Meditations on First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul are Demonstrated is Rene Descartes's philosophical treatise, first published in Latin in 1641 and in French translation in 1647. Framed as six meditations written as if over six days, it begins by setting aside every belief that is not absolutely certain and then asks what, if anything, can still be known from that starting point. The work presents Descartes's metaphysical system in its most detailed form, extending ideas he had first sketched in the fourth part of his 1637 Discourse on the Method, and it remains one of the most widely read and influential texts in the history of philosophy. Descartes later revisited the same metaphysical ground in his 1644 Principles of Philosophy, which he intended as a more systematic guidebook to the same ideas.