Discours de La Methode/Discourse on the Method: A Bilingual Edition with an Interpretive Essay

No text has defined the self-understanding of the present time like Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard 's _La condition postmoderne, Rapport sur le savoir_ (1979). But few participants in the dialogue between the moderns and the postmoderns can claim to understand exactly what 'modernity' is. Yet one can hardly understand '_post_-modernism' without adequately understanding what it is supposed to supersede. Thus there also arises one of the biggest difficulties in understanding postmodernism itself.\u000a\u000aA good way to try to meet this need is by rereading, now more carefully than ever, the book to which Stephen Toulmin refers, in _Cosmopolis, The Hidden Agenda of Modernity_ (1990), as one of '. . . the founding documents of modern thought . . .' (p.14). It is Ren\u00e9 Descartes ' _Discours de la m\u00e9thode/Discourse on the Method_ (1637), which is both a classic of modern philosophy and the crucial source book of modernity.\u000a\u000a\u000a\u000aThis unique edition of the _Discours/Discourse_ contains an improved version of the original French text of Adam and Tannery, a new English translation as literal as possible and as liberal as necessary, an interpretive essay contextualizing the text historically and philosophically, an extensive bibliography, and a comprehensive index of Cartesian terminology.\u000a\u000a\u000a\u000aThe edition is not only for advanced students and teachers of philosophy as well as of related disciplines such as literary and cultural criticism, but also for all those 'human beings of good sense' motivated by an interest in uncovering 'the hidden agenda of modernity'. It is thus also intended as a timely contribution to the modern-postmodern debate.\u000a\u000a\u000a\u000a