René Descartes is a Philosopher I will always recommend to beginners, not only because ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ is, compared to some other texts, pretty easy to read, but it’s impact on Philosophy and Descartes’ influence on the world at large was immense and wide-ranging. A link to an online version can be found below.
Most people would be familiar with his contributions to some extent without realising it. I would imagine the reason for that would be we often, for one reason or another, refer to Descartes in the Latin form of his name ‘Renatus Cartesius‘, the adjectival form being Cartesian.
The wax argument illustrates the result of methodological scepticism on every day objects, and a narrative grounding that Descartes can use to illustrate his distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and later his arguments for Rationalism and Cartesian Dualism.
Place of the White Blog 