Descartes: A Biography

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Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) 

that this kind of argument requires a ‘meditation’. The only way to embark

onthis project is to stop looking at the familiar objects of our experience

and to look instead within ourselves, at our own thoughts. This requires a

formof mental training, for which theSpiritual Exercisesof Saint Ignatius

might provide a model. Given the risks involved, this was something that

he thought should be deferred in.Hemight come back to it again

some other time.

This opportunity arose in.Infact, even before theDiscoursewas

published in French, the question of preparing a Latin translation has

been raised, and in that context Descartes mentioned that he had written

adraft of a treatise on metaphysics eight years previously. ‘If there is a Latin

version of this book, for which preparations are being made, I could have

it [a discussion of metaphysical questions] included there’ (i.). By late

, Descartes had given up hope of reprinting theEssaysin French or of

publishing an expanded Latin translation that would contain objections

and replies. However, it was too late by then to halt the project of preparing

aLatin version of the text, one that would certainly be accessible to a much

wider academic readership than the original French text. Hence the need

to return to those metaphysical questions that were partly revealed in

Part IVof theDiscourseand that required a more extended discussion and

defence.As already acknowledged by Descartes, such a metaphysical

essay would also mean that he had to discuss scepticism.

Pyrrhonism

There is no indication in Descartes’ work prior tothat he was

remotely persuaded by sceptical doubts about the possibility of knowl-

edge. His studies in optics, physiology, and meteorology, and his earlier

work in mathematics, give no indication that he ever worried about the

possibility that all human knowledge might collapse because it was built

on faulty foundations. More accurately, he seems to have had no reserva-

tions about the veracity of his own theories or the reliability of the ‘proofs’

he offered to support them. Impartial readers at the time were likely to

believe that he was too confident about his philosophical views rather than

the opposite, and that he was unwilling to listen to genuine objections.

He had indeed raised questions about foundations in theDiscourse,but

they were doubts about other people’s theories and, in general, about the

traditional learning of the schools that continued to be taught uncritically