Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What years did Descartes live?
René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/, UK also /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/;[15] French:[ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian";[16] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. A native of the Kingdom of France, he spent about 20 years (1629–49) of his life in the Dutch Republic after serving for a while in the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. He is generally considered one of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age.[17]
If Descartes is still considered the father of modern philosophy, Dutch Republic can be called its cradle. Cartesianism is the name given to the philosophical doctrine of René Descartes. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. Cartesianism had been controversial for several years before 1656. Descartes himself had lived in the Dutch Republic for some twenty years (1628–1649). Descartes served for a while in the army of the Dutch military leader Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau, and developed a fascination for practical technology. In the 1630s, while staying in the Dutch city Deventer, Descartes worked on a text which became published as "Traite' de l'Homme" (1664). Throughout his writing, he used words such as clock, automaton, and self – moving machine as interchangeable constructs. He postulated an account of the physical world that was thoroughly materialistic. His mechanical view of nature replaced the organism model which had been popular since the Renaissance. His "Discours de la méthode" (1637) was originally published at Leiden, and his "Principia philosophiae" (1644) appeared from the presses at Amsterdam. In the 1630s and 1640s, Descartes's ideas gained a foothold at the Dutch universities.
Dualism is the division of two contrasted or opposed aspects.The dualist school supposes the existence of non-physical entities, the most widely discussed one being the mind. But beyond that it runs into stumbling blocks. Pierre Gassendi put one such problem directly to René Descartes in 1641, in response to Descartes's "Meditations":
Descartes' response to Gassendi, and to Princess Elizabeth who asked him similar questions in 1643, is generally considered nowadays to be lacking, because it did not address what is known in the philosophy of mind as the interaction problem. This is a problem for non-physical entities as posited by dualism: by what mechanism, exactly, do they interact with physical entities, and how can they do so? Interaction with physical systems requires physical properties which a non-physical entity does not possess.
The growing popularity of skeptical views created an intellectual crisis in seventeenth-century Europe. One major response was offered by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650). In his classic work, "Meditations of First Philosophy" (1641), Descartes sought to refute skepticism, but only after he had formulated the case for skepticism as powerfully as possible. Descartes argued that no matter what radical skeptical possibilities we imagine there are certain truths (e.g., that thinking is occurring, or that I exist) that are absolutely certain. Thus, the ancient skeptics were wrong to claim that knowledge is impossible. Descartes also attempted to refute skeptical doubts about the reliability of our senses, our memory, and other cognitive faculties. To do this, Descartes tried to prove that God exists and that God would not allow us to be systematically deceived about the nature of reality. Many contemporary philosophers question whether this second stage of Descartes’ critique of skepticism is successful.
In 1646 Christina's good friend, ambassador Pierre Chanut, met and corresponded with the philosopher René Descartes, asking him for a copy of his Meditations. Upon showing the queen some of the letters, Christina became interested in beginning a correspondence with Descartes. She invited him to Sweden, but Descartes was reluctant until she asked him to organize a scientific academy. Christina sent a ship to pick up the philosopher and 2,000 books.[39] Descartes arrived on 4October 1649. He resided with Chanut, and finished his Passions of the Soul. It is highly unlikely Descartes wrote a "Ballet de la Naissance de la Paix", performed on her birthday.[40] On the day after, 19December 1649, he probably started with his private lessons. With Christina's strict schedule he was invited to the cold and draughty castle at 5:00 AM daily to discuss philosophy and religion. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she disapproved of his mechanical view, and he did not appreciate her interest in Ancient Greek.[41] On 15 January Descartes wrote he had seen Christina only four or five times.[42] On 1February 1650 Descartes caught a cold. He died ten days later, early in the morning on 11 February 1650, and according to Chanut the cause of his death was pneumonia.[43][note 7]
By 1649, Descartes had become famous throughout Europe for being one of the continent's greatest philosophers and scientists.[44] That year, Queen Christina of Sweden invited Descartes to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love. She was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish the "Passions of the Soul", a work based on his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth.[48] Descartes accepted, and moved to Sweden in the middle of winter.[49]
Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approach has profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity.[94][95] The first two of his Meditations on First Philosophy, those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes' writings that most influenced modern thinking.[96] It has been argued that Descartes himself didn't realize the extent of this revolutionary move.[97] In shifting the debate from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?," Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God)—while the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority, "certainty" instead relies on the judgment of the individual.
