The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

René Descartes

1596–1650

Also known as Renatus Cartesius

Often called the father of modern philosophy, he sought certain foundations for knowledge through methodical doubt and the insight 'I think, therefore I am'.

Portrait of a man with shoulder-length dark hair, a moustache and a white collar
Copy after a portrait by Frans Hals, 1649.After Frans Hals · Public domain · See the original

Descartes resolved to doubt everything that could possibly be doubted, and found one thing he could not: that he himself, while doubting, was thinking and so existed. From this starting point he attempted to rebuild knowledge on secure foundations. He drew a sharp distinction between mind, a thinking thing, and matter, an extended thing — a dualism that set the terms of the mind–body problem.

He was also a major mathematician, and one of the inventors of analytic geometry.

Tradition
Western
Region
France and the Dutch Republic
Influenced
Baruch Spinoza

Key works

  • Discourse on the Method (Discours de la méthode), 1637
  • Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes de prima philosophia), 1641

Sources

  1. Gary Hatfield, René Descartes, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy