We explain who René Descartes was, where he was born, what his works and contributions were. Also, its characteristics and famous phrases.
Who was René Descartes?
René Descartes (1596-1650) was a philosopher, scientist and mathematician of French originconsidered by tradition as the father of modern philosophy, analytical geometry and mechanism in physics.
Descartes was one of the great men of science of his time and is still today. an obligatory and central reference of Western culture. He is considered an innovator and a disrupter of the methods and theories accepted by the academy at the time, which he helped to re-found.
Many works and philosophical concepts today carry the adjective “Cartesian” to indicate their origin in the postulates of this thinker. Whether in metaphysics, theology or epistemology, Descartes is a figure to whom one constantly turns, proof that his thought is still alive and continues to speak to philosophers of the present.
Among his many and varied works we find fundamental titles such as Rules for the direction of the mind(1628), The discourse of the method (1637) and Metaphysical meditations (1641).
See also: Rationalism
Life and training of Descartes
Descartes He was born on March 31, 1596 in Touraine (France), today called “Descartes” in his honor.. He was the third son of a French family of lower nobility. His father was Joachim Descartes, advisor to the Parliament of Brittany, and his mother Jeanne Brochard, daughter of the mayor of Nantes. At the time of his birth, his parents were fleeing Rennes due to the bubonic plague. Barely a few months old, Descartes was orphaned by his mother on May 13, 1597, and was left in the care of his father in his maternal grandmother's house.
Descartes received an early education at the Collège Henry IVa Jesuit teaching center located in the town of La Flèche. He remained there from eleven to sixteen years of age. Even though he had to undergo a special regimen due to his poor health (it is believed that he had delicate health), he was highly valued by the educational community. Since he was little he learned and excelled in physics, scholastic philosophy and mathematics. He also studied Greek and Latin, and read authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, Homer and Plato, among others.
In 1614 he entered the University of Poitiers, where He studied medicine and law, a discipline in which he obtained bachelor's and graduate degrees.. After a brief foray into military life, and after some trips through Denmark and Germany, Descartes returned to France to settle in Paris. He stayed there for a while until 1629, the year in which he returned permanently to the Netherlands.
In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden summoned him to Stockholm.where he died of pneumonia in February of the following year. The cause of his death is usually a matter of suspicion. Eike Pies, German historian and doctor, argues in his book The murder of Descartes who was murdered by arsenic poisoning.
Fields of interest of René Descartes
Descartes had a preference for the sciences that were most developed during and after the Renaissance, so He recognized himself as a Copernican and atomistfollowing the studies of Copernicus, Galileo and Gassendi.
He maintained a close correspondence with many thinkers of the time., with whom he frequently discussed physics, mathematics and philosophy, his three major areas of work.
His works show a large number of fields of thought. An example of this is his work in geometry, optics, physics, mathematics and philosophy in almost all its branches.
Works of René Descartes
Except for some notes from his youth, The first preserved work of Descartes was his Rules for the direction of the spirit (1701)which was written in 1628 but published posthumously. Other important works, published during his lifetime, are the Discourse on the method to choose reason well and find the truth in the sciences, Metaphysical meditations, The search for truth through natural reason and Principles of philosophyamong others.
Almost all of his works were written in Latin, in the style of the time, although many were also written in his native language, French. His most studied works in universities and philosophical schools, and today considered fundamental works of Western philosophy, are:
- Discourse of the method (1637). Originally written in French, this work is divided into six parts and tells the story of Descartes' life and the circumstances he had to go through to find a unitary method for knowledge. Here the Cartesian or hyperbolic doubt appears for the first time and, after its development, the exposition of the four rules to follow to find the ultimate truth of things. The truth is also characterized as distinct and evident, the two criteria to distinguish it from the others.
- Metaphysical meditations (1641). Originally written in French, the meditations present the philosophical system introduced by Descartes in the Discourse of the method. Divided into six parts (each one a meditation) the book is the metaphysical explanation of the Cartesian method of hyperbolic doubt. After a first meditation in which Descartes dismantles the sources of all possible knowledge (the senses and reason), the other five meditations revolve around the possibility of restoring the validity of those same sources to guarantee that man is not always wrong. and can find a different and evident truth.
Main ideas of René Descartes
The philosophical works of Descartes They marked the end of an era (the medieval world) to give way to philosophical modernity.. Most of his works revolve around the criticism of established methods of thought, the construction of a new method to find the truth, the development of hyperbolic doubt (the “methodical doubt”, regarding the method) and the ego cogito as the first obvious truth.
- Deduction and induction. On the one hand, the method consisted of the application of deductive and inductive reasoning from science to philosophy. These reasonings rejected the scholastic doctrine, which compared opinions of the ancient teachers of the genre and was based on the canonical interpretation of the Scriptures to guarantee the truth.
- The existence of God. Although his thought recognized the existence of God, many specialists in Descartes maintain that God only appears to avoid the French philosopher from problems with the Church. The fact that Descartes lived in a time of censorship and intellectual persecution (as happened with Galileo) is undeniable. However, in the Metaphysical meditations God, as guarantor of reason, plays such an important role in recovering the world that his presence is unavoidable.
- Methodical doubt. It is also known as “hyperbolic” doubt (due to its exaggerated nature) or “Cartesian” doubt (in reference to Descartes). The doubt appears as a methodological proposal in Discourse of the method and then put it into practice Metaphysical meditations. Descartes maintains that everything that may be the subject of doubt must be discarded as true. It doesn't matter that it is unreasonable to doubt it, if it can be doubted it is enough.
- Ego cogito. Even though different antecedents can be traced, Descartes is recognized for having been the first to formulate the ego cogito: I think, therefore I am. The discussions around this formula, its meaning and the usefulness it represents in Meditations They still play a fundamental role in contemporary philosophical discussions. Broadly speaking, it can be said that the ego cogito It affirms the presence of an egoic subjectivity above the rest of things. The world as an extensive substance (extensive res), the body and even the senses play a secondary role in the face of the obvious and inevitability of the Cartesian ego: even when it doubts, can be deceived or even makes a mistake, it is undeniable and necessary that the self exists so that it can suffer each of these conditions.
Other philosophical ideas and figures that Descartes introduced into the world of philosophy are: the dualism of body and soul, the immortality of the soul, ideas as immanent, the degrees of reality, the physical functioning of the body (very close to how it is thought of). today) and the origin of dream material, among others.
Contributions of René Descartes in other fields
Mathematics gained with Descartes the appearance of analytical geometry and the theory of equations. His contributions in the field were numerous and have to do with the method of stating things.
For example, Descartes introduced the use of letters of the alphabet as variables: he distinguished between the first (A, B, C…) for the known and the last (X, Y, Z…) for the unknown.
Also created the method of exponents to represent powersand the Cartesian law of signs. Today we speak of “Cartesian planes” in his honor.
Although in physics his contributions were not so significant, it is true that Optics and mechanics benefited greatly from his thinking. By replacing spiritual values in the work of earlier thinkers with mechanical interpretations, he was able to better approximate physical phenomena and thus established the foundations for the modern scientific method.
Recognitions to René Descartes
Descartes' remains were exhumed in 1676 and placed in a copper coffin to be transported to Paris, where they were in the church of Saint-Geneviève-du-Mont, then in the Panthéon and finally in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His skull, however, is in the Museum of Man in the same city. His hometown was named after him. One of the lunar craters, too.
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References
- Cottingham, J. G. (1993). A Descartes dictionary. Blackwell Reference.
- Cottingham, J. G. (1995). Descartes. National Autonomous University of Mexico.
- Cottingham, J. G. (1992). The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge University Press.
