Meditations on First Philosophy
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oxford world’s classics MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY René Descartes was born at La Haye near Tours on 31 March 1596. He was educated at the Jesuit Collège de la Flèche in Anjou, and at the University of Poitiers, where he took a Licenciate in Law in 1616. Two years later he entered the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau in Holland, and met a local schoolmaster, Isaac Beeckman, who fostered his interest in mathematics and physics. After further travels in Europe he settled in Paris in 1625, and came into contact with scientists, theologians, and philosophers in the circle of the Minim friar Marin Mersenne. At the end of 1928 Descartes left for Holland, which he made his home until 1648; he devoted himself to carrying forward the mathematical, scientific, and philosophical work he had begun in Paris. When he learned of the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633, he abandoned his plans to publish a treatise on physics, and under pressure from his friends consented to have the Discourse on the Method printed, with three accompany- ing essays on topics in which he had made discoveries. In 1641 his Meditations appeared, setting out the metaphysical underpinnings of his physical theories; these were accompanied by objections written by contemporary philosophers, and Descartes’s replies to them. His writings provoked controversy in both France and Holland, where his scientific ideas were banned in one university; his works, however (including the Principles of Philosophy of 1644) continued to be published, and to bring him notoriety and renown. In 1648 he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden to settle in Stockholm; it was there he died of pneumonia on 11 February 1650. Michael Moriarty is Centenary Professor of French Literature and Thought at Queen Mary, University of London. Among his publications are Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (2003) and Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (2006). oxford world’s classics For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS RENÉ DESCARTES Meditations on First Philosophy With Selections from the Objections and Replies Translated with an Introduction and Notes by MICHAEL MORIARTY 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Michael Moriarty 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Descartes, René, 1596–1650. [Meditationes de prima philosophia. English] Meditations on first philosophy: with selections from the objections and replies/ René Descartes translated with an introduction and notes by Michael Moriarty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–280696–3 1. First philosophy. 2. God—Proof, Ontological. 3. Methodology. 4. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Moriarty, Mike. II. Title. B1853.E5M67 2008 194--dc22 2007044519 Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 978–0–19–280696–3 13579108642 CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi List of Abbreviations vii Introduction ix Note on the Text and Translation xli Select Bibliography xlvi A Chronology of René Descartes xlix MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY 1 Letter of Dedication 3 Preface to the Reader 7 Synopsis of the following Six Meditations 10 First Meditation 13 Second Meditation 17 Third Meditation 25 Fourth Meditation 38 Fifth Meditation 45 Sixth Meditation 51 THE OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES 65 Introduction 67 First Objections and Replies 74 Second Objections and Replies 85 Third Objections 107 Fourth Objections and Replies 125 Fifth Objections and Replies 166 Sixth Objections and Replies 199 Seventh Objections 214 Explanatory Notes 232 Index 273 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for assistance with this edition. In par- ticular, I would like to thank Terence Cave, Hannah Dawson, Susan James, Ian Maclean, and Morag Shiach for their generous assistance and support. I am most grateful to the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press for their valuable comments and suggestions. As series editor, Judith Luna has been an unfailing source of guidance and encouragement. Thanks also to Jeff New for his painstaking and vigilant copy-editing. As always, my colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London, have been a pleasure to work with and along- side. This work was begun in the last stages of a research leave jointly funded by Queen Mary and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am most grateful for this support. Anyone working on Descartes knows how much he or she owes to the generations of scholars in various disciplines and from many countries whose work has illuminated the life, background, and above all the texts of this author. I hope that my own debts are, however imperfectly, acknowledged in the notes. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AT Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols., rev. edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1996) BGDM Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ ‘Meditations’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) CCD John Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) CHSCP Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Discourse Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, ed. and trans. Ian Maclean, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) F Descartes, Meditations, French text JHI Journal of the History of Ideas L Descartes, Meditations, Latin text OP Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vols., Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1963–73) PL Patrologiæ cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844–55) VS Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier, 3 vols. paginated as one (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 1992 [1st publ. 1924]) This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION Descartes’s Meditations is among the most influential texts in the his- tory of Western philosophy. Many thinkers have challenged or rejected his thought, some of them almost totally, but his rigorous questioning of traditional certainties is at the source of most subse- quent philosophical developments. The criticism he has received and continues to receive is a backhanded compliment he would not have appreciated, but an index, nonetheless, of the power of his philosophy. Descartes’s Life Descartes was born in 1596, in La Haye, a town in Touraine (central- western France): the family home was in Châtellerault, in the neigh- bouring province of Poitou.1 France was emerging from a civil war between Catholics and Protestants that had lasted for over thirty years. His family’s background was in the legal profession and the royal administration. The office held by his father conferred noble rank, but such office-holding nobles had far less prestige than the military nobility. Yet Descartes, as Ian Maclean observes, derived a sense of status from this background, borne out in his later attitudes, including a tendency to refuse to be identified as a professional scholar.2 In 1607 he entered the Jesuit college of La Flèche, near Le Mans, where he received an excellent education, which he describes 1 For biographical material I have drawn on Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Geneviève Rodis- Lewis, Descartes: biographie (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1995: in English as Descartes: His Life and Thought, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)); A. C. Grayling, Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and its Place in his Times (London: The Free Press, 2005); Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). I am particularly grateful to Ian Maclean for his comments on a draft of this Introduction as well as on the draft Explanatory Notes. 2 Descartes, A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, ed.