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René Descartes

February 11, 2023

"Descartes" redirects here. For other uses, see Descartes (disambiguation).

René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/ or UK: /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] (listen); Latinized: Renatus Cartesius;[note 3][16] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650[17][18][19]: 58 ) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age.[20] Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes was Catholic.

René Descartes
Portrait after Frans Hals[note 1]
Born31 March 1596 (1596-03-31)
La Haye en Touraine, Touraine, Kingdom of France
Died11 February 1650 (1650-02-12) (aged 53)
Stockholm, Swedish Empire
NationalityFrench
Education
ChildrenFrancine Descartes
Era17th-century philosophy
Age of Enlightenment
RegionWestern philosophy
School
ThesisUntitled LL.B. thesis (1616)
Main interests
Epistemology, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, cosmology, ethics
Notable ideas
List
Influences
Influenced
Signature

Many elements of Descartes' philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejected any appeal to final ends, divine or natural, in explaining natural phenomena.[21] In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. Refusing to accept the authority of previous philosophers, Descartes frequently set his views apart from the philosophers who preceded him. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, an early modern treatise on emotions, Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." His best known philosophical statement is "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"; French: Je pense, donc je suis), found in Discourse on the Method (1637; in French and Latin) and Principles of Philosophy (1644, in Latin).[note 4]

Descartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy, and is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology in the 17th century.[22][note 5] He laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz, and was later opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The rise of early modern rationalism – as a highly systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in history – exerted an immense and profound influence on modern Western thought in general, with the birth of two influential rationalistic philosophical systems of Descartes (Cartesianism) and Spinoza (Spinozism). It was the 17th-century arch-rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz who have given the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history. Leibniz, Spinoza,[23] and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well.[24]

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytic geometry—used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Coat of arms of the Descartes family.

Life

Early life

 
The house where Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine

René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Province of Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596.[25] René Descartes was conceived about halfway through August 1595. His mother, Jeanne Brochard, died a few days after giving birth to a still-born child in May 1597.[26][25] Descartes' father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes.[27]: 22  René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots.[28] In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche,[29][30] where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including Galileo's work.[31][32] While there, Descartes first encountered hermetic mysticism. After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and Licence in canon and civil law in 1616,[31] in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer.[33] From there, he moved to Paris.

In Discourse on the Method, Descartes recalls:[34]: 20–21 

I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way to derive some profit from it.

 
Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers, 1616

In accordance with his ambition to become a professional military officer in 1618, Descartes joined, as a mercenary, the Protestant Dutch States Army in Breda under the command of Maurice of Nassau,[31] and undertook a formal study of military engineering, as established by Simon Stevin.[35]: 66  Descartes, therefore, received much encouragement in Breda to advance his knowledge of mathematics.[31] In this way, he became acquainted with Isaac Beeckman,[31] the principal of a Dordrecht school, for whom he wrote the Compendium of Music (written 1618, published 1650).[36] Together, they worked on free fall, catenary, conic section, and fluid statics. Both believed that it was necessary to create a method that thoroughly linked mathematics and physics.[37]

While in the service of the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria from 1619,[38] Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague, in November 1620.[39][40]

According to Adrien Baillet, on the night of 10–11 November 1619 (St. Martin's Day), while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau, Descartes shut himself in a room with an "oven" (probably a cocklestove)[41] to escape the cold. While within, he had three dreams,[42] and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy. However, it is speculated that what Descartes considered to be his second dream was actually an episode of exploding head syndrome.[43] Upon exiting, he had formulated analytic geometry and the idea of applying the mathematical method to philosophy. He concluded from these visions that the pursuit of science would prove to be, for him, the pursuit of true wisdom and a central part of his life's work.[44][45] Descartes also saw very clearly that all truths were linked with one another, so that finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science. Descartes discovered this basic truth quite soon: his famous "I think, therefore I am."[37]

Career

France

In 1620, Descartes left the army. He visited Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, then visited various countries before returning to France, and during the next few years, he spent time in Paris. It was there that he composed his first essay on method: Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind).[37] He arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life.[35]: 132 [46]: 94  Descartes was present at the siege of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu in 1627.[46]: 128  In the autumn of that year, in the residence of the papal nuncio Guidi di Bagno, where he came with Mersenne and many other scholars to listen to a lecture given by the alchemist, Nicolas de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux, on the principles of a supposed new philosophy,[47] Cardinal Bérulle urged him to write an exposition of his new philosophy in some location beyond the reach of the Inquisition.[48]

Netherlands

 
In Amsterdam, Descartes lived at Westermarkt 6 (Maison Descartes, left).

Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic in 1628.[42] In April 1629, he joined the University of Franeker, studying under Adriaan Metius, either living with a Catholic family or renting the Sjaerdemaslot. The next year, under the name "Poitevin", he enrolled at Leiden University, which at the time was a Protestant University.[49] He studied both mathematics with Jacobus Golius, who confronted him with Pappus's hexagon theorem, and astronomy with Martin Hortensius.[50] In October 1630, he had a falling-out with Beeckman, whom he accused of plagiarizing some of his ideas. In Amsterdam, he had a relationship with a servant girl, Helena Jans van der Strom, with whom he had a daughter, Francine, who was born in 1635 in Deventer. She was baptized a Protestant[51][52] and died of scarlet fever at the age of 5.

Unlike many moralists of the time, Descartes did not deprecate the passions but rather defended them;[citation needed] he wept upon Francine's death in 1640.[53] According to a recent biography by Jason Porterfield, "Descartes said that he did not believe that one must refrain from tears to prove oneself a man."[54] Russell Shorto speculates that the experience of fatherhood and losing a child formed a turning point in Descartes' work, changing its focus from medicine to a quest for universal answers.[55]

Despite frequent moves,[note 6] he wrote all of his major work during his 20-plus years in the Netherlands, initiating a revolution in mathematics and philosophy.[note 7] In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Italian Inquisition, and Descartes abandoned plans to publish Treatise on the World, his work of the previous four years. Nevertheless, in 1637, he published parts of this work in three essays:[56] "Les Météores" (The Meteors), "La Dioptrique" (Dioptrics) and La Géométrie (Geometry), preceded by an introduction, his famous Discours de la méthode (Discourse on the Method).[56] In it, Descartes lays out four rules of thought, meant to ensure that our knowledge rests upon a firm foundation:[57]

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

In La Géométrie, Descartes exploited the discoveries he made with Pierre de Fermat, having been able to do so because his paper, Introduction to Loci, was published posthumously in 1679. This later became known as Cartesian Geometry.[58]

Descartes continued to publish works concerning both mathematics and philosophy for the rest of his life. In 1641, he published a metaphysics treatise, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy), written in Latin and thus addressed to the learned. It was followed in 1644 by Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), a kind of synthesis of the Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. In 1643, Cartesian philosophy was condemned at the University of Utrecht, and Descartes was obliged to flee to the Hague, settling in Egmond-Binnen.

Between 1643 and 1649 Descartes lived with his girlfriend at Egmond-Binnen in an inn.[59] Descartes became friendly with Anthony Studler van Zurck, lord of Bergen and participated in the design of his mansion and estate.[60][61][62] He also met Dirck Rembrantsz van Nierop, a mathematician and surveyor.[63] He was so impressed by Van Nierop's knowledge that he even brought him to the attention of Constantijn Huygens and Frans van Schooten.[64]

Christia Mercer suggested that Descartes may have been influenced by Spanish author and Roman Catholic nun Teresa of Ávila, who, fifty years earlier, published The Interior Castle, concerning the role of philosophical reflection in intellectual growth.[12][65]

Descartes began (through Alfonso Polloti, an Italian general in Dutch service) a six-year correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, devoted mainly to moral and psychological subjects.[66] Connected with this correspondence, in 1649 he published Les Passions de l'âme (The Passions of the Soul), which he dedicated to the Princess. A French translation of Principia Philosophiae, prepared by Abbot Claude Picot, was published in 1647. This edition was also dedicated to Princess Elisabeth. In the preface to the French edition, Descartes praised true philosophy as a means to attain wisdom. He identifies four ordinary sources to reach wisdom and finally says that there is a fifth, better and more secure, consisting in the search for first causes.[67]

Sweden

 
Descartes in conversation with Queen Christina in Stockholm

By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe's most famous philosophers and scientists.[56] That year, Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love. Descartes accepted, and moved to Sweden in the middle of winter.[68] She was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish The Passions of the Soul.[69]

He was a guest at the house of Pierre Chanut, living on Västerlånggatan, less than 500 meters from Tre Kronor in Stockholm. There, Chanut and Descartes made observations with a Torricellian mercury barometer. Challenging Blaise Pascal, Descartes took the first set of barometric readings in Stockholm to see if atmospheric pressure could be used in forecasting the weather.[70]

Death

Descartes arranged to give lessons to Queen Christina after her birthday, three times a week at 5 am, in her cold and draughty castle. It soon became clear they did not like each other; she did not care for his mechanical philosophy, nor did he share her interest in Ancient Greek. By 15 January 1650, Descartes had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1 February, he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February at Chanut.[71]

“Yesterday morning about four o'clock a.m. has deceased here at the house of His Excellency Mr. Chanut, French ambassador, Mr. Descartes. As I have been informed, he had been ill for a few days with pleurisy. But as he did not want to take or use medicines, a hot fever appears to have arisen as well. Thereupon, he had himself bled three times in one day, but without operation of losing much blood. Her Majesty much bemoaned his decease, because he was such a learned man. He has been cast in wax. It was not his intention to die here, as he had resolved shortly before his death to return to Holland at the first occasion. Etc.” [72]

The cause of death was pneumonia according to Chanut, but peripneumonia according to Christina's physician Johann van Wullen who was not allowed to bleed him.[73] (The winter seems to have been mild,[74] except for the second half of January which was harsh as described by Descartes himself; however, "this remark was probably intended to be as much Descartes' take on the intellectual climate as it was about the weather.")[69]

 
 
(left) The tomb of Descartes (middle, with detail of the inscription), in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris; (right) memorial to Descartes, erected in the 1720s, in the Adolf Fredriks kyrka

E. Pies has questioned this account, based on a letter by the Doctor van Wullen; however, Descartes had refused his treatment, and more arguments against its veracity have been raised since.[75] In a 2009 book, German philosopher Theodor Ebert argues that Descartes was poisoned by a Catholic missionary who opposed his religious views.[76][77][78]

As a Catholic[79][80][81] in a Protestant nation, he was interred in a graveyard used mainly for orphans in Adolf Fredriks kyrka in Stockholm. His manuscripts came into the possession of Claude Clerselier, Chanut's brother-in-law, and "a devout Catholic who has begun the process of turning Descartes into a saint by cutting, adding and publishing his letters selectively."[82][83]: 137–154  In 1663, the Pope placed Descartes' works on the Index of Prohibited Books. In 1666, sixteen years after his death, his remains were taken to France and buried in Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. In 1671, Louis XIV prohibited all lectures in Cartesianism. Although the National Convention in 1792 had planned to transfer his remains to the Panthéon, he was reburied in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1819, missing a finger and the skull.[note 8] His skull is on display in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.[84]

Philosophical work

 
René Descartes at work
Further information: Cartesianism

In his Discourse on the Method, he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt, also sometimes referred to as methodological skepticism or Cartesian doubt: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted and then re-establishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge.[85] Descartes built his ideas from scratch which he does in The Meditations on First Philosophy. He relates this to architecture: the top soil is taken away to create a new building or structure. Descartes calls his doubt the soil and new knowledge the buildings. To Descartes, Aristotle's foundationalism is incomplete and his method of doubt enhances foundationalism.[86]

Initially, Descartes arrives at only a single first principle that he thinks. This is expressed in the Latin phrase in the Discourse on Method "Cogito, ergo sum" (English: "I think, therefore I am").[87] Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting; therefore, the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist."[88] These two first principles—I think and I exist—were later confirmed by Descartes' clear and distinct perception (delineated in his Third Meditation from The Meditations): as he clearly and distinctly perceives these two principles, Descartes reasoned, ensures their indubitability.

Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is what he does, and his power must come from his essence. Descartes defines "thought" (cogitatio) as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious.[89] He gave reasons for thinking that waking thoughts are distinguishable from dreams, and that one's mind cannot have been "hijacked" by an evil demon placing an illusory external world before one's senses.[86]

And so something that I thought I was seeing with my eyes is grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind.[90]: 109 

In this manner, Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge, discarding perception as unreliable and, instead, admitting only deduction as a method.[91]

Mind–body dualism

Further information: Mind–body problem and Mind–body dualism
 
L'homme (1664)

Descartes, influenced by the automatons on display throughout the city of Paris, began to investigate the connection between the mind and body, and how the two interact.[citation needed] His main influences for dualism were theology and physics.[92] The theory on the dualism of mind and body is Descartes' signature doctrine and permeates other theories he advanced. Known as Cartesian dualism (or mind–body dualism), his theory on the separation between the mind and the body went on to influence subsequent Western philosophies.[93] In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempted to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body. Humans are a union of mind and body;[94] thus Descartes' dualism embraced the idea that mind and body are distinct but closely joined. While many contemporary readers of Descartes found the distinction between mind and body difficult to grasp, he thought it was entirely straightforward. Descartes employed the concept of modes, which are the ways in which substances exist. In Principles of Philosophy, Descartes explained, "we can clearly perceive a substance apart from the mode which we say differs from it, whereas we cannot, conversely, understand the mode apart from the substance". To perceive a mode apart from its substance requires an intellectual abstraction,[95] which Descartes explained as follows:

The intellectual abstraction consists in my turning my thought away from one part of the contents of this richer idea the better to apply it to the other part with greater attention. Thus, when I consider a shape without thinking of the substance or the extension whose shape it is, I make a mental abstraction.[95]

According to Descartes, two substances are really distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other. Thus, Descartes reasoned that God is distinct from humans, and the body and mind of a human are also distinct from one another.[96] He argued that the great differences between body (an extended thing) and mind (an un-extended, immaterial thing) make the two ontologically distinct. According to Descartes' indivisibility argument, the mind is utterly indivisible: because "when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any part within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete."[97]

Moreover, in The Meditations, Descartes discusses a piece of wax and exposes the single most characteristic doctrine of Cartesian dualism: that the universe contained two radically different kinds of substances—the mind or soul defined as thinking, and the body defined as matter and unthinking.[98] The Aristotelian philosophy of Descartes' days held that the universe was inherently purposeful or teleological. Everything that happened, be it the motion of the stars or the growth of a tree, was supposedly explainable by a certain purpose, goal or end that worked its way out within nature. Aristotle called this the "final cause," and these final causes were indispensable for explaining the ways nature operated. Descartes' theory of dualism supports the distinction between traditional Aristotelian science and the new science of Kepler and Galileo, which denied the role of a divine power and "final causes" in its attempts to explain nature. Descartes' dualism provided the philosophical rationale for the latter by expelling the final cause from the physical universe (or res extensa) in favor of the mind (or res cogitans). Therefore, while Cartesian dualism paved the way for modern physics, it also held the door open for religious beliefs about the immortality of the soul.[99]

Descartes' dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was, according to Descartes, a composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind. In The Meditations, Descartes even argues that while the mind is a substance, the body is composed only of "accidents".[100] But he did argue that mind and body are closely joined:[101]

Nature also teaches me, by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a pilot in his ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. If this were not so, I, who am nothing but a thinking thing, would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken.[101]

Descartes' discussion on embodiment raised one of the most perplexing problems of his dualism philosophy: What exactly is the relationship of union between the mind and the body of a person?[101] Therefore, Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the mind–body problem for many years after Descartes' death.[102] Descartes was also a rationalist and believed in the power of innate ideas.[103] Descartes argued the theory of innate knowledge and that all humans were born with knowledge through the higher power of God. It was this theory of innate knowledge that was later combated by philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), an empiricist.[104] Empiricism holds that all knowledge is acquired through experience.

Physiology and psychology

In The Passions of the Soul, published in 1649,[105] Descartes discussed the common contemporary belief that the human body contained animal spirits. These animal spirits were believed to be light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles. These animal spirits were believed to affect the human soul, or passions of the soul. Descartes distinguished six basic passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. All of these passions, he argued, represented different combinations of the original spirit, and influenced the soul to will or want certain actions. He argued, for example, that fear is a passion that moves the soul to generate a response in the body. In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body, he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector.[106] Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland, through animal spirits. Thus different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits. He argued that these motions in the pineal gland are based on God's will and that humans are supposed to want and like things that are useful to them. But he also argued that the animal spirits that moved around the body could distort the commands from the pineal gland, thus humans had to learn how to control their passions.[107]

Descartes advanced a theory on automatic bodily reactions to external events, which influenced 19th-century reflex theory. He argued that external motions, such as touch and sound, reach the endings of the nerves and affect the animal spirits. For example, heat from fire affects a spot on the skin and sets in motion a chain of reactions, with the animal spirits reaching the brain through the central nervous system, and in turn, animal spirits are sent back to the muscles to move the hand away from the fire.[107] Through this chain of reactions, the automatic reactions of the body do not require a thought process.[103]

Above all, he was among the first scientists who believed that the soul should be subject to scientific investigation. He challenged the views of his contemporaries that the soul was divine, thus religious authorities regarded his books as dangerous.[108] Descartes' writings went on to form the basis for theories on emotions and how cognitive evaluations were translated into affective processes. Descartes believed that the brain resembled a working machine and unlike many of his contemporaries, he believed that mathematics and mechanics could explain the most complicated processes of the mind.[citation needed] In the 20th century, Alan Turing advanced computer science based on mathematical biology as inspired by Descartes. His theories on reflexes also served as the foundation for advanced physiological theories, more than 200 years after his death. The physiologist Ivan Pavlov was a great admirer of Descartes.[109]

Moral philosophy

For Descartes, ethics was a science, the highest and most perfect of them. Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had its roots in metaphysics.[91] In this way, he argues for the existence of God, investigates the place of man in nature, formulates the theory of mind–body dualism, and defends free will. However, as he was a convinced rationalist, Descartes clearly states that reason is sufficient in the search for the goods that we should seek, and virtue consists in the correct reasoning that should guide our actions. Nevertheless, the quality of this reasoning depends on knowledge, because a well-informed mind will be more capable of making good choices, and it also depends on mental condition. For this reason, he said that a complete moral philosophy should include the study of the body.[110]: 189  He discussed this subject in the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and as a result wrote his work The Passions of the Soul, that contains a study of the psychosomatic processes and reactions in man, with an emphasis on emotions or passions.[111] His works about human passion and emotion would be the basis for the philosophy of his followers (see Cartesianism), and would have a lasting impact on ideas concerning what literature and art should be, specifically how it should invoke emotion.[112]

Humans should seek the sovereign good that Descartes, following Zeno, identifies with virtue, as this produces blessedness. For Epicurus, the sovereign good was pleasure, and Descartes says that, in fact, this is not in contradiction with Zeno's teaching, because virtue produces a spiritual pleasure, that is better than bodily pleasure. Regarding Aristotle's opinion that happiness (eudaimonia) depends on both moral virtue and also on the goods of fortune such as a moderate degree of wealth, Descartes does not deny that fortunes contribute to happiness but remarks that they are in great proportion outside one's own control, whereas one's mind is under one's complete control.[111] The moral writings of Descartes came at the last part of his life, but earlier, in his Discourse on the Method, he adopted three maxims to be able to act while he put all his ideas into doubt. This is known as his "Provisional Morals".

Religion

In the third and fifth Meditation, Descartes offers proofs of a benevolent God (the trademark argument and the ontological argument respectively). Because God is benevolent, Descartes has faith in the account of reality his senses provide him, for God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, Descartes finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception. Regarding epistemology, therefore, Descartes can be said to have contributed such ideas as a rigorous conception of foundationalism and the possibility that reason is the only reliable method of attaining knowledge. Descartes, however, was very much aware that experimentation was necessary to verify and validate theories.[91]

Descartes invokes his causal adequacy principle[113] to support his trademark argument for the existence of God, quoting Lucretius in defence: "Ex nihilo nihil fit", meaning "Nothing comes from nothing" (Lucretius).[114] Oxford Reference summarises the argument, as follows, "that our idea of perfection is related to its perfect origin (God), just as a stamp or trademark is left in an article of workmanship by its maker."[115] In the fifth Meditation, Descartes presents a version of the ontological argument which is founded on the possibility of thinking the "idea of a being that is supremely perfect and infinite," and suggests that "of all the ideas that are in me, the idea that I have of God is the most true, the most clear and distinct."[116]

Descartes considered himself to be a devout Catholic,[79][80][81] and one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Catholic faith. His attempt to ground theological beliefs on reason encountered intense opposition in his time. Pascal regarded Descartes' views as a rationalist and mechanist, and accused him of deism: "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God," while a powerful contemporary, Martin Schoock, accused him of atheist beliefs, though Descartes had provided an explicit critique of atheism in his Meditations. The Catholic Church prohibited his books in 1663.[117][118][119]: 274 

Descartes also wrote a response to external world skepticism. Through this method of skepticism, he does not doubt for the sake of doubting but to achieve concrete and reliable information. In other words, certainty. He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Descartes goes on to show that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and that God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things. Descartes also believes a substance is something that does not need any assistance to function or exist. Descartes further explains how only God can be a true "substance". But minds are substances, meaning they need only God for it to function. The mind is a thinking substance. The means for a thinking substance stem from ideas.[120]

Descartes steered clear of theological questions, restricting his attention to showing that there is no incompatibility between his metaphysics and theological orthodoxy. He avoided trying to demonstrate theological dogmas metaphysically. When challenged that he had not established the immortality of the soul merely in showing that the soul and the body are distinct substances, he replied, "I do not take it upon myself to try to use the power of human reason to settle any of those matters which depend on the free will of God."[121]

Natural science

Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences.[122] For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, as he related in a letter to a French translator:[91]

Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.

On animals

Descartes denied that animals had reason or intelligence.[123] He argued that animals did not lack sensations or perceptions, but these could be explained mechanistically.[124] Whereas humans had a soul, or mind, and were able to feel pain and anxiety, animals by virtue of not having a soul could not feel pain or anxiety. If animals showed signs of distress then this was to protect the body from damage, but the innate state needed for them to suffer was absent.[125] Although Descartes' views were not universally accepted, they became prominent in Europe and North America, allowing humans to treat animals with impunity. The view that animals were quite separate from humanity and merely machines allowed for the maltreatment of animals, and was sanctioned in law and societal norms until the middle of the 19th century.[126]: 180–214  The publications of Charles Darwin would eventually erode the Cartesian view of animals.[127]: 37  Darwin argued that the continuity between humans and other species opened the possibilities that animals did not have dissimilar properties to suffer.[128]: 177 

Historical impact

Emancipation from Church doctrine

 
Cover of Meditations

Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approach has profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity.[22][129] The first two of his Meditations on First Philosophy, those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes' writings that most influenced modern thinking.[130] It has been argued that Descartes himself did not realize the extent of this revolutionary move.[131] In shifting the debate from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?", Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God)—while the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority, "certainty" instead relies on the judgment of the individual.

In an anthropocentric revolution, the human being is now raised to the level of a subject, an agent, an emancipated being equipped with autonomous reason. This was a revolutionary step that established the basis of modernity, the repercussions of which are still being felt: the emancipation of humanity from Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine; humanity making its own law and taking its own stand.[132][133][134] In modernity, the guarantor of truth is not God anymore but human beings, each of whom is a "self-conscious shaper and guarantor" of their own reality.[135][136] In that way, each person is turned into a reasoning adult, a subject and agent,[135] as opposed to a child obedient to God. This change in perspective was characteristic of the shift from the Christian medieval period to the modern period, a shift that had been anticipated in other fields, and which was now being formulated in the field of philosophy by Descartes.[135][137]

This anthropocentric perspective of Descartes' work, establishing human reason as autonomous, provided the basis for the Enlightenment's emancipation from God and the Church. According to Martin Heidegger, the perspective of Descartes' work also provided the basis for all subsequent anthropology.[138] Descartes' philosophical revolution is sometimes said to have sparked modern anthropocentrism and subjectivism.[22][139][140][141]

Mathematical legacy

 
A Cartesian coordinates graph, using his invented x and y axes

One of Descartes' most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. Descartes "invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by x, y, and z, and knowns by a, b, and c". He also "pioneered the standard notation" that uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents; for example, the 2 used in x2 to indicate x squared.[142][143]: 19  He was first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in the system of knowledge, using it as a method to automate or mechanize reasoning, particularly about abstract, unknown quantities.[144]: 91–114  European mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics, serving as the foundation of algebra. Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Pacioli, Cardan, Tartaglia and Ferrari. Equations of degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal, because a three-dimensional form, such as a cube, occupied the largest dimension of reality. Descartes professed that the abstract quantity a2 could represent length as well as an area. This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians such as François Viète, who insisted that a second power must represent an area. Although Descartes did not pursue the subject, he preceded Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in envisioning a more general science of algebra or "universal mathematics," as a precursor to symbolic logic, that could encompass logical principles and methods symbolically, and mechanize general reasoning.[145]: 280–281 

Descartes' work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz, who applied the infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics.[146] His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.

The beginning to Descartes' interest in physics is accredited to the amateur scientist and mathematician Isaac Beeckman, who was at the forefront of a new school of thought known as mechanical philosophy. With this foundation of reasoning, Descartes formulated many of his theories on mechanical and geometric physics.[147] Descartes discovered an early form of the law of conservation of momentum (a measure of the motion of an object), and envisioned it as pertaining to motion in a straight line, as opposed to perfect circular motion, as Galileo had envisioned it.[147][148] He outlined his views on the universe in his Principles of Philosophy, where he describes his three laws of motion.[149] (Newton's own laws of motion would later be modeled on Descartes' exposition.[147])

Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics. He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law, or more commonly Snell's law outside France) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow's centre is 42°).[150] He also independently discovered the law of reflection, and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law.[151]

Influence on Newton's mathematics

Current popular opinion holds that Descartes had the most influence of anyone on the young Isaac Newton, and this is arguably one of his most important contributions. Decartes' influence extended not directly from his original French edition of La Géométrie, however, but rather from Frans van Schooten's expanded second Latin edition of the work.[152]: 100  Newton continued Descartes' work on cubic equations, which freed the subject from fetters of the Greek perspectives. The most important concept was his very modern treatment of single variables.[153]: 109–129  Newton rejected Descartes' vortex theory of planetary motion in favor of his law of universal gravitation, and most of the second book of Newton's Principia is devoted to his counterargument.

