Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• A French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.

• Spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholic.

• 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.

• 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, 1644) and Principles of Philosophy (1644, in Latin, 1647 in French). The statement has either been interpreted as a logical syllogism or as an intuitive thought.

• 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. 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 systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in history—exerted an influence on modern Western thought in general, with the birth of two 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.

​

 

Quotes By Descartes:

• ​​“Cogito Ergo Sum.” (“I think, therefore I am.”)

• There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.

• The two operations of our understanding, intuition, and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely on the acquisition of knowledge.

• The thinking of the mind is twofold: understanding and willing.

• Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom.

• Conquer yourself rather than the world.

• When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

• Control your body if you want your mind to work properly.

• Mind and soul of the man is entirely different from the body.​

​