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Conventionally recognised as the founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes (1596-1650) is also inseparably associated with the development of modern science. His Discourse on Method (1637) was composed in French, not the scholastic Latin; he was here seeking to communicate with literate citizens rather than the university academics, who were still heavily influenced by the derivative form of Aristotelianism that was taught in Christian Scholasticism. Primarily a scientist, Descartes opposed Scholasticism. His reputation as an early vivisectionist has met with strong criticism.

René  Descartes


1.        Introduction

2.        Early  Life

3.        A  Reclusive  Philosopher

4.        The  Suppressed  New  Astronomy

5.         From  the  Rules  to  Meditations

6.         Problems  with  Calvinist  Theologians

7.         Principia  Philosophiae

8.        The  Vivisection  Issue

9.        Supporters  and  Critics



1.   Introduction

While Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is famed as the innovator of modern empirical method, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) has the repute of a rationalist, employing a form of intensive deductive reasoning, but not divorced from experiment; he pursued a form of scientific research. Descartes remained a Roman Catholic in his basic religious views, although he was not by any means typical of that ideological category, and in fact was quite a radical.

Descartes was a proponent of the scientific findings of his era, and tried to improve on these. Modern commentators sometimes refer to the "new science" of that era. Descartes opposed the traditional Scholastic philosophy perpetuated by the universities, a form of thinking rooted in Aristotelianism as interpreted by the Christian Schoolmen of the late medieval period. This version of Aristotle had been accommodated to concepts and circumstances completely unknown to the Stagirite.


There are some misleading "new age" versions of Descartes that depict him as a Jesuit-influenced "dualist." In reality, his version of philosophy and science evoked the fierce hostility of Roman Catholic and Calvinist theologians. Those dogmatic opponents were adherents of the Scholastic Aristotelianism which Descartes negotiated so assiduously. "He is best characterised as a philosopher of the Scientific Revolution" (Clarke 2006:2). However, his definition of animals is controversial, and open to strong criticism, having been influential in vivisection practices. See Descartes and Vivisection.

2.   Early  Life

The social context is relevant. Descartes was born at the small town of La Haye, near Poitiers. His father was one of the landed gentry, gaining the reputation of a councillor and lawyer. French society was then divided into three classes, namely the aristocracy, the clergy, and the "third estate." There could be some movement in the conglomerate third class, where lawyers had some eminence. Most of those below that level (i.e., lawyers) were afflicted with disadvantages, including illiteracy. Even a century later, most of the French population were illiterate. They had no chance of learning the prestige language of Latin, which the clergy and scholars employed. Many people could not even sign their names in French.

Descartes was educated at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, where he boarded for eight years. The curriculum was not limited to theology, but lent scope to the classical humanities. The prevalent Christian Late Scholastic Aristotelianism was represented, at a time when the Jesuits adapted the French university system, gaining control of bourgeois and upper class education.



In 1618 Descartes opted for military enlistment, moving to the Netherlands where he joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. He has often been described as a soldier; some sources suggest that he served as an engineer, using his educated talent. That same year he encountered at Breda the Dutch mathematician Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637), described as "an enthusiastic scientific amateur" who "introduced Descartes to some of the new currents in science, the newly revived atomist ideas, and the attempt to combine mathematics and physics" (D. Garber, "Rene Descartes: 1 Life," Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

He moved to Germany for further military service. In November 1619, while lodging at Ulm, Descartes experienced three intense dreams narrated by his early biographer Adrien Baillet in La Vie de M. Descartes (1691). This episode created in him the belief that he was destined to complete an encyclopaedia of the sciences. His enthusiasm for mathematics was accompanied by such developing themes as the light of reason, which is more complex in his vocabulary than contemporary usage denotes.


He continued to travel after leaving military service. Descartes returned to France, but did not settle. To obtain an income, he sold his share of the ancestral property; he was able to live as a gentleman. However, Descartes reacted to encounters with Parisian society. The reasons for his second departure from France in 1628 have been differently explained. One version is presented in terms of an effort to gain solitude away from the customary urban distractions. Yet solitude can be a misleading word here; some of his activities were rather more extroverted than a retirement may suggest. Meaning his preoccupation with corpses and carcases in a pursuit of anatomical discovery.