One of the last notable philosophers to accept something like the Aristotelian "common sense" was Descartes in the 17th century, but he also undermined it. He described this inner faculty when writing in Latin in his "Meditations on first philosophy". The common sense is the link between the body and its senses, and the true human mind, which according to Descartes must be purely immaterial. Unlike Aristotle, who had placed it in the heart, by the time of Descartes this faculty was thought to be in the brain, and he located it in the pineal gland. Descartes' judgement of this common sense was that it was enough to persuade the human consciousness of the existence of physical things, but often in a very indistinct way. To get a more distinct understanding of things, it is more important to be methodical and mathematical. This line of thought was taken further, if not by Descartes himself then by those he influenced, until the concept of a faculty or organ of common sense was itself rejected.
Contemporaries such as Gassendi and Hobbes went beyond Descartes in some ways in their rejection of Aristotelianism, rejecting explanations involving anything other than matter and motion, including the distinction between the animal-like judgement of sense perception, a special separate common sense, and the human mind or , which Descartes had retained from Aristotelianism. In contrast to Descartes who "found it unacceptable to assume that sensory representations may enter the mental realm from without"...
But Descartes used two different terms in his work, not only the Latin term "", but also the French term , with which he opens his "Discourse on Method". And this second concept survived better. This work was written in French, and does not directly discuss the Aristotelian technical theory of perception. is the equivalent of modern English "common sense" or "good sense". As the Aristotelian meaning of the Latin term began to be forgotten after Descartes, his discussion of gave a new way of defining in various European languages (including Latin, even though Descartes himself did not translate as , but treated them as two separate things).
Descartes saw his Meditations as providing the metaphysical underpinning of his new physics. Like Galileo, he sought to overturn what he saw as two-thousand-year-old prejudices injected into the Western tradition by Aristotle. The Aristotelian thought of Descartes' day placed a great weight on the testimony of the senses, suggesting that all knowledge comes from the senses. The Meditator's suggestion that all one's most certain knowledge comes from the senses is meant to appeal directly to the Aristotelian philosophers who will be reading the Meditations. The motivation, then, behind the First Meditation is to start in a position the Aristotelian philosophers would agree with and then, subtly, to seduce them away from it. Descartes is aware of how revolutionary his ideas are, and must pay lip service to the orthodox opinions of the day in order to be heeded.
Beeckman's most influential teachers in Leiden probably were Snellius and Simon Stevin. He himself was a teacher to Johan de Witt and a teacher and friend of René Descartes. Beeckman had met the young Descartes in November 1618 in Breda, where Beeckman then lived and Descartes was then garrisoned as a soldier. It is said that they met when both were looking at a placard that was set up in the Breda marketplace, detailing a mathematical problem to be solved. Descartes asked Beeckman to translate the problem from Dutch to French. In their following meetings Beeckman interested Descartes in his corpuscularian approach to mechanical theory, and convinced him to devote his studies to a mathematical approach to nature. In 1619, Descartes dedicated one of his first "tractati" to him, the "Compendium Musicae". When Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic in the autumn of 1628, Beeckman also introduced him to many of Galileo's ideas. In 1629 they fell out over a dispute concerning whether Beeckman had helped Descartes with some of his mathematical discoveries. In October 1630, Descartes wrote a long and harshly abusive letter, apparently meant to crush Beeckman psychologically, in which he declared himself never to have been influenced by Beeckman. However, and despite a few other such fallings-outs, they remained in contact until Beeckman's death in 1637.
