Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy

Of all Descartes' works students are most often referred to his Meditations, as a key text in Western philosophy. This textbook extracts from the recently published two volume Philosophical Writings of Descartes (translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch) the authoritative, new translation of the Meditations and complements it with a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies. The selection of extracts from the Objections and Replies has been done specially for the present volume, with the aim of assisting the student to come to terms with the subtle reasoning of the Meditations by focusing on some of the principal philosophical difficulties raised by the work. Material is arranged thematically so as to indicate the main points of criticism which occured to Descartes' contemporaries as they read the Meditations, and how Descartes clarified his arguments in response to those criticisms. The new translation of these fundamental writings is based on the best available Latin or French texts, and rendered into clear, readable English.