Descartes moved to the Netherlands, though never settling, living in numerous places, including Amsterdam, Leiden, and Utrecht. He became so difficult to locate that some persons spelt his name as Monsieur d'Escartes, meaning Mr. Evasion.

3.   A  Reclusive  Philosopher

This habit of peregrination and withdrawal has created different interpretations of his psychology. Descartes is described in a major academic work as "a reclusive, cantankerous, and oversensitive loner" by the late 1630s (Clarke, op. cit., p. 180). We may believe that "his aversion to the ideas of others extended to his avoidance of learned people; in fact, as he matured, he tended to avoid all contact with people, and his adult life was lived primarily in isolation" (K. Detlefsen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews).

Care is needed to describe and define such traits, however briefly. It is not too difficult to discern why the subject was so wary of involvement with the learned, who were so often linked to the inflexible Scholastic curriculum which he opposed in his researches.




Quite understandably, Descartes did not want his tongue cut out for contradicting ecclesiastical authorities, who inhabited the upper tiers of the French caste system. Religion so often becomes a suppressive measure of convenience for the executioner mentality, which can too easily masquerade behind the pomp and veneer of presumed spirituality.


The major correspondent of Descartes was Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), an erudite French theologian and multi-linguist who was in contact with scientists and philosophers throughout Europe. Mersenne was in contact with Descartes from the 1620s. Indeed, it was Mersenne who acted as the major transmitter of intellectual news to the reclusive Descartes. Yet perhaps the latter was even wary of the former in some "cantankerous" moods, just in case loyalties might switch. Mersenne had written books against heresy, and was familiar with much scientific research, grasping that Scholastic philosophy was vulnerable to attack.


4.   The  Suppressed  New  Astronomy


The suppressed new astronomy is inseparably associated with the drafting of Le Monde (The World), a work which Descartes had virtually completed by 1633, and which incorporated his mechanistic physics and physiology. That same year, however, he learnt with dismay of the recent condemnation (in Rome) of Galileo for holding Copernican views. Descartes prudently decided not to publish his book, which was deducibly Copernican in complexion.

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) was a canon at Frombork, a mathematician and astronomer who had enrolled at the University of Cracow in Poland. His On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres redefined the Earth as a small planet moving around the sun, as distinct from the traditional geocentric theory which believed the Earth to exist at the centre of the universe. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) assimilated the heliocentric new astronomy, authoring the first book (Mysterium Cosmographicum) to be openly heliocentric (see Stanford Encyclopaedia). The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was one of Kepler's readers.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo was subsequently an empirical convert to the Copernican rationale, and via his improved telescopes, made various important discoveries of his own. In 1610, and in a letter to Kepler, "Galileo reported that the professors at Padua and Pisa did not want to know of his discoveries because they adhered to the opinion that truth is not to be found in nature but in text comparisons" (Shepherd, Psychology in Science, 1983, p. 91).


Many years later, he reasserted that rationale in his Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), published at Florence. The Inquisition banned the sale of his book. Galileo was ordered to appear before the ecclesiastical authorities in Rome. In 1633 the Inquisition issued a sentence of condemnation, and he was forced to recite and sign a formal abjuration of the heresy (see further Stanford Encyclopaedia). Galileo was confined in Siena and placed under house arrest. That same year, he was permitted to retire to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence, where he lived under house arrest for the remaining years of his existence.

"The same eyes which had made telescopic discoveries were totally blind during the last years of his life, Pope Urban VIII having denied his requests to consult doctors in nearby Florence at the critical onset of the fatality" (Shepherd, op. cit., p. 92). Eyes could suffer as well as tongues, in the climate of inquisition.


5.    From  the  Rules  to  Meditations

The travelling Descartes had earlier studied various sciences, including optics, and may have discovered the law of refraction independently. During the 1620s he had composed an incomplete treatise on method entitled Rules for the Direction of the Mind. This early work evidences a preoccupation with mathematics, and he perhaps abandoned the Rules because of the difficulties encountered in taking mathematics as the model for knowledge. His subsequent works predominantly contain metaphysics and much natural philosophy; his invocation of mathematics as a gauge of certainty has been viewed as rhetorical by close analysts. Thus, the associated "method of reasoning based on mathematics" requires due caution as a criterion for his philosophy.

