Helpful books and resources

The Routledge Guidebook to Descartes' Meditations, by
Gary Hatfield

This is one of the books recommended in the recent Course Specification and it is an excellent recommendation.

It may be that those teachers who studied philosophy some years ago will think they remember everything they have to know from their first year at university and now only need to explain the pupil notes. Perhaps so but possibly not. It used to be that philosophy departments drew a distinction between doing philosophy and studying the history of ideas. The classic texts were mined for arguments that could help students understand debates in epistemology and other areas. There is now a greater appreciation of the need to understand Descartes in the context of his own time and to understand his own purpose in writing. This part of the Higher Course is now text based and it important not to gloss over parts that might have been overlooked when using a different approach. Hatfield’s commentary is an excellent guide for any teacher who wants to get to grips with what Descartes was trying to do.

The Course Specification says, ‘The method of doubt: Descartes’ presentation of his philosophy through the voice of a first-person narrator, a meditator, who is re-evaluating his beliefs and starting again right from the foundations.’ Hatfield helpfully maintains the distinction between Descartes the author and the character of the meditator by referring to the meditator as ‘she’.

In the second set of replies Descartes writes, ‘This is why I wrote 'Meditations' rather than 'Disputations', as the philosophers have done, or 'Theorems and Problems', as the geometers would have done. In so doing I wanted to make it clear that I would have nothing to do with anyone who was not willing to join me in meditating and giving the subject attentive consideration.’ Hatfield explains how the structure of the Meditations echoes the religious meditations of Ignatius of Loyola, writings that Descartes would have undoubtedly known from his education in a Jesuit school.

Both the background information and the paragraph by paragraph explanation of the text will be an invaluable aid to the teacher who wants to be confident in their presentation of this part of the course.