Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings

Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings
ISBN: 9780140447019
Publication Date: 1 September 1999

The Meditations (1641) must surely be Rene Descartes' masterpiece. The six Meditations and accompanying selections from the Objections and Replies provide a definitive statement of what Descartes intended as the foundations of his whole philosophy. His project was to resolve the epistemological questions brought about by the prevailing scepticism of his age; to build, from the basis of self-awareness, through the notion of a benevolent God, to a systematic and novel approach to metaphysics, and to construct a secure starting-point for science.

The first part of a new two-volume edition of the works of Descartes in Penguin Classics, this volume consists not only of a new translation of the original Latin text and extensive selections from the Objections and Replies, but also includes relevant correspondence from the period 1643-9, Part One of The Principles of Philosophy and Comments On a Certain Manifesto, as examples of Descartes' other metaphysical writings from the period 1641-9.

About The Author Rene Descartes was born in 1596 at La Haye (now called Descartes) near Tours, and educated at the Jesuit College at La Flèche. Like many of his contemporaries he contested the value of an education based on Aristotelianism and, after leaving college, attempted to resolve the sceptical crisis of his age by devising a method of reasoning modelled on the rigour and certainty of mathematics.

Despite claiming to avoid theological questions and stay within the scope of human reason, his writings involved him in numerous disputes with theologians of both the Catholic and (especially) the Reformed persuasion. In 1621, after a period spent in the Netherlands, Bohemia and Hungary as a soldier, he left the army and devoted himself ...