In a gathering at Paris in 1628, at the residence of the Papal nuncio, Descartes expressed some of his emerging ideas to a small audience discussing Scholastic philosophy. Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629), the Augustinian theologian, encouraged Descartes to pursue his researches as a means of serving Christianity. The Copernican issue would not have been envisaged in this cue; the fact is that Descartes soon afterwards left Paris for the Netherlands that same year, and was clearly working on very independent lines.


The trio of essays were accompanied by a more famous work, intended as an introduction to the essays. Again in French, the full title in translation reads Discourse on the Method of Properly Conducting Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. This was published anonymously, and has an autobiographical content relating to the author's discoveries.

In the third section of the Discourse, Descartes claims to cultivate the divinely implanted "light of reason," supposedly facilitating discrimination between truth and falsity, in contrast to the opinions of others. His Discourse and Essays were evidently aimed at educated citizens who might find Latin more difficult. These anonymous contributions appear to have created much interest. Since that time, his remarks (in part five of the Discourse) on the difference between animals and humans have drawn criticism; his argument about the absence of a mind in animals was accompanied by a rigid deduction about the absence of sensation and pain in those creatures.

This theory is not convincing, and can be accused of gross insensitivity. "I think, therefore I am" can too easily mean "I think, therefore animals do not feel pain, and therefore I can act without conscience in relation to them." Descartes is strongly associated with the growth of vivisection practices in the wake of Vesalius (see further section 8 below).

He never married. The tendency of the subject to withdrawal did not prevent his relationship in 1635 at Amsterdam with the servant girl Helena Jans van der Strom, who gave birth to his daughter Francine that year. Some commentators have dwelt upon his concern for the tragic death of his daughter in 1640. Meanwhile, his output had infiltrated the University of Utrecht, where Henri Reneri promoted him. A subsequent supporter was Henricus Regius, though the clearly emerging non-Scholastic concepts of Descartes gained opposition from the Calvinist camp.

In 1641 he published in Latin the Meditationes (Meditations on the First Philosophy), which eventually became his most celebrated work. It is complicated by the attached text (Objections and Replies) comprising written objections from leading scholars and theologians, plus the replies of Descartes. The critics included Pierre Gassendi, Antoine Arnauld, Thomas Hobbes, and Marin Mersenne (otherwise the supporter and friend of Descartes). The intermediary for this feedback was Mersenne, who had a high social profile. The Meditations does not explicitly promote heretical views such as the Copernican model, but in his attempt to introduce the ground for science or knowledge (scientia), Descartes was in the underlying role of contesting Scholastic philosophy. That role is confirmed by the following detail:

"In a letter to Mersenne, dated 28 January 1641, Descartes says 'these six meditations [i.e., the Meditations] contain all the foundations of my physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them. I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles, and recognise their truth, before they notice that they [my principles] destroy the principles of Aristotle.' " (Stanford Encyclopaedia, 2007)

The famous phrase cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) has "a relatively minor role" in the exegesis of Descartes (Clarke 2006:1), but is often assumed to be a virtual cardinal tenet. This phrase appears as a counter to scepticism, a contemporary trend which Descartes adapted to form a preliminary exercise of doubt about the nature of knowledge. That trend is strongly associated with Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), whose writings exercised a pervasive influence upon French intellectual life during the seventeenth century.

Employing his sceptical line of enquiry, or "method of doubt," Descartes professedly arrived at certainty, both of his own mental existence and that of God. The sceptical ingredient in his approach was misconstrued. Some theological opponents said that his proofs for the existence of God, outlined in the Meditations, amounted to secret atheism, and that his method of doubt was sufficient to incite libertinism.

A basic point to grasp is that: "Descartes challenged the fundamental philosophy in terms of which both Catholic and Reformed theologians had expressed their teaching of Christian dogmas for centuries" (ibid:4). The hostile response eventually listed him posthumously in the Papal Index of Forbidden Books (1663). The basic conflict visible here is that between obsolete Scholasticism and the emerging Scientific Revolution.


