René Descartes
René Descartes (1596 CE–1650 CE) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist universally recognized as the father of modern Western philosophy. Born in La Haye en Touraine, he received a rigorous Jesuit education before traveling extensively across Europe and eventually settling in the Dutch Republic to pursue independent research. Descartes sought to completely rebuild human knowledge on a foundation of absolute certainty, sweeping away the dominant medieval scholastic traditions. In his landmark texts, Discourse on the Method (1637 CE) and Meditations on First Philosophy (1641 CE), he deployed a method of radical skepticism, systematically doubting all sensory experience until he arrived at his first indubitable truth: Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). From this premise, he constructed a rationalist metaphysics based on substance dualism—famously splitting reality into mind (res cogitans) and matter (res extensa)—and invented analytic geometry, providing the mathematical framework for the Scientific Revolution.
Quotes
- I think, therefore I am.
- Except our own thoughts, there is...
- Good sense is of all things in the...
- The reading of all good books is...
- It is not enough to have a good...
- Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
- Divide each difficulty into as many...
- I have found no better way of...
- Conquer yourself rather than the...
- Common sense is the best...
- It is only prudent never to place...
- The senses deceive from time to...
- I am, I exist — this is certain.
- Each problem that I solved became a...