Philosophical Works · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Philosophical Works by René Descartes.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Narrator
major
Also known as I, me, myself, mine
This first-person voice is not a man with a biography but a mind at work, sorting its ideas into innate, adventitious, and self-made, and asking which of them can be trusted. His defining tension is between the natural impulse to believe his senses and the natural light that alone can ground certainty — he admits the former has led him toward the worse part before. Watching him catch his own unexamined assumptions is what makes the early meditations feel less like doctrine and more like a live struggle.
René Descartes
major
Also known as Descartes, La Vie de M. Descartes
Descartes stands in a long line of thinkers — Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus — and judges them all to have failed at the one task that matters: finding first causes from which everything else can be deduced. His candor about that failure, and his willingness to begin again rather than defer to authority, is the engine of the whole project. He matters because he turns the history of philosophy into a challenge rather than a monument, inviting the reader to walk the untried road alongside him.
God
major
Also known as Deity
God enters these pages not as a devotional figure but as the linchpin of an argument: a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely perfect being, which the mind cannot have manufactured from nothing. Descartes insists we must attend only to the characters comprised in that notion and mix in nothing fictitious, lest the idea collapse into something we merely wish were true. The early arc depends on this being — without it, the clear perceptions that ground all other knowledge have no guarantor.
Aristotle
supporting
Also known as Aristotle
Aristotle appears here as the cautionary counterexample: a mind of real judgment and wisdom who nonetheless lacked the candor to admit uncertainty, and whose authority then smothered his successors into acquiescence. Descartes uses him to show how even great thinkers can mistake probable opinion for demonstrated truth, and how reverence for a teacher can stall the search for first principles. His shadow is what makes Descartes's own vow to doubt everything feel like a necessary correction rather than a stunt.
Democritus
minor
Also known as Democritus
Pre-Socratic philosopher whose atomist theory is discussed in relation to materialism.
Epicurus
minor
Also known as Epicurus
Hellenistic philosopher whose hedonistic ethics are contrasted with Cartesian rationalism.
Plato
minor
Also known as Plato
Classical philosopher whose theory of Forms is compared to Descartes' innate ideas.
Archimedes
minor
Also known as Archimedes
Ancient mathematician used as an example of certain knowledge and method.
Henricus Regius
minor
Also known as Regius
Dutch philosopher and correspondent of Descartes, known for his mechanistic views.
Antoine Arnauld
minor
Also known as Arnauld
French theologian and philosopher who raised objections to Descartes' Meditations.
Louis de La Forge
minor
Also known as De la Forge
French Cartesian physician and commentator on Descartes' physiology.
The Cartesians
minor
Also known as the Cartesians
Followers of Descartes' philosophy, discussed as a school of thought.
The Atheists
minor
Also known as the atheists , who are in general sciolists rather than ingenious or learned
Opponents of religious belief criticized by Descartes as superficial thinkers.
Garnier
minor
Also known as Garnier
Editor or commentator referenced in the text's apparatus.
Hamilton
minor
Also known as Hamilton
Philosopher or critic mentioned in passing in the text.
