Rules for the Direction of the Mind
by René Descartes · Regulae ad directionem ingenii
Assigned by 3 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- c. 1628
- Form
- Treatise
- Language
- Latin
- Length
- Short · 80 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume 1, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald MurdochCambridge University Press, 1985The standard scholarly translation, and the one most programs photocopy from.
These links go straight to Amazon and Bookshop.org and earn this site nothing today. Prices are the same either way. How this works.
An unfinished early work, abandoned around 1628 and not published until after Descartes died. Twenty-one rules set out how the mind should be trained to reach certainty: only intuition and deduction yield knowledge, problems must be reduced to what is simplest and absolutely known, and the imagination should be used to represent quantities as figures and lines. The later rules describe the reduction of any well-posed problem to a single equation. It is the clearest statement of the ambition behind the Discourse and the Geometry, written before Descartes had a metaphysics to support it.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Rules for the Direction of the Mind are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.