Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521338573 ISBN 13: 9780521338578

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1986

Synopsis

Of all Descartes' works students are most often referred to his Meditations, as a key text in Western philosophy. This textbook extracts from the recently published two volume Philosophical Writings of Descartes (translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch) the authoritative, new translation of the Meditations and complements it with a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies. The selection of extracts from the Objections and Replies has been done specially for the present volume, with the aim of assisting the student to come to terms with the subtle reasoning of the Meditations by focusing on some of the principal philosophical difficulties raised by the work. Material is arranged thematically so as to indicate the main points of criticism which occured to Descartes' contemporaries as they read the Meditations, and how Descartes clarified his arguments in response to those criticisms. The new translation of these fundamental writings is based on the best available Latin or French texts, and rendered into clear, readable English.

About this title

Book Description:

This authoritative translation of the Meditations is taken from the much acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes. It is based on the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English.

About the Author:

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London, and an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He is co-editor and translator of the standard English edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes (1991), and editor of the Cambridge Companion to Descartes (1992), and his own books in this area include Cartesian Reflections (2008). He has also published extensively in the fields of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0521338573
• ISBN 13: 9780521338578
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144