Descartes

• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is widely known to be the founder of modern philosophy.
• Descartes's father was a councillor of the parliament of Brittany and possessed a moderate amount of landed property. When Descartes father died, he inherited his land and sold his estates and invested his money, obtaining six or seven thousand Francs a year.
• From 1604 to 1612, he was educated at the Jesuit college of La Fleche and enlisted in the Dutch army in (1617). Then in 1619 he enlisted in the Bavarian army. He was also a sincere Catholic.
• In 1621 he gave up fighting in the army after a visit to Italy. He then settled in Paris in 1625, but in 1628 he rejoined the army. When this episode was finished, he decided to live in Holland. This was probably to escape persecution.
• He lived in Holland for 20 years, from 1629 to 1649, except from a few brief visits to France and one to England, both were for business. One of the main reasons why Descartes moved to Holland, was because it was the one country that had freedom of speculation in the 17th century. This is also why many philosophers who wrote controversial books, went to Holland to get them printed. Such as Lock and Spinoza. But even in Holland, Descartes was subject to vexatious attacks by the Protestants. Because it was said that his views led to atheism, he would have been prosecuted if it wasn't for the intervention from the ambassador of France and the Prince of Orange. With this attack having failed, another  less direct attack was made on him a few years later, by the the authorities of the University of Leyden, which forbade any mention of him. But yet again the Prince of Orange intervened and told the University to stop being silly.



Rene Descartes

• Queen Christina of Sweden, thought that because she was a sovereign, she had the right to waste the time of great men. So because she was a big fan of Descartes, she wanted daily sessions from him. But because she was so busy, the only time of day that she could spare was five in the morning. With Descartes being a man who didn't like to wake up before midday, he was unaccustomed to this early rising in the cold of a Scandinavian winter and therefore couldn't uphold these daily sessions.
• Descartes fell ill and died in February, 1650. He never married, but he had a daughter who died at the age of five. Its been known, that Descartes said that the passing of his daughter was the greatest sorrow of his life. Descartes was always well dressed and always wore a sword.
• Descartes was a philosopher, a mathematician and a man of Science. His great contribution to geometry was the invention of co-ordinate geometry, although not quite in its final form.
• The book in which he set forth most of his scientific theories was Principia Philosophiae, which was published in 1644. The two most important books that Descartes has written from a philosophical stand point are the Discourse on method (1637) and the Meditations (1642).
• In these books, Descartes begins by explaining the method of 'Cartesian doubt'. The method of 'Cartesian doubt' is basically to help Descartes have a firm basis for his philosophy. In order for him to achieve this he resolves to make himself doubt everything that he can manage to doubt. Knowing that this process could take some time, he decided to remove everything from his mind that he could possibly doubt in relation to his practice. He began with scepticism in regard to the senses. 'I can doubt', he says 'that I am sitting here by the fire in a dressing-gown ? yes, for sometimes I have dreamt that I was here when in fact I was naked in bed'. He then proceeds to discuss how he thinks that there might be a powerful demon misleading him and that if there is such a demon, it might be that all things that he sees are only are illusion of which the demon makes use as traps for Descartes credulity. In order for Descartes to overcome these thoughts, he then went on to say one of the most famous philosophical quotes of his time, which was 'There remains, however, something that I cannot doubt: no demon, however cunning, could deceive me if I did not exist. I may have no body : this might be an illusion. But thought is different, While I wanted to think everything false, it must necessarily be that I who thought was something; and remarking that this truth, I think, therefore I am'. Once Descartes established  this quote, he had set a firm foundation from which he could rebuild his knowledge from. He had established that the only thing he knew was real, was his mind. ' The I that has been proved to exist has been inferred from the fact that I think, therefore I exist while I think, and only then. If I ceased to think, there would be no evidence of my existence. I am a thing that thinks, a substance of which the whole nature or essence consists in thinking, and which needs no place or material thing for its existence. The soul, therefore, is wholly distinct from the body and easier to know than the body; it would be what it is even if there were no body.'
• He also believed that Knowledge of external things must be by the mind, not by the senses.
• Descartes believed that because god is good, god wouldn't act deceitful like the demon which he has previously mentioned. Therefore he believed that because god gave him an inclination to believe in bodies, bodies must therefore exist. He also believed that god gave him the faculty to correct errors, therefore, he uses this faculty to employ that whatever is clear and distinct, must be true. Which enables him to know mathematics and physics.
• In the Meditations there was a discussion as to why the mind feels 'sorrow' when the body is thirsty. The Cartesian answer to this, was, the body and mind were like two clocks, that when one indicated 'thirst' the other indicated 'sorrow'.