Descartes Essential eBook

René Descartes was born in La Haye (now Descartes), in the French department of Indre-et-Loire. At the age of eight, he entered the Jesuit Royal Henry-Le-Grand College in La Flèche. He had considerable freedom and was appreciated by his teachers, but declared in the Discourse on the Method his disappointment with scholastic teaching. Afterwards, he continued his studies, graduating with a Bachelor's and Licentiate degree in Law in 1616 from the University of Poitiers. However, Descartes never practiced law, and in 1618 he enlisted in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, intending to pursue a military career. But he considered himself less an actor than a spectator: more of a listener in a school of war than a true soldier. He then met Isaac Beeckman, and composed a short treatise on music entitled Compendium Musicae. It is also during this time that he wrote Larvatus prodeo (I walk masked). In 1619, he traveled to Germany and on November 10th had a dream vision of a new mathematical and scientific system. In 1622, he returned to France and spent the following years in Paris and some other parts of Europe. In 1628, he composed the Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind), and left for the Netherlands, where he lived until 1649, but frequently changing addresses. In 1629 he began working on Treatise on the World, a work of physics, which was intended to defend the thesis of heliocentrism, but in 1633, when Galileo was condemned, Descartes abandoned his plans to publish it. In 1635, Descartes' illegitimate daughter, Francine, was born. She was baptized on August 7, 1635. Her death in 1640 was a great blow to Descartes. In 1637, he published three short summaries of his scientific work: Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry, but it is the preface to these works that continues to be read to this day: the Discourse on the Method. In 1641, his best-known work appeared: Meditations on First Philosophy, with the first six sets of Objections and Replies. The authors of the objections are: for the first set, the Dutch theologian Johan de Kater; for the second, Mersenne; for the third, Thomas Hobbes; for the fourth, Arnauld; for the fifth, Gassendi; and for the sixth set, Mersenne. In 1642, the second edition of the Meditations included a seventh objection, made by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin, followed by a Letter to Dinet. In 1643, Cartesian philosophy was condemned by the University of Utrecht, and Descartes began his long correspondence with Elizabeth of Bohemia. Descartes published The Principles of Philosophy, a kind of Cartesian manual, and made a quick visit to France in 1644, where he met the French ambassador to the Swedish court, Chanut, who put him in contact with Queen Christina of Sweden. On this occasion, he is said to have declared that the Universe is entirely filled with an omnipresent "ether." Thus, the rotation of the Sun, through the ether, would create waves or eddies, explaining the movement of the planets, like a mixer. The ether would also be the medium through which light propagates, traversing it through space from the Sun to us. In 1647 he was awarded a pension by the King of France and began working on the Description of the Human Body. He interviewed Frans Burman in Egmond-Binnen in 1648, resulting in the Conversation with Burman. In 1649 he went to Sweden at the invitation of Queen Christina, and his Treatise on the Passions, which he dedicated to Princess Isabella, was published. René Descartes died of pneumonia on February 11, 1650, in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was working as a tutor at the invitation of the Queen. Accustomed to working in bed until noon, his health suffered from the demands of Queen Christina – her studies began at 5 a.m. As a Catholic in a Protestant country, he was buried in a cemetery for unbaptized children, in Adolf Fredrikskyrkan in Stockholm. Later, his remains were taken to France and buried in the Church of Saint Genevieve-du-Mont in Paris. An 18th-century memorial remains in the Swedish church. During the French Revolution, his remains were exhumed to be placed in the Panthéon, alongside other great French thinkers. The village in the Loire Valley where he was born was renamed La Haye-Descartes. In 1667, after his death, the Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Prohibited Books.