Objections and Replies

Summary

Descartes presented the Meditations to a select group of scholars before publication so that their comments and his replies would be issued with the work in a single volume. Marin Mersenne, Descartes’ primary correspondent, was initially instructed to submit it to “three or four” trusted theologians only. Their approval would be enough to dedicate the book to the Sorbonne, “in order to ask them to be my protectors in the cause of God” (AT III 183–85). But the project grew into something more ambitious. Initially, Descartes asked his friends J. A. Bannius and A. A. Bloemaert to write some objections; they, in turn, asked the Dutch priest Johannes Caterus to do so. Caterus's First Set of Objections, together with Descartes’ Replies and the manuscript of the Meditations, was then sent to France to be printed, with Descartes leaving Mersenne to organize the rest and telling him that he would be “glad if people make as many objections as possible and the strongest they can find” (AT III 297). Descartes had already tried to promote his works by making them a focus of discussion; he previously requested objections to the Discourse to be sent to his publisher, promising to have them published with his response (AT VI 75). This time he was collecting objections before publication. Mersenne obtained five more sets, making six altogether in the first edition; a seventh set followed in the second edition of 1642. In a somewhat rare show of modesty, Descartes decided that his own responses should be called “Replies to the Objections” rather than “Solutions” “so as to leave the reader to judge whether they provide solutions or not” (AT III 340, CSMK 170).

The objectors are as follows:

1. 1.Caterus

2. 2.“Theologians and philosophers,” represented as “collected by Mersenne”

3. 3.Thomas Hobbes, later described as “a famous English philosopher”

4. 4.Antoine Arnauld, a theology doctorate student at the Sorbonne, whose objections are addressed to Mersenne as intermediary

5. 5.Pierre Gassendi, philosopher and historian

6. 6.A group described as “various theologians and philosophers,” once more collected by Mersenne, together with an appendix containing the arguments of “a group of philosophers and geometers”

7. 7.The Jesuit mathematician Pierre Bourdin