René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, often called “the Father of modern philosophy.” Educated at the Jesuit college of La Flèche and trained in law at Poitiers, he traveled as a young man and served as a volunteer soldier. On the night of November 10, 1619, in southern Germany, vivid dreams convinced him he was called to build a unified science on the sure foundation of reason. Settling in the Dutch Republic for some twenty years, he published the Discourse on the Method (1637), whose appendix founded analytic geometry and the Cartesian coordinate system, and the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), which argues for the existence of God and the distinction of mind and body. From methodical doubt he reached his first certainty: “I think, therefore I am.” He died in Stockholm in 1650 while serving Queen Christina of Sweden.
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Western Philosophy from Augustine to Kant
Augustine of Hippo drew on Platonic philosophy to frame Christian thought, and Thomas Aquinas later united Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle. In the seventeenth century, René Descartes made methodical doubt the starting point of modern philosophy, Blaise Pascal explored the limits of reason, and John Locke grounded knowledge in experience. Immanuel Kant then sought to reconcile these rationalist and empiricist traditions.
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