- Meditation as Experimental Introspection 🔶/MEI
- Meditation as Mental Purification 🔷/MMP
The coloured diamonds are for skimming, the abbreviations for textual search.
A certain principled problem in looking for remarks on these themes in the actual meditations (as opposed to the introductions or replies to the objects), is the literary character of the meditations, i.e. it is not always clear who is speaking in the meditations and in how far this is an expression of Descartes's view.
Quotes are from John Cottingham translation, Cambridge UP, Second Edition.
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[...] although the proofs I employ here are in my view as certain and evident as the proofs of geometry, [...] it will be impossible for many people to achieve an adequate perception of them [...], because they require a mind which is completely free from preconceived opinions and which can easily detach itself from involvement with the senses
p. 5, 🔷/MMP
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If all this [i.e. the official blessing from the Sorbonne] were to happen, I do not about that all the errors which have ever existed on these subjects would soon be eradicated from the minds of men.
p. 6, 🔷/MMP
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there will be no one left in the world who will dare to call into doubt either the existence of God or the real distinction between the human soul and body
p. 7 🔷/MMP
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I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions.
p. 9, 🔶/MEI & 🔷/MMP
!!!This quote seems important, because it makes explicit that Descartes's purpose is a practice and that this practice is central to the text. Otherwise a lot of the following quotes about mental purification might hang in the air because they are related only to the text, but not to meditation in particular. But if the express purpose of the text is to serve for meditation, these are ~ co-extensive.
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Although the usefulness of such extensive doubt is not apparent at first sight, its greatest benefit lies in freeing us from all our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.
The eventual result of this doubt is to make it impossible for us to have any further doubts about what we subsequently discover to be true.
p. 10, 🔶/MEI & 🔷/MMP
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the mind uses its own freedom and supposes the non-existence of all the things about whose existence it can have even the slightest doubt; and in so doing the mind notices that it is impossible that it should not itself exist during this time
p. 10, 🔶/MEI
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it enables the mind to distinguish without difficulty what belongs to itself, i.e. to an intellectual nature, from what belongs to the body
p. 10, 🔷/MMP
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Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them.
p. 15, 🔷/MMP
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But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.
p. 16, 🔷/MMP
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In the meantime, I know that no danger or error will result from my plan, and that I cannot possibly go too far in my distrustful attitude. This is because the task now in hand does not involve action but merely the acquisition of knowledge.
p. 19, 🔶/MEI
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I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.
p. 19, 🔶/MEI & 🔷/MMP
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But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being woken up, and goes along with the pleasant illusion as long as he can.
p. 19, 🔷/MMP
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I thus realize that none of the things that the imagination enables me to grasp is at all relevant to this knowledge of myself which I possess, and that the mind must therefore be most carefully diverted from such things if it is to perceive its own nature as distinctly as possible.
p. 23, 🔷/MMP
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But I see what it is: my mind enjoys wandering off and will not yet submit to being restrained within the bounds of truth. Very well then; just this once let us give it a completely free rein, so that after a while, when it is time to tighten the reins, it may more readily submit to being curbed.
p. 24, 🔷/MMP
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But since the habit of holding on to old opinions cannot be set aside so quickly, I should like to stop here and meditate for some time on this new knowledge I have gained, so as to fix it more deeply in my memory.
p. 27, 🔷/MMP
Nothing too interesting here.
The ending of the third meditation, where the I stops to bask in the contemplation of God could lead a cynic to believe that this is a cheap trick to gain the favour of the Sorbonne. And then, that the appeals to meditation elsewhere are cheap tricks of the same sort. But this is not compatible with the very similar stances towards meditation expressed in Descartes's private letters.
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Admittedly, I am aware of a certain weakness in me, in that I am unable to keep my attention fixed on one and the same item of knowledge at all times; but by attentive and repeated meditation I am nevertheless able to make myself remember if as often as the need arises, and thus get into the habit of avoiding error.
p. 49, 🔷/MMP
This is with respect to the need to keep the will out of factual judgments, for risk of overstepping the bounds of reason. It is necessary to make a habit out of restraining one's will.
Not much.
Not much.
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Those who give the matter their careful attention and spend time meditating with me will clearly see that there is within us an idea of a supremely powerful and perfect being, and also that the objective reality of this idea cannot be found in us, either formally or eminently. I cannot force this truth on my readers if they are lazy, since it depends solely on their exercising their own powers of thought.
p. 105, 🔶/MEI
From Cottingham, Murdoch, Stoothoff, Kenny's translation of Descartes's correspondences
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If you spend a sufficient time on this meditation, you acquire by degrees a very clear, dare I say intuitive, notion of intellectual nature in general.
p. 55, 🔶/MEI
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But though this is very true, and no one could find it hard to accept when he thinks of it explicitly, yet I did say that it is a belief which one has to grow accustomed to, and that long practice and repeated meditation are necessary to do so. This is because our desires and our passions are constantly telling us the opposite.
p. 98, 🔷/MMP
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We cannot continually pay attention to the same thing; and so, however clear and evident the reasons may have been that convinced us of some truth in the past, we can later be turned away from believing it by some false appearances unless we have so imprinted it on our mind by long and frequent meditation that it has become a settled disposition with us. In this sense the scholastics are right when they say that virtues are habits; for in fact our failings are rarely due to lack of theoretical knowledge of what we should do, but to lack of practical knowledge - that is, lack of a firm habit of belief.
p. 267, 🔷/MMP (Letter to Princess Elizabeth)
!!!This seems extremely useful for supporting a very purposeful (and serious) use of the format of spiritual meditation.