Contemporary reception

In commercial terms, The Discourse appeared during Descartes' lifetime in a single edition of 500 copies, 200 of which were set aside for the author. Sharing a similar fate was the only French edition of The Meditations, which had not managed to sell out by the time of Descartes' death. A concomitant Latin edition of the latter was, however, eagerly sought out by Europe's scholarly community and proved a commercial success for Descartes.[154]: xliii–xliv 

Although Descartes was well known in academic circles towards the end of his life, the teaching of his works in schools was controversial. Henri de Roy (Henricus Regius, 1598–1679), Professor of Medicine at the University of Utrecht, was condemned by the Rector of the university, Gijsbert Voet (Voetius), for teaching Descartes' physics.[155]

According to John Cottingham—whose translation of Meditations—is considered to be "authoritative", Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy is considered to be "one of the key texts of Western philosophy". Cottingham said that the Meditations is the "most widely studied of all Descartes' writings".[156]: 50 

According to Anthony Gottlieb, a former senior editor of The Economist, and the author of The Dream of Reason and The Dream of Enlightenment, one of the reasons Descartes and Thomas Hobbes continue to be debated in the second decade of the twentieth century, is that they still have something to say to us that remains relevant on questions such as, "What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and our ideas of God?" and "How is government to deal with religious diversity."[157]

In her 2018 interview with Tyler Cowen, Agnes Callard described Descartes' thought experiment in the Meditations, where he encouraged a complete, systematic doubting of everything that you believe, to "see what you come to". She said, "What Descartes comes to is a kind of real truth that he can build upon inside of his own mind."[158] She said that Hamlet's monologues—"meditations on the nature of life and emotion"—were similar to Descartes' thought experiment. Hamlet/Descartes were "apart from the world", as if they were "trapped" in their own heads.[158] Cowen asked Callard if Descartes actually found any truths through his thought experiment or was it just "an earlier version of the contemporary argument that we're living in a simulation, where the evil demon is the simulation rather than Bayesian reasoning?" Callard agreed that this argument can be traced to Descartes, who had said that he had refuted it. She clarified that in Descartes' reasoning, you do "end up back in the mind of God"—in a "universe God has created" that is the "real world"...The whole question is about being connected to reality as opposed to being a figment. If you're living in the world God created, God can create real things. So you're living in a real world."[158]

Purported Rosicrucianism

The membership of Descartes to the Rosicrucians is debated.[159]

The initials of his name have been linked to the R.C. acronym widely used by Rosicrucians.[160] Furthermore, in 1619 Descartes moved to Ulm which was a well renowned international center of the Rosicrucian movement.[160] During his journey in Germany, he met Johannes Faulhaber who had previously expressed his personal commitment to join the brotherhood.[161]

Descartes dedicated the work titled The Mathematical Treasure Trove of Polybius, Citizen of the World to "learned men throughout the world and especially to the distinguished B.R.C. (Brothers of the Rosy Cross) in Germany". The work wasn't completed and its publication is uncertain.[162]

Bibliography

Writings

  • 1618. Musicae Compendium. A treatise on music theory and the aesthetics of music, which Descartes dedicated to early collaborator Isaac Beeckman (written in 1618, first published—posthumously—in 1650).[163]: 127–129 
  • 1626–1628. Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). Incomplete. First published posthumously in Dutch translation in 1684 and in the original Latin at Amsterdam in 1701 (R. Des-Cartes Opuscula Posthuma Physica et Mathematica). The best critical edition, which includes the Dutch translation of 1684, is edited by Giovanni Crapulli (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
  • c. 1630. De solidorum elementis. Concerns the classification of Platonic solids and three-dimensional figurate numbers. Said by some scholars to prefigure Euler's polyhedral formula. Unpublished; discovered in Descartes' estate in Stockholm 1650, soaked for three days in the Seine in a shipwreck while being shipped back to Paris, copied in 1676 by Leibniz, and lost. Leibniz's copy, also lost, was rediscovered circa 1860 in Hannover.[164]
  • 1630–1631. La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle (The Search for Truth by Natural Light) unfinished dialogue published in 1701.[165]: 264ff 
  • 1630–1633. Le Monde (The World) and L'Homme (Man). Descartes' first systematic presentation of his natural philosophy. Man was published posthumously in Latin translation in 1662; and The World posthumously in 1664.
  • 1637. Discours de la méthode (Discourse on the Method). An introduction to the Essais, which include the Dioptrique, the Météores and the Géométrie.
  • 1637. La Géométrie (Geometry). Descartes' major work in mathematics. There is an English translation by Michael Mahoney (New York: Dover, 1979).
  • 1641. Meditationes de prima philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy), also known as Metaphysical Meditations. In Latin; a second edition, published the following year, included an additional objection and reply, and a Letter to Dinet. A French translation by the Duke of Luynes, probably done without Descartes' supervision, was published in 1647. Includes six Objections and Replies.
  • 1644. Principia philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), a Latin textbook at first intended by Descartes to replace the Aristotelian textbooks then used in universities. A French translation, Principes de philosophie by Claude Picot, under the supervision of Descartes, appeared in 1647 with a letter-preface to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.
  • 1647. Notae in programma (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet). A reply to Descartes' one-time disciple Henricus Regius.
  • 1648. La description du corps humain (The Description of the Human Body). Published posthumously by Clerselier in 1667.
  • 1648. Responsiones Renati Des Cartes... (Conversation with Burman). Notes on a Q&A session between Descartes and Frans Burman on 16 April 1648. Rediscovered in 1895 and published for the first time in 1896. An annotated bilingual edition (Latin with French translation), edited by Jean-Marie Beyssade, was published in 1981 (Paris: PUF).
  • 1649. Les passions de l'âme (Passions of the Soul). Dedicated to Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate.
  • 1657. Correspondance (three volumes: 1657, 1659, 1667). Published by Descartes' literary executor Claude Clerselier. The third edition, in 1667, was the most complete; Clerselier omitted, however, much of the material pertaining to mathematics.

In January 2010, a previously unknown letter from Descartes, dated 27 May 1641, was found by the Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos when browsing through Google. Bos found the letter mentioned in a summary of autographs kept by Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The college was unaware that the letter had never been published. This was the third letter by Descartes found in the last 25 years.[166][167]

  •  

    Handwritten letter by Descartes, December 1638

  •  

    Principia philosophiae, 1644

Collected editions

  • Oeuvres de Descartes edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1897–1913, 13 volumes; new revised edition, Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1964–1974, 11 volumes (the first 5 volumes contains the correspondence). [This edition is traditionally cited with the initials AT (for Adam and Tannery) followed by a volume number in Roman numerals; thus AT VII refers to Oeuvres de Descartes volume 7.]
  • Étude du bon sens, La recherche de la vérité et autres écrits de jeunesse (1616–1631) edited by Vincent Carraud and Gilles Olivo, Paris: PUF, 2013.
  • Descartes, Œuvres complètes, new edition by Jean-Marie Beyssade and Denis Kambouchner, Paris: Gallimard, published volumes:
    • I: Premiers écrits. Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, 2016.
    • III: Discours de la Méthode et Essais, 2009.
    • VIII.1: Correspondance, 1 edited by Jean-Robert Armogathe, 2013.
    • VIII.2: Correspondance, 2 edited by Jean-Robert Armogathe, 2013.
  • René Descartes. Opere 1637–1649, Milano, Bompiani, 2009, pp. 2531. Edizione integrale (di prime edizioni) e traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, M. Savini ISBN 978-88-452-6332-3.
  • René Descartes. Opere 1650–2009, Milano, Bompiani, 2009, pp. 1723. Edizione integrale delle opere postume e traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, M. Savini ISBN 978-88-452-6333-0.
  • René Descartes. Tutte le lettere 1619–1650, Milano, Bompiani, 2009 IIa ed., pp. 3104. Nuova edizione integrale dell'epistolario cartesiano con traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, F.A. Meschini, M. Savini e J.-R. Armogathe ISBN 978-88-452-3422-4.
  • René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619–1648, Milano, Bompiani, 2015 pp. 1696. Edizione integrale con traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di Giulia Beglioioso e Jean Robert-Armogathe ISBN 978-88-452-8071-9.

Early editions of specific works

Collected English translations

  • 1955. The Philosophical Works, E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, trans. Dover Publications. This work is traditionally cited with the initials HR (for Haldane and Ross) followed by a volume number in Roman numerals; thus HR II refers to volume 2 of this edition.
  • 1988. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes in 3 vols. Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Kenny, A., and Murdoch, D., trans. Cambridge University Press. This work is traditionally cited with the initials CSM (for Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch) or CSMK (for Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, and Kenny) followed by a volume number in Roman numeral; thus CSM II refers to volume 2 of this edition.
  • 1998. René Descartes: The World and Other Writings. Translated and edited by Stephen Gaukroger. Cambridge University Press. (This consists mainly of scientific writings, on physics, biology, astronomy, optics, etc., which were very influential in the 17th and 18th centuries, but which are routinely omitted or much abridged in modern collections of Descartes' philosophical works.)

Translation of single works

  • 1628. Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence. A Bilingual Edition of the Cartesian Treatise on Method 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, ed. & trans. G. Heffernan (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998).
  • 1633. The World, or Treatise on Light 21 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine, tr. by Michael S. Mahoney.
  • 1633. Treatise of Man, tr. by T. S. Hall. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
  • 1637. Discourse on the Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology, trans. P. J. Olscamp, Revised edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001).
  • 1637. The Geometry of René Descartes 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, trans. D. E. Smith & Marcia Latham (Chicago: Open Court, 1925).
  • 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy, tr. by J. Cottingham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Latin original. Alternative English title: Metaphysical Meditations. Includes six Objections and Replies. A second edition published the following year, includes an additional Objection and Reply and a Letter to Dinet. HTML Online Latin-French-English Edition 27 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
  • 1644. Principles of Philosophy 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, trans. V. R. Miller & R. P. Miller: (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982).
  • 1648. Descartes' Conversation with Burman, tr. by J. Cottingham, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
  • 1649. Passions of the Soul 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, trans. S. H. Voss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). Dedicated to Elisabeth of the Palatinate.
  • 1619–1648. René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619–1648, ed. by Giulia Beglioioso and Jean Robert-Armogathe, Milano, Bompiani, 2015 pp. 1696. ISBN 978-88-452-8071-9

See also

  Write your essay about René Descartes on Wikiversity

Notes

  1. ^ Although the uncertain authorship of this most iconic portrait of Descartes was traditionally attributed to Frans Hals, there is no record of their meeting. During the 20th century the assumption was widely challenged.[1]
  2. ^ a b Étienne Gilson argued in La Liberté chez Descartes et la Théologie (Alcan, 1913, pp. 132–147) that Duns Scotus was not the source of Descartes' Voluntarism. Although there exist doctrinal differences between Descartes and Scotus "it is still possible to view Descartes as borrowing from a Scotist Voluntarist tradition".[11]
  3. ^ Adjectival form: Cartesian /kɑːrˈtiːziən, -ˈtiːʒən/
  4. ^ This idea had already been proposed by Spanish philosopher Gómez Pereira a hundred years ago in the form: "I know that I know something, anyone who knows exists, then I exist" (nosco me aliquid noscere, & quidquid noscit, est, ergo ego sum).
    • Pereira, Gómez. 1749 [1554]. "De Immortalitate Animae." Antoniana Margarita. p. 277.
    • Santos López, Modesto. 1986. "Gómez Pereira, médico y filósofo medinense." In Historia de Medina del Campo y su Tierra, volumen I: Nacimiento y expansión, edited by E. L. Sanz.
  5. ^ See also: Epistemological turn.
  6. ^ While in the Netherlands he changed his address frequently, living among other places in Dordrecht (1628), Franeker (1629), Amsterdam (1629–1630), Leiden (1630), Amsterdam (1630–1632), Deventer (1632–1634), Amsterdam (1634–1635), Utrecht (1635–1636), Leiden (1636), Egmond (1636–1638), Santpoort (1638–1640), Leiden (1640–1641), Endegeest (a castle near Oegstgeest) (1641–1643), and finally for an extended time in Egmond-Binnen (1643–1649).
  7. ^ He had lived with Henricus Reneri in Deventer and Amsterdam, and had met with Constantijn Huygens and Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius; Descartes was interviewed by Frans Burman at Egmond-Binnen in 1648. Henricus Regius, Jan Stampioen, Frans van Schooten, Comenius and Gisbertus Voetius were his main opponents.
  8. ^ The remains are, two centuries later, still resting between two other graves—those of the scholarly monks Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon—in a chapel of the abbey.

