Reasoning and Meditation in Descartes' Third Meditation

• Published in: The European legacy, toward new paradigms Vol. 27; no. 3-4; pp. 300 - 309
• Main Author: Tweyman, Stanley
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 19.05.2022; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: argumentation; Descartes; God; knowledge; Meditation; reasoning
• ISSN: 1084-8770; 1470-1316
• DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2021.2023991

My article focuses on Descartes' Third Meditation, in which he seeks to gain a knowledge of God as his creator. While Descartes offers two proofs of God's existence in this meditation-the first to prove that God is the cause of his idea of God, and the second to prove that God is the cause of his idea of God and that God is the cause of Descartes, insofar as he is a thinking thing-I show that these proofs fail to establish that God is the cause of Descartes. This is not a failure on the part of these proofs, for ultimately Descartes intends the knowledge of God as his creator to be obtained through meditation, and not argumentation. The two proofs of God's existence have a role to play in guiding Descartes to grasp, through meditation, the relation of his idea of God and the idea of the self qua thinking thing. Toward the end of the article, I show that my study is in accordance with Descartes' account of the method he employs in the Meditations, as detailed in the Replies to Objections II.