Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings

By: René Descartes and John Cottingham and Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch

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Synopsis: Rene Descartes is universally acknowledged as the father of modern Western philosophy. It is to the writings of Descartes, above all others, that we must turn if we wish to understand the great seventeenth-century revolution in which the old scholastic world view slowly lost its grip, and the foundations of modern philosophical and scientific thinking were laid. The range of Descartes' thought was enormous, and his published work includes writings on mathematics, physics, astronomy, meteorology, optics, physiology, psychology, metaphysics and ethics. No one volume can hope to do justice to such an oeuvre, but the present selection includes the most famous and widely studied texts, and a good bit more besides. We hope it will be a serviceable and reasonably representative anthology for those who wish to study for themselves one of the most important and fascinating philosophical systems ever produced.