# Cartesian Meditations

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{{Short description|Book by Edmund Husserl}}
{{Infobox book
| name = Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology
| image = Cartesian Meditations (French edition).jpg
| caption = Cover of the French edition
| author = [Edmund Husserl](/source/Edmund_Husserl)
| country =
| language = French
| subject = [Phenomenology](/source/Phenomenology_(philosophy))
| published = 1931
| media_type = Print
| pages =
| isbn =
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
'''''Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology''''' ({{langx|fr|Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie}}) is a book by the philosopher [Edmund Husserl](/source/Edmund_Husserl), based on four lectures he gave at the [Sorbonne](/source/University_of_Paris), in the Amphithéatre Descartes on February 23 and 25, 1929. Over the next two years, he and his assistant [Eugen Fink](/source/Eugen_Fink) expanded and elaborated on the text of these lectures. These expanded lectures were first published in a 1931 French translation by Gabrielle Peiffer<!--[sic]--> and [Emmanuel Levinas](/source/Emmanuel_Levinas) with advice from [Alexandre Koyré](/source/Alexandre_Koyr%C3%A9).  They were published in German, along with the original ''Pariser Vorträge'', in 1950, and again in an English translation by Dorion Cairns in 1960, based on a typescript of the text (Typescript C) which Husserl had designated for Cairns in 1933.

The ''Cartesian Meditations'' were never published in German during Husserl's lifetime, a fact which has led some commentators to conclude that Husserl had become dissatisfied with the work in relation to its aim, namely an introduction to transcendental [phenomenology](/source/Phenomenology_(philosophy)). The text introduces the main features of Husserl's mature transcendental phenomenology, including (not exhaustively) the transcendental reduction, the [epoché](/source/epoch%C3%A9), static and genetic phenomenology, [eidetic reduction](/source/eidetic_reduction), and eidetic phenomenology.  In the Fourth Meditation, Husserl argues that transcendental phenomenology is nothing other than [transcendental idealism](/source/transcendental_idealism).
 
The name ''Cartesian Meditations'' refers to [René Descartes'](/source/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes) ''[Meditations on First Philosophy](/source/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy).'' Thus Husserl wrote:
{{quote
|France's greatest thinker, René Descartes, gave transcendental phenomenology new Impulses through his Meditations; their study acted quite directly on the transformation of an already developing phenomenology into a new kind of transcendental philosophy. Accordingly one might almost call transcendental phenomenology a neo-Cartesianism, even though It Is obliged — and precisely by its radical development of Cartesian motifs — to reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content of the Cartesian philosophy.|Edmund Husserl, [https://archive.org/stream/CartesiamMeditations/12813080-husserl-cartesian-meditations_djvu.txt ''Cartesian Meditations'']}}

==Contents==
The work is divided into five "meditations" of varying length, whose contents are as follows:
#First Meditation: The Way to the Transcendental Ego
#Second Meditation: The Field of Transcendental Experience
#Third Meditation: Constitutional Problems
#Fourth Meditation: Constitutional Problems Pertaining to the Transcendental Ego Itself
#Fifth Meditation: Transcendental Being as Monadological Intersubjectivity

==Editions==
* ''Méditations Cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie''. 1931. Gabrielle Peiffer<!--[sic]--> and Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Paris: Armand Collin.
* ''Méditations Cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie''. 1947. Gabrielle Peiffer<!--[sic]--> and Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Paris: Vrin.
*''[https://archive.org/details/CartesiamMeditations Cartesian Meditations].'' 1960. Dorion Cairns, trans. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

==References==
* Dermot Moran, Rodney K. B. Parker (eds.). 2016<!--[sic]-->. ''Studia Phaenomenologica: Vol. XV / 2015<!--[sic]-->. Early Phenomenology''. Zeta Books. p.&nbsp;150.

{{Edmund Husserl}}
{{Authority control}}

Category:1931 non-fiction books
Category:Books about René Descartes
Category:Books by Edmund Husserl
Category:Phenomenology literature

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