FREE ESSAY ON DESCARTES' SECOND MEDITATION

DESCARTES' SECOND MEDITATION

In Meditation two, Descartes embarks on his journey of truth. It discusses how a body can
perceive things, such as objects. Attempting to affirm the idea that God must exist as a
fabricator for his ideas, he stumbles on his first validity: the notion that he exists.
He ascertains that if he can both persuade himself of something, and likewise be deceived
of something, then surely he must exist. This self-validating statement is known as the
Cogito Argument. Simply put, it implies that whatever thinks must exist. Having
established this, Descartes asks himself: What is this "I" which "necessarily exists"? 
Descartes now begins to explore his inner consciousness to find the essence of his being.
He disputes that he is a "rational animal" for this idea is difficult to understand. He
scrutinizes whether perhaps he is a body infused with a soul but this idea is dismissed
since he cannot be certain of concepts that are of the material world. Eventually he
focuses on the act of thinking and from this he posits: "I am a thing that thinks." A
thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines
and senses. To prove that perception on the part of the mind is more real than that of
the senses Descartes asks us to consider a piece of wax. Fresh from the comb the
qualities we attribute to the wax are those derived from the senses. Melted, the
qualities that we attribute to the wax are altered and can only be known to the
intellect. Descartes demonstrates how the information from the senses gives us only the
observable, it is the mind that allows us to understand. The results of the second
meditation are considerable, doubt has both proven the certainty of Descartes existence
and that his essence is the mind.