The subject matter of Between Two Worlds is a ‘re-reading’ of Descartes’ Meditations. Carriero’s main intention is to show how Descartes was reacting against some tenets of scholastic philosophy throughout the Meditations.  Carriero reads Descartes’ Meditations through the context scholastic orthodoxies that originate from Aquinas and Aristotle, the kind of philosophical notions taught as ‘Dogma’ during Descartes’ own philosophical education. Carriero makes the bold claim that Descartes’ Meditations was a work about the nature of knowledge, reality and God. This claim is bold because a mass of contemporary Descartes’ literature avoids this kind of reading of Descartes’ ; instead being concerned with specific theses or passages in the Meditations rather than looking at the work as a whole. 

Carriero goes through the Meditations paragraph-by-paragraph; it is painstakingly meticulous and unveils a consistent line of reasoning from Descartes’s end, if we are to consider it to be a rejection of scholasticism.  Carriero at various important points compares the views of Descartes’ to Aristotle or Aquinas to demonstrate how Descartes is launching a devastating refutation to the sorts of views prevalent of the time. Issues in the scholastic philosophy are addressed such as the medieval notion that there is no knowledge that has not been derived through the senses, St. Thomas’ views on free decision and a dispute concerning our access to knowledge of God’s nature (‘essence’).

Descartes wrote the Meditations intent on starting philosophy with ‘clean slate’. Without any assumptions about, or references to other works of philosophy, Descartes had written the Meditations is a self-contained book. Carriero writes Between Two Worlds without any presumptions about the reader’s knowledge of philosophy. All that is required is that the reader has read Descartes’ Meditations, which is a fairly modest requirement.

While this book is quite heavy on terminology, Carriero does introduce and define almost all of the terms which might alienate the reader. There are two different kinds of readers who may find themselves lost in this book. Firstly there is the reader completely or relatively new to philosophy; such a reader may not be used to the terms and concepts being repeatedly mentioned or that they are very new to.

The other kind of reader that may find difficulty would be the sort of person who may have a background in philosophy and maybe even with a putative knowledge of Descartes’, but not entirely familiar with the secondary literature or philosophical literature written at this kind of period. This kind of reader may be inclined to read the Meditations as a catalogue of criticisms and failures without anything of worthwhile contemporary importance.  This sort of philosophically-versed reader may not have the specific familiarity with the terminology which is no longer in contemporary circulation, such as the concept of ‘objective reality’ to have meant ‘can be represented in the subject’s mind’ (somewhat opposite of the modern meaning of ‘objective’!). 

Even though Carriero has written to account for the introductory reader, they should find this book difficult reading. It is really the individual with an interest in Early Modern scholarship who would appreciate this commentary most. There are some aspects of this commentary that I found particularly impressive. One particular aspect was to consider Descartes’ treatment of God seriously. Carriero considers a big part of Descartes’ Meditations to be the nature of God and His role in how we come to know of the world.

Carriero reads the Meditations to be part of a tradition of (Christian) Philosophical Theology, yet also sets the agenda for the philosophical theology of the later philosophers like Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant.

Of great interest to me was that Carriero considers the Third and Fourth Meditations to be part of a ‘theodicy’ (a defense or justification of God’s goodness) in relation to the doubts to our everyday knowledge that Descartes raises in the First Meditation. Very few, if any Descartes scholars take the role of God seriously, instead they favour a reading of the Meditations as primarily a work in the theory of knowledge. Other highlights include when Carriero addresses the Latin and Christian etymological routes to a lot of the terminology used in the Meditations, which are lost in translation.

While I consider this work to undoubtedly add some worthwhile reading to the body of Descartes’ scholarship, some concerns are excluded. Readers who are interested in the ‘relevance’ or ‘validity’ of Descartes’ claims, for instance should look elsewhere. This is a work that is rarely critical of Descartes in that it does not raise more modern objections. While Carriero does address criticisms, most of them are related to the authors of the ‘Objections and Replies’ concerning the Meditations which were published in Descartes’ own time. Most of the ‘criticisms’ laid to Descartes by Carriero are the ones which are well-known and we should not see Between Two Worlds as a work that is particularly critical, but more explicative. While this is a minor point, this book is part of a style of scholarship which is sometimes ignored in favor of the kind which goes out of its way to critique the views of historical philosophers.

Despite this, Between Two Worlds displays a very strong and textually based reading. It would have enormous value to those with a serious interest in understanding Descartes.

© 2009 Michael Pereira

Michael Pereira has an MA in Philosophy and a BSc in Sociology and Philosophy. He has been invited to give talks on Kant’s philosophy, social science and the philosophical underpinnings of ecology. His area of interest is Kant’s theoretical philosophy and Kant’s (supposed) relevance to contemporary philosophy of science.

Keywords: Descartes