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Epistemology & Rationalism
René Descartes
1596 – 1650
“Cogito, ergo sum — I think, therefore I am.”
Father of Modern Philosophy. By doubting everything that could be doubted, Descartes arrived at the one indubitable truth — the existence of the thinking self.
Biography
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. He is often called the father of modern philosophy for his method of systematic doubt, which swept away the accumulated authority of scholasticism.
In the Meditations on First Philosophy he argues that mind and body are distinct substances — a position known as Cartesian dualism. The mind is a thinking thing; the body and all of nature are extended things.
His contributions to mathematics were equally vast: he invented the Cartesian coordinate system, uniting algebra and geometry into analytic geometry.
Important Works
Meditations on First Philosophy
1641Six meditations reconstructing knowledge from the ground up, establishing the self as the first certainty.
Discourse on the Method
1637The manifesto of rational method and the origin of the Cogito argument.
Key Takeaways
- Systematic doubt reveals the cogito as the one indubitable certainty.
- Mind and body are distinct, interacting substances (Cartesian dualism).
- Clear and distinct perception is the criterion of truth.
- God's existence guarantees the reliability of reason.
- Analytic geometry: algebraic equations can describe geometric curves.