{"id":254,"date":"1997-09-23T09:20:00","date_gmt":"1997-09-23T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/?p=254"},"modified":"2012-01-20T20:52:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T04:52:11","slug":"meditations-on-first-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/meditations-on-first-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditations on First Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I returned to this college text with a renewed sense of confidence. Several years, and much reading and thinking, had passed since I last picked it up. As it turned out, my confidence was partially warranted. But I admit to not being able to stay on the train of thought consistently. Perhaps this is due to a lack of intellectual rigor and preparation, a testament to Descartes&#8217; powerful mind. Or perhaps he himself was rambling and undisciplined. It&#8217;s certainly fashionable to dis Descartes in today&#8217;s cleverly counter-intuitive climate. I give him the benefit of the doubt, gentleman that I am.<\/p>\n<p>This much is clear: he learned from a great teacher &#8212; the clear voice that arises in silence and solitude. And in that inner territory, with so few familiar landmarks, he cleared a trail of sorts. The problem of Cartesian rationalism is not with any flaw in Descartes&#8217; thinking, but in the false assumption that it is the only possible path. Philosophy is intended to be public: let those who have ears, hear. Let those who have better ideas, speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I returned to this college text with a renewed sense of confidence. Several years, and much reading and thinking, had passed since I last picked it up. As it turned out, my confidence was partially warranted. But I admit to not being able to stay on the train of thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}