References

Citations

  1. ^ Nadler, Steven, The Philosopher, The Priest, and The Painter: A Portrait of Descartes 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 174–198.
  2. ^ Tad M. Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 257 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ^ Fumerton, Richard (21 February 2000). "Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. from the original on 24 April 2018. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  4. ^ Bostock, D., Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 43 1 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine: "All of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume supposed that mathematics is a theory of our ideas, but none of them offered any argument for this conceptualist claim, and apparently took it to be uncontroversial."
  5. ^ Gutting, Gary (1999). Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 9780521649735. Modernity begins with Descartes' mutation of Augustinianism. Taylor emphasizes that "Descartes is in many ways profoundly Augustinian".
  6. ^ Yolton, J. W., Realism and Appearances: An Essay in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 136.
  7. ^ "The Correspondence Theory of Truth" 25 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  8. ^ Gaukroger, S., Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 228 3 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine.
  9. ^ H. Ben-Yami, Descartes' Philosophical Revolution: A Reassessment, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 76.
  10. ^ H. Ben-Yami, Descartes' Philosophical Revolution: A Reassessment, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 179: "[Descartes'] work in mathematics was apparently influenced by Viète's, despite his denial of any acquaintance with the latter's work."
  11. ^ John Schuster, Descartes-Agonistes: Physico-mathematics, Method & Corpuscular-Mechanism 1618–33, Springer, 2012, p. 363 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine, n.. 26.
  12. ^ a b Mercer, C., "Descartes' debt to Teresa of Ávila, or why we should work on women in the history of philosophy" 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Philosophical Studies 174, 2017.
  13. ^ Pérez, Rolando (2020), "Francisco Sanches", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, from the original on 26 September 2022, retrieved 12 January 2022
  14. ^ "Rodrigo de Arriaga". Scholasticon (in French).
  15. ^ "Jacques Bénigne Bossuet French prelate and historian (1627–1704)" 29 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine from the Encyclopædia Britannica, 10th Edition (1902)
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  18. ^ "Descartes, René[dead link]" (US English). Lexico. Oxford University Press. 2020.
  19. ^ Colie, Rosalie L. (1957). Light and Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press. p. 58.
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  21. ^ Carlson, Neil R. (2001). Physiology of Behavior. Needham Heights, Massachusetts: Pearson: Allyn & Bacon. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-205-30840-8.
  22. ^ a b c Bertrand Russell (2004) History of western philosophy 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine pp. 511, 516–17.
  23. ^ Moorman, R. H. 1943. "The Influence of Mathematics on the Philosophy of Spinoza 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine." National Mathematics Magazine 18(3):108–15.
  24. ^ Grondin, J., Introduction to Metaphysics: From Parmenides to Levinas (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 126 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
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  27. ^ Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève (1992). "Descartes' Life and the Development of His Philosophy". In Cottingham, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-521-36696-0. from the original on 1 February 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
  28. ^ . Archived from the original on 29 January 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
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  34. ^ Descartes. [1637] 2011. Discourse on the Method. Zhubei: Hyweb Technology. p. 20–21 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
  35. ^ a b Gaukroger, Stephen. 1995. Descartes: An Intellectual Biography 5 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  36. ^ McQuillan, J. C. 2016. Early Modern Aesthetics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 45 1 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine.
  37. ^ a b c Durandin, Guy. 1970. Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.
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  39. ^ Parker, N. Geoffrey. 2007. "Battle of White Mountain 9 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine" (revised). Encyclopædia Britannica.
  40. ^ Jeffery, R. 2018. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia: The Philosopher Princess. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. p. 68 8 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine.
  41. ^ Rothkamm, J., Institutio Oratoria: Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009), p. 40 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
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External links

 
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Descartes, René".

General

  • The Correspondence of René Descartes in EMLO
  • Works by René Descartes at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about René Descartes at Internet Archive
  • Works by René Descartes at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Detailed biography of Descartes at MacTutor
  • Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "René Descartes" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  • René Descartes (1596–1650) Published in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition (1996)
  • A site containing Descartes' main works, including correspondence, slightly modified for easier reading
  • Descartes Philosophical Writings tr. by Norman Kemp Smith at archive.org
  • Studies in the Cartesian philosophy (1902) by Norman Kemp Smith at archive.org
  • The Philosophical Works Of Descartes Volume II (1934) at archive.org
  • Descartes featured on the 100 French Franc banknote from 1942.
  • Free scores by René Descartes at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
  • René Descartes at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  • Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi su Descartes e il Seicento
  • Livre Premier, La Géométrie, online and analyzed by A. Warusfel, BibNum[click "à télécharger" for English analysis]

Bibliographies

  • Bibliografia cartesiana/Bibliographie cartésienne on-line (1997–2012)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • Descartes
  • Life and works
  • Epistemology
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Ethics
  • Modal Metaphysics
  • Ontological Argument
  • Theory of Ideas
  • Pineal Gland
  • Law Thesis

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • Descartes
  • Descartes: Ethics
  • Descartes: Mind-Body Distinction
  • Descartes: Scientific Method

Other

  • Bernard Williams interviewed about Descartes on Men of ideas
  • BALDASSARRI, F. (2019) The mechanical life of plants: Descartes on botany. The British Journal for the History of Science, 52(1), 41-63. doi:10.1017/S000708741800095X

