title: Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
author: Ren Descartes
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.
zlib_text: Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
  JOHN COTTINGHAM
  Introduction
  Descartes is perhaps the most widely studied of all the great philoso-
  phers. Students in countless introductory courses find that their
  imagination is captured by the lonely quest for knowledge described
  in Descartes' masterpiece, the Meditations on First Philosophy. The
  radical critique of preconceived opinions or prejudices (praejudicia)
  which begins that work seems to symbolize the very essence of
  philosophical inquiry. And the task of finding secure foundations for
  human knowledge, a reliable basis for science and ethics, encapsu-
  lates, for many, what makes philosophy worth doing. The excite-
  ment felt on first encountering Cartesian philosophy does not dimin-
  ish as one delves deeper. Descartes' inquiries into the nature and
  structure of the material universe, his views on human freedom and
  the existence of God, and his account of the human condition and
  the relationship between mind and 