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Show how Descartes thoughts through the Meditations guide us to a satisfied subjective

In order to show how Descartes meditations are leading us from a non-satisfied subject to a satisfied one, we should first consider the meaning and concept of the subject. In the Webster dictionary the meaning of subject is as follows:
“one that is placed under authority or control”.
This is the lingual meaning of the word subject but when it comes to the philosophical  terms, the subject (particularly in the philosophy of Descartes ) can apply to something more essential as well as fundamental when it intends to describe the whole world in the terms of subjectivity.
Unlike the ancient philosophers who had based their philosophy on the metaphysical terms,  as it was very difficult to have access to the terms of subjectivity, Descartes bases the basic unit of his philosophy on the subject in so far as we have access to it by our consciousness. One of the most important concepts of Descartes was Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I exist). The term “I think” has later had a deep impact on psychology as well as paved the way to individualism.
In developing the line of arguments further, Descartes intends to raise questions against unquestionable truths. In this regard, he underscores the quest for knowledge. He believed that  Knowledge had to be doubtless as well as based upon the universal values; in other words, knowledge has to be based on correct facts and can not be purely based upon our ordinary “taken for granted knowledge” . In his analyses of the previous scientific works with regard to socio-philosophical analyses, Descartes was not satisfied because he found these analyses unsatisfactory. He has none the less aimed at to find a new foundation for social science which could base upon the new Unit (subject). Descartes barely was looking for a new epistemological principles which could be protected from skeptical attacks. Descartes opens his first Mediation with his persona, the meditator, reflecting upon the project to be undertaken. He argues:
I have observed for some years now how many false things I have admitted as true from my earliest age, … , I observed that once in life[semel in vita] everything ought to be completely overturned, and ought to be completely rebuilt from the first foundations , if I want to build anything firm and lasting in the science.(AT VII 17, the scientific background to Descartes meditations)
Later he analyzed his epistemological sources. First of all, he underlined that senses are deceivable. As a straight stick appears bent when put into water (Plato’s famous example). Therefore Descartes disregards all sensory information. Afterwards he starts attacking his predecessor’s knowledge by making the fact obvious that the men can easily make mistakes in reasoning,  and  in this regard he decides to further discount all existing ideas or arguments. Finally, he declares that the same experiences can be felt whilst awake or asleep, and attributes all his experiences hitherto as illusions. And we can easily see all these through the summary of meditation I which is brought here :

Meditation I
A firm foundation for the science requires a truth that is absolutely certain; for this purpose, I will reject all my beliefs for which there is even a possibility of doubt, and whatever truths are left will be absolutely certain. All my beliefs about the world are based on the fundamental belief that the senses tell me to be truth. But this belief is not absolutely certain. It is at least possible that everything my senses tell me is an illusion created by a powerful being. Therefore, there is some reason to doubt my foundation belief, and thus all my beliefs about the world are doubtful; none of them can serve as the foundation for science. (Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)

After the first meditation that he started with his method of doubt in every single thing around him, right before plunging there forever he finally thought of one thing. He found out thinking. He found out that he is thinking that he is being deceived, he is thinking that things are not right, he is thinking that all those things are happening, and even when doubting his thinking, it would be his thought itself!!! Here comes some phrases of his meditation that Descartes explains the way he found Cogito ergo sum as his certain truth.

Meditation II
Is there any truth which can be absolutely certain? Yes. Even if all of my experience is an illusion, it cannot be doubted that the experience is taking place. And this means that I, the experiences, must exist. Since the only evidence I have that I exist is that I am thinking, then it is also absolutely certain that I am a thing that thinks, that is, a mind and again since I am not certain (yet) that the physical world exists, therefore, I know with certainty that I am only a mind. I am much more certain of my mind’s existence than my body’s. It might seem that in fact we know physical things through the senses with greater certainty than we know something intangible like the mind. But the wax experiment demonstrates that the senses themselves know nothing, and that only the intellect truly knows physical things. It follows that the mind itself is known with greater certainty than anything that we know through the senses.( Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)
He knew he had made his new discovery, the discovery of his new basic element for his work, the foundation of his new science, a new complete and satisfied subject, a epistemologically subjectivity immune from skeptical challenges; the Cogito ergo sum.
When it comes to the third meditation Descartes uses Ontological Argument to prove God’s existence. Existence is derived immediately from the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being. This part of meditations is clearly more complicated than the previous ones and we might need scholastic machinery to analyze it. By examining the truths which he discovered in the course of his second meditation he claims “So, I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.”, and afterwards he uses Ontological argument (the necessity of a supremely perfect being) that every idea should be caused and as long as he can not be the cause of everything then there should be a infinite being that is the cause.(Descartes’ Ontological Argument)
Descartes has received many objections about his proof of God’s argument such as there is no clear understanding of a infinite being, The fact of imagining and thinking about a perfect thing, doesn’t necessarily make it exist, there is no necessity need for the God to exist that we have thought in our minds and nothing can cause himself to exist.(Objections to Descartes Meditations)

