On the Improvement of the Understanding

The six meditations where Descartes doubts everything he knows until he reaches a certainty he cannot doubt. This edition adds short bracketed explanations, so the argument is easy to follow step by step.

René Descartes

Descartes tells how he decided to doubt everything and rebuild knowledge from a single certainty: I think, therefore I am. The short, personal book that launched modern rationalism.

René Descartes

Descartes' own textbook version of his philosophy, from the method of doubt to the nature of God, mind and matter. John Veitch's classic translation, typeset in a clean modern layout.

René Descartes

Spinoza builds his whole philosophy like geometry, from definitions and axioms to God, mind, emotions and freedom. The most ambitious system of 17th-century rationalism, in the classic Elwes translation.

Benedict de Spinoza

Spinoza reads the Bible with the tools of reason and defends freedom of thought against religious and political authority. The book that made him the most controversial philosopher of his time.

Baruch Spinoza