"A close reading of the texts suggests that Descartes did not endorse the [traditional Scholastic] understanding of substances, and its implicit category mistake, on which Ryle's version of Cartesian dualism depends." (Clarke 2003:2)

6.  Problems  with  Calvinist  Theologians


Descartes was sensitive to requests for advice from his supporter Henricus Regius (a professor of medicine at Utrecht). The latter found himself in opposition with Voetius, who defended certain Scholastic doctrines on behalf of Calvinist theologians against adherents of the "new philosophy." Descartes counselled that Regius should adopt a conciliatory tactic, one of praising his opponent at every opportunity, and emphasising the status of Voetius as "Magnificent Rector." There were various other refinements of this tactic that were advocated.




Descartes countered in the Open Letter to Voetius (1643), defending freedom of thought. However, this letter "repays him [Voetius] in the same currency of personal attack that had marred the whole discussion from the beginning" (ibid., p. 239). Against this drawback should be set the recognition of Descartes that "the most worrying feature of Schoock's long book was the suggestion that he [Descartes] was some kind of cryptic atheist, and that he deserved the same fate as Vanini" (ibid:240).

Soon after, and that same year, Voetius caused the French philosopher to be summoned by the municipal council of Utrecht; Descartes was expected to answer the charge of libel against Voetius. Descartes was not living in Utrecht, and he complained at the nature of the summons. He took advice to contact the French ambassador to the Hague, and via that channel, to request the Prince of Orange to intervene on his behalf. Descartes was successful in this recourse, and the Utrecht magistrates accordingly closed the case (ibid:242-3).

Two years later, Schoock acknowledged that the incentive to write The Admirable Method had come from Voetius, and that he had only undertaken the disputed work because he was asked to do so by Voetius, who had suggested the charge of atheism. Schoock also conceded that the tone of the attack did not befit a scholarly debate, and emphasised that he had never meant to compare Descartes to Vanini.


Descartes responded with his Apologetic Letter to the Magistrates of Utrecht (1648), in which he complained, e.g., about the accusation that he had been sent by the Jesuits to create trouble in The Netherlands. He repeated his charge that Voetius must have been the real author of The Admirable Method, the content of which had been disowned by Schoock. The latter was temporarily arrested due to the activity of Voetius.


Descartes had a disagreement with his erratic supporter Regius when the latter composed the controversial treatise Physical Foundations (1646), which presented the ideas of Descartes without the legitimating (and protective) metaphysical context. Regius again ignored the advice of Descartes, and the correspondence between them apparently ceased (Clarke 2006:312ff).

There was a sequel to the Utrecht problem at Leiden University, where Descartes gained both friends and enemies. Objections from two Calvinist theologians at Leiden developed into a public controversy during 1647. Descartes countered that his writings did not contain the themes that were censored. Jacobus Revius (1586-1658) was one of the opponents, and he mentioned the dire word Pelagianism, in a context of stigma. The French philosopher sent a letter of complaint to the university, relating that he had wrongfully been accused of blasphemy and Pelagianism.


The curators of Leiden University convened in February 1648, and confirmed their decision of the previous year that only Aristotelian philosophy could be taught in their precincts. Both Revius and the Cartesian exponent Adriaan Heereboord (1614-1661) were reprimanded. The curators took no action against Descartes (ibid:343ff). However, nobody could teach his philosophy at Leiden, and the professors were forbidden to mention his name.

7.   Principia  Philosophiae

Meanwhile, in 1644 Descartes published his Latin work Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), which was dedicated to his correspondent Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was unusually intellectual. That text restates his metaphysics and outlines his version of physics and other sciences. The physics is mechanistic, having disadvantages by comparison with later models; yet at the time of Descartes, the mechanistic rationale was an advance. The Principles influenced such scientists as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. Yet the book has gained criticism in terms of a physics rooted in metaphysics. Such a perspective can be misleading.

Recent research has described Descartes as being in more affinity with the natural philosophy of Francis Bacon than was formerly supposed. The World and Principles of Philosophy reveal the French thinker as a practitioner of mathematics, mechanics, optics, anatomy, physiology, and also "psycho-physiology" (see further Gaukroger 2000). The spotlight generally given to the Meditations has tended to obscure the scientific endeavours of Descartes in other works.




The Principles of Philosophy was published in four parts, with two other envisaged parts that have since been reconstructed. This mature work borrowed from the format of Late Scholastic textbooks, but took the argument into different significations. The Principles commenced with a concern to establish the metaphysical foundations of natural philosophy, and ended with the link between that philosophy and morality.


