The Blackwell Guide to Descartes' Meditations (Blackwell Guides to Great Works)

263 Pages·2006·1.22 MB·english

by  Stephen Gaukroger

The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations
Blackwell Guides to Great Works
A proper understanding of philosophy requires engagement with the foundational
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Published
1 The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic, edited by Gerasimos Santas
2 The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Stephen
Gaukroger
3 The Blackwell Guide to Mill’s Utilitarianism, edited by Henry R. West
4 The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Richard
Kraut
5 The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise, edited by Saul Traiger
Forthcoming
The Blackwell Guide to Kant’s Ethics, edited by Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, edited by
Kenneth Westphal
The Blackwell Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, edited by Robert Scharff
The Blackwell Guide To
descartes’
Meditations
ediTed By STephen GaukroGer
© 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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1 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Blackwell guide to Descartes’ meditations / edited by Stephen Gaukroger.
p. cm.—(Blackwell guides to great works)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1875-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-1875-X (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1874-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-1874-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Descartes, René, 1596–1650. Meditationes de prima philosophia. 2. First
philosophy. I. Gaukroger, Stephen. II. Series.
B1854.B55 2005
194—dc22
2005009842
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
References to Descartes’ Works ix
Introduction 1
Stephen Gaukroger
1 The Meditations and the Objections and Replies 6
Roger Ariew
2 Descartes and Skepticism 17
Charles Larmore
3 The Cogito and the Foundations of Knowledge 30
Edwin Curley
4 The Nature of the Mind 48
Marleen Rozemond
5 The Doctrine of Substance 67
Jorge Secada
6 The Doctrine of Ideas 86
Steven Nadler
7 Proofs for the Existence of God 104
Lawrence Nolan and Alan Nelson
vi cont ents
8 The Cartesian Circle 122
Gary Hatfield
9 Judgment and Will 142
Michael Della Rocca
10 Descartes’ Proof of the Existence of Matter 160
Desmond M. Clarke
11 The Mind–Body Relation 179
John Cottingham
12 Seventeenth-century Responses to the Meditations 193
Tad M. Schmaltz
Appendix: Descartes’ Six Metaphysical Meditations, trans.
William Molyneux (1680) 204
References 243
Index 250
Notes on Contributors
Roger Ariew is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, Tampa.
He is author of Descartes and the Last Scholastics (1999), and co-author of Historical
Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (2003). He has published transla-
tions of Montaigne, Descartes, and Leibniz, and edited the works of Dupleix.
Desmond M. Clarke is Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork. He
is author of Descartes’ Philosophy of Science (1982), Occult Powers and Hypotheses
(1989), and Descartes’ Philosophy of Mind (2003). He is translator of the Penguin
editions of Descartes’ writings.
John Cottingham is Professor of Philosophy at Reading University. He is author
of Rationalism (1984), Descartes (1986), The Rationalists (1988), A Descartes
Dictionary (1993), Descartes’ Philosophy of Mind (1997), Philosophy and the Good
Life (1998), and The Meaning of Life (2002). Among his many translations of
Descartes, he is co-translator of the three-volume Cambridge edition of Descartes’
writings and letters.
Edwin Curley is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He is
author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics (1969) and Descartes against the Skeptics (1978).
He has published translations of Hobbes and Spinoza.
Michael Della Rocca is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is author
of Representation and the Mind–Body Problem (1996).
Stephen Gaukroger is Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science
at the University of Sydney, and presently holds an Australian Research Council
Professorial Fellowship. His works include Descartes: An Intellectual Biography
(1995), Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-modern Philosophy (2001),
and Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy (2002).
viii notes on co ntributors
Gary Hatfield is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is
author of The Natural and the Normative (1991), Descartes and the Meditations
(2002), and Philosophy of Psychology (2005). He has published translations of
Kant.
Charles Larmore is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities, Professor of
Philosophy and of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is author of
Patterns of Moral Complexity (1987), Modernité et morale (1993), The Morals
of Modernity (1996), The Romantic Legacy (1996), Les Pratiques du moi (2004),
and (with Alain Renaut) Débat sur l’éthique: Idéalisme ou réalisme.
Steven Nadler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. He is
author of Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (1989), Malebranche and
Ideas (1992), Spinoza: A Life (1999), and Spinoza’s Heresy (2002).
Alan Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He
has published papers in early modern philosophy and the philosophy of science.
Lawrence Nolan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University,
Long Beach. He has published papers in early modern philosophy and the phil-
osophy of religion.
Marleen Rozemond is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Toronto. She is author of Descartes’ Dualism (1998).
Tad M. Schmaltz is Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is author of
Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul (1996) and Radical Cartesianism (2002).
Jorge Secada is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.
He is author of Cartesian Metaphysics (2000).
References to
Descartes’ Works
All references to Descartes’ works are to the standard original-language edition:
Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols (Paris: Vrin,
1974–89). This is abbreviated throughout to AT, followed by the volume number,
and then the page numbers, e.g. AT iv, 345–6.
The standard English selection of Descartes’ works is The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and
Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91).
There are marginal references to the volume and page number in AT in this trans-
lation, and the original text and the translation can be correlated easily.
For ease of reference, the following volumes in AT correspond to the relevant
works and volumes of the Cottingham et al. (CSM) translation:
AT i–v Correspondence CSM vol. 3
AT vi Discourse on Method, Essays CSM vol. 1
AT vii Meditations with Objections and Replies (Latin) CSM vol. 2
AT viiiA Principles of Philosophy (Latin) CSM vol. 1
AT viiiB Notes on a Programme, &c. CSM vol. 1
AT ixA Meditations with Objections and Replies (French) CSM vol. 2
AT ixB Principles of Philosophy (French) CSM vol. 1
AT x Rules, Search for Truth, &c. CSM vol. 1
AT xi The World, Passions of the Soul, &c. CSM vol. 1
Introduction
Stephen Gaukroger
In Descartes’ Meditations (1641) epistemology takes center stage in philoso-
phy for the first time, and it does so in an especially dramatic form, offering
a mental purging of a kind previously only encountered in religious literature.
It puts the knowing subject on the spot, demanding that any knowledge claim,
even the seemingly most trivial or obvious, be justified, and this demand for jus-
tification is presented as if one’s life depended on it: for Descartes wants to show
us that our cognitive life does indeed depend on it. The Meditations aim to make
one responsible for one’s cognitive life in a way that the devotional texts of the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation – where a range of exacting moral stan-
dards, accompanied by demands for self-vigilance which had been the preserve of
monastic culture throughout the Middle Ages, were transferred wholesale to the
general populace – made one responsible for the minute details of one’s everyday
life. Philosophy becomes personal with Descartes. It is no longer the preserve of,
or exclusively of concern to, the cleric. Indeed, Descartes’ view is that the person
best fitted to be a philosopher is someone whose mind has not been corrupted by
scholastic learning (AT x, 496). The nature of philosophy is transformed, although
it does in some ways return to the notion of the philosopher as portrayed by
Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues, someone who has had no special training but
takes nothing on trust, subjecting everything to intense examination and question-
ing (see Risse 1963).
In the light of this, it is not surprising that courses in the Western philosophical
tradition in colleges and universities worldwide include a dialogue of Plato and
Descartes’ Meditations as introductions to philosophy. This is not because they
are elementary, providing a means of acclimatizing oneself to philosophical argu-
ment before moving on to something more substantial, for they remain both the
subject of serious scholarship and permanent sources of philosophical inspiration.
Rather, their attraction derives from a combination of readability and depth. This
combination is sometimes liable to mislead readers because it means that there is
a great deal more beneath the surface than there seems.