Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy Literary Elements

Philosophy, nonfiction

17th century France, Age of Enlightenment

This nonfictional, philosophical work is told from the first-person perspective of the narrator, who is most likely Rene Descartes himself walking the reader through his thought experiment.

Thoughtful, contemplative, introspective

There is no real protagonist or antagonist, just a French philosopher searching for meaning through reason.

Descartes doesn't know what to trust in the world around him; his senses seem untrustworthy, and he's uncertain if reality is simply an illusion. To find an answer to this problem, he engages in a philosophical experiment, stripping reality down to the ground layer and building it back up until he has a theory of life and metaphysics.

Descartes finishes his examination, concluding that the difference between mind and flesh is extreme, despite their integration in human bodies, and thus completes his cohesive metaphysical system.

Descartes beings the essay by telling the reader that he has discovered that many things he had believed were in fact incorrect, making him question the nature of reality. This foreshadows his dramatic thought experiment, in which he dissects and rebuilds the theory of life itself.

"My reason tells me that as well as withholding assent from propositions that are obviously false, I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and indubitable." (First Meditation)

As part of his reductionistic thought experiment, Descartes makes no allusions to anyone or anything beyond himself and his mind, save for his references to God, which could be considered allusions in themselves.

Over the course of the First Meditation, Descartes has mechanically and procedurally dismantled the reliability of reality (in his mind, at least). At the beginning of the Second Meditation, consequently, he says that he feels like he's being swirled around in a dark whirlpool, not sure which way is up. This whirlpool represents the strength and confusion of existential doubt, which he quickly tries to escape by proving the existence of both himself and God.

According to Descartes, God exists because we can perceive him. We can perceive things, however, because God exists. This leads to a bit of circular reasoning that Descartes might be able to spin into a paradox.

Although he has preconceived ideas and philosophies, Descartes strips them all away, dismantling reality until he's back to the ground level before building it back up, paralleling the discoveries of a person as he grows up and discovers what he believes is true about the universe.

"I realized that if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I needed—just once in my life—to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations." (First Meditation)

"Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once." (First Meditation)