8.   The  Vivisection  Issue

Descartes has the generalised reputation of a deductivist, as distinct from an empiricist. He was a mechanist who believed that he had evolved a perfect rationalism, a way of thinking that can be strongly questioned. He was a crude empiricist in his preoccupation with observation. "He even arranged for the slaughter of a pregnant cow so that he could examine the foetus at an early stage of its development" (Clarke 2006:332). Such tendencies did not assist his insensitive approach to the question of animal consciousness. Strong accusations have been lodged against his version of animal existence. His obnoxious theme that "animals are machines" can be found in his Passions of the Soul (1649).

His followers, meaning the Cartesians, have been criticised as the brutal precursors of laboratory practices. A systematic approach to his theories occurred after his death. An early posthumous report, dating to the 1650s, has received different interpretations.


Some have interpreted this report to mean the early Cartesians. Yet another version has deduced that the reference refers to a Jesuit school, where young students were apparently taught vivisection. The victimised animals were dogs (Gombay, Descartes, p. ix). However, Descartes cannot escape the worst implications, especially as he was in all likelihood influenced by some Jesuit ideas. He is known to have undertaken some anatomical dissection, making daily visits to a butcher in Amsterdam, and acquiring animal parts to dissect at home, in addition to his "solitary meditations" (Rodis-Lewis 1998:85). The realistic indications are that some of his dissections applied to live animals, and this means vivisection. Descartes is associated with the tradition of Vesalius, a sixteenth century anatomist.

A basic problem is that much of the subject's life is obscure; biographical lore was substituted for the blanks. Much of what we know about his life comes from the biography La Vie de Monsieur Descartes (1691) by Adrien Baillet. Some writers have claimed to explode the myths surrounding Descartes. At Amsterdam in the early 1630s, he assisted in the dissection of human corpses; the location was an amphitheatre reserved for this purpose (Watson 2007:15). The same writer has emphasised that Descartes described the dissection of a dog's heart, and describes him as a pioneer of vivisection.

In a letter dated February 1638, Descartes describes vivisection on a living rabbit, something he had observed several times before, and which he had just performed himself. "I opened the chest of a live rabbit and removed the ribs to expose the heart" (Cottingham et al, Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, pp. 79ff). This barbarous activity tends to offset his "solitary meditations." It is not clear where he had made his earlier observations, whether in a Jesuit environment or a secular one.

Descartes lived in a bloodthirsty age, dominated by the Thirty Years War, in which the descendants of European "barbarian tribes" were far from perfection. His attitude to animals was weighted by a belief that they were automatons, reflecting theological dogmas that animals had no soul. The simplistic motto "I think, therefore I am" also signified, in effect, that "animals do not think, therefore they are not conscious, and do not feel pain." These assumptions were very convenient for Christian vivisectors, and may be dismissed as banal.

The seemingly contradictory beliefs of the subject have been a source of aggravation. In the mid-1640s, Descartes himself "opens up the possibility for the first time that there may be different degrees of thought and that animals may enjoy some less perfect form of thinking" (Clarke 2006:336).

An English royalist, namely William Cavendish (the Marquis of Newcastle), read the Principles of Philosophy and sent a letter to Descartes in 1646 about the apparent capacity of animals to think. The reply indicates that the rigid thinking of Descartes about animals was influenced by his aversion to views of Michel de Montaigne and Pierre Charron, who had both extolled the ingenuity and thinking ability of animals (ibid:332ff).

Descartes had preferred to argue in his Discourse on Method that the distinctive character of human language meant that animals do not think, equating to the assumption that only humans have an immortal soul. This misleading argument was pitched against the scepticism of that era, and was effectively in support of some religious beliefs. "There is nothing which leads feeble minds more readily astray from the straight path of virtue than to imagine that the soul of animals is of the same nature as our own, and that, consequently, we have nothing to fear or to hope for after this life" (F. E. Sutcliffe, trans., Discourse on Method, p. 76).

9.   Supporters  and  Critics

A relevant theme is that "in the 1640s, he [Descartes] thought himself at war with the Jesuits" (Ariew 1999:155). Descartes had early reacted against the doctrines of influential Jesuit thinkers like Francisco Suarez. The latter writer, along with the Jesuits Toledo and Fonseca, is classified as "Late Scholastic" in current analysis. Descartes became familiar with the writings of these Late Scholastics during his schooling at La Fleche, an acquaintance resulting in his "discreet incredulity" (Secada 2000:29-30).