February 11, 2023
rené, descartes, descartes, redirects, here, other, uses, descartes, disambiguation, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed. Descartes redirects here For other uses see Descartes disambiguation This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Rene Descartes news newspapers books scholar JSTOR July 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Rene Descartes d eɪ ˈ k ɑːr t or UK ˈ d eɪ k ɑːr t French ʁene dekaʁt listen Latinized Renatus Cartesius note 3 16 31 March 1596 11 February 1650 17 18 19 58 was a French philosopher scientist and mathematician widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic initially serving the Dutch States Army later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age 20 Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics Descartes was Catholic Rene DescartesPortrait after Frans Hals note 1 Born31 March 1596 1596 03 31 La Haye en Touraine Touraine Kingdom of FranceDied11 February 1650 1650 02 12 aged 53 Stockholm Swedish EmpireNationalityFrenchEducationCollege Royal Henry Le Grand 1607 1614 University of Poitiers LL B 1616 University of Franeker no degree Leiden University no degree ChildrenFrancine DescartesEra17th century philosophyAge of EnlightenmentRegionWestern philosophy Dutch philosophy French philosophySchoolRationalism Cartesianism Mechanism Innatism 2 257 Foundationalism 3 Conceptualism 4 43 Augustinianism 5 Indirect realism 6 136 Correspondence theory of truth 7 Corpuscularianism 8 Theological voluntarism note 2 ThesisUntitled LL B thesis 1616 Main interestsEpistemology metaphysics mathematics physics cosmology ethicsNotable ideasList Cogito ergo sum Method of doubt Subjectivity Method of normals Analytic geometry Cartesian coordinate system Imaginary number Mind body problem Cartesian dualism interactionism trialism Cartesian circle Foundationalism Mathesis universalis Folium of Descartes Dream argument Evil demon Conservation of momentum quantitas motus Balloonist theory Descartes Rule of Signs Wax argument Trademark argument Causal adequacy principle Res cogitans res extensa distinction ConatusInfluences PlatoAristotleArchimedesAvicennaAl GhazaliAverroesAnselmElisabeth of the PalatinateAugustineStoicsAquinasOckhamSuarezMersenneSextus EmpiricusMontaigneJacobus GoliusBeeckmanHarvey 9 Viete 10 Duns Scotus note 2 Teresa of Avila 12 Sanches 13 Arriaga 14 Influenced Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy especially Spinoza Leibniz Locke Malebranche Arnauld Bossuet 15 Huygens Newton Voltaire Rousseau Hume Gibbon Kant Schopenhauer Marx citation needed Darwin Freud Nietzsche Husserl ChomskySignatureMany elements of Descartes philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism the revived Stoicism of the 16th century or in earlier philosophers like Augustine In his natural philosophy he differed from the schools on two major points first he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form second he rejected any appeal to final ends divine or natural in explaining natural phenomena 21 In his theology he insists on the absolute freedom of God s act of creation Refusing to accept the authority of previous philosophers Descartes frequently set his views apart from the philosophers who preceded him In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul an early modern treatise on emotions Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic as if no one had written on these matters before His best known philosophical statement is cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am French Je pense donc je suis found in Discourse on the Method 1637 in French and Latin and Principles of Philosophy 1644 in Latin note 4 Descartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy and is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology in the 17th century 22 note 5 He laid the foundation for 17th century continental rationalism later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz and was later opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes Locke Berkeley and Hume The rise of early modern rationalism as a highly systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in history exerted an immense and profound influence on modern Western thought in general with the birth of two influential rationalistic philosophical systems of Descartes Cartesianism and Spinoza Spinozism It was the 17th century arch rationalists like Descartes Spinoza and Leibniz who have given the Age of Reason its name and place in history Leibniz Spinoza 23 and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well 24 Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy 1641 continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments Descartes influence in mathematics is equally apparent the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him He is credited as the father of analytic geometry used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution Coat of arms of the Descartes family Contents 1 Life 1 1 Early life 1 2 Career 1 2 1 France 1 2 2 Netherlands 1 2 3 Sweden 1 3 Death 2 Philosophical work 2 1 Mind body dualism 2 2 Physiology and psychology 2 3 Moral philosophy 2 4 Religion 2 5 Natural science 2 5 1 On animals 3 Historical impact 3 1 Emancipation from Church doctrine 3 2 Mathematical legacy 3 2 1 Influence on Newton s mathematics 3 3 Contemporary reception 3 4 Purported Rosicrucianism 4 Bibliography 4 1 Writings 4 2 Collected editions 4 3 Early editions of specific works 4 4 Collected English translations 4 5 Translation of single works 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Sources 8 External links 8 1 General 8 2 Bibliographies 8 3 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8 4 Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8 5 OtherLife EditEarly life Edit The house where Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine Rene Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine Province of Touraine now Descartes Indre et Loire France on 31 March 1596 25 Rene Descartes was conceived about halfway through August 1595 His mother Jeanne Brochard died a few days after giving birth to a still born child in May 1597 26 25 Descartes father Joachim was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes 27 22 Rene lived with his grandmother and with his great uncle Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots 28 In 1607 late because of his fragile health he entered the Jesuit College Royal Henry Le Grand at La Fleche 29 30 where he was introduced to mathematics and physics including Galileo s work 31 32 While there Descartes first encountered hermetic mysticism After graduation in 1614 he studied for two years 1615 16 at the University of Poitiers earning a Baccalaureat and Licence in canon and civil law in 1616 31 in accordance with his father s wishes that he should become a lawyer 33 From there he moved to Paris In Discourse on the Method Descartes recalls 34 20 21 I entirely abandoned the study of letters Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world I spent the rest of my youth traveling visiting courts and armies mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks gathering various experiences testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way to derive some profit from it Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers 1616 In accordance with his ambition to become a professional military officer in 1618 Descartes joined as a mercenary the Protestant Dutch States Army in Breda under the command of Maurice of Nassau 31 and undertook a formal study of military engineering as established by Simon Stevin 35 66 Descartes therefore received much encouragement in Breda to advance his knowledge of mathematics 31 In this way he became acquainted with Isaac Beeckman 31 the principal of a Dordrecht school for whom he wrote the Compendium of Music written 1618 published 1650 36 Together they worked on free fall catenary conic section and fluid statics Both believed that it was necessary to create a method that thoroughly linked mathematics and physics 37 While in the service of the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria from 1619 38 Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague in November 1620 39 40 According to Adrien Baillet on the night of 10 11 November 1619 St Martin s Day while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau Descartes shut himself in a room with an oven probably a cocklestove 41 to escape the cold While within he had three dreams 42 and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy However it is speculated that what Descartes considered to be his second dream was actually an episode of exploding head syndrome 43 Upon exiting he had formulated analytic geometry and the idea of applying the mathematical method to philosophy He concluded from these visions that the pursuit of science would prove to be for him the pursuit of true wisdom and a central part of his life s work 44 45 Descartes also saw very clearly that all truths were linked with one another so that finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science Descartes discovered this basic truth quite soon his famous I think therefore I am 37 Career Edit France Edit In 1620 Descartes left the army He visited Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto then visited various countries before returning to France and during the next few years he spent time in Paris It was there that he composed his first essay on method Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii Rules for the Direction of the Mind 37 He arrived in La Haye in 1623 selling all of his property to invest in bonds which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life 35 132 46 94 Descartes was present at the siege of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu in 1627 46 128 In the autumn of that year in the residence of the papal nuncio Guidi di Bagno where he came with Mersenne and many other scholars to listen to a lecture given by the alchemist Nicolas de Villiers Sieur de Chandoux on the principles of a supposed new philosophy 47 Cardinal Berulle urged him to write an exposition of his new philosophy in some location beyond the reach of the Inquisition 48 Netherlands Edit In Amsterdam Descartes lived at Westermarkt 6 Maison Descartes left Title page of Principia philosophiae Principles of Philosophy 1656 Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic in 1628 42 In April 1629 he joined the University of Franeker studying under Adriaan Metius either living with a Catholic family or renting the Sjaerdemaslot The next year under the name Poitevin he enrolled at Leiden University which at the time was a Protestant University 49 He studied both mathematics with Jacobus Golius who confronted him with Pappus s hexagon theorem and astronomy with Martin Hortensius 50 In October 1630 he had a falling out with Beeckman whom he accused of plagiarizing some of his ideas In Amsterdam he had a relationship with a servant girl Helena Jans van der Strom with whom he had a daughter Francine who was born in 1635 in Deventer She was baptized a Protestant 51 52 and died of scarlet fever at the age of 5 Unlike many moralists of the time Descartes did not deprecate the passions but rather defended them citation needed he wept upon Francine s death in 1640 53 According to a recent biography by Jason Porterfield Descartes said that he did not believe that one must refrain from tears to prove oneself a man 54 Russell Shorto speculates that the experience of fatherhood and losing a child formed a turning point in Descartes work changing its focus from medicine to a quest for universal answers 55 Despite frequent moves note 6 he wrote all of his major work during his 20 plus years in the Netherlands initiating a revolution in mathematics and philosophy note 7 In 1633 Galileo was condemned by the Italian Inquisition and Descartes abandoned plans to publish Treatise on the World his work of the previous four years Nevertheless in 1637 he published parts of this work in three essays 56 Les Meteores The Meteors La Dioptrique Dioptrics and La Geometrie Geometry preceded by an introduction his famous Discours de la methode Discourse on the Method 56 In it Descartes lays out four rules of thought meant to ensure that our knowledge rests upon a firm foundation 57 The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not know to be such that is to say carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt In La Geometrie Descartes exploited the discoveries he made with Pierre de Fermat having been able to do so because his paper Introduction to Loci was published posthumously in 1679 This later became known as Cartesian Geometry 58 Descartes continued to publish works concerning both mathematics and philosophy for the rest of his life In 1641 he published a metaphysics treatise Meditationes de Prima Philosophia Meditations on First Philosophy written in Latin and thus addressed to the learned It was followed in 1644 by Principia Philosophiae Principles of Philosophy a kind of synthesis of the Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy In 1643 Cartesian philosophy was condemned at the University of Utrecht and Descartes was obliged to flee to the Hague settling in Egmond Binnen Between 1643 and 1649 Descartes lived with his girlfriend at Egmond Binnen in an inn 59 Descartes became friendly with Anthony Studler van Zurck lord of Bergen and participated in the design of his mansion and estate 60 61 62 He also met Dirck Rembrantsz van Nierop a mathematician and surveyor 63 He was so impressed by Van Nierop s knowledge that he even brought him to the attention of Constantijn Huygens and Frans van Schooten 64 Christia Mercer suggested that Descartes may have been influenced by Spanish author and Roman Catholic nun Teresa of Avila who fifty years earlier published The Interior Castle concerning the role of philosophical reflection in intellectual growth 12 65 Descartes began through Alfonso Polloti an Italian general in Dutch service a six year correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia devoted mainly to moral and psychological subjects 66 Connected with this correspondence in 1649 he published Les Passions de l ame The Passions of the Soul which he dedicated to the Princess A French translation of Principia Philosophiae prepared by Abbot Claude Picot was published in 1647 This edition was also dedicated to Princess Elisabeth In the preface to the French edition Descartes praised true philosophy as a means to attain wisdom He identifies four ordinary sources to reach wisdom and finally says that there is a fifth better and more secure consisting in the search for first causes 67 Sweden Edit Descartes in conversation with Queen Christina in Stockholm By 1649 Descartes had become one of Europe s most famous philosophers and scientists 56 That year Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love Descartes accepted and moved to Sweden in the middle of winter 68 She was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish The Passions of the Soul 69 He was a guest at the house of Pierre Chanut living on Vasterlanggatan less than 500 meters from Tre Kronor in Stockholm There Chanut and Descartes made observations with a Torricellian mercury barometer Challenging Blaise Pascal Descartes took the first set of barometric readings in Stockholm to see if atmospheric pressure could be used in forecasting the weather 70 Death Edit Descartes arranged to give lessons to Queen Christina after her birthday three times a week at 5 am in her cold and draughty castle It soon became clear they did not like each other she did not care for his mechanical philosophy nor did he share her interest in Ancient Greek By 15 January 1650 Descartes had seen Christina only four or five times On 1 February he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February at Chanut 71 Yesterday morning about four o clock a m has deceased here at the house of His Excellency Mr Chanut French ambassador Mr Descartes As I have been informed he had been ill for a few days with pleurisy But as he did not want to take or use medicines a hot fever appears to have arisen as well Thereupon he had himself bled three times in one day but without operation of losing much blood Her Majesty much bemoaned his decease because he was such a learned man He has been cast in wax It was not his intention to die here as he had resolved shortly before his death to return to Holland at the first occasion Etc 72 The cause of death was pneumonia according to Chanut but peripneumonia according to Christina s physician Johann van Wullen who was not allowed to bleed him 73 The winter seems to have been mild 74 except for the second half of January which was harsh as described by Descartes himself however this remark was probably intended to be as much Descartes take on the intellectual climate as it was about the weather 69 left The tomb of Descartes middle with detail of the inscription in the Abbey of Saint Germain des Pres Paris right memorial to Descartes erected in the 1720s in the Adolf Fredriks kyrka E Pies has questioned this account based on a letter by the Doctor van Wullen however Descartes had refused his treatment and more arguments against its veracity have been raised since 75 In a 2009 book German philosopher Theodor Ebert argues that Descartes was poisoned by a Catholic missionary who opposed his religious views 76 77 78 As a Catholic 79 80 81 in a Protestant nation he was interred in a graveyard used mainly for orphans in Adolf Fredriks kyrka in Stockholm His manuscripts came into the possession of Claude Clerselier Chanut s brother in law and a devout Catholic who has begun the process of turning Descartes into a saint by cutting adding and publishing his letters selectively 82 83 137 154 In 1663 the Pope placed Descartes works on the Index of Prohibited Books In 1666 sixteen years after his death his remains were taken to France and buried in Saint Etienne du Mont In 1671 Louis XIV prohibited all lectures in Cartesianism Although the National Convention in 1792 had planned to transfer his remains to the Pantheon he was reburied in the Abbey of Saint Germain des Pres in 1819 missing a finger and the skull note 8 His skull is on display in the Musee de l Homme in Paris 84 Philosophical work Edit Rene Descartes at work Further information Cartesianism In his Discourse on the Method he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt To achieve this he employs a method called hyperbolical metaphysical doubt also sometimes referred to as methodological skepticism or Cartesian doubt he rejects any ideas that can be doubted and then re establishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge 85 Descartes built his ideas from scratch which he does in The Meditations on First Philosophy He relates this to architecture the top soil is taken away to create a new building or structure Descartes calls his doubt the soil and new knowledge the buildings To Descartes Aristotle s foundationalism is incomplete and his method of doubt enhances foundationalism 86 Initially Descartes arrives at only a single first principle that he thinks This is expressed in the Latin phrase in the Discourse on Method Cogito ergo sum English I think therefore I am 87 Descartes concluded if he doubted then something or someone must be doing the doubting therefore the very fact that he doubted proved his existence The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence that is in and of itself proof that he does exist 88 These two first principles I think and I exist were later confirmed by Descartes clear and distinct perception delineated in his Third Meditation from The Meditations as he clearly and distinctly perceives these two principles Descartes reasoned ensures their indubitability Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks But in what form He perceives his body through the use of the senses however these have previously been unreliable So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing Thinking is what he does and his power must come from his essence Descartes defines thought cogitatio as what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it insofar as I am conscious of it Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious 89 He gave reasons for thinking that waking thoughts are distinguishable from dreams and that one s mind cannot have been hijacked by an evil demon placing an illusory external world before one s senses 86 And so something that I thought I was seeing with my eyes is grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind 90 109 In this manner Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction as a method 91 