Descartes may be inconsistent on this point for in the "Replies" he says of objective existence, “this mode of being is of course much less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside the intellect; but, as I did explain, it is not therefore simply nothing.” Despite what Descartes appears to say in the "Meditations" it may be necessary for the objective reality to be less than the formal reality of the thing represented. Williams points out, “God, as the argument insists, has more reality or perfection than anything else whatever. Hence if Descartes’s idea of God is not itself God (which would of course be absurd), it cannot, however regarded, possess as much reality as God, and hence cannot demand as much reality in its cause as God possesses. So the argument seems to fall short of positing God as cause of the idea.” He goes on to say that Descartes must, therefore be relying on something more than the general principle that there must be as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the idea itself. Instead, he suggests, Descartes is relying on special features of the idea of God: “the infinity and perfection of God, represented in his idea, are of such a special character, so far in excess of any other possible cause, that the only thing adequate to produce an idea of that would be the thing itself, God.”
His contemporary Blaise Pascal, criticised him in similar words to those used by Plato's Socrates concerning Anaxagoras, discussed above, saying that "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God."
In his Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes sets forth two proofs for God's existence. One of these is founded upon the possibility of thinking the "idea of a being that is supremely perfect and infinite," and suggests that "of all the ideas that are in me, the idea that I have of God is the most true, the most clear and distinct."[87] Descartes considered himself to be a devout Catholic[59][60][61] and one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Catholic faith. His attempt to ground theological beliefs on reason encountered intense opposition in his time, however: Pascal regarded Descartes' views as rationalist and mechanist, and accused him of deism: "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God," while a powerful contemporary, Martin Schoock, accused him of atheist beliefs, though Descartes had provided an explicit critique of atheism in his Meditations. The Catholic Church prohibited his books in 1663.[46][88] Descartes also wrote a response to external world scepticism. Through this method of scepticism, he does not doubt for the sake of doubting but to achieve concrete and reliable information. In other words, certainty. He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Descartes goes on to show that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and that God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things. Descartes also believes a substance is something that does not need any assistance to function or exist. Descartes further explains how only God can be a true “substance”. But minds are substances, meaning they need only God for it to function. The mind is a thinking substance. The means for a thinking substance stem from ideas.[89]
Letter 14 compares British philosopher Isaac Newton to French philosopher René Descartes. Upon his death in 1727, Newton was compared to Descartes in a eulogy performed by French philosopher Fontenelle. While the British did not appreciate this comparison, Voltaire argues that Descartes, too, was a great philosopher and mathematician.
When in November 1640 the Long Parliament succeeded the Short, Hobbes felt that he was in disfavour due to the circulation of his treatise and fled to Paris. He did not return for 11 years. In Paris, he rejoined the coterie around Mersenne and wrote a critique of the "Meditations on First Philosophy" of Descartes, which was printed as third among the sets of "Objections" appended, with "Replies" from Descartes, in 1641. A different set of remarks on other works by Descartes succeeded only in ending all correspondence between the two.
In 1646 Chanut met and corresponded with the philosopher René Descartes, asking him for a copy of his "Meditations". Upon showing Christina of Sweden some of the letters, the queen became interested in beginning a correspondence with Descartes. She invited him to Sweden, but Descartes was reluctant until she asked him to organize a scientific academy. He resided with Chanut, and finished his Passions of the Soul. Chanut lived at Västerlånggatan, 450 meters from Tre Kronor (castle) on Gamla Stan. There, Chanut and Descartes made observations with a Torricellian barometer, a tube with mercury. Chanut was criticized when he organized a private mass in his house. Descartes died of pneumonia according to Chanut. Over time there have been speculations regarding the death of the philosopher. Theodor Ebert claimed that Descartes did not meet his end by being exposed to the harsh Swedish winter climate, as philosophers have been fond of repeating, but by arsenic poisoning.
Aristotle's scientific explanation in "Physics" resembles the DN model, an idealized form of scientific explanation. The framework of Aristotelian physics—Aristotelian metaphysics—reflected the perspective of this principally biologist, who, amid living entities' undeniable purposiveness, formalized vitalism and teleology, an intrinsic morality in nature. With emergence of Copernicanism, however, Descartes introduced mechanical philosophy, then Newton rigorously posed lawlike explanation, both Descartes and especially Newton shunning teleology within natural philosophy. At 1740, David Hume staked Hume's fork, highlighted the problem of induction, and found humans ignorant of either necessary or sufficient causality. Hume also highlighted the fact/value gap, as what "is" does not itself reveal what "ought".
Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is what he does, and his power must come from his essence. Descartes defines "thought" (cogitatio) as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious.[66] He gave reasons for thinking that waking thoughts are distinguishable from dreams, and that one's mind cannot have been "hijacked" by an evil demon placing an illusory external world before one's senses.[67]
Descartes' dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was according to Descartes a composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind. In Meditations Descartes even argues that while the mind is a substance, the body is composed only of "accidents".[77] But he did argue that mind and body are closely joined:[78]
Rene Descartes, a famous French philosopher, contributed to the field of psychology while also keeping the Catholic church's beliefs in mind. Descartes' beliefs were controversial during the 17th-century because some of his beliefs went against Christian teachings. Contrary to Christian teachings, Descartes believed that animals could be understood as a machine that did not have a soul. Although he did not specifically say that humans did not have a soul, Christians found this statement to be controversial because human beings resembled animals. These beliefs were written in his work titled "The World". "The World" was never published because Descartes feared the Catholic church would punish him for his controversial beliefs.
Unlike many moralists of the time, Descartes was not devoid of passions but rather defended them; he wept upon Francine's death in 1640.[40] "Descartes said that he did not believe that one must refrain from tears to prove oneself a man." Russell Shorto postulated that the experience of fatherhood and losing a child formed a turning point in Descartes' work, changing its focus from medicine to a quest for universal answers.[41]
Before Descartes begins to describe his theories in physics, he introduces the reader to the idea that there is no relationship between our sensations and what creates these sensations, thereby casting doubt on the Aristotelian belief that such a relationship existed. Next he describes how fire is capable of breaking wood apart into its minuscule parts through the rapid motion of the particles of fire within the flames. This rapid motion of particles is what gives fire its heat, since Descartes claims heat is nothing more than just the motion of particles, and what causes it to produce light.
Descartes apparently started giving lessons to Queen Christina after her birthday, three times a week, at 5 a.m, in her cold and draughty castle. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she did not like his mechanical philosophy, nor did he appreciate her interest in Ancient Greek. By 15 January 1650, Descartes had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1 February he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February.[52] The cause of death was pneumonia according to Chanut, but peripneumonia according to the doctor Van Wullen who was not allowed to bleed him.[53] (The winter seems to have been mild,[54] except for the second half of January which was harsh as described by Descartes himself; however, "this remark was probably intended to be as much Descartes' take on the intellectual climate as it was about the weather."[48])
René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596.[21] His mother, Jeanne Brochard, died soon after giving birth to him, and so he was not expected to survive.[21] Descartes' father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes.[22] René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots.[23] In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche,[24][25] where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including Galileo's work.[24][26] After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and Licence in canon and civil law in 1616,[24] in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer.[27] From there he moved to Paris.
The rise of modern rationalism in the Dutch Republic, had a profound influence on the 17th-century philosophy. Descartes is often considered to be the first of the modern rationalists. Descartes himself had lived in the Dutch Republic for some twenty years (1628–1649) and served for a while in the army of the Dutch military leader Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau. The Dutch Republic was the first country in which Descartes' rationalistic philosophy (Cartesianism) succeeded in replacing Aristotelianism as the academic orthodoxy. Fritz Berolzheimer considers Hugo Grotius the Descartes of legal philosophy and notes Grotian rationalism's influence on the 17th-century jurisprudence: "As the Cartesian "cogito ergo sum" became the point of departure of rationalistic philosophy, so the establishment of government and law upon reason made Hugo Grotius the founder of an independent and purely rationalistic system of natural law." In the late 1650s Leiden was a place where one could study Cartesian philosophy. Sometime between 1656 and 1661 it appears that Spinoza did some formal study of philosophy at the University of Leiden. Philosophy of Spinoza (Spinozism) was an systematic answer to Descartes' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate.