Summary: Discourse on the Method of Reason

The course of modern philosophy has many contributors, but perhaps not as significant as Rene Descartes, whose work initiated the secular movement which now characterizes the entire field of Western philosophy. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. This was the singular truth which initiated the structure of thought built by Descartes. His work was the starting point for all of the philosophers which came after. He extended the use of reason and deduction into the natural sciences, and his work was the beginning of the climb out of the dark ages of faith and reasoning by authority. The Discourse on the Method of Reason was the first true work of skepticism, a foundation of doubt which allowed a critical re-examination of all that was previously held to be true. Descartes literally revolutionized both philosophy and mathematics, and this discourse provides the means by which he approached the tangle of contemporary thought and laid the foundation of rational understanding. Includes: