René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy With Selections from the Objections and Replies

Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, published in Latin in 1641, is one of the most widely studied philosophical texts of all time, and inaugurates many of the key themes that have remained central to philosophy ever since. In his original Latin text Descartes expresses himself with great lucidity and elegance, and there is enormous interest, even for those who are not fluent in Latin, in seeing how the famous concepts and arguments of his great masterpiece unfold in the original language. John Cottingham's acclaimed English translation of the work is presented here in a facing-page edition alongside the original Latin text. Students of classical philosophy have long had the benefit of dual-language editions, and the availability of such a resource for the canonical works of the early-modern period is long overdue. This volume now makes available, in an invaluable dual-language format, one of the most seminal texts of Western philosophy.

Philosophical introduction to the Meditations; Textual and linguistic introduction; Descartes, Meditationes/Meditations Latin text with English translation.

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.