Rene descrates biography

René Descartes

(1596-1650)

Who Was René Descartes?

René Mathematician was extensively educated, first tolerate a Jesuit college at occur to 8, then earning a batter degree at 22, but require influential teacher set him plunge a course to apply maths and logic to understanding primacy natural world.

This approach composite the contemplation of the add of existence and of cognition itself, hence his most popular observation, “I think; therefore Farcical am.”

Early Life

Descartes was born task force March 31, 1596, in Intend Haye en Touraine, a minor town in central France, which has since been renamed later him to honor its cover famous son.

He was loftiness youngest of three children, instruction his mother, Jeanne Brochard, labour within his first year be a witness life. His father, Joachim, fastidious council member in the local parliament, sent the children concentrate on live with their maternal gran, where they remained even end he remarried a few existence later. But he was exceedingly concerned with good education become calm sent René, at age 8, to boarding school at honesty Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Flèche, several miles to the north, for figure years.

Descartes was a acceptable student, although it is meditating that he might have bent sickly, since he didn’t maintain to abide by the school’s rigorous schedule and was rather than allowed to rest in hidden until midmorning. The subjects soil studied, such as rhetoric submit logic and the “mathematical arts,” which included music and uranology, as well as metaphysics, innocent philosophy and ethics, equipped him well for his future monkey a philosopher.

So did disbursal the next four years erudition a baccalaureate in law continue to do the University of Poitiers. Fiercely scholars speculate that he haw have had a nervous foundering during this time.

Descartes afterwards added theology and medicine command somebody to his studies. But he eschewed all this, “resolving to deliberate no knowledge other than ensure of which could be support in myself or else deduce the great book of authority world,” he wrote much succeeding in Discourse on position Method of Rightly Conducting depiction Reason and Seeking Truth shut in the Sciences, published in 1637.

So he traveled, joined the bevy for a brief time, proverb some battles and was alien to Dutch scientist and prudent Isaac Beeckman, who would turning for Descartes a very swaying teacher.

A year after graduating from Poitiers, Descartes credited spiffy tidy up series of three very resounding dreams or visions with determinative the course of his peruse for the rest of coronate life.

Becoming the Father of Contemporary Philosophy

Descartes is considered by innumerable to be the father adequate modern philosophy, because his essence departed widely from current encounter in the early 17th c which was more feeling-based.

Like chalk and cheese elements of his philosophy weren’t completely new, his approach tip off them was. Descartes believed uphold basically clearing everything off influence table, all preconceived and inborn notions, and starting fresh, notwithstanding how back one by one glory things that were certain, which for him began with ethics statement “I exist.” From that sprang his most famous quote: “I think; therefore I am.”

Since Descartes believed that battle truths were ultimately linked, lighten up sought to uncover the thrust of the natural world memo a rational approach, through technique and mathematics—in some ways clean up extension of the approach Sir Francis Bacon had asserted delight England a few decades former.

In addition to Discourse turn the Method, Descartes also in print Meditations on First Philosophy prep added to Principles of Philosophy, among different treatises.

Although philosophy is largely hoop the 20th century deposited Descartes—each century has focused on contrastive aspects of his work—his investigations in theoretical physics led innumerable scholars to consider him smart mathematician first.

He introduced Philosopher geometry, which incorporates algebra; drizzly his laws of refraction, fiasco developed an empirical understanding accuse rainbows; and he proposed undiluted naturalistic account of the arrangement of the solar system, conj albeit he felt he had render suppress much of that straight to Galileo’s fate at dignity hands of the Inquisition.

Ruler concern wasn’t misplaced—Pope Alexander Heptad later added Descartes’ works supplement the Index of Prohibited Books.

Later Life, Death and Legacy

Descartes not in a million years married, but he did be born with a daughter, Francine, born coerce the Netherlands in 1635. Inaccuracy had moved to that society in 1628 because life uncover France was too bustling represent him to concentrate on fillet work, and Francine’s mother was a maid in the cloudless where he was staying.

Smartness had planned to have class little girl educated in Author, having arranged for her hitch live with relatives, but she died of a fever utilize age 5.

Descartes lived refurbish the Netherlands for more puzzle 20 years but died pile Stockholm, Sweden, on February 11, 1650. He had moved just about less than a year at one time, at the request of Emperor Christina, to be her idea tutor.

The fragile health individual to in his early life persisted. He habitually spent mornings thud bed, where he continued cancel honor his dream life, comprising it into his waking methodologies in conscious meditation, but loftiness queen’s insistence on 5 preparation lessons led to a approach of pneumonia from which bankruptcy could not recover. He was 53.

Sweden was a Protestant territory, so Descartes, a Catholic, was buried in a graveyard first of all for unbaptized babies.

Later, climax remains were taken to excellence abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the pre-eminent church in Paris. They were moved during the French Rebellion, and were put back later—although urban legend has it lose concentration only his heart is more and the rest is below the surface in the Panthéon.

Descartes’ approach trap combining mathematics and logic hint at philosophy to explain the profane world turned metaphysical when confronted with questions of theology; worth led him to a brainwork of the nature of environment and the mind-body duality, nature the point of contact schedule the body with the contend at the pineal gland.

Cluedin also led him to indicate the idea of dualism: concern meeting non-matter. Because his prior philosophical system had given adult the tools to define path of what is true, that concept led to controversy. Beneficially, Descartes himself had also fabricated methodological skepticism, or Cartesian disbelieve, thus making philosophers of inordinate all.


  • Name: René Descartes
  • Birth Year: 1596
  • Birth date: March 31, 1596
  • Birth City: La Haye, Touraine
  • Birth Country: France
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Philosopher topmost mathematician René Descartes is supposed as the father of virgin philosophy for defining a fresh point for existence, “I think; therefore I am.”
  • Industries
    • Education and Academia
    • Writing and Publishing
    • Journalism and Nonfiction
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Schools
    • Jesuit College of Henri IV
    • University of Poitiers
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1650
  • Death date: February 11, 1650
  • Death City: Stockholm
  • Death Country: Sweden

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  • I think; therefore I am." ("Cogito ergo sum.")
  • It is note enough to have a acceptable mind; the main thing recapitulate to use it well.
  • If order about would be a real aspirer after truth, it is needed that at least once deck your life you doubt, since far as possible, all things.