Mind body dualism Edit Further information Mind body problem and Mind body dualism L homme 1664 Descartes influenced by the automatons on display throughout the city of Paris began to investigate the connection between the mind and body and how the two interact citation needed His main influences for dualism were theology and physics 92 The theory on the dualism of mind and body is Descartes signature doctrine and permeates other theories he advanced Known as Cartesian dualism or mind body dualism his theory on the separation between the mind and the body went on to influence subsequent Western philosophies 93 In Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes attempted to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body Humans are a union of mind and body 94 thus Descartes dualism embraced the idea that mind and body are distinct but closely joined While many contemporary readers of Descartes found the distinction between mind and body difficult to grasp he thought it was entirely straightforward Descartes employed the concept of modes which are the ways in which substances exist In Principles of Philosophy Descartes explained we can clearly perceive a substance apart from the mode which we say differs from it whereas we cannot conversely understand the mode apart from the substance To perceive a mode apart from its substance requires an intellectual abstraction 95 which Descartes explained as follows The intellectual abstraction consists in my turning my thought away from one part of the contents of this richer idea the better to apply it to the other part with greater attention Thus when I consider a shape without thinking of the substance or the extension whose shape it is I make a mental abstraction 95 According to Descartes two substances are really distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other Thus Descartes reasoned that God is distinct from humans and the body and mind of a human are also distinct from one another 96 He argued that the great differences between body an extended thing and mind an un extended immaterial thing make the two ontologically distinct According to Descartes indivisibility argument the mind is utterly indivisible because when I consider the mind or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing I am unable to distinguish any part within myself I understand myself to be something quite single and complete 97 Moreover in The Meditations Descartes discusses a piece of wax and exposes the single most characteristic doctrine of Cartesian dualism that the universe contained two radically different kinds of substances the mind or soul defined as thinking and the body defined as matter and unthinking 98 The Aristotelian philosophy of Descartes days held that the universe was inherently purposeful or teleological Everything that happened be it the motion of the stars or the growth of a tree was supposedly explainable by a certain purpose goal or end that worked its way out within nature Aristotle called this the final cause and these final causes were indispensable for explaining the ways nature operated Descartes theory of dualism supports the distinction between traditional Aristotelian science and the new science of Kepler and Galileo which denied the role of a divine power and final causes in its attempts to explain nature Descartes dualism provided the philosophical rationale for the latter by expelling the final cause from the physical universe or res extensa in favor of the mind or res cogitans Therefore while Cartesian dualism paved the way for modern physics it also held the door open for religious beliefs about the immortality of the soul 99 Descartes dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings A human was according to Descartes a composite entity of mind and body Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body but the body could not exist without the mind In The Meditations Descartes even argues that while the mind is a substance the body is composed only of accidents 100 But he did argue that mind and body are closely joined 101 Nature also teaches me by the sensations of pain hunger thirst and so on that I am not merely present in my body as a pilot in his ship but that I am very closely joined and as it were intermingled with it so that I and the body form a unit If this were not so I who am nothing but a thinking thing would not feel pain when the body was hurt but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken 101 Descartes discussion on embodiment raised one of the most perplexing problems of his dualism philosophy What exactly is the relationship of union between the mind and the body of a person 101 Therefore Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the mind body problem for many years after Descartes death 102 Descartes was also a rationalist and believed in the power of innate ideas 103 Descartes argued the theory of innate knowledge and that all humans were born with knowledge through the higher power of God It was this theory of innate knowledge that was later combated by philosopher John Locke 1632 1704 an empiricist 104 Empiricism holds that all knowledge is acquired through experience Physiology and psychology Edit In The Passions of the Soul published in 1649 105 Descartes discussed the common contemporary belief that the human body contained animal spirits These animal spirits were believed to be light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles These animal spirits were believed to affect the human soul or passions of the soul Descartes distinguished six basic passions wonder love hatred desire joy and sadness All of these passions he argued represented different combinations of the original spirit and influenced the soul to will or want certain actions He argued for example that fear is a passion that moves the soul to generate a response in the body In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector 106 Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland through animal spirits Thus different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits He argued that these motions in the pineal gland are based on God s will and that humans are supposed to want and like things that are useful to them But he also argued that the animal spirits that moved around the body could distort the commands from the pineal gland thus humans had to learn how to control their passions 107 Descartes advanced a theory on automatic bodily reactions to external events which influenced 19th century reflex theory He argued that external motions such as touch and sound reach the endings of the nerves and affect the animal spirits For example heat from fire affects a spot on the skin and sets in motion a chain of reactions with the animal spirits reaching the brain through the central nervous system and in turn animal spirits are sent back to the muscles to move the hand away from the fire 107 Through this chain of reactions the automatic reactions of the body do not require a thought process 103 Above all he was among the first scientists who believed that the soul should be subject to scientific investigation He challenged the views of his contemporaries that the soul was divine thus religious authorities regarded his books as dangerous 108 Descartes writings went on to form the basis for theories on emotions and how cognitive evaluations were translated into affective processes Descartes believed that the brain resembled a working machine and unlike many of his contemporaries he believed that mathematics and mechanics could explain the most complicated processes of the mind citation needed In the 20th century Alan Turing advanced computer science based on mathematical biology as inspired by Descartes His theories on reflexes also served as the foundation for advanced physiological theories more than 200 years after his death The physiologist Ivan Pavlov was a great admirer of Descartes 109 Moral philosophy Edit For Descartes ethics was a science the highest and most perfect of them Like the rest of the sciences ethics had its roots in metaphysics 91 In this way he argues for the existence of God investigates the place of man in nature formulates the theory of mind body dualism and defends free will However as he was a convinced rationalist Descartes clearly states that reason is sufficient in the search for the goods that we should seek and virtue consists in the correct reasoning that should guide our actions Nevertheless the quality of this reasoning depends on knowledge because a well informed mind will be more capable of making good choices and it also depends on mental condition For this reason he said that a complete moral philosophy should include the study of the body 110 189 He discussed this subject in the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and as a result wrote his work The Passions of the Soul that contains a study of the psychosomatic processes and reactions in man with an emphasis on emotions or passions 111 His works about human passion and emotion would be the basis for the philosophy of his followers see Cartesianism and would have a lasting impact on ideas concerning what literature and art should be specifically how it should invoke emotion 112 Humans should seek the sovereign good that Descartes following Zeno identifies with virtue as this produces blessedness For Epicurus the sovereign good was pleasure and Descartes says that in fact this is not in contradiction with Zeno s teaching because virtue produces a spiritual pleasure that is better than bodily pleasure Regarding Aristotle s opinion that happiness eudaimonia depends on both moral virtue and also on the goods of fortune such as a moderate degree of wealth Descartes does not deny that fortunes contribute to happiness but remarks that they are in great proportion outside one s own control whereas one s mind is under one s complete control 111 The moral writings of Descartes came at the last part of his life but earlier in his Discourse on the Method he adopted three maxims to be able to act while he put all his ideas into doubt This is known as his Provisional Morals Religion Edit In the third and fifth Meditation Descartes offers proofs of a benevolent God the trademark argument and the ontological argument respectively Because God is benevolent Descartes has faith in the account of reality his senses provide him for God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him From this supposition however Descartes finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception Regarding epistemology therefore Descartes can be said to have contributed such ideas as a rigorous conception of foundationalism and the possibility that reason is the only reliable method of attaining knowledge Descartes however was very much aware that experimentation was necessary to verify and validate theories 91 Descartes invokes his causal adequacy principle 113 to support his trademark argument for the existence of God quoting Lucretius in defence Ex nihilo nihil fit meaning Nothing comes from nothing Lucretius 114 Oxford Reference summarises the argument as follows that our idea of perfection is related to its perfect origin God just as a stamp or trademark is left in an article of workmanship by its maker 115 In the fifth Meditation Descartes presents a version of the ontological argument which is founded on the possibility of thinking the idea of a being that is supremely perfect and infinite and suggests that of all the ideas that are in me the idea that I have of God is the most true the most clear and distinct 116 Descartes considered himself to be a devout Catholic 79 80 81 and one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Catholic faith His attempt to ground theological beliefs on reason encountered intense opposition in his time Pascal regarded Descartes views as a rationalist and mechanist and accused him of deism I cannot forgive Descartes in all his philosophy Descartes did his best to dispense with God But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers after that he had no more use for God while a powerful contemporary Martin Schoock accused him of atheist beliefs though Descartes had provided an explicit critique of atheism in his Meditations The Catholic Church prohibited his books in 1663 117 118 119 274 Descartes also wrote a response to external world skepticism Through this method of skepticism he does not doubt for the sake of doubting but to achieve concrete and reliable information In other words certainty He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily and are not willed by him They are external to his senses and according to Descartes this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind and thus an external world Descartes goes on to show that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted and that God has given him the propensity to believe that such ideas are caused by material things Descartes also believes a substance is something that does not need any assistance to function or exist Descartes further explains how only God can be a true substance But minds are substances meaning they need only God for it to function The mind is a thinking substance The means for a thinking substance stem from ideas 120 Descartes steered clear of theological questions restricting his attention to showing that there is no incompatibility between his metaphysics and theological orthodoxy He avoided trying to demonstrate theological dogmas metaphysically When challenged that he had not established the immortality of the soul merely in showing that the soul and the body are distinct substances he replied I do not take it upon myself to try to use the power of human reason to settle any of those matters which depend on the free will of God 121 Natural science Edit Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences 122 For him philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge as he related in a letter to a French translator 91 Thus all Philosophy is like a tree of which Metaphysics is the root Physics the trunk and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk which are reduced to three principals namely Medicine Mechanics and Ethics By the science of Morals I understand the highest and most perfect which presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences is the last degree of wisdom On animals Edit Descartes denied that animals had reason or intelligence 123 He argued that animals did not lack sensations or perceptions but these could be explained mechanistically 124 Whereas humans had a soul or mind and were able to feel pain and anxiety animals by virtue of not having a soul could not feel pain or anxiety If animals showed signs of distress then this was to protect the body from damage but the innate state needed for them to suffer was absent 125 Although Descartes views were not universally accepted they became prominent in Europe and North America allowing humans to treat animals with impunity The view that animals were quite separate from humanity and merely machines allowed for the maltreatment of animals and was sanctioned in law and societal norms until the middle of the 19th century 126 180 214 The publications of Charles Darwin would eventually erode the Cartesian view of animals 127 37 Darwin argued that the continuity between humans and other species opened the possibilities that animals did not have dissimilar properties to suffer 128 177 Historical impact EditEmancipation from Church doctrine Edit Cover of Meditations Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy the thinker whose approach has profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity 22 129 The first two of his Meditations on First Philosophy those that formulate the famous methodic doubt represent the portion of Descartes writings that most influenced modern thinking 130 It has been argued that Descartes himself did not realize the extent of this revolutionary move 131 In shifting the debate from what is true to of what can I be certain Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God while the traditional concept of truth implies an external authority certainty instead relies on the judgment of the individual In an anthropocentric revolution the human being is now raised to the level of a subject an agent an emancipated being equipped with autonomous reason This was a revolutionary step that established the basis of modernity the repercussions of which are still being felt the emancipation of humanity from Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine humanity making its own law and taking its own stand 132 133 134 In modernity the guarantor of truth is not God anymore but human beings each of whom is a self conscious shaper and guarantor of their own reality 135 136 In that way each person is turned into a reasoning adult a subject and agent 135 as opposed to a child obedient to God This change in perspective was characteristic of the shift from the Christian medieval period to the modern period a shift that had been anticipated in other fields and which was now being formulated in the field of philosophy by Descartes 135 137 This anthropocentric perspective of Descartes work establishing human reason as autonomous provided the basis for the Enlightenment s emancipation from God and the Church According to Martin Heidegger the perspective of Descartes work also provided the basis for all subsequent anthropology 138 Descartes philosophical revolution is sometimes said to have sparked modern anthropocentrism and subjectivism 22 139 140 141 Mathematical legacy Edit A Cartesian coordinates graph using his invented x and y axes One of Descartes most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry which uses algebra to describe geometry Descartes invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by x y and z and knowns by a b and c He also pioneered the standard notation that uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents for example the 2 used in x2 to indicate x squared 142 143 19 He was first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in the system of knowledge using it as a method to automate or mechanize reasoning particularly about abstract unknown quantities 144 91 114 European mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics serving as the foundation of algebra Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Pacioli Cardan Tartaglia and Ferrari Equations of degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal because a three dimensional form such as a cube occupied the largest dimension of reality Descartes professed that the abstract quantity a2 could represent length as well as an area This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians such as Francois Viete who insisted that a second power must represent an area Although Descartes did not pursue the subject he preceded Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in envisioning a more general science of algebra or universal mathematics as a precursor to symbolic logic that could encompass logical principles and methods symbolically and mechanize general reasoning 145 280 281 Descartes work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz who applied the infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics 146 His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial The beginning to Descartes interest in physics is accredited to the amateur scientist and mathematician Isaac Beeckman who was at the forefront of a new school of thought known as mechanical philosophy With this foundation of reasoning Descartes formulated many of his theories on mechanical and geometric physics 147 Descartes discovered an early form of the law of conservation of momentum a measure of the motion of an object and envisioned it as pertaining to motion in a straight line as opposed to perfect circular motion as Galileo had envisioned it 147 148 He outlined his views on the universe in his Principles of Philosophy where he describes his three laws of motion 149 Newton s own laws of motion would later be modeled on Descartes exposition 147 Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction also known as Descartes law or more commonly Snell s law outside France that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees i e the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow s centre is 42 150 He also independently discovered the law of reflection and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law 151 Influence on Newton s mathematics Edit Current popular opinion holds that Descartes had the most influence of anyone on the young Isaac Newton and this is arguably one of his most important contributions Decartes influence extended not