Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy

In this chapter, Descartes provides a short autobiography of the time between his childhood and adulthood in order to give the reader a context for how and why he arrived at certain understandings of the nature of Reason, truth, falsity, science, and morality.

Ever since he first began schooling, Descartes enjoyed learning, regardless if the subject matter belonged to the arts, the humanities, or the sciences. Moreover, it was during these years that he would form a deep love of mathematics and philosophy. The key realization made by Descartes was that, with respect to philosophy, “it has been cultivated by the very best minds which have ever existed […] and that, nevertheless, not one of its problems is not subject to disagreement, and consequently is uncertain” (32).

It is this realization that the history of philosophy is characterized by the diversity of positions with respect to a set of shared problems—what is truth? What is reality? What is good/the good life?—that led Descartes on the path whereby the only way of discerning what is actually true is by treating everything that is probably true as being a mere falsity: “I took to be tantamount to false everything which was merely probably” (32).

It is from these experiences during his time at university that Descartes decided, once he had graduated, to try to arrive at the truth regarding the nature of rationality by travelling and experiencing the ways in which people of different backgrounds came to reason about what they take to be true:

[A]s soon as I reached an age which allowed me to emerge from the tutelage of my teachers, I abandoned the study of letters altogether […] I spent the rest of my youth in traveling […] in gathering a varied experience, in testing myself in situations which chance offered me, and everywhere reflecting upon whatever events I witnessed in such a way as to draw some profit from them. For it seemed to me that I might find much more truth in the reasonings which each one makes in matters that affect him closely (33).

At the end of Descartes’s experiences within academia and during his travels, he comes to the realization that whether it is with respect to books or to everyday persons, one is continually confronted with a variety of opinions people take to be true, all while the foundations that establish objective truth remain lacking. 

In this chapter, Descartes recounts the time he was living in Germany during a winter that forced him to spend a whole day indoors. On this day, Descartes undertook a closer examination of his own thoughts and was led to his first key insight: “often there is less perfection in works composed of several separate pieces and made by different masters, than in those at which only one person has worked” (35).

For Descartes this can be seen in art, architecture, and even in the laws that govern a society. Moreover, Descartes is led to take as true the idea that there is more perfection in a work created by a single person than by many when he contrasts the laws of human society with those of God:

[...] it is indeed certain that the state of the true religion, the laws of which God alone has made, must be incomparably better ordered than all the others. And, to speak of human things, I believe that, if Sparta greatly flourished in times past, it was not on account of the excellence of each of its laws taken individually […] but because, having been invented by one man only, they all tended towards the same end (35-36).

From these insights, Descartes goes on to outline four rules by which he will construct a method of knowing the truth without prejudice or convention. The first rule is to never treat anything as true unless it is so clear and distinct in one’s mind that it would be impossible to doubt its existence. The second rule is that of dividing a thing or problem into as many parts as possible in order to re-order them in the most rational manner. The third rule is that of beginning with the most simple or basic ideas and then ascend in degree of complexity to more complex notions. The fourth rule is to continuously subject these ideas, whether simple or complex, to review and revision, in order to be certain that one has not omitted anything. 

In this chapter, Descartes takes it upon himself to outline the key moral codes that he followed during this period, whereby he would subject everything he believes to be true to rigorous scrutiny. The reason Descartes felt it necessary to delineate these moral codes was the simple fact that what we think is true and good influences how we act towards others. Since Descartes is subjecting all of his beliefs to scrutiny, he feels it necessary to establish a set of norms that will allow him to accomplish the practical task of everyday living among others.

Descartes’s first maxim is to observe all customs and laws of his country, thus ensuring that he will continue his investigations in the most comfortable and least hostile of social environments. Regarding his second maxim, Descartes sets himself the task of only dispensing with an opinion, no matter how improbable or doubtful, once he has followed it to its logical conclusion and derived, with certainty, its being true or false. Regarding his third maxim, Descartes takes it as a rule that what can be corrected and therefore mastered is one’s own mind, rather than the external world; hence, he writes, “[I] try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world” (47). The fourth and final moral code by which Descartes decides to live during this period of philosophical investigation is—having examined the various ways of reaching the truth—maintaining a total commitment to the path of philosophy and the progressive development of his intellect in the hopes of attaining a knowledge of what is really true regarding the nature of reality and human existence.