Discourse on the Method

René Descartes’s 1637 philosophical work presents a method for seeking truth and introduces influential ideas about reason, knowledge, and the self.

René Descartes: A French philosopher and mathematician who helped establish modern rationalism and analytic geometry. He wrote the work as an account of his intellectual development and method.
Cartesian method: Descartes’s procedure of accepting only clear claims, dividing problems, proceeding in order, and reviewing thoroughly. The work states these rules as a practical guide to inquiry.
Thirty Years' War: A series of European conflicts from 1618 to 1648, involving religious and political powers. Descartes recounts serving in military settings during the period when he developed his method.
Meditations on First Philosophy: Descartes’s 1641 work that develops arguments about doubt, the self, God, and the material world. It expands philosophical arguments that the Discourse introduces in autobiographical form.
Methodic doubt: A procedure of suspending belief in any claim that can be doubted, to find a secure foundation for knowledge. The work describes doubt as a route toward certainty rather than an end in itself.
Analytic geometry: The use of algebraic methods to describe geometric figures through coordinates and equations. Descartes presents mathematical problem-solving as a model for disciplined reasoning.
Dutch Republic: A seventeenth-century republic in northern Europe and a major center of publishing and intellectual exchange. Descartes lived and worked there when he prepared the book for publication.
Cartesianism: A philosophical tradition shaped by Descartes’s rationalist method and distinction between mind and body. The book helped establish the approach later grouped under Descartes’s name.
Cogito ergo sum: Descartes’s claim that the act of thinking establishes the thinker’s existence. The work presents an early form of this claim as the first certainty reached by doubt.
Clear and distinct perception: Descartes’s criterion that a perception must be clear and distinct to count as true. The work connects trustworthy judgment with ideas grasped distinctly by reason.

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