Descartes' Meditations: on First philosophy

By James Paul Roolvink

In 1641, Descartes' (1596-1650) 'Meditations' were published. Descartes regarded this publication as a victory over Aristotelian thought and the beginning of scientific thought, which regards mechanical causality as the sole form of causality.

In the 'Meditations', science - physics in the broadest sense - is grounded in first philosophy, which concerns self-consciousness. The certain, firm foundation of physics, that which underlies physics, is called metaphysics. Objectivity is therefore intrinsically interwoven with self-consciousness. Kant would later define this idea as 'objectivity for me'-that is, how something absolute in itself is objectively present to me as a subject. Cultural anthropology arose from the further elaboration of this insight: there are multiple kinds of objectivity. This does not, therefore, lead to a subjectivist relativism in which nothing is true. There are multiple objective truths 'caught as fish' in the net of intersubjectivity in which the subjects could be seen as the noods of the net.

What many fail to realise, however, is that the first philosophy of self-consciousness is itself completed in an awareness of God, the subject of theology. Awareness of God, initially in the form of the non-∞ idea of the ∞, is the condition of possibility for self-consciousness and thus for the first philosophy, metaphysics and the physical sciences.

This book contains a word-for-word explanation of the 'Meditations' and demonstrates how self-consciousness arises. It demonstrates how, in the emergence of self-consciousness-without realising it at the time-Descartes draws upon Aristotelian final causality, which he was so keen to abolish. It shows that Descartes managed to gather all the ingredients needed to solve the mind-body problem and actually came very close to solving it. We also discover a new kind of proof of God's existence.

Above all, this book demonstrates that Descartes was an immensely subtle thinker. He has been maligned because people (such as Husserl (1859-1938) and Heidegger (1889-1976)) never truly understood him. With this book, the spirit of Descartes will be able to shine.

This book and the text above is translated by the translation machine DeepL.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9LZBZ1N
• ISBN13: 9798188143084
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"