Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings

This book is planned as the definitive one-volume reader for all English-speaking students of Descartes.

René Descartes (Author), John Cottingham (Edited by), Robert Stoothoff (Edited by), Dugald Murdoch (Edited by), Anthony Kenny (Edited by)

9780521358125, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 February 1988

272 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.395 kg

'This new translation is designed as a replacement for the old but still widely used translation by Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross … Unlike the Haldane and Ross edition which was translated from a composite text based on both the French and Latin editions, the present translation is made from the Latin text alone, with significant changes in the French edition indicated in the footnotes. This is clearly much more satisfactory. The translation is generally accurate, and is neither excessively free nor excessively literal … There is little doubt that this will become the standard translation of Descartes' philosophical writings, and it deserves a warm welcome.' French Studies

Based on the new and much acclaimed two-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, this anthology of essential texts contains the most important and widely studied of those writings, including the Discourse and Meditations and substantial extracts from the Regulae, Optics, Principles, Objectives and Replies, Comments on a Broadsheet, and Passions of the Soul. In clear, readable, modern English, with a full text and running references to the standard Franco-Latin edition of Descartes, this book is planned as the definitive one-volume reader for all English-speaking students of Descartes.

1. General introduction
2. Chronological table of Descartes' life and works
3. Rules for the direction of our native intelligence
4. Discourse on the method
5. Optics
6. Meditations on first philosophy
7. Objections and replies
8. Principles of philosophy
9. Comments on a certain broadsheet
10. The passions of the soul
Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]