Die Prinzipien der Philosophie

With the "Principia Philosophiae" (1644), René Descartes gave the world a preview of a new physics, not the content, but the model of his explanation of all natural phenomena based on intuition, following mathematical principles and operating hypothetically prevailed. The fact that Descartes - following the "Discours de la méthode" (1637) and the "Meditationes de prima philosophia" (1641) - set the caesura with the publication of the "Principia", which established his position as the first thinker of "modern philosophy", is a topos of the history of philosophy. However, there is still disagreement among biographers and interpreters on the question of whether Descartes himself was aware that all statements or findings about what happens in nature necessarily remain hypothetical (from a metaphysical point of view) and yet (if methodically arrived at) are true to reality and make it calculable. Or whether he only resorted to presenting all his statements about the principles of physical things, the visible world and the earth in a purely hypothetical form in the "Principia" in order to avoid persecution by the Inquisition. This new, bilingual edition of the epoch-making philosophical treatise offers not only the original Latin text and the completely new translation, which takes precise account of terminological distinctions, but also for the first time a comprehensive indexing of the sources consulted by Descartes, i.e. the contemporary publications on the study of the physical world. i.e. the contemporary publications on the investigation of natural phenomena, which today - since Descartes - we can categorise as physical or scientific investigations.