scholarly journals The Two Truths that Descartes Discovers in His Meditations on First Philosophy that Do Not Require the Divine Guarantee

2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Stanley Tweyman

In my paper, I show that there are two truths in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy that do not require the divine guarantee, despite Descartes’ claim in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph in the third meditation that he cannot be certain of anything unless he knows that God exists as Descartes’ creator and that God is not a deceiver.

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Caterina Gabrielli

This essay relates the content of an educational experience that applies the methodology of debate to the closer examination of an argumentative philosophical text, in the form of a deliberation with oneself. The text in question is Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, specifically the first, the second, the sixth meditation and respective Objections. The class involved in the activity is the IV B of the Liceo classico Alessandro Manzoni in Lecco.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 133-148
Author(s):  
Saja Parvizian ◽  

Commentators have noticed the striking similarities between the skep­tical arguments of al-Ghazālī’s Deliverance from Error and Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. However, commentators agree that their solutions to skepticism are radically different. Al-Ghazālī does not use rational proofs to defeat skepticism; rather, he relies on a supernatural light [nūr] sent by God to rescue him from skepticism. Descartes, on the other hand, relies on the natural light of reason [lumen naturale] to prove the existence of God, mind, and body. In this paper, I argue that Descartes’ solution is closer to al-Ghazālī’s than commentators have allowed. A close reading of the cosmological argument of the Third Meditation reveals that there is also a type of divine intervention em­ployed in the Meditations, which helps Descartes defeat skepticism. This reading may buttress the case made by some that al-Ghazālī influenced Descartes; but more importantly, it requires us to rethink key features of Descartes’ epistemology.


Author(s):  
Mary Domski

This article examines Newton’s approach to applying mathematics to natural evidence by attending to the proposals concerning space and mathematical knowledge that are presented in the unpublished pre-1687 manuscript De Gravitatione. In this work, Newton identifies the form of space studied in geometry with the empirically real form of space in which natural bodies are situated, and thereby collapses the classic Platonic divide between the certainty of mathematical knowledge and the uncertainty of empirical knowledge. As a result, the question of whether it is possible to apply mathematics to the empirical realm is not, for Newton, to be answered independently of mathematics. As shown in De Gravitatione, this application is part and parcel of the mathematical enterprise. To highlight the novelty of Newton’s blending of mathematics and empiricism, his views are contrasted with those put forward in Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).


2006 ◽  
Vol 2006 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-84
Author(s):  
Jacek Filek

The history of philosophy is a history of the basic paradigms of philosophical thinking. These paradigms are marked out by the changing ways of experiencing being. Philosophy „declines“ being. Expressing this more grammatico, philosophy conjugates the infinitive „to be“. The first word of the first First Philosophy is „is“ - this is the „antiquity“ of philosophizing, the objective paradigm, the philosophy of objectivity, for which reason is the dominant human faculty and truth is the primary notion. The time of this paradigm is the past. The first word of the second First Philosophy is „I am“ - this is the „modernity“ of philosophizing, the subjective paradigm, the monological philosophy of subjectivity, for which the will is the dominant human faculty and freedom is the primary notion. The time of this paradigm is the future. The first word of the third First Philosophy is „you are“ - this is „the now“ of philosophizing, the dialogical paradigm, the philosophy of „the other“, for which feeling is the dominant faculty and responsibility is the primary notion. The basic notion of this new paradigm of thinking is responsibility, and its time is the present. These paradigms, however, are not in conflict with one another; rather, in showing the various aspects of being they help us to experience its fullness. The full experience of being can therefore be summarized in a triad of notions: truth - freedom - responsibility. However, what responsibility consists of remains to be determined.


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