Discours de la Méthode. Les Méditations Métaphysiques. Les Principes de la Philosophie

3 works in 3 quarto volumes, marbled brown calf, gilt armorials stamped at the center of the covers, spines with raised bands decorated with gilt fleurons, decorated edges, mottled edges. Uniform contemporary bindings.

Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One’s Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences. Plus the Dioptrics and the Meteors, which are Essays of this method. Revised and corrected in this last edition.
Paris, Charles Angot, 1668.

Quarto, 303 pp., (23) pp., 127 pp., (1) p.
232 x 170 mm.

Descartes, René. The Meditations on First Philosophy.
Paris, Théodore Girard, 1673.

Quarto, (20) pp., 732 pp. (numbered by error as 754).
231 x 171 mm.

Descartes, René. The Principles of Philosophy.
Paris, widow Bobin, 1681.

Quarto, (28) leaves, 477 pp., (3) pp., 1 folding figure in the text and 20 folding plates, 1 frontispiece.
232 x 166 mm.

Extremely rare collection ofDiscourse on the Method, the Meditations on First Philosophy and the Principles of Descartes in uniform armorial bindings.
Tchemerzine, II, 782 and 788; A.J. Guibert, 20-21, 60-61, 132-133.

I/ Discourse on the Method.
Important third edition of the Discourse described by A.J. Guibert (pp. 20 and 21).

Compared to the first edition of 1637, it includes corrections and addenda, especially in the last two parts.

The Treatise on Mechanics is here in the original edition and The Compendium of Music in its first French edition.

“Numerous woodcut illustrations accompany the text of the Dioptrics and the Meteors.”

II/ The Meditations on First Philosophy.
Third French edition of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.

Numerous marginal notes have been added.

Descartes himself revised the French translation of the Meditations, originally written in Latin.

“The author took care to revise the translation, to correct himself, and clarified certain passages whose meaning was not clear enough in the Latin. The first French edition of 1647 was reprinted in Paris in 1661, then again, divided into articles with summaries by René Fédé in Paris in 1673” (Brunet).

III/ The Principles of Philosophy.
Fourth enlarged edition, revised and corrected, of “the work that Descartes presented as the ‘systematic and definitive Treatise on the principles of knowledge’, or as the most accomplished expression of his philosophical system” (Dictionnaire des Œuvres).

It includes the 20 large folding plates from the original edition.

Precious and extremely rare collection of three major texts by Descartes in old uniform armorial bindings ofAlexandre, Duke of La Rochefoucauld and La Roche-Guyon.

Born on September 29, 1660, he first bore the title Count of Montignac; he served in the Navy and then the Army, and was created Duke of La Roche-Guyon in February 1713. (O. Hermal, pl.710).

The three volumes bear the stamp of the library of the Château de La Roche-Guyon on the title page.