Am I just missing something with this guy or are meditations

>>7686216

No one gives a shit about the later part of that book. Just think of him as the dude who said, "Woah, what if like, the world is just an illusion, man. Good thing I know I'm real lol." That's literally all you need to know.

>>7686229

Don't forget his famous proposition "Give her the dick"

>>7686216
You're missing something. If you have a jstor account, look up Richard Kennington, and any of his articles on Descartes.

I'm reading him in my modern philosophy class and yes, he is full of shit, even my Jewish professor can't backup his claims convincingly.

>>7686216
Read him in an East West philosophy course, after I read the Buddhists and such talk on illusion. Then he goes and talks and you can tell, from that perspective, it's a watered down, barely comprehending plagiarism of what the East philosophers were already talking about in Taoism and Buddhism and Zen. And my biggest pet peeve with these sort of 'great thinkers' is that they revolutionized things in their tiny part of the world but they wrote like shit. Circuitous, meandering. The Eastern philosophers I was exposed to wrote to be understood, not to be apart of the intellegentsia.

>>7686442
that's exactly the thing, Descartes can't write for shit. If I happen to get lost mid sentence or something I feel like I gotta start back at the previous paragraph just to have it make sense again.

>>7686472
It's because they're journal entries or meditations as he likes to hold himself up to be doing. Each sentence is an idea that builds on the other, so if you get lost, or god forbid disagree, with any one idea, you have to go back to start just to see where he was going with this. Kinda like the ultimate circle jerk, just staying in his own head with his ideas and going with it instead of checking multiple references before moving forward.

>>7686216
why is his beard slightly off in that portrait?

>>7687621
thanks. you just ruined my life

>>7686630
>It's because they're journal entries or meditations as he likes to hold himself up to be doing.
That's the thing though; they were *composed*. They're not real journal entries of his, but a manner of presentation. There's a bigger rhetorical element to Descartes than most scholars discussing him realize.

>>7687802
eh, maybe. that's why he had that other book, right?. but philosophy at that time period, I just have no patience for it. Rhetoric that is full proof is usually not using any communications knowledge on how to be clear to the largest amount of people. Some of that rhetoric skills is about being unclear to the 'stupids'

>>7686229
> straw-manning one of the greatest philosophers to ever exist
You're a disgusting imbecile.

>>7688153
>Some of that rhetoric skills is about being unclear to the 'stupids'
Well, I take it that's the point. Henry More sorta caught on when Descartes started discussing whether animals were just automata, insinuating that his whole "mind as substance" deal was just a pretense.

>>7686442
>>7686472
>>7686630
this is what this man's understanding of the world was
its easy to critique this hundreds of years later

DUDE Clearly and Distinctly LMAO

>>7686216

You're not missing anything, OP.

Descartes is very pleasing to the freshman undergraduate student who is taking the freshman philosophy class (and I know this because I've had older friends and contemporaries who have been through the same thing as me) because they feel (partially correctly) that they are his intellectual superior. Oh that argument doesn't actually necessitate God lmao, Descartes you so silly. And then everyone moves on to the actual interesting material in whatever their major is. Maybe a year later, many of them actually find themselves challenged, and thinking, and really having to study for the first time in their lives, following this babby penetration into philosophy (which sometimes coincides with starting uni, as I've said).

That said, Descartes for some gets relegated to footnote, and the historical significance of his work (the simulacrum thought experiment and coordinate geometry) is taken for granted.

File: Berkeley.jpg (132KB, 800x1075px) Image search: [Google]

132KB, 800x1075px

>>7686216
>inb4 I don't agree with him, therefore his ideas are shit

The latter meditations are the logical successors of the previous meditations. If you want to criticize anything about them, criticize the fact that Descartes did, without reason, affirm the existence of matter.

>>7689571
kek