Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy is perhaps the most widely studied philosophy text in the English-speaking world. It is used in hundreds of Introduction to Philosophy courses, and is one of the most important of the great canonical texts of Western philosophy. It inaugurates many of the key themes that have remained central to philosophy ever since.

The original Latin text (published in 1641, with a second edition the following year) displays Descartes not just as a philosophical genius but as a writer of great lucidity and elegance, and there is great profit to be had, even for those who are not fluent in Latin, in seeing how the famous concepts and arguments of his great masterpiece are expressed in the author’s own words. Students of classical philosophy have long had the benefit of facing-page dual-language editions, and the availability of such a resource for those working in the early-modern period is long overdue. Following the pattern established in the celebrated Loeb Classical Library, the original text is here presented on the left hand (verso) page, with the translation on the right hand (recto) side. The pagination is arranged so that the texts run parallel throughout the work.