Descartes' Principles of Philosophy (Principia philosophiae) was the last of his three main expositions of his metaphysics and epistemology (or 'first philosophy', as he preferred to call it), and it was published in 1644. Unlike the Discourse on the Method, it was directed at a university audience, and was written in Latin. Unlike the Meditations on First Philosophy, it was directed towards the Faculty of Arts, rather than the Faculty of Theology. Students followed a general Arts course before proceeding to one of the 'higher' faculties, such as Theology or Law, and the syllabus included metaphysics and physics, based mainly on the works of Aristotle. Descartes' ambition was that his book should replace Aristotle as the main text. It is therefore written in a rather more systematic and didactic style than his earlier works.
And here is the complete index with hypertexted links to the contents.
Wow, those are nice links. I was wondering about what Descartes work was about, thanks. If you are familiar with the rest of his works, can you recommend any work of his in particular?
Wow, those are nice links. I was wondering about what Descartes work was about, thanks. If you are familiar with the rest of his works, can you recommend any work of his in particular?
Descartes wrote three important texts: "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences", "Meditations on First Philosophy", and Principles of Philosophy which is linked above in the first post.
I have found online texts of "Discourse on Method" and the "Meditations" which maybe worthwhile to link here so I will post them now:
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