Discourse on Method

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.

Richard Kennington (1921–1999) was a professor of philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University and Catholic University of America. His teaching wqas centered largely on seventeenth-century thinkers such as Bacon and Descartes.

Pamela Kraus teaches at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. She is coeditor (along with Frank Hunt) of Richard Kennington's "On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy" (Lexington, 1004).

Frank Hunt teaches at St Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is coeditor, along with Pamela Kraus, of Richard Kennington's "On Modern Origins in Early Modern Philosophy" (Lexington, 1004).