Meditation I By Descartes: Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called Into Doubt
To summarize this first meditation, all is just about doubt. Descartes, the author, is doubting whether the things he used to learn, things we used to learn and things we are learning now is a truth or just a man-make belief. It is also written that he can accept the things he can sense but sometimes his senses can also be deceptive. Even so, there are also some things that we can’t doubt, like our own existence and action at the moment. He is also wondering why we find Physics, Astronomy, Medicine and other sciences are somewhat unreliable and uncertain but find Math (Geometry, Arithmetic, etc.) reliable. This made him doubt about is the intervention of the higher being, God Himself. He is questioning if the Truly Good and Truthful God will deceive us or maybe there is another being, a deceitful and powerful evil one, who keeps deceiving us.
Through the reader’s point of view, Descartes is doubting about reality and dreams, which occurs very similar to him. He dreams of doing something and truly convinced by it, yet he woke up and realized it’s just on his mind, in his own dream. After reflecting for long, he figures out that every simple thing can be doubted. This also led him to think The Almighty God could easily make our conceptions wrong, because He is powerful. But even so, he thinks that God would not do that, because He is Good. It led him to think that there’s another evil-powerful-deceitful being who deceive us all, but then it’s also not true, because God is Good, He won’t lead us to harm. So, with all this doubts, Descartes proved us that nothing is certain and the only thing that is certain is our own existence.
Those doubts can be perceived as the usual skeptical doubts that is very common in the field of philosophy even until now. But actually, Descartes was the first one who asked the big question, how can we be certain that everything we know is the truth? If we aren’t sure, how can we claim that we know anything? These questions inspire the philosophers and philosophy students to find an answer, so that they can provide a certain foundation for our knowledge and understanding of the world. Actually, there’s no living being that doubts this much, but it’s very hard to brush-off even a hint of doubt. Especially when the doubt is very logical and rational with solid reasons, like the ones Descartes had present to the world. This was the reason why his work led a lot of philosophers like Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein to try and provide answers for his doubts.
