THE ENIGMA OF THE MEDITATIONS

Descartes's intellectual activities, including his researches in mathematics, optics, and anatomy, and his publication of three scientific Essays and the Discourse on Method in 1637 have been described in the Introduction. Why did the Meditations, a hundred-page treatise on metaphysics and epistemology appear four years later and what can be concluded from Descartes's manner of presenting it to the world?

In the Meditations, doubt and subjectivity are taken to their logical limits to yield, not uncertainty and relativism, but truth and objectivity. The argument begins with the single hypothesis propounded by the Meditator: “A malevolent Demon is thoroughly deceiving me.” As in a mathematical reductio ad absurdum proof, the hypothesis is shown to be false; it contains a hidden contradiction – if I am deceived, I exist, and if I exist, God exists and is not a deceiver. Considered as a thought experiment, Descartes's procedure discloses important features of reality by artificially forcing the natural way of thinking out of its usual patterns. But why did Descartes decide to take up such abstract questions as the nature and existence of God and the nature of material and mental substance? Why does he employ such scholastic terminology as “formal and eminent causes,” “essence” and “existence,” as though he were writing to appeal to a traditional university audience when the structure of his argument is so novel?