A Discourse on Method
Notebook
René Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637) is the founding text of modern rationalist philosophy, written in accessible French rather than scholarly Latin. In six parts Descartes recounts his intellectual autobiography and lays out a method of systematic doubt, resolving to accept only what is clear and distinct—arriving at the first certainty, 'I think, therefore I am.' From this foundation he rebuilds knowledge of God, the soul, and the physical world, inaugurating the modern turn toward the thinking subject.
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