"René Descartes"
(1596-1650)
René Descartes (/ˈdeɪˌkɑːrt/ French:
[ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form:
"Cartesian". 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French
philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western
philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his
writings, which are studied closely to this day. A native of the Kingdom of
France, he spent about 20 years (1629–49) of his life in the Dutch Republic
after serving for a while in the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince
of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. He is generally
considered one of the most notable intellectual representatives of the Dutch
Golden Age.
Descartes's Meditations on First
Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy
departments. Descartes's influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the
Cartesian coordinate system (see below) was named after him. He is credited as
the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry,
used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was
also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution.
Descartes refused to accept the
authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from
those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Les passions de l'âme,
a treatise on the early modern version of what are now commonly called
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" (French: Je pense, donc
je suis; I think, therefore I am), found in part IV of Discours de la méthode
(1637; written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and
§7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644; written in Latin).
Many elements of his 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.In his theology,
he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation.
Descartes laid the foundation for
17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and
Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting
of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all
well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz
contributed greatly to science as well.
