Trauma and Healing in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy: An Essay

Abstract

I examine René Descartes’ effort in his Meditations on First Philosophy to emerge from the trauma of realizing that many of his beliefs held since early youth are false, and that, until now, he has had no means of setting out on a path to truth. Through his new method of inquiry, which, in the Replies to the Second Set of Objections, he refers to as ‘analysis’, he sets out in his Meditations to begin the healing process, by establishing a secure foundation for knowledge, through what he refers to as his clear and distinct innate ideas. My paper will highlight the fact that Cartesian healing is not a collaborative process, but a personal effort, with a view to establishing that all clear and distinct ideas must be true, given that Descartes’ existence as a thinking thing and all his clear and distinct ideas are created by a veracious God.