Rene Descartes' Regulae: The Power and Poverty of Method

René Descartes: The Power and Poverty of Method is the second installment of the new Seaburn Wisdom series, whose primary purpose is to stimulate the appetite of readers to further explore the riches of the Western philosophical tradition. In this book the reader will be taken upon a tour of the intellectual thrills and travails that brought Descartes, one of the architects of the modern world, into contact with the trailblazing powers of a new methodological approach to the acquisition of knowledge. But as the birth of a new conception of reality is never without its share of suffering, the reader will also learn how the development of Cartesian thinking had to overcome a number of important obstacles along the way. The Regulae of Descartes is not generally counted as a success by Cartesian scholars. This book provides a spirited defense of the claim that the failure of the method of the Regulae needs to be reinterpreted in light of the complex tapestry of thinking weaved by Descartes over an entire lifetime. Descartes did not abandon the Regulae although he never quite completed it. To see how such a seeming contradiction can be rendered intelligible we at Seaburn invite you to read the book.