O leitor como sujeito meditante: a maneira de demonstrar e o estilo de escrita das meditações metafísicas de René Descartes

Abstract

In the final pages of the Second Reply, Descartes talks both about how the theses in the Meditations on First Philosophy are demonstrated, and about the writing style he adopted for this work. The way he demonstrates is analysis; his writing style is meditation. Reading the Meditations depends, fundamentally, on understanding those two things, as well as the relationship between them. With this paper we intend, first, to analyze how Descartes understands analysis as a method and what meditation means; and then, to understand the way in which that method of analysis and the practice of meditation are coordinated to engender the path followed in Meditations on First Philosophy. Considering his analysis as a method for problem solving, and taking into consideration the meaning of meditative writing styles at the time Descartes lived, we defend the thesis that meditation, for Descartes, means to penetrate slowly and carefully into the problems from which the Meditations have been developed.