Descartes: Discourse on Method (Focus Philosophical Library)

This is an English translation of Descartes' seminal discourse, with an original essay by Richard Kennington. This text is designed to provide the student with a close translation, notes, and a glossary of key terms, facilitating access to ideas as they originally were presented and helping to make the translator's work transparent. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Decartes' immediate audience. The Focus Philosophical Library publishes clear, faithful editions enabling access for modern students to the essential ideas and wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers. Review: '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 Basics: Based on the new two volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings, this anthology of essential texts contains the most important and widely studied of the writings. Cover 1 The Focus Philosophical Library 4 Title page 5 Copyright page 6 Contents 7 Editors’ Note 9 Introduction 11 Discourse on the Method of Conducting One’s Reason Well and Seeking Truth in the Sciences 25 Part 1 25 Part 2 31 Part 3 37 Part 4 42 Part 5 47 Part 6 58 Interpretive Essay: Descartes’s Discourse on Method 69 Glossary 89 Index 96 Back cover 100