directly from his original French edition of La Geometrie however but rather from Frans van Schooten s expanded second Latin edition of the work 152 100 Newton continued Descartes work on cubic equations which freed the subject from fetters of the Greek perspectives The most important concept was his very modern treatment of single variables 153 109 129 Newton rejected Descartes vortex theory of planetary motion in favor of his law of universal gravitation and most of the second book of Newton s Principia is devoted to his counterargument Contemporary reception Edit In commercial terms The Discourse appeared during Descartes lifetime in a single edition of 500 copies 200 of which were set aside for the author Sharing a similar fate was the only French edition of The Meditations which had not managed to sell out by the time of Descartes death A concomitant Latin edition of the latter was however eagerly sought out by Europe s scholarly community and proved a commercial success for Descartes 154 xliii xliv Although Descartes was well known in academic circles towards the end of his life the teaching of his works in schools was controversial Henri de Roy Henricus Regius 1598 1679 Professor of Medicine at the University of Utrecht was condemned by the Rector of the university Gijsbert Voet Voetius for teaching Descartes physics 155 According to John Cottingham whose translation of Meditations is considered to be authoritative Descartes s Meditations on First Philosophy is considered to be one of the key texts of Western philosophy Cottingham said that the Meditations is the most widely studied of all Descartes writings 156 50 According to Anthony Gottlieb a former senior editor of The Economist and the author of The Dream of Reason and The Dream of Enlightenment one of the reasons Descartes and Thomas Hobbes continue to be debated in the second decade of the twentieth century is that they still have something to say to us that remains relevant on questions such as What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and our ideas of God and How is government to deal with religious diversity 157 In her 2018 interview with Tyler Cowen Agnes Callard described Descartes thought experiment in the Meditations where he encouraged a complete systematic doubting of everything that you believe to see what you come to She said What Descartes comes to is a kind of real truth that he can build upon inside of his own mind 158 She said that Hamlet s monologues meditations on the nature of life and emotion were similar to Descartes thought experiment Hamlet Descartes were apart from the world as if they were trapped in their own heads 158 Cowen asked Callard if Descartes actually found any truths through his thought experiment or was it just an earlier version of the contemporary argument that we re living in a simulation where the evil demon is the simulation rather than Bayesian reasoning Callard agreed that this argument can be traced to Descartes who had said that he had refuted it She clarified that in Descartes reasoning you do end up back in the mind of God in a universe God has created that is the real world The whole question is about being connected to reality as opposed to being a figment If you re living in the world God created God can create real things So you re living in a real world 158 Purported Rosicrucianism Edit The membership of Descartes to the Rosicrucians is debated 159 The initials of his name have been linked to the R C acronym widely used by Rosicrucians 160 Furthermore in 1619 Descartes moved to Ulm which was a well renowned international center of the Rosicrucian movement 160 During his journey in Germany he met Johannes Faulhaber who had previously expressed his personal commitment to join the brotherhood 161 Descartes dedicated the work titled The Mathematical Treasure Trove of Polybius Citizen of the World to learned men throughout the world and especially to the distinguished B R C Brothers of the Rosy Cross in Germany The work wasn t completed and its publication is uncertain 162 Bibliography EditWritings Edit 1618 Musicae Compendium A treatise on music theory and the aesthetics of music which Descartes dedicated to early collaborator Isaac Beeckman written in 1618 first published posthumously in 1650 163 127 129 1626 1628 Regulae ad directionem ingenii Rules for the Direction of the Mind Incomplete First published posthumously in Dutch translation in 1684 and in the original Latin at Amsterdam in 1701 R Des Cartes Opuscula Posthuma Physica et Mathematica The best critical edition which includes the Dutch translation of 1684 is edited by Giovanni Crapulli The Hague Martinus Nijhoff 1966 c 1630 De solidorum elementis Concerns the classification of Platonic solids and three dimensional figurate numbers Said by some scholars to prefigure Euler s polyhedral formula Unpublished discovered in Descartes estate in Stockholm 1650 soaked for three days in the Seine in a shipwreck while being shipped back to Paris copied in 1676 by Leibniz and lost Leibniz s copy also lost was rediscovered circa 1860 in Hannover 164 1630 1631 La recherche de la verite par la lumiere naturelle The Search for Truth by Natural Light unfinished dialogue published in 1701 165 264ff 1630 1633 Le Monde The World and L Homme Man Descartes first systematic presentation of his natural philosophy Man was published posthumously in Latin translation in 1662 and The World posthumously in 1664 1637 Discours de la methode Discourse on the Method An introduction to the Essais which include the Dioptrique the Meteores and the Geometrie 1637 La Geometrie Geometry Descartes major work in mathematics There is an English translation by Michael Mahoney New York Dover 1979 1641 Meditationes de prima philosophia Meditations on First Philosophy also known as Metaphysical Meditations In Latin a second edition published the following year included an additional objection and reply and a Letter to Dinet A French translation by the Duke of Luynes probably done without Descartes supervision was published in 1647 Includes six Objections and Replies 1644 Principia philosophiae Principles of Philosophy a Latin textbook at first intended by Descartes to replace the Aristotelian textbooks then used in universities A French translation Principes de philosophie by Claude Picot under the supervision of Descartes appeared in 1647 with a letter preface to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia 1647 Notae in programma Comments on a Certain Broadsheet A reply to Descartes one time disciple Henricus Regius 1648 La description du corps humain The Description of the Human Body Published posthumously by Clerselier in 1667 1648 Responsiones Renati Des Cartes Conversation with Burman Notes on a Q amp A session between Descartes and Frans Burman on 16 April 1648 Rediscovered in 1895 and published for the first time in 1896 An annotated bilingual edition Latin with French translation edited by Jean Marie Beyssade was published in 1981 Paris PUF 1649 Les passions de l ame Passions of the Soul Dedicated to Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate 1657 Correspondance three volumes 1657 1659 1667 Published by Descartes literary executor Claude Clerselier The third edition in 1667 was the most complete Clerselier omitted however much of the material pertaining to mathematics In January 2010 a previously unknown letter from Descartes dated 27 May 1641 was found by the Dutch philosopher Erik Jan Bos when browsing through Google Bos found the letter mentioned in a summary of autographs kept by Haverford College in Haverford Pennsylvania The college was unaware that the letter had never been published This was the third letter by Descartes found in the last 25 years 166 167 Handwritten letter by Descartes December 1638 Principia philosophiae 1644Collected editions Edit Oeuvres de Descartes edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery Paris Leopold Cerf 1897 1913 13 volumes new revised edition Paris Vrin CNRS 1964 1974 11 volumes the first 5 volumes contains the correspondence This edition is traditionally cited with the initials AT for Adam and Tannery followed by a volume number in Roman numerals thus AT VII refers to Oeuvres de Descartes volume 7 Etude du bon sens La recherche de la verite et autres ecrits de jeunesse 1616 1631 edited by Vincent Carraud and Gilles Olivo Paris PUF 2013 Descartes Œuvres completes new edition by Jean Marie Beyssade and Denis Kambouchner Paris Gallimard published volumes I Premiers ecrits Regles pour la direction de l esprit 2016 III Discours de la Methode et Essais 2009 VIII 1 Correspondance 1 edited by Jean Robert Armogathe 2013 VIII 2 Correspondance 2 edited by Jean Robert Armogathe 2013 Rene Descartes Opere 1637 1649 Milano Bompiani 2009 pp 2531 Edizione integrale di prime edizioni e traduzione italiana a fronte a cura di G Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I Agostini M Marrone M Savini ISBN 978 88 452 6332 3 Rene Descartes Opere 1650 2009 Milano Bompiani 2009 pp 1723 Edizione integrale delle opere postume e traduzione italiana a fronte a cura di G Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I Agostini M Marrone M Savini ISBN 978 88 452 6333 0 Rene Descartes Tutte le lettere 1619 1650 Milano Bompiani 2009 IIa ed pp 3104 Nuova edizione integrale dell epistolario cartesiano con traduzione italiana a fronte a cura di G Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I Agostini M Marrone F A Meschini M Savini e J R Armogathe ISBN 978 88 452 3422 4 Rene Descartes Isaac Beeckman Marin Mersenne Lettere 1619 1648 Milano Bompiani 2015 pp 1696 Edizione integrale con traduzione italiana a fronte a cura di Giulia Beglioioso e Jean Robert Armogathe ISBN 978 88 452 8071 9 Early editions of specific works Edit Discours de la methode Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine 1637 Renati Des Cartes Principia philosophiae Archived 9 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine 1644 Le monde de Mr Descartes ou le traite de la lumiere Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine 1664 Geometria Archived 24 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine 1659 Meditationes de prima philosophia Archived 24 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine 1670 Opera philosophica Archived 27 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine 1672 Collected English translations Edit 1955 The Philosophical Works E S Haldane and G R T Ross trans Dover Publications This work is traditionally cited with the initials HR for Haldane and Ross followed by a volume number in Roman numerals thus HR II refers to volume 2 of this edition 1988 The Philosophical Writings of Descartes in 3 vols Cottingham J Stoothoff R Kenny A and Murdoch D trans Cambridge University Press This work is traditionally cited with the initials CSM for Cottingham Stoothoff and Murdoch or CSMK for Cottingham Stoothoff Murdoch and Kenny followed by a volume number in Roman numeral thus CSM II refers to volume 2 of this edition 1998 Rene Descartes The World and Other Writings Translated and edited by Stephen Gaukroger Cambridge University Press This consists mainly of scientific writings on physics biology astronomy optics etc which were very influential in the 17th and 18th centuries but which are routinely omitted or much abridged in modern collections of Descartes philosophical works Translation of single works Edit 1628 Regulae ad directionem ingenii Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence A Bilingual Edition of the Cartesian Treatise on Method Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine ed amp trans G Heffernan Amsterdam Atlanta Rodopi 1998 1633 The World or Treatise on Light Archived 21 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine tr by Michael S Mahoney 1633 Treatise of Man tr by T S Hall Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1972 1637 Discourse on the Method Optics Geometry and Meteorology trans P J Olscamp Revised edition Indianapolis Hackett 2001 1637 The Geometry of Rene Descartes Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine trans D E Smith amp Marcia Latham Chicago Open Court 1925 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy tr by J Cottingham Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1996 Latin original Alternative English title Metaphysical Meditations Includes six Objections and Replies A second edition published the following year includes an additional Objection and Reply and a Letter to Dinet HTML Online Latin French English Edition Archived 27 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine 1644 Principles of Philosophy Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine trans V R Miller amp R P Miller Dordrecht Boston London Kluwer Academic Publishers 1982 1648 Descartes Conversation with Burman tr by J Cottingham Oxford Clarendon Press 1989 1649 Passions of the Soul Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine trans S H Voss Indianapolis Hackett 1989 Dedicated to Elisabeth of the Palatinate 1619 1648 Rene Descartes Isaac Beeckman Marin Mersenne Lettere 1619 1648 ed by Giulia Beglioioso and Jean Robert Armogathe Milano Bompiani 2015 pp 1696 ISBN 978 88 452 8071 9See also Edit Mathematics portal Philosophy portal3587 Descartes asteroid Cartesian circle Cartesian doubt Cartesian materialism not a view that was held by or formulated by Descartes Descartes number Cartesian plane Descartes Prize Descartes Huygens Prize Cartesian product Cartesian product of graphs Cartesian theater Cartesian tree Descartes crater and Highlands on the Moon Apollo 16 landing site Descartes rule of signs Descartes s theorem 4 tangent circles Descartes theorem on total angular defect Folium of Descartes Bucket argument Paris Descartes University List of things named after Rene Descartes Write your essay about Rene Descartes on WikiversityNotes Edit Although the uncertain authorship of this most iconic portrait of Descartes was traditionally attributed to Frans Hals there is no record of their meeting During the 20th century the assumption was widely challenged 1 a b Etienne Gilson argued in La Liberte chez Descartes et la Theologie Alcan 1913 pp 132 147 that Duns Scotus was not the source of Descartes Voluntarism Although there exist doctrinal differences between Descartes and Scotus it is still possible to view Descartes as borrowing from a Scotist Voluntarist tradition 11 Adjectival form Cartesian k ɑːr ˈ t iː z i e n ˈ t iː ʒ en This idea had already been proposed by Spanish philosopher Gomez Pereira a hundred years ago in the form I know that I know something anyone who knows exists then I exist nosco me aliquid noscere amp quidquid noscit est ergo ego sum Pereira Gomez 1749 1554 De Immortalitate Animae Antoniana Margarita p 277 Santos Lopez Modesto 1986 Gomez Pereira medico y filosofo medinense In Historia de Medina del Campo y su Tierra volumen I Nacimiento y expansion edited by E L Sanz See also Epistemological turn While in the Netherlands he changed his address frequently living among other places in Dordrecht 1628 Franeker 1629 Amsterdam 1629 1630 Leiden 1630 Amsterdam 1630 1632 Deventer 1632 1634 Amsterdam 1634 1635 Utrecht 1635 1636 Leiden 1636 Egmond 1636 1638 Santpoort 1638 1640 Leiden 1640 1641 Endegeest a castle near Oegstgeest 1641 1643 and finally for an extended time in Egmond Binnen 1643 1649 He had lived with Henricus Reneri in Deventer and Amsterdam and had met with Constantijn Huygens and Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius Descartes was interviewed by Frans Burman at Egmond Binnen in 1648 Henricus Regius Jan Stampioen Frans van Schooten Comenius and Gisbertus Voetius were his main opponents The remains are two centuries later still resting between two other graves those of the scholarly monks Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon in a chapel of the abbey References EditCitations Edit Nadler Steven The Philosopher The Priest and The Painter A Portrait of Descartes Archived 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 2013 pp 174 198 Tad M Schmaltz Radical Cartesianism The French Reception of Descartes Cambridge University Press 2002 p 257 Archived 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Fumerton Richard 21 February 2000 Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archived from the original on 24 April 2018 Retrieved 19 August 2018 Bostock D Philosophy of Mathematics An Introduction Wiley Blackwell 2009 p 43 Archived 1 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine All of Descartes Locke Berkeley and Hume supposed that mathematics is a theory of our ideas but none of them offered any argument for this conceptualist claim and apparently took it to be uncontroversial Gutting Gary 1999 Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity Cambridge University Press p 116 ISBN 9780521649735 Modernity begins with Descartes mutation of Augustinianism Taylor emphasizes that Descartes is in many ways profoundly Augustinian Yolton J W Realism and Appearances An Essay in Ontology Cambridge University Press 2000 p 136 The Correspondence Theory of Truth Archived 25 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Gaukroger S Descartes An Intellectual Biography Clarendon Press 1995 p 228 Archived 3 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine H Ben Yami Descartes Philosophical Revolution A Reassessment Palgrave Macmillan 2015 p 76 H Ben Yami Descartes Philosophical Revolution A Reassessment Palgrave Macmillan 2015 p 179 Descartes work in mathematics was apparently influenced by Viete s despite his denial of any acquaintance with the latter s work John Schuster Descartes Agonistes Physico mathematics Method amp Corpuscular Mechanism 1618 33 Springer 2012 p 363 Archived 15 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine n 26 a b Mercer C Descartes debt to Teresa of Avila or why we should work on women in the history of philosophy Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Philosophical Studies 174 2017 Perez Rolando 2020 Francisco Sanches in Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2020 ed Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University archived from the original on 26 September 2022 retrieved 12 January 2022 Rodrigo de Arriaga Scholasticon in French Jacques Benigne Bossuet French prelate and historian 1627 1704 Archived 29 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine from the Encyclopaedia Britannica 10th Edition 1902 Wells John 3 April 2008 Longman Pronunciation Dictionary 3rd ed Pearson Longman ISBN 978 1 4058 8118 0 Descartes Collins English Dictionary 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Stockholm Stockholm News 22 February 2010 Archived from the original on 15 December 2014 self published source Ebert Theodor 2009 Der ratselhafte Tod des Rene Descartes in German Alibri Verlag ISBN 978 3 86569 048 7 Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 Retrieved 11 August 2020 a b Garstein Oskar 1992 Rome and the Counter Reformation in Scandinavia The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden 1622 1656 BRILL ISBN 978 90 04 09395 9 Archived from the original on 3 August 2021 Retrieved 3 October 2020 a b Rodis Lewis Genevieve 1999 Descartes His Life and Thought Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 8627 2 Archived from the original on 25 July 2021 Retrieved 3 October 2020 a b Oppy Graham Trakakis N N 11 September 2014 Early Modern Philosophy of Religion The History of Western Philosophy of Religion volume 3 Routledge ISBN 978 1 317 54645 0 Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 Retrieved 3 October 2020 Andrefabre e monsite com Archived from the original on 5 November 2014 Retrieved 21 December 2014 Watson R Cogito Ergo Sum The Life of Rene Descartes Boston David R Godine 2002 pp 137 154 Archived 25 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine 5 historical figures whose heads have been stolen Strange Remains 23 July 2015 Archived from the original on 22 December 2016 Retrieved 29 November 2016 Copenhaver Rebecca Forms of skepticism Archived from the original on 8 January 2005 Retrieved 15 August 2007 a b Newman Lex 2016 Zalta Edward N ed Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2016 ed Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University Archived from the original on 8 March 2021 Retrieved 22 February 2017 Cogito ergo sum philosophy Encyclopedia Britannica Archived from the original on 16 June 2015 Retrieved 28 July 2021 Ten books Chosen by Raj Persuade The British Journal of Psychiatry Archived from the original on 10 November 2003 Retrieved 13 November 2007 Descartes Rene 1644 The Principles of Philosophy Vol IX Bardt C Material and Mind Cambridge MA MIT Press 2019 p 109 