Want to learn the ideas in Meditations On First Philosophy better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Meditations On First Philosophy by Rene Descartes here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of Meditations On First Philosophy
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Meditations On First Philosophy, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Rene Descartes.
1-Page Summary of Meditations On First Philosophy
Overview
If you were asked to quote a philosopher, which quote would come to mind? “Workers of the world unite!” or perhaps “I think, therefore I am.” However, most people would say, “I think, therefore I am.”
René Descartes is one of the most famous philosophers in history, but his theories are not widely known. This passage explains three main concepts from his best-known work, “Meditations on First Philosophy”. If you read these key points and understand them, you will be able to better comprehend that famous quote.
In this article, you’ll learn why Descartes says the Truman Show isn’t too far from reality; how to prove God’s existence; and why we shouldn’t trust our eyes or ears.
Big Idea #1: Our senses deceive us.
If one of your friends lied to you over and over again, then you wouldn’t trust them. You would also not rely on them for anything important.
We rely on our five senses to gather information about the world around us. However, our senses often trick us into believing things that are not true. For example, when we dream at night, our sense of sight and hearing can convince us that we’re having a real experience.
Dreams can feel incredibly real, so real that we rarely realize they are just dreams. Painters can make images of life and the senses create vivid images in our minds.
Of course, painters often create images of things that could never exist in the real world. Think of satyrs, half-man/half-goat figures from mythology. We know they don’t exist, but still we can be fooled into thinking they do.
The reason is that artists use a technique called “simultaneous contrast” to fool our visual system into seeing something that isn’t actually there.
Our senses can be fooled. They can be misled by external forces and factors.
Imagine that something evil out there is fooling your senses. That sounds far-fetched, but let’s roll with it for a moment. It could be tricking your senses without you knowing about it—right this very minute. Descartes drew this reasoning from popular beliefs about demons that were still prevalent during the seventeenth century. We find a more modern example of his argument in The Truman Show, where the main character, played by Jim Carrey, is raised in an artificial world where he is constantly filmed and watched by millions of viewers around the globe. The whole thing is controlled by an “evil genius” TV producer who controls everything Truman sees and hears every day of his life.
So, we can’t trust our senses or what we learn from them. We should therefore treat all knowledge with skepticism. Things like our body and the physical world around us might exist, but we can’t be sure of it. So what can we be sure of?
Big Idea #2: Our thinking proves that we exist.
As our senses can be easily deceived, we should spend our lives as vigilant skeptics. Skepticism is a good thing because it means that you’re thinking about things and looking for answers.
