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Sorry for my poor English, but my mother tongue is French. Did anybody read the introduction essay
of Jean-Francois Revel to Descartes Discours de la Methodeedited in the most famous pocket
edition Collection de Poche? The essay is called 'Descarte inutile et incertain' trans. 'Descartes
useless and uncertain'. I found myself astounded in front of a so irrevocable negative critic of the
whole Cartesian method and conception. But it is written in a very persuasive style that my more
novice approach and reading of Descartes fell apart under this destroying introduction. I don't know
what to think about it. The rule is more to admiration concerning Descartes? I would like to find my
way out of it, if possible.
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Descartes was neither useless nor uncertain. He was writing in the time honoured tradition of
philosophy as "the practice of wisdom". His Meditations are the result of his spiritual exercises, as he
himself points out. He invites us to withdraw from the thrall of life and to question our own certainties
as a like exercise. He supplies a method whereby one proceed by doubt. The real antidote to what
you have read is to be found in the brilliant work of Pierre Hadot of the College de France. See his
Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique(Etudes Augustinennes, Paris, 1987 2nd edition) in which
he refers to Descartes throughout by implication and explicitly in several instances. I haven't read
Hadot's book on Marcus Aurelius' 'Meditations', La Citadelle Erieureint(Paris, 1992), but I imagine
that he makes further illuminating contextualisations of Descartes there, either explicitly or by
implication.
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