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Descartes Meditations Below, you will find your first writing assignment of the semester

Descartes Meditations

Below, you will find your first writing assignment of the semester. You are to pick one of the following eight prompt questions and compose an essay of no less than 500 words—or, roughly, two full pages, double spaced, size 12 Times New Roman font, standard margins— and no more than 800 words (roughly 3 full pages)
Q.1) Descartes Meditations finds Descartes meditating on first philosophy, which is to say, first principles, or that, which is most fundamental. And, as both the first two propositions in Meditation I and the extended title of the text indicate, these first principles are God, souls (res cogitons), and bodies (res extensa). Taking such lofty concerns into consideration, does Descartes succeed in rationally proving that the human soul is a completely distinct and separate existence from the human body? One would do well to consider the following: his inventory of the basic kinds of being; his image of the tree as indicative of the role of metaphysical investigation as foundational to grasping reality; the faculties of the mind as suggestive of the existence of material bodies.
Q.2) Perhaps the defining characteristic of Descartes’ Meditations is the method by which he undertakes his ‘meditating’; accordingly, it behooves one to take special note of his method. What is the method by which Descartes conducts his investigation? One would do well to consider the following: the four rules of method; clear and distinct ideas, both what they are and what they most certainly are not; the two basic procedures of intuition and deduction; the virtues of such a method, such as the way in which the method allows Descartes to avoid certain pitfalls—and be sure to identify said pitfalls—to which many of his predecessors had succumbed; why Descartes understood his method to be, in a sense, full-proof.
Q.3) A total of six ‘meditations’ comprise Descartes’ Meditations, each a masterpiece in its own right; you are to select one among these six ‘meditations’ and exhibit a detailed and nuanced understanding of it. One would do well to include the following: a meticulously- wrought exegesis of the particular idea(s) Descartes explores in one’s selected ‘meditation,’ using one’s own words and original examples to clarify what Descartes reflects on; an examination of any notions that he introduces, rules out—including his reason(s) for ruling them out—and settles on, either ultimately or for the time being; appropriate consideration of the context within which one’s selected ‘meditation’ appears in the overall work.
Q.4) Scholars generally consider Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Are Demonstrated to be a seminal, pivotal, and deeply influential text in the history of western philosophy; please take the work as a whole into consideration by tracing the logical trajectory of Descartes’s argument as it develops over the course of the work. One would do well to consider the following: any key themes that emerge repeatedly; any particularly difficult challenges that give Descartes reason to pause; any—if there are, in fact, any—instances when Descartes appears to change his opinion on something. Ultimately, one should strive to provide a clear grasp of the narrative thread that ties together the ‘meditations’ into a single, cohesive work of profound insight

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