Meditation I Rene Descartes Essay, Research Paper
Meditation I
In Meditation I, Rene Descartes, talks about beliefs that he believed were true, but were those of falsehood. He also talks about deception and how he is always being deceived in the world. Rene, talks about getting rid of his worries and living peacefully in this article. He does this by justifying some of his beliefs that are false.
He has accepted many beliefs to be true, but yet they are very deceiving to him. Though, he cannot deny some of those beliefs because he himself knows they are true. He also talks about dreaming and how dreaming is connected to real things in life. Images you see in your sleep are like painted images, he says. Whether you are asleep or awake, things are always the same for example, one plus one will always be two and the sky will always be blue.
Rene says that we can be easily deceived even with simple things not just something difficult. Maybe God did not want to deceive him but instead, deceiving himself with his mind. Believing that something is true because that is what you want your mind to believe. It seems that who ever is deceived is slightly imperfect. Him always being deceived is increased which decreases the power of his creator. Rene believes that nothing he believed is beyond doubt. He has to be more careful with his beliefs and from obvious falsehood, if he wants to be certain of what is true or false.
Rene could never break the habit of believing or trusting his beliefs. He thinks they are mostly probable and we have much more reason to believe than to deny. That is why he thinks it will be good for him to turn his beliefs around. Allowing himself to be deceived and believe all his past beliefs were false and imaginary. Then when everything is balanced out, his prejudices and bad habits will no longer bother him. He supposes that there is a God who is supremely good, who is the source of all truth. Also, that there is an evil demon who he considers powerful and smart. The demon uses things from his dreams to deceive him and works very hard to do that. Rene will concentrate on that meditation and if he does not know the truth he will try to figure out what is false. He will try his best to do that, no matter how powerful or smart the person might be.
Rene s plan is good, but he is lazy and his laziness stops him from continuing on to his meditation. Rene finds himself going back to his original life. Rene feels imprisoned and enjoys the illusion of freedom in his dreams. He realizes he is asleep and is afraid of waking up because he will awaken back to all his problems in his life. He would rather be asleep and enjoy everything peacefully.
Rene brings up interesting points in his article, for example: The part when he says dreams are like painted images, sounded interesting to me. I never thought of dreams to be painted images but just illusionary images we see at random when we sleep. I also agree with him when he says, that God is supremely good, but there is an evil demon that is powerful and smart. The reason I agree with him might be because I grew up believing these beliefs, which might be false but then again may also be true.