Philosophical Works

René Descartes set out to rebuild human knowledge from the ground up, doubting everything he possibly could until he reached one certainty he could not doubt: that he was thinking, and therefore existed. This collection brings together his central philosophical writings, including the Discourse on the Method of 1637 and the Meditations on First Philosophy that followed. In plain, first-person prose he lays out his rules for reasoning, his proof of his own existence, and his arguments about God, the soul, and the physical world. These works founded modern philosophy and set the terms that Spinoza, Locke, and Kant would spend the next two centuries answering. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.