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Thomas Hobbes 'View Of René Descartes' Meditations On First Philosophy

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After reading each philosopher's ideas and justifications, I agree with Hobbes' view, because of Descartes' obscured and flawed rational system. In 1641, René Descartes published Meditations on First Philosophy in an effort to establish what is true with absolute certainty. The book is made out of six chapters, one for each day of Descartes' meditation to establish absolute certainty of what is known. Some main topics include: the senses, the mind, the body, the belief of God, and material things. Descartes main objective in the First Meditation is to doubt all of his previous knowledge and “attack straightaway those principles which supported everything [he] once believed” (Descartes, 60). Once completed, Descartes believes he will find the …show more content…

With the fear that what he sees is false, Descartes decides to doubt all his senses and rely on one simple fact he knows to be true: “I am, I exist” (Descartes, 64). Since the belief was not affected by the skepticism and he cannot exist without a thought and mind, he accepts that he is a “thinking thing” (Descartes 65). Descartes defines “thinking” as imagining, understanding, doubting, and sensing. To determine if he has a body, Descartes uses the Cartesian Dualism to describe the relationship between mind and body. We cannot be sure we have a body; Descartes can be sure that we have a mind. Descartes completes this chapter determining that perceiving is not possible without a mind, the mind’s existence is definite, and most importantly the mind and body are two separate and distinct …show more content…

At first, he scrutinizes Hobbes' confusion because Descartes feels that “[he had] said this so explicitly and in so many places, that there seems to be no room for doubt”. Descartes is reacting to Hobbes' rejection of the words, “that is, a mind, a soul, an understanding, a reason” (Third Replies: CSM II 123). Another way Descartes explains how Hobbes is interpreting his words wrong is the comparison with thinking and walking. This is an incorrect comparison because walking is understood as only the action, while thought can refer to either the action or the thing possessing the

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