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine a b c d Descartes Rene Letter of the Author to the French Translator of the Principles of Philosophy serving for a preface Translated by Veitch John Archived from the original on 17 January 2018 Retrieved 6 December 2011 Watson Richard A January 1982 What Moves the Mind An Excursion in Cartesian Dualism American Philosophical Quarterly University of Illinois Press 19 1 73 81 JSTOR 20013943 Gobert R D The Mind Body Stage Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Stanford Stanford University Press 2013 David Cunning 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Meditations Cambridge University Press p 277 ISBN 978 1 107 72914 8 a b David Cunning 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Meditations Cambridge University Press p 278 ISBN 978 1 107 72914 8 David Cunning 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Meditations Cambridge University Press p 279 ISBN 978 1 107 72914 8 David Cunning 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Meditations Cambridge University Press p 280 ISBN 978 1 107 72914 8 Georges Dicker 2013 Descartes An Analytic and Historical Introduction OUP p 86 ISBN 978 0 19 538032 3 Georges Dicker 2013 Descartes An Analytic and Historical Introduction OUP p 87 ISBN 978 0 19 538032 3 Georges Dicker 2013 Descartes An Analytic and Historical Introduction OUP p 301 ISBN 978 0 19 538032 3 a b c Georges Dicker 2013 Descartes An Analytic and Historical Introduction OUP p 303 ISBN 978 0 19 538032 3 Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy online Descartes and the Pineal Gland a b Eric Shiraev 2010 A History of Psychology A Global Perspective A Global Perspective Sage p 88 ISBN 978 1 4129 7383 0 Baldwin Bird T April 1913 John Locke s Contributions to Education PDF The Sewanee Review The Johns Hopkins University Press 21 2 177 187 JSTOR 27532614 Archived PDF from the original on 26 September 2022 Retrieved 22 September 2020 17th and 18th Century Theories of Emotions gt Descartes on the Emotions Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archived from the original on 3 September 2006 Retrieved 29 July 2021 Eric Shiraev 2010 A History of Psychology A Global Perspective A Global Perspective Sage p 86 ISBN 978 1 4129 7383 0 a b Eric Shiraev 2010 A History of Psychology A Global Perspective A Global Perspective Sage p 87 ISBN 978 1 4129 7383 0 Goudriaan Aza 3 September 2020 The Concept of Heresy and the Debates on Descartes Philosophy Church History and Religious Culture 100 2 3 172 186 doi 10 1163 18712428 10002001 ISSN 1871 241X S2CID 225257956 Archived from the original on 14 March 2022 Retrieved 14 March 2022 Eric Shiraev 2010 A History of Psychology A Global Perspective Sage p 88 ISBN 978 1 4129 7383 0 Pickave M amp Shapiro L eds Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Oxford Oxford University Press 2012 p 189 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine a b Blom John J Descartes His moral philosophy and psychology New York University Press 1978 ISBN 0 8147 0999 0 Jacob Margaret C 2009 The Scientific Revolution A Brief History with Documents Boston Bedford St Martin s pp 16 17 ISBN 978 0 312 65349 1 Dicker G Descartes An Analytical and Historical Introduction Oxford Oxford University Press 2013 pp 118ff Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Carus Lucretius 1947 De Rerum Natura Oxford University Press pp 146 482 Trademark argument Oxford Reference Archived from the original on 23 October 2017 Retrieved 29 July 2021 Descartes Rene Meditations on First Philosophy 3rd Ed Translated from Latin by Donald A Cress Descartes Rene 2009 Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Deluxe Edition Chicago Encyclopaedia Britannica Edward C Mendler False Truths The Error of Relying on Authority p 16 Peterson L L American Trinity Jefferson Custer and the Spirit of the West Helena MT Sweetgrass Books 2017 p 274 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Descartes Rene Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy www iep utm edu Archived from the original on 1 November 2012 Retrieved 22 February 2017 Gaukroger Stephen 1995 Descartes An Intellectual Biography Oxford University Press Inc New York Clarendon Press pp 355 356 ISBN 978 0 19 823994 9 Grosholz Emily 1991 Cartesian method and the problem of reduction Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 824250 5 Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 Retrieved 24 May 2020 But contemporary debate has tended to understand Cartesian method merely as the method of doubt I want to define Descartes method in broader terms to trace its impact on the domains of mathematics and physics as well as metaphysics Waddicor M H Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law Leiden Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1970 p 63 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Animal Consciousness No 2 Historical background Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 23 December 1995 Archived from the original on 6 September 2008 Retrieved 16 December 2014 Parker J V Animal Minds Animal Souls Animal Rights Lanham University Press of America 2010 pp 16 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine 88 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine 99 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Gaukroger S Descartes System of Natural Philosophy Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2002 pp 180 214 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Spencer J Love and Hatred are Common to the Whole Sensitive Creation Animal Feeling in the Century before Darwin in A Richardson ed After Darwin Animals Emotions and the Mind Amsterdam and New York Rodopi 2013 p 37 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Workman L 2013 Charles Darwin The Shaping of Evolutionary Thinking Palgrave Macmillan p 177 ISBN 978 1 137 31323 2 Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 Retrieved 19 August 2019 Heidegger 1938 2002 p 76 quotation Descartes that which he himself founded modern and that means at the same time Western metaphysics Schmaltz Tad M Radical Cartesianism The French Reception of Descartes Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine p 27 quotation The Descartes most familiar to twentieth century philosophers is the Descartes of the first two Meditations someone preoccupied with hyperbolic doubt of the material world and the certainty of knowledge of the self that emerges from the famous cogito argument Roy Wood Sellars 1949 Philosophy for the future the quest of modern materialism quotation Husserl has taken Descartes very seriously in a historical as well as in a systematic sense in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology Husserl finds in the first two Meditations of Descartes a depth which it is difficult to fathom and which Descartes himself was so little able to appreciate that he let go the great discovery he had in his hands Martin Heidegger 1938 2002 The Age of the World Picture quotation For up to Descartes a particular sub iectum lies at the foundation of its own fixed qualities and changing circumstances The superiority of a sub iectum arises out of the claim of man to a self supported unshakeable foundation of truth in the sense of certainty Why and how does this claim acquire its decisive authority The claim originates in that emancipation of man in which he frees himself from obligation to Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine to a legislating for himself that takes its stand upon itself Ingraffia Brian D 1995 Postmodern theory and biblical theology vanquishing God s shadow Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine p 126 Norman K Swazo 2002 Crisis theory and world order Heideggerian reflections Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine pp 97 99 a b c Lovitt Tom 1977 introduction to Martin Heidegger s The question concerning technology and other essays pp xxv xxvi Briton Derek The modern practice of adult education a postmodern critique p 76 Martin Heidegger The Word of Nietzsche God is Dead pp 88 90 Heidegger 1938 2002 p 75 quotation With the interpretation of man as subiectum Descartes creates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every kind and tendency Schwartz B I China and Other Matters Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1996 p 95 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine quotation the kind of anthropocentric subjectivism which has emerged from the Cartesian revolution Charles B Guignon Heidegger and the problem of knowledge Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine p 23 Husserl Edmund 1931 Cartesian Meditations An Introduction to Phenomenology quotation When with the beginning of modern times religious belief was becoming more and more externalized as a lifeless convention men of intellect were lifted by a new belief their great belief in an autonomous philosophy and science in philosophy the Meditations were epoch making in a quite unique sense and precisely because of their going back to the pure ego cogito Descartes work has been used in fact to inaugurates an entirely new kind of philosophy Changing its total style philosophy takes a radical turn from naive objectivism to transcendental subjectivism Rene Descartes Discourse de la Methode Leiden Netherlands Jan Maire 1637 appended book La Geometrie book one p 299 Archived 8 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine From p 299 Etaa oua2 pour multiplierapar soy mesme Eta3 pour le multiplier encore une fois para amp ainsi a l infini and aa or a2 in order to multiply a by itself and a3 in order to multiply it once more by a and thus to infinity Sorell T Descartes A Very Short Introduction 2000 New York Oxford University Press p 19 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Gaukroger S The nature of abstract reasoning philosophical aspects of Descartes work in algebra in J Cottingham ed The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1992 pp 91 114 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Morris Kline Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times Vol 1 1972 New York amp Oxford Oxford University Press pp 280 281 Archived 16 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine Gullberg Jan 1997 Mathematics From The Birth of Numbers W W Norton ISBN 978 0 393 04002 9 a b c Slowik Edward 22 August 2017 Descartes Physics In Edward N Zalta ed Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive Archived from the original on 18 March 2019 Retrieved 1 October 2018 Alexander Afriat Cartesian and Lagrangian Momentum Archived 9 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine 2004 Rene Descartes 1664 Principia Philosophiae Part II 37 40 Tipler P A and G Mosca 2004 Physics For Scientists And Engineers W H Freeman ISBN 978 0 7167 4389 7 Rene Descartes Encarta Microsoft 2008 Archived from the original on 7 September 2007 Retrieved 15 August 2007 Westfall R S Never at Rest A Biography of Isaac Newton Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1980 p 100 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Whiteside D T Newton the Mathematician in Z Bechler ed Contemporary Newtonian Research Berlin Heidelberg Springer 1982 pp 109 129 Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Maclean I introduction to Descartes R A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences Oxford Oxford University Press 2006 pp xliii xliv Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Cottingham John Murdoch Dugald Stoothof Robert 1984 Comments on a Certain Broadsheet The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Cambridge University Press p 293 ISBN 978 0 521 28807 1 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 24 May 2020 Cottingham amp Williams 1996 Gottlieb 2016 p 23 a b c Cowan amp Callard 2018 The Rosicrucian history www rosicrucian org Archived from the original on 22 January 2015 Retrieved 13 May 2021 a b Bond Steven 24 June 2011 R C Rosicrucianism and Cartesianism in Joyce and Beckett Miranda 4 2011 doi 10 4000 miranda 1939 ISSN 2108 6559 OCLC 5497224736 Archived from the original on 2 June 2018 Henri John Nolan Lawrence 26 January 2015 Nolan Lawrence ed Rosicrucian The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon Cambridge University Press 659 660 doi 10 1017 CBO9780511894695 224 ISBN 9780511894695 Archived from the original on 10 June 2018 Retrieved 13 May 2021 Mansikka Tomas 21 April 2018 Esotericism in reverse Descartes and the poetic imagination in the seventeenth century pdf Approaching Religion 8 1 84 doi 10 30664 ar 66731 ISSN 1799 3121 OCLC 8081521487 Retrieved 13 May 2021 Cook H J in Porter R amp Teich M eds The Scientific Revolution in National Context Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1992 pp 127 129 Archived 16 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine Federico Pasquale Joseph 1982 Descartes on Polyhedra A Study of the De solidorum elementis Sources in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences Vol 4 Springer Cottingham J Murdoch D amp Stoothof R trans and eds The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol 2 Cambridge Cambridge University 1984 pp 264ff Archived 16 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine Vlasblom Dirk 25 February 2010 Unknown letter from Descartes found NRC nl in Dutch Archived from the original on 8 November 2016 Retrieved 30 May 2012 Vlasblom Dirk Hoe Descartes in 1641 op andere gedachten kwam NRC nl in Dutch Archived from the original on 27 October 2016 Sources Edit Agostini Siegrid Leblanc Helene eds 2015 Examina Philosophica I Quaderni di Alvearium PDF Vol Le fondement de la science Les dix premieres annees de la philosophie cartesienne 1619 1628 Archived PDF from the original on 26 February 2021 Retrieved 20 January 2016 Boyer Carl 1985 A History of Mathematics Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 02391 5 Carriero John 2008 Between Two Worlds Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 13561 8 Chomsky Noam 1966 Cartesian Linguistics A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought New York NY Harper amp Row ISBN 978 1 877275 34 0 2009 Third Edition edited with a new introduction by James McGilvray Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 70817 3 Clarke Desmond 2006 Descartes A Biography Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 82301 2 Costabel Pierre in French 1987 Rene Descartes Exercices pour les elements des solides Paris Presses Universitaires de France ISBN 978 2 13 040099 8 Cottingham John 1992 The Cambridge Companion to Descartes Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 36696 0 Cottingham John Williams B eds 1996 Sixth Meditation The existence of material things and the real distinction between mind and body Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy With Selections from the Objections and Replies Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy pp 50 62 Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 50 62 doi 10 1017 CBO9780511805028 012 ISBN 9780521558181 50 62 Tyler Cowen host Agnes Callard guest 11 April 2018 Agnes Callard on the Theory of Everything Medium via Mercatus Center Podcast Conversations with Tyler Cowen No 38 Retrieved 25 January 2023 Duncan Steven M 2008 The Proof of the External World Cartesian Theism and the Possibility of Knowledge Cambridge England James Clarke amp Co ISBN 978 0 227 17267 4 Archived from the original on 23 December 2008 Farrell John Demons of Descartes and Hobbes Paranoia and Modernity Cervantes to Rousseau Cornell UP 2006 chapter 7 Garber Daniel 1992 Descartes Metaphysical Physics Chicago IL University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 28219 0 Garber Daniel Ayers Michael 1998 The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 53721 6 Gaukroger Stephen 1995 Descartes An Intellectual Biography Oxford England Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 823994 9 Gillespie A 2006 Descartes Demon A Dialogical Analysis of Meditations on First Philosophy Theory amp Psychology 16 761 781 Gottlieb Anthony 2016 The Dream of Enlightenment The Rise of Modern Philosophy Allen Lane p 301 ISBN 9780871404435 Grayling A C 2005 Descartes The Life and Times of a Genius New York NY Walker Publishing Co Inc ISBN 978 0 8027 1501 2 Heidegger Martin 1938 2002 The Age of the World Picture in Off the Beaten Track Archived 21 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine pp 57 85 Keeling S V 1968 Descartes Oxford England Oxford University Press Melchert Norman 2002 The Great Conversation A Historical Introduction to Philosophy New York NY McGraw Hill ISBN 978 0 19 517510 3 Monnoyeur Francoise November 2017 Matiere et espace dans le systeme cartesien Paris Harmattan 266 pages ISBN 978 2 343 13394 2 Moreno Romo Juan Carlos Vindicacion del cartesianismo radical Anthropos Barcelona 2010 Moreno Romo Juan Carlos Coord Descartes vivo Ejercicios de hermeneutica cartesiana Anthropos Barcelona 2007 Naaman Zauderer Noa 2010 Descartes Deontological Turn Reason Will and Virtue in the Later Writings Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 76330 1 Negri Antonio 2007 The Political Descartes Verso Ozaki Makoto 1991 Kartenspiel oder Kommentar zu den Meditationen des Herrn Descartes Berlin Klein Verlag ISBN 978 3 927199 01 9 Sasaki Chikara 2003 Descartes Mathematical Thought Archived 5 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 237 xiv 496 pp bibl indexes Dordrecht Boston London Kluwer Academic Publishers Schafer Rainer 2006 Zweifel und Sein Der Ursprung des modernen Selbstbewusstseins in Descartes cogito Wuerzburg Koenigshausen amp Neumann ISBN 978 3 8260 3202 8 Serfati Michel 2005 Geometrie in Ivor Grattan Guinness ed Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics Elsevier 1 22 Sorrell Tom 1987 Descartes Oxford England Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 287636 2 Vrooman Jack Rochford 1970 Rene Descartes A Biography Putnam Press Watson Richard A 2012 Rene Descartes Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc Archived from the original on 7 May 2015 Retrieved 31 March 2012 Watson Richard A 2007 Cogito Ergo Sum a life of Rene Descartes David R Godine 2002 reprint 2007 ISBN 978 1 56792 335 3 Was chosen by the New York Public library as one of 25 Books to Remember from 2002 Woo B Hoon 2013 The Understanding of Gisbertus Voetius and Rene Descartes on the Relationship of Faith and Reason and Theology and Philosophy Westminster Theological Journal 75 1 45 63 Archived from the original on 26 September 2022 Retrieved 7 April 2014 External links EditRene Descartes at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article Descartes Rene General Edit The Correspondence of Rene Descartes in EMLO Works by Rene Descartes at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Rene Descartes at Internet Archive Works by Rene Descartes at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Detailed biography of Descartes at MacTutor Herbermann Charles ed 1913 Rene Descartes Catholic Encyclopedia New York Robert Appleton Company John Cottingham translation of Meditations and Objections and Replies Rene Descartes 1596 1650 Published in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition 1996 A site containing Descartes main works including correspondence slightly modified for easier reading Descartes Philosophical Writings tr by Norman Kemp Smith at archive org Studies in the Cartesian philosophy 1902 by Norman Kemp Smith at archive org The Philosophical Works Of Descartes Volume II 1934 at archive org Descartes featured on the 100 French Franc banknote from 1942 Free scores by Rene Descartes at the International Music Score Library Project IMSLP Rene Descartes at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi su Descartes e il Seicento Livre Premier La Geometrie online and analyzed by A Warusfel BibNum click a telecharger for English analysis Bibliographies Edit Bibliografia cartesiana Bibliographie cartesienne on line 1997 2012 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edit Descartes Life and works Epistemology Mathematics Physics Ethics Modal Metaphysics Ontological Argument Theory of Ideas Pineal Gland Law ThesisInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edit Descartes Descartes Ethics Descartes Mind Body Distinction Descartes Scientific MethodOther Edit Bernard Williams interviewed about Descartes on Men of ideas BALDASSARRI F 2019 The mechanical life of plants Descartes on botany The British Journal for the History of Science 52 1 41 63 doi 10 1017 S000708741800095X Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Rene Descartes amp oldid 1138708649, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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