Most semesters - since I tend to teach Introduction to Philosophy (sometimes called by a different title) - I cover the entirety of Rene Descartes' work, the Meditations on First Philosophy. Whether you love him or hate him (and I love Descartes), think he's got things right or wrong (and I think he got a lot wrong), you've got to admit that he's a centrally important figure in Philosophy's living history and traditions.
I was very surprised to learn - through Twitter conversations - that many students never encounter more than the First and Second Meditations in their classes! Not only did a lot of students report that, but also quite a few instructors admitted that they taught the first third of the work, and then either skipped the rest entirely, or jumped way ahead into a few bits of the Sixth Meditation. Later on, when I've got some time on my hands, I'll write up a piece about why this is such a bad pedagogical strategy, what mistaken ideas about Descartes it implants, and what interesting features of Descartes' thought it deprives students from engaging.
We cover the entire work, and this semester, I've remedied the previous lack of core concept videos covering the main ideas of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Meditations. I provide these as resources for my students in both my online and my face-to-face classes. As I've been releasing them to the much more general public worldwide, it's clear from the video comments that teachers, students, and lifelong learners have been finding them useful as well.
Here are those eight videos:
Third Meditation:
- Where Does Falsity Reside?
- Innate, Adventitous, and Produced Ideas
- Objective and Formal Reality
- The Argument for God's Existence
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