rené descartes discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy

ĭescartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy, and is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology in the 17th century. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, an early modern treatise on emotions, Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic 'as if no one had written on these matters before.' His best known philosophical statement is ' cogito, ergo sum' ('I think, therefore I am' French: Je pense, donc je suis), found in Discourse on the Method (1637, in French and Latin) and Principles of Philosophy (1644, in Latin). Refusing to accept the authority of previous philosophers, Descartes frequently set his views apart from the philosophers who preceded him. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form second, he rejected any appeal to final ends, divine or natural, in explaining natural phenomena. Many elements of Descartes' philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a Deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholic. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. René Descartes ( / d eɪ ˈ k ɑːr t/ or UK: / ˈ d eɪ k ɑːr t/ French: ( listen) Latinized: Renatus Cartesius 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) : 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.

René descartes discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy