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René Descartes is generally considered the father of modern philosophy. He was the first major figure in the philosophical movement known as rationalism, a method of understanding the world based on the use of reason as the means to attain knowledge. Along with empiricism, which stresses the use of sense perception rather than pure reason, rationalism was one of the main intellectual currents of the Enlightenment, a cultural movement spanning the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that revolutionized the Western world. In tandem with men like John Locke, John Hobbes, and Voltaire, Descartes spurred society to re-examine its traditions and institutions, leading to massive social upheaval. Both the American and French Revolutions were based on Enlightenment theories, and the ways we approach science, math, philosophy, and the idea of the self were radically transformed during the period.
Descartes was born in
At La Flèche, Descartes’ professors favored the Aristotelian method of study, which held that nature was inherently stable and ordered and that one could rely on information derived from sense perceptions to deduce truths. Descartes would later question this fundamental tenet of his education. The college also taught mathematics separately from the study of physical world, which was founded on philosophy, rather than what we now consider scientific method. Descartes had doubts about this divide, and one of the major results of his later work was the use of mathematics in the study of physics.
After leaving La Flèche, Descartes enrolled in the University of Poitiers, and he obtained a law degree in 1616. Despite his ill health, he then enlisted in the military. His military service, along with his family’s modest wealth, gave Descartes the opportunity to travel. He happily settled in one foreign locale after another for most of his life. While in Holland in
In
In
It wasn’t until
The work that cemented Descartes’ fame was Meditations on First Philosophy (
But as his fame grew, so did the demands on his time. In 1649 Descartes moved from Holland to Stockholm, Sweden, at the request of Sweden’s nineteen-year-old Queen Christina, and agreed to work as her philosophy tutor. Ignoring Descartes’ poor health and his preference for staying in bed until noon, Queen Christina scheduled her lessons with him for 5:00 a.m. Lack of sleep and inhospitable living conditions took their toll on Descartes, and, in 1650, he died of pneumonia at age fifty-four. Despite his attempts to stay on the church’s good side, Descartes’ books were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books after his death, so for years no Catholic was allowed to read them.
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