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Meditations on First Philosophy: A Monolingual Edition

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Presumably, the chief purpose of a volume such as this is to serve as an inexpensive text for undergraduates. Scholars will turn to more elaborate (and more expensive) editions.

Unfortunately, any students who are assigned this edition will spend as much time trying to understand the stilted English translation as they will Descartes' philosophy.

Fortunately, there are several readily available English versions of the Meditations that are far more readable than this one. Hackett publishes a translation by Donald Cress that is actually five cents cheaper than this one, and there are even free versions on the Internet that surpass this translation in clarity (and occasionally accuracy).

Perhaps the only good reason for assigning this edition would be an undying loyalty to Notre Dame. Indeed, for some that will be reason enough!

Rene Discartes, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, proposes his theories on the existance of God and on the human soul. This book is an exploration into the mind of the man who said "I think, therefore i am." In Discartes' First Philosophy he thinks twice about things that many of us don't think about once, and proposes not only his ideas, but also his thought process in coming to those ideas. This book is a 'must-have' in the collection of anyone who can appreciate deeper thought.