Video and Podcast Resources on René Descartes' Meditations
One of the first primary texts I sought out to read on my own as a philosophy major my first semester in college (33 years back) was Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. I wasn’t all that successful in making sense of it, but I made other runs at it, a few as an undergraduate, many in graduate school, and more after I began teaching it in my own undergraduate classes.
It is truly a classic of western Philosophy, and for me, each rereading still remains rewarding. Most semesters that I teach an Introduction to Philosophy class, it is one text I lead my students through in its entirety.
I’ve produced a number of lectures in both video and podcast format discussing pretty much all of the key ideas, distinctions, and arguments found in the six meditations comprising the work. I expect they might prove useful for anyone who wants to work through this important text.
If you watch the videos, you’ll notice me holding and referencing a copy of the work that you might have a bit of difficulty tracking down. It is an old Presses Universitaires de France edition, which provides both Descartes’ Latin original and the French translation. I translate fairly freely into English from the text while I lecture. You might want an English translation to refer to an follow along with, and the Hackett edition (translated by Cress) is a decent enough one. If you want to get a bit more fancy, you’ll find the Meditations in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes volume 2 (translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch), which is the edition Descartes scholarship uses.
Here are the links to all of the lectures:
Meditation 1
The Senses, Dreams, and Doubt - video format | podcast format
Geometry, Mathematics, and Doubt - video format | podcast format
God, Causes, and Certainty - video format | podcast format
The Evil Demon Hypothesis - video format | podcast format
Meditation 2
The Cogito and Thinking Being - video format | podcast format
The Piece of Wax Example - video format | podcast format
What Is Known Clearly and Distinctly - video format | podcast format
Meditation 3
Innate, Adventitious, and Produced Ideas - video format | podcast format
Objective and Formal Reality - video format | podcast format
The Argument for God's Existence - video format | podcast format
Where Does Falsity Reside? - video format | podcast format
Meditation 4
Human Being, Supreme Being, and Non-Being - video format | podcast format
Is God Responsible for Human Error? - video format | podcast format
Error, The Understanding, and The Will - video format | podcast format
The Freedom and Power of The Will - video format | podcast format
Meditation 5
True and Immutable Natures - video format | podcast format
Previous Judgements Clear & Distinct Ideas - video format | podcast format
An Ontological Argument for God's Existence - video format | podcast format
Meditation 6
Imagination and Intellection or Conception - video format | podcast format
Faculties of the Human Mind and Body - video format | podcast format
What Nature Teaches Us - video format | podcast format
Sense Perception and External Things - video format | podcast format
So there you have them, the entire sequence of 22 lectures designed to help you study and more fully understand this classic work of modern philosophy. I hope they can shorten the learning curve for any of you who are just starting out with Descartes. And perhaps for those who have already read through the Meditations several times, you’ll find some useful clarifications or summaries of what he’s saying in there!