Meditation III
Every idea must be caused, and the cause must be as real as the idea. If I have any idea of which I cannot be the cause, then something besides me must exist. But the idea of God, an infinite and perfect being, could not have originated from within me, since I am finite and imperfect. I have an idea of God, and it can only have been caused by God. Therefore God exists.( Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)
Descartes knows God an infinite and perfect being and of course no demon, so he continues building up his work by explaining why his finite faculty of judgment can make mistakes. Descartes explains our being (personality) somewhere between nothing and infinite being.

Meditation IV
Only an imperfect (less than perfectly good) being could practice deliberate deception. Therefore, God is no deceiver and at the same time my faculty of judgment comes from God which means I can make no mistake as long as I use it properly. But it is not an infinite faculty; I make mistakes when I judge things that I don’t really know. God also gave me free will, which is infinite and therefore extends beyond my finite intellect. I therefore know now that if I know something with absolute certainty (clearly and distinctly), then I cannot be mistaken, because God is no deceiver. The correct way to proceed is to avoid mistakes and limit my claims to knowledge to those things I know clearly and distinctly.( Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)
Existence of God in meditations is derived immediately from the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being. Descartes has failed to formulate a single version of his arguments which he started at meditation three and the main statement of the argument appears in the Fifth Meditation. This comes on the heels of an earlier causal argument for God’s existence (third meditation), raising questions about the order and relation between these two distinct proofs. This is also defends it in the First, Second, and Fifth Replies against scathing objections by some of the leading intellectuals of his day.(Descartes’ Ontological Argument)

Meditation V
About what can be known for certain about material objects. Before deciding whether they exist outside me, I know that my ideas of them consist of shape, size, motion, etc. I also know that by thinking about these attributes I can discover certain facts that are necessarily true about them (the truths of geometry, for example). I do not invent ideas such as geometrical shapes, nor do I get them from sensory experience. Proof of this is the fact that I can discover geometrical truths about figures which I cannot imagine. Just as, by thinking about my ideas of geometrical shapes, I can discover truths that necessarily belong to them, I can do the same with God. I have a clear and distinct idea of a perfect being. Perfect is equal with lacking nothing. I cannot conceive of a being that is perfect but lacks existence. Therefore, existence necessarily belongs to God. This doesn’t mean that my thinking of something makes it exist. If I conceive of a triangle, I must conceive of a figure whose angles equal two right angles. But it doesn’t follow that the triangle must exist. But God is different. God, being perfect, is the one being to whom existence must belong. Thus, when I conceive of God, I must conceive of a being that exists. Because God, being perfect, is not a deceiver, I know that once I have perceived something clearly and distinctly to be true, it will remain true, even if later I forget the reasoning that led me to that conclusion. I could not have this certainty about anything if I did not know God.( Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)
At sixth meditation Descartes reaches his final stop of his mediations which contains Cartesian body, Mind-body dualism, Primary and secondary qualities.

