I read this directly after reading through Discourse on Method, and I think there’s no question that this is the sober, more traditionally philosophical sister work which seems to contain the most distilled Descartes. This time around we’re focusing primarily on first principles and the conclusions which might rise out of them. The outline goes:

1. First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt (ie everything)
2. Second Meditation: Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is Easier to Know than the body
3. Third Meditation: Of God; That He Exists
4. Meditation: Of Truth and Error
5. Fifth Meditation: Of the Essence of Material Things; and, Once More of God, that He Exists
6. Sixth Meditation: Of the Existence of Material Things, and of the Real Distinction between the Soul and the Body of Man

Just looking at the outline here, it’s clear Descartes is serious about things. While Plato flirts with the nature of things, things that must truly exist in some capacity, it isn’t until some of the later sections that Descartes is willing to flirt with these questions. His approach, while I think it’s reconcilable with much of classical and antique philosophy, is a stark departure. The “method” from Discourse on Method is much more stripped down here, but is now revealed as the assumption crushing sledgehammer that Descartes hyped it up to be, leaving us with a landscape nearly alien. In fact, what seems similar (lots of antique philosophy does end up slipping in, perhaps because of Descartes’ relationship with the Jesuits) seems out of place. One can’t help in 2023 but do some eye rolling at the fact that it’s only at the third meditation that God is apparently proven to exist, something that perhaps even smacks of some desperation in Descartes trying to come to reasonable conclusions. Despite this, however, most of the walk through first principles is extremely productive and incredibly insightful. I would argue that the first two meditations are all time classics and put in a way that is extremely original. Here, unlike the typical doubting Descartes that we sort of expect, we quickly arrive at a foundational truth that we all the moderns after Descartes have taken for granted: I think therefore I am. In many ways it actually seems a blanket of truth amidst that state of uncertainty that Descartes initially leaves us in. And, although I’m critical of Descartes treatment of God, it’s only because so much of his analysis reaches these sublime heights. His use of God here wouldn’t make most theologians blink an eye, but the most rigorous philosophers are left dazed and possibly with a smirk on their face. Perhaps Descartes is really much more pragmatic than he leads the reader to believe. It might be his one trick of rhetoric that backfirst a bit on him.