Who is Rene Descartes?

Born in La Haye, France, which was later renamed Descartes in honour of his irrefutable ground-breaking work, René Descartes (see Figure 1) was an innovative thinker, often dubbed the father of modern philosophy. Having lived to the age of 53 (1596-1650), comparatively short to current times, Descartes certainly made the best of his five decades on this earth. He was educated at the propitious Jesuit college of La Flèche, where he studied traditional Aristotelian philosophy among other various subjects. After his graduation at La Flèche he moved from Anjou to Paris in order to attend Poitiers university, where he attained a degree in law (C.U.P., 2013).

After his expedition with formal education, Descartes joined the Imperial armies during the earlier stages of what is now referred to as the Thirty Years' War. In 1621 he managed to withdraw before the war worsened, but before doing so had the great honour of being a part of the winning side in the Battle of Prague (Flew, 1971, p. 177-178). After retiring from the ranks of the army, he found himself trapped in Germany due to the inability to travel because of poor winter weather. It was there that while locked up in a room with nobody or anything to distract him, he began the deep thinking required to later on, in 1637, write his essay named Discourse. In this essay he claims: “My design has never extended further than the attempt to reform my own opinions, and to build on a foundation which is entirely my own (Descartes, 1931, Part I).” This implies that the first essay he ever published—which later would prove to be groundbreaking work in such things as the most effective ways to approaching philosophy—was entirely for himself; to explain himself, and not to affect ot...

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...hilosopher, mathematician, and scientist, and revolutionized all three of these areas drastically, impacting their modern state to this day. Intellectuals such as René Descartes are certainly rare commodities, and surely he will be commended and studied for centuries to come such as Aristotle and Plato have been.

Works Cited

Columbia University Press [C.U.P.] (2013). René Descartes. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. Vancouver, B.C: Columbia University Press.

Craig, E. (2012). René Descartes. Britannica Biographies. Vancouver, B.C: Insomniac Press

Descartes, René. (1931). Philosophical Works. Cambridge, England: C.U.P.

Flew, Anthony. (1971). An Introduction to Western Philosophy: Ideas and Argument from Plato to Sartre. London, England: Thames and Hudson.

Harpur, Patrick. (2002). The Philosophers' Secret Fire. London, England: Penguin Books.