Six metaphysical meditations
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~34,500 words · 164 passages
Cite this work
- APADescartes. (n.d.). Six metaphysical meditations. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/descartes/six-metaphysical-meditations
- MLADescartes. Six metaphysical meditations. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/descartes/six-metaphysical-meditations.
- ChicagoDescartes. Six metaphysical meditations. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/descartes/six-metaphysical-meditations.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Metaphysical Meditations (1641) in an old English translation.
Context and history
The doubt, the evil genius, the cogito, and the rebuilding of the world from there. **Warning: neither the Latin original nor the French is in the catalogue**, so this is the only version held.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
altogether new, but only add the divers Parts of different Animals together; And if by chance they invent any thing so new that nothing was ever seen like it, for that ’tis wholy fictitious and false, yet the colours at least of which, they make it must be _true Colours_; so upon the same account, tho these General things as eyes, head, hands, _&c._ may be imaginary; yet nevertheless we must of necessity confess the more _simple_ and _universal_ things to be _True_, of which (as of true Colours) these _Images_ of things (whether _true_ or _false_) which are in our minds are made; such as are the nature of a body in General, and its Extension, also the shape of things extended, with the quantity or bigness of them; their number also, and place wherein they are, the time in which they continue, and the like, and therefore from hence we make no bad conclusion, that _Physick_, both _Natural_, and _Medicinal_, _Astronomy_, and all other _sciences_, which depend on the consideration of _compound things_, are _Doubtful_. But that _Arithmetick_, _Geometry_, and the like (which treat only of the most _simple_, and _General_ things not regarding whether they really are or not) have in them something _certain_ and _undoubted_; for whether I sleep or wake, _two_ and _three_ added make five; a _square_ has no more sides than _four_ _&c._ neither seems it possible what such _plain truths_ can be _doubted_ off. 2 _Solution._ But all this While there is rooted in my mind a certain old opinion of the _being_ of an _Omnipotent God_, by whom I am _created_ in the state I am in; and how know I but he caused that there should be no Earth, no Heaven, no Body, no Figure, no Magnitude, no Place, and yet that all these things should seem to me to be as now they are?…
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