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Joshtrom Isaac KureethadamCorresponding author

The 'Meditational' Genre of Descartes' Meditations

Article
13/1 - Spring 2008, pages 51-68
Date of online publication: 30 mars 2016
Date of publication: 30 juin 2008

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on Descartes' employment of the meditational genre in the weaving of the text of the Meditations. In the first part, the possible influences behind Descartes' choice of the meditational genre are examined. The second part of the paper attempts to spell out the significance of Descartes' use of the meditational form. The claim advanced here is that Descartes adopted this unique genre ultimately to further his radical philosophical project of a subject-centred theory of knowledge and a new metaphysical Weltbild, with the self (res cogitans) catapulted to the central stage and the physical world (res extensa) reduced to an object of the subject's act of representation.

Keywords

Cite this article

Kureethadam, Joshtrom Isaac. “The 'Meditational' Genre of Descartes' Meditations.” Forum Philosophicum 13, no. 1 (2008): 51–68. doi:10.35765/forphil.2008.1301.04.