Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze a contemporary debate concerning a central aspect of Descartes’s Meditations. The debate concerns the proper way to respond to the question “Who is the Cartesian meditator?” The answers offered by Descartes’s commentators have included (1) a philosophically naïve person of common sense, (2) a skeptic, (3) a Scholastic, and (4) an amalgam of such personas. I argue that each of these answers is misguided and that the proper response is not to attempt to answer the question. Rather, I contend, the proper response is to reject the question both because it falsely implies that the meditator is a fictional character and because reading the Meditations as a work of fiction obscures Descartes’s concern with the pursuit of virtue, in general, and with the virtues of belief formation, in particular.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, the young slave in the Meno.
- 2.
Carriero (1997, 3–5) identifies the following line of objections.
- 3.
Descartes seems to be commenting on the project of the Principles, which was published shortly before this letter, but his comment applies equally well to the Meditations, if it is considered merely as a creative way of presenting the same arguments for which he argues in the Principles.
- 4.
Thus, the kind of prayer involved in lectio divina differs fundamentally, say, from petitionary prayers or prayers of praise.
- 5.
Given my focus on “traditional Christianity,” as described in the Introduction, I will use the title “Saint” for and only for those people who are regarded as saints by the “mother tradition” that is shared by Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Protestants. So, for example, I will refer to Paul the Apostle as “St. Paul” and to Augustine of Hippo as “St. Augustine” but to Frances de Sales simply as “Frances de Sales.”
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- 7.
Even after Augustine becomes convinced of the essential claims of Christianity, he hesitates to embrace the requisite changes both of will and of action. For instance, alluding to a parable comparing the kingdom of God to a pearl of great price, he says, “I had found the good pearl, and this I must buy, after selling all that I had. Yet still I hesitated”—Augustine 1960, 182. Similarly, he confesses (to God), “I was overcome by your truth, I had no answer whatsoever to make, but only those slow and drowsy words, ‘Right away. Yes, right away.’ ‘Let me be for a little while.’ But ‘Right away—right away’ was never right now, and ‘Let me be for a little while’ stretched out for a long time”—Augustine 1960, 90.
- 8.
Note that I am merely using Augustine and Ignatius as examples from the general contemplative tradition with which Descartes is familiar in an attempt to help elucidate my thesis about the importance of reading the Meditations as meditations for understanding the Cartesian meditator. In so doing, I mean to suggest neither that Descartes’s philosophy is fundamentally Augustinian nor that its origins are substantially Ignatian—cp. Menn 1998; Stohrer 1979.
I found Stohrer’s paper to be helpful in elucidating the similarities between the practice of Descartes’s Meditations and the kind of retreat one would make with Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. It seems to me, however, that Descartes is likely to have a number of influences from the general contemplative tradition with which he is familiar—cp. Hatfield 1986. Thus, I think it is a virtue of my argument that it does not require an attempt to establish a link between Descartes and any one of his possible influences, and, consequently, that it does not require an attempt to explain the strength of the influence that any particular author(s) had on him.
- 9.
Since literary genres are not the sorts of things that have “real essences,” allow me to stipulate this point as marking the essential difference between the literary genre of “meditations” and the literary genre of “fiction,” as I am using these (and related) terms in this chapter. Thus, the nature of a “work of philosophical fiction” is merely to present a philosopher’s arguments in a stylized fashion by placing them in the mouth(s) of some fictional character(s). So, for instance, as I am using these and related terms, both Descartes’s The Search for Truth and Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion are examples of philosophical fiction.
- 10.
I am sympathetic with Cunning on this point, but our respective readings may differ. For instance, he agrees with commentators who claim that “Descartes writes from the first-person point of view to identify with his readers” and cites Wilson (1978) as an example of such a commentator (2009, 28). If, by this, he means to suggest that the Meditations is a work of fiction, then our readings do, in fact, differ in an important way since reading the Meditations in this manner seems to me to misrepresent Descartes’s role as the director of a set of meditations. Given his emphasis on Descartes’s role as “teacher,” however, our readings may not differ all that greatly.
- 11.
Such practice aims to reform not merely the content of a meditator’s knowledge but also his or her passions and, ultimately, his or her cognitive, conative, and affective habits. For more recent work on these aspects of Descartes’s program, see not only Cunning 2010 but also, e.g., Davies 2001; Schmitter 2002.
- 12.
Broughton suggests that “the motivations Descartes describes for undertaking an inquiry guided by the method of doubt are not the motivations that might persuade any actual meditator to begin as the fictional meditator begins”—see, Broughton 2002, 31. Although it might be true that no one who is first beginning to philosophize would sit down and, without any guidance, start thinking through the issues of first philosophy as the ‘I’ of the Meditations does, it does not follow that a meditator would not sit down and begin to think through the issues of first philosophy in this way. This is because a meditator approaches Descartes’s text with the intention of meditating seriously and attempting to identify with the ‘I’. Just as Augustine may not originally have been motivated to meditate on the Psalms for the reasons expressed by the ‘I’ of the scriptures, the person who decides to engage in the Cartesian meditations may not originally be motivated by the reasons expressed by the ‘I’ of the Meditations. Nonetheless, in keeping with the object of meditation, Augustine’s mind or will were changed as he came to identify with the ‘I’ of the Psalms. Similarly, even if the Cartesian meditator does not share Descartes’s convictions, his mind or will may be changed as he comes to identify with the ‘I’ of the Meditations. Hence, Broughton’s assertion is incorrect: an actual meditator may, indeed, begin as the Cartesian meditator does.
- 13.
Thus, it is a bit of a misnomer to speak of “the Cartesian meditator.” There is not one Cartesian meditator; there are many.
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Vitz, R. (2015). Cartesian Meditation and the Pursuit of Virtue. In: Reforming the Art of Living. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05281-6_2
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