What is Descartes' Meditations?

Abstract

Starting with the question “what is Descartes’s Meditations?” the paper moves on to consider the relation between the literary genre in which philosophy is written, the underlying conception of the subject, and how a given work should be read. In answer to the initial question the paper takes the Meditations to be a manual for meditation on the objects of first philosophy, self and God answer. It then supports this answer with an overall reading of the book, highlighting some passages, discussing Descartes’s conception of meditation, and addressing the issue of the role within it played by argument and discursive understanding.