Reading Descartes’s Meditations … Twice!

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Using the strategy laid out in Mortimer Adler’s classic How to Read a Book, this course is devoted to developing a thorough understanding of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy by reading it once quickly to get an overview and then again more slowly to figure out the details. Along the way, we’ll pay careful attention to both the dramatic and the philosophic features that Descartes interweaves in this philosophical creation story. Whether you’ve attempted Descartes’s Meditations before or never cracked the cover, this course is for you.

Texts
  • Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
  • Adler and Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide
    to Intelligent Reading [OPTIONAL]
TAUGHT: SPRING 2024