These reading guides will do a number of different things depending on what we are reading. Their main function will be to direct you the specific passages we will focus on in discussion, but sometimes they will also provide information about the background or context of what you are reading. (The texts have introductions which provide useful information of the latter sort that I will duplicate in these guides only when I want to call special attention to it.)
The Discourse on Method as a sort of preface to a group of Descartes’ scientific works, and it provides both a bit of intellectual autobiography and an account of his general aims. In particular, it elaborates the broader philosophical setting for the specific treatises published with it, and our focus will be on the parts of the Discourse that have this as their primary function.
• You should look at the editor’s preface (pp. vii-ix) for an overview of Descartes’ life and works. What Descartes has to say himself about the development of his thinking appears in this assignment in part 1, the first portion of part 2, and last portion of part 3.
• In between the latter two is Descartes’ account of the basic rules of his method. Pay most attention to the rules appearing in the latter portion of part 2 and also to the metaphor of building earlier in that part.
• Part 4 of the Discourse gives an overview of Descartes general philosophy. It amounts to an outline of the next work we will read, the Meditations on First Philosophy that he published a few years after the Discourse. The account here is pretty sketchy in places, so don’t be surprised if it isn’t all very clear. But it is still worth paying attention to, partly because it will give you an introduction to the Meditations and partly because the statements of his views that Descartes provides here are among the most memorable.