Meditation VI
All that is left is to determine whether material objects exist with certainty. I know that the abstract shapes representing them are real, since I perceive them clearly and distinctly in geometry. Furthermore, I have a faculty of imagination, by which I can conceive of material objects, and which is different from my intellect. The most likely explanation for the existence of my faculty of imagination is that my mind is joined with a body that has sense organs. This is even more likely in the case of the faculty of sensation. Then I found it possible to doubt everything. Now I am in the process of systematically removing doubts where certainty exists. Now that I know God can create anything just as I apprehend it, the distinctness of two things in my mind is sufficient to conclude that they really are distinct. Thus I know I exist, I am a thinking thing, and although I may possess a body, “it is certain that this I is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it.”. My faculty of sensing is passive and thus presupposes a faculty of causing sensation, which cannot be within me, since some ideas come to me without my cooperation and even against my will; it therefore belongs to something else. This is either a body or God. But since God is not a deceiver, he doesn’t plant these ideas directly in me (doesn’t make me believe in a nonexistent world). Therefore corporeal things exist. My senses might mislead me about the details, but I know at least that the ideas that I clearly and distinctly understand–geometrical properties–belong to these bodies. Nature is God’s order; thus it has truth to teach me. For example, that I am present to my body in a more intimate way than a pilot in a ship. And that there are other bodies around me that affect me in various ways, that should be pursued or avoided; the senses thus act to preserve and maintain the body. But I also make some judgments on my own that are not justified by nature’s teachings, particularly in assuming objects and their qualities to be exactly as my senses report them, that sense qualities reside in them, etc. It is the fault of my judgment that I use sense perception as a direct apprehension of the essences of external bodies; there is nothing inherently deceptive about sensation. Another problem is the misleading signals I sometimes get from my own body, which induce me to commit errors. A body with edema, for example, will have an inclination to drink, when in fact this is something it ought to avoid. How can God permit this? The body is divisible, the mind is not. Further, the mind gets impressions from the parts of the body not immediately, but via the brain. Therefore the nerves running from the parts to the brain might be stimulated (pulled) somewhere in between, registering motion in the brain just as if the body part were affected. When everything functions normally, the sensations in the mind are the best and most appropriate for the purpose of maintaining health. So the exceptions prove the goodness of God in making us this way.  By using more than one sense, and memory, I can avoid errors of the senses of this kind. So I should get rid of the excessive doubts I started with, especially those premised on dreaming, since I can easily distinguish dreaming from waking by the continuity of the latter. I can trust the truth of my ideas as long as my senses, memory, and understanding are all consistent with one another.( Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy)
Descartes’ conclusion made everyone happy: the Church had nothing to fear from science. Subjective sense experience is still liable to error, so people still need the Church. The Church rules in the realm of SOUL. Science rules in the realm of BODY — external objects as measured and quantified by math — but only because the certainty of science depends on the existence of a non-deceiving God. Whether they admit it or not, scientists depend on God.(Notes on Descartes’ Meditations)

Conclusion
In the following essay I intended to show the scientific works of Descartes with regard to his emphasis upon subjectivity. I tried to show that Descartes philosophy created a rift between the ancient and the modern philosophy by bringing the consciousness to the fore of the modern debates. I developing the line of argument further, I tried to show that the basic elements of Descartes meditations were an attempt to secure pure knowledge by putting emphasis upon the concept “I think”.  I have implicitly dared to come across the danger of arguing that the source of unsatisfactory subjectivity is related to the concept of doubts. In other words,  Descartes tried to explicate the fact that as long as we surrounded by doubts, the possibility of developing a kind of modern subjectivity is bleak. Furthermore,   I assumed that modern subjectivity has to do with the raise of individualism and rationality. Thus I clearly wanted to say that Descartes legacy in relation to the creation of modern subject is still alive, however post-modernism proclaims loudly “the death of subject”. The misunderstanding here is that we may think that “the death of subject” means the satisfaction of subjectivity. But experience of many shows that the dissatisfaction of subjectivity has to do with uncertainty and playfulness, which post-modernism is a great fun of such values.

Sources :
Comments on summeries based according to sources :
Some parts of this article is written by my conclusion after reading these sources and there might not be a direct sentece in the article from them but the concept and conclusion have been understood and written from them.
•    Name : Summary of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy
Link :  http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/10/descart.html
Copyright © 1999 James T. Anderson
Date : 09.03.09 10:30
•    Name : The scientific background to Descartes meditations – [SEMEL IN VITA] (Source was supplied by group teacher)
By Daniel Garber
University of Chicago
•    Name : Descartes and the Meditations (Source was supplied by group teacher)
By Gary Hatfield
•    Name : Essay on Descartes
link : http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2004/7/19/55914/4732
Date : 08.03.09 22:00
•    Name : Descartes’ Proof for the Existence of God
Link : http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/descartes-god.html
Date : 10.03.09 22:40
•    Name : Descartes’ Ontological Argument
Link : http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ontological/
Date : 10.03.09 18:30
•    Name : OBJECTIONS TO DESCARTES’ MEDITATIONS
Link :http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/hobbes/objections/objindex.html
Date : 09.03.09 10:30
•    Name : DESCARTES EXISTENCE OF GOD
Link : http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/100733.html
Date : 10.03.09 21:00
•    Name : Notes on Descartes’ Meditations
Link : http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/Dscartes.htm
Date : 12.03.09 08:00