ABSTRACT
I In the Preface to the Meditationes Descartes asserts that his readers are ‘those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me and to lead the mind away from the senses, and simultaneously from all prejudgments’ – people he acknowledges to be few in number.2 This naturally leads to questions about what the invitation to meditate along with him means. First, does this have a different sense than would, say, a request to think along with him (cogitare in Latin, penser in French)? Second, ‘meditation’ possessed certain connotations for a seventeenth-century reader that would suggest a mental practice associated with spiritual exercises and devotions. Does the Meditationes display traits that clearly and significantly align it with such practices?
