The Search for Truth by Natural Light
The Search for Truth by Natural Light is an unfinished philosophical dialogue by René Descartes “set in the courtly culture of the ‘honnête homme’ and ‘curiosité’.” It was written in French 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. A Latin translation, Inquisitio Veritatis per Lumen Naturale, was published in 1683 as part of Renati Des-Cartes Musicae compendium and again in 1701 as part of R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica ; 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. The opening passage "is a helpful commentary on the argument of Articles 74-78" of The Passions of the Soul.
Descartes’s intent
Descartes begins by observing that "even though all the science that we can desire is to be found in books, what they contain of good is mixed with so many uselessness, and dispersed in the mass of so many large volumes, that for it would take longer to read than human life gives us, and to recognize what is useful in it, more talent than to find it ourselves." He therefore adds: "This is what makes me hope that the reader will not be sorry to find here a more abbreviated way, and that the truths which I will put forward will be acceptable to him, although I do not borrow them from Plato or Aristotle."The dialogue
Descartes then imagines a conversation between three characters: Eudoxus, Polyander and Epistemon. Eudoxus is a man endowed with an ordinary mind, but whose judgment is not spoiled by any false opinion, and who has all his reason intact, as he received it from nature; in his country house, where he lives, he receives a visit from two men of the greatest mind, and the most distinguished of the century, one of whom has never studied anything, while the other knows very well everything that can be learned in schools.Eudoxus praises the merits of doubt: "Only pay me your attention; I will take you further than you think. Indeed, it is from this universal doubt that, as from a fixed and immutable point, I have resolved to derive the knowledge of God, of yourself, and of all that the world contains".