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René Descartes |
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The Search for Truth by Natural Light[1] (La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle) is an unfinished philosophical dialogue by René Descartes “set in the courtly culture of the ‘honnête homme’ and ‘curiosité’.”[2] It was written in French (presumably after the Meditations was completed[3]) but that was lost around 1700 and remained lost until a partial copy was discovered in G.W. Leibniz's papers in Hanover in 1908 and published in the Adam-Tannery edition of Descartes's works and correspondence (vol. X, pp. 495-532).[2][4][5] A Latin translation, Inquisitio Veritatis per Lumen Naturale, was published in 1683 as part of Renati Des-Cartes Musicae compendium (Blaviana printing house, Amsterdam)[6] and again in 1701 as part of R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica (Apud Janssonio-Waesbergios, Boom et Goethals, Amsterdam);[7] it was also included in a Dutch translation of a collection of letters from Descartes published in 1684 by J.H. Glazemaker.
A definitive edition, containing the partial French text plus the fuller Dutch and Latin translations on facing pages was published in 2002.[2][a] The opening passage (translated by Norman Kemp Smith to English in 1957) "is a helpful commentary on the argument of Articles 74-78" of The Passions of the Soul.[3]
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