Key Facts
full title · Principles of Philosophy
author · Rene Descartes
philosophical movement · Cartesian Rationalism
language · Latin
time and place written · The Principles were written during the early 1640s at Descartes' home in Holland
date of first publication · 1644
publisher · Elzevirs
speaker · Rene Descartes
other books by descartes on this topic · A fuller version of Descartes' philosophy can be found in his Meditations on First Philosophy. For more on his cosmology and natural science, see Le Monde (The World). Descartes' theory of physiology and psychology receives a more detailed treatment in Description of the Human Body. Descartes' published correspondence also yields valuable insight in all of these areas.
goal of the book · To present a clear and certain unified science, covering all areas of possible human knowledge
areas of philosophy covered · Part I of the Principles presents Descartes' epistemology and metaphysics. The remainder of the book presents his natural philosophy, which is more akin to what we today would call "science."
philosophical movements opposed · Descartes developed his new philosophy because he was dissatisfied with the vague and misleading philosophy of the powerful Scholastic philosophers. Though Descartes is now often read in the context of the debates between the Cartesian rationalists and the British empiricists, that debate was not yet raging during Descartes' lifetime, and so that particular school of thought was not a target of Descartes' philosophy. (Although, it is important to note that Thomas Hobbes, who served as the forerunner to British empiricism, was one of the critics who attacked Descartes' philosophy).
philosophers influenced by the · It seems fair to say that not a single Western philosopher since Descartes has managed to escape his influence. Descartes set the modern philosophical conversation into motion. More than anyone else, though, the Cartesian rationalists (Nicolas Malebranche, Baruch Spinoza, and G.W. Leibniz) are the rightful inheritors of Descartes' mantle. In addition, Immanuel Kant, who attempted to reconcile Cartesian rationalism and British empiricism in the late eighteenth century, can be seen as a philosophical descendant of Descartes'.
