ABSTRACT
The opening paragraph finds the meditator mired in the doubts of “yesterday’s meditation” (7:23). (Descartes here reflects a common practice in spiritual exercises, of offering several meditations to be read on successive days.) Despite the dizzying effects of this deep doubt, she resolves to “make an effort and once more attempt the same path which I started on yesterday” (7:24). She recalls the strategy that has been in play:
Anything which admits of the slightest doubt I will set aside just as if I had found it to be wholly false; and I will proceed in this way until I recognize something certain, or, if nothing else, until I at least recognize for certain that there is no certainty. [7:24]
The meditator’s immediate goal is to use doubt as a tool to achieve certainty, even if only to discover “for certain” that certainty cannot be attained.
