All of the primary readings for this class will be from Descartes work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, or from the Objections and Replies.

Each of the meditations is quite short, but dense and deep, so you will likely want to read through the meditation for each week several times, and devote some time to thinking it over.

There's no reason that you can't read ahead in the work, if you'd like to. That will give you some sense of where Descartes is going with the work as a whole. You'll also notice how the different meditations, and the arguments, distinctions, and ideas worked out in them, intersect with and build upon each other

The Objections and Replies are considerably longer, and they are polemical or critical in nature. You may find it useful to go over them more than once, but even if you just read through them one time, you'll get something out of that.

Here is our weekly plan

• Week 1 - First Meditation - What can be called into doubt
  
  
• Week 2 - Second Meditation - The nature of the human mind and how it is better known from the body
  
  
• Week 3 - Third Meditation - The existence of God
  
  
• Week 4 - Fourth Meditation - Of the true and the false
  
  
• Week 5 - Fifth Meditation - The existence of material things, and the existence of God considered a second time
  
  
• Week 6 - Sixth Meditation - The existence of material things and the real distinction between mind and body
  
  
• Week 7 - Objections 1-4 and Descartes' Replies 1-4
  
  
• Week 8 - Objections 5-7 and Descartes' Replies 5-7