The reactionary Descartes "saw himself as presenting a new philosophy, both natural and metaphysical, to take the place of Aristotle's and St. Thomas Aquinas's" (ibid:1). Aquinas was undeniably a partisan of Aristotle, but he accommodated the Greek philosopher to a Christian theological setting in medieval Scholasticism.

In 1649 Descartes published in French the Passions de l'ame (Passions of the Soul). The context for this is relevant to assimilate, having a different complexion to the "dualism" so strongly associated with his exegesis:



On the positive side also, Queen Christina of Sweden was now in correspondence with him, which led to her invitation for Descartes to join her court at Stockholm in early 1649. That correspondence had commenced via the French diplomat Chanut, a contact of Descartes. The latter evidently had some hesitation about moving to Stockholm, and the conflict in his mind was apparently the cause of his sending very different letters to Chanut and the Queen (via Chanut) about the royal invitation. These discrepant letters "show Descartes at his dissembling best" (ibid:384). The philosopher was basically worried as to whether the royal interest amounted to "a temporary curiosity."

Descartes eventually accepted Queen Christina's invitation, arriving in Sweden in September 1649. The Queen was serious about learning philosophy, but the tuition entailed Descartes rising at five in the morning, an early hour to which he was quite unaccustomed. Some commentators state that he caught pneumonia. He died at Stockholm in February 1650.


Descartes died in relative obscurity. By 1667, some French "Cartesians" had begun to publish his works, and to develop a more systematic Cartesian philosophy, in the face of orthodox religious disapproval. "Descartes had many followers who took his ideas (as they understood them) as dogma.... Late seventeenth century Europe was flooded with paraphrases of and commentaries on Descartes' writings" (D. Garber, Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). The hostile campaign of Voetius did not succeed for long, and Utrecht became the most Cartesian of the Dutch universities.

There were also independent thinkers who were influenced by Descartes, notably Malebranche and Spinoza. The first published book of Spinoza was a commentary on the Principles of Descartes, and "although he [Spinoza] later moved well outside the Cartesian camp, Descartes' doctrines helped to structure his mature thought" (ibid).

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was a Parisian who rejected Scholasticism after attending the Sorbonne. He was ordained an Augustinian priest in 1664; reputedly in the same year, he discovered the book by Descartes entitled Traité de l'Homme (Treatise on Man), posthumously published and which tackles physiology. Malebranche subsequently attempted to synthesise St. Augustine and Descartes, and was also known for his occasionalism, a doctrine meaning that God is the only real cause. He composed the widely read work Recherche de la vérité or The Search after Truth, appearing in 1674/5 (Lennon and Olscamp 1997). See further Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

As a consequence of Recherche, Malebranche "quickly became the most influential Cartesian philosopher, and indeed before Locke the most influential philosopher of any kind in his era, eclipsing even Descartes" (Gaukroger 1995:476). Malebranche was the channel by means of which many later philosophers assimilated Descartes. During the eighteenth century, the theme of Descartes as the founder of modern philosophy was evolved, although not without disagreements and distortions.

Meanwhile, there were critiques of Cartesian philosophy, including those expressed by the panpsychist Spinoza, the materialist Thomas Hobbes, the polymathic Leibniz, and the "commonsense empiricist" John Locke. In his Ethics, Spinoza rejected the theory of Descartes concerning the pineal gland, and also radically altered the Cartesian perspective on substance, applying a panpsychist or "pantheist" context decoding to a substantial gulf from Malebranche and others.


"The official condemnations of Cartesianism of the late seventeenth century were unusually frequent and ferocious. Only the condemnations of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century seem to have been as frequent." (Ariew 1999:156)

Attempts to place Descartes in due context are ongoing.

Kevin  R. D. Shepherd

July 2010 (modified December 2012 and July 2015)















Cottingham, John, Cartesian Reflections (Oxford University Press, 2008).





















Southwell, Gareth, Talking Clocks and Deranged Springs - or, Did Descartes Really Nail Cats to Trees? (online article, 2012).



Watson, Richard, Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes (Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, 2007).
