Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes
Published 1641 · 120 pages · 25,000 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is Meditations on First Philosophy to read?
Meditations on First Philosophy scores 44 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Philosophical vocabulary. Relatively clear for a classic.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Pure metaphysics and epistemology.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Every sentence advances the argument.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Six meditations in logical sequence.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The evil demon, the wax, as philosophical thought experiments.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Deadly serious philosophical investigation.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Each meditation builds toward resolution.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Six meditations in clear sequence.
How Meditations on First Philosophy is regarded
Meditations on First Philosophy holds a literary regard score of 80 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.