User:Goclenius/Descartes' Life from 1639 to 1650

The life of René Descartes
From 1596 to 1629
From 1630 to 1639
From 1639 to 1650

This article is part of the René Descartes series.

This article is part of the Descartes’ Life series.

The Descartes’ Life series presents information about Descartes’ life and his historical context. For systematic discussion of his philosophical doctrines, see René Descartes.

Articles in this series:

• Descartes’ Life from 1596 to 1629
• Descartes’ Life from 1630 to 1639
• Descartes’ Life from 1639 to 1650

The Meditations, the Principles (1639–47)

In January 1639, Descartes tells Mersenne that he has proposed for himself a program of study “for the rest of the winter”, and begs leave not to write until Easter. It may be that during that time he began or revised the Meditations. In December he refers to an “Essay in Metaphysics”, which has apparently been sent to Mersenne; in March of 1640 he says he intends to have his essay printed in Leiden in five or six weeks. The Meditations were sent to Mersenne in November of 1640. Mersenne, at Descartes’ request, circulated the manuscript to members of his circle in Paris, including Hobbes, Gassendi, and Arnauld; it was also sent independently to a Dutch theologian, Johannes Caterus.

The Objections and Replies

Descartes’ intention was to elicit in advance of publication a set of objections to which he could respond. Six sets of objections and replies were published in the first edition of the Meditations in 1640; the second edition included a seventh set of objections written by a Jesuit, Pierre Bourdin, with whom Descartes had already engaged in controversy in 1639–1640. The dispute with Bourdin, whom he took to be responding on behalf of the entire company of Jesuits, added to Descartes’ apprehensions about them, expressed more than once in his letters.

Not only did the circulation of the Meditations before publication assure Descartes of a better response than he had received to the Discourse, it also enabled him to clarify and elaborate on key points in the argument.

In the first replies to Caterus, for example, Descartes expands on the notion of God as causa sui (“cause of himself”), which would later play a role in Spinoza’s thought. In the fourth replies to Arnauld, he develops the argument for the mind-body distinction, and makes an attempt—an unfortunate one, as it turned out—to show how transubstantiation could be conceived within his new physics; and in the sixth replies to Mersenne and others, he puts forward an analysis of the three “degrees” of sensation.

By far the longest give-and-take is in response to the fifth set of objections written by Gassendi, who addresses Descartes as Mens (“Mind”). Descartes returns the favor by addressing Gassendi as Caro (“Flesh”). In their exchange Gassendi’s empiricist theory of knowledge is set against the innatist apriorism of Descartes. Gassendi holds, for example, that the concepts and truths of mathematics are known to us by abstraction from sensory experience; Descartes that on the contrary those concepts and truths are known independently of experience. Gassendi published a reply to Descartes’ replies, to which Descartes responded, not very politely, in the “Letter to Clerselier” published with the French translation of the Meditations in 1647. The controversy led to an estrangement between them which lasted until 1647.

Controversy

In 1641–1643 Descartes was embroiled, at first through the intermediary of Henricus Regius, at that point his protégé, and then in his own person, with Gisbert Voetius, a theologian and the pastor of the Reformed Church in Utrecht, and his colleague Martinus Schoock. Regius, a proponent of Cartesian views in natural philosophy and medicine, publicly defended a number of controversial theses.

Descartes wrote several letters advising him on how to talk to his Aristotelian adversaries. The exchanges between Regius and his opponents grew acrimonious, so much so that the directors of the University of Utrecht tried to end it by forbidding both parties to engage in public debate. In response to Voëtius and to Bourdin, Descartes wrote the Letter to Dinet in ?!?. A few years later, after Regius had begun to take an independent course, Descartes criticized him in the Notae in programma (Notes against a certain broadsheet) (1647). As with Beeckman, an initially friendly, even close, collaboration ended in rejection on the part of Descartes.

The Principles

In 1644 Descartes published the Principles of philosophy, a work at first intended to replace the Aristotelian textbooks used by the Jesuits. It was intended a comprehensive presentation of Descartes’ metaphysics and natural philosophy. Its four parts, however, (of the six at first projected by Descartes) omit the material of the Treatise of man, some of which would be used in the Passions of the soul. The Principles was later translated into French under Descartes’ supervision, and published in 1647 with a letter-preface to Princess Elisabeth. In that letter, Descartes presents the “tree of knowledge”: metaphysics is its root, physics (that is, the natural philosophy of the Principles) is its trunk, and its three branches are the practical sciences of mechanics, medicine, and ethics.

Descartes returned to his researches in anatomy and physiology in the 1640s. The result was his Description of the human body, whose date of composition is most likely 1647 or 1648.ªªª In it Descartes develops a mechanistic account of reproduction; the Treatise on man had omitted that topic, instead simply presupposing the existence of animal-machines. The Description, like the Treatise, was published only after Descartes' death, first in Latin translation (1661) and then in the original French (166?!?).

In 1647, Descartes twice traveled from Egmond in North Holland to Paris. The first trip was to arrange for the French translation of the Principles and to recover interest owed to him by his brother Pierre on money paid for inherited properties that had been sold in ?!?. On his second trip Descartes met Hobbes at a dinner arranged by a young priest, César d’Estrées, for the purpose of reconciling Descartes with his old adversaries Hobbes and Gassendi. Gassendi was too ill to attend; but after dinner Descartes and Hobbes visited him; Descartes’ quarrel with Gassendi was finally laid to rest. Descartes also visited Pascal, who was also sick in bed, with whom he talked for several hours after a demonstration by the mathematician Roberval of Pascal’s calculating machine.<rev>Jacqueline Pascal, AT 5:72ªªª</rev> Descartes visited Pascal again the next day. Of this visit nothing is known, except that he offered medical advice.

On 16 April 1648, Descartes had a conversation with an unknown party (an annotation in the extant manuscript, a third-generation copy, says it was with Francis Burman, then twenty years old, who later became a noted theologian). A record of that conversation, discovered in 1895 at the University of Göttingen, were first published in 1896. The manuscript bears the title Responsiones Renati Des Cartes ad quasdam difficultates… (Responses of René Descartes to certain difficulties…). It is now usually called the Conversation with Burman.

Last visit to Paris

In monthªªª1648 Descartes returned to Paris to collect a royal pension of 3,000 livres awarded to him by Cardinal Mazarin. He seems to have planned, uncharacteristically, to enter the life of the court, taking an apartment nearby. The state, however, was undergoing a financial crisis brought on by the luxurious expenditures of Queen Anne and Mazarin. On 17 February payment of interest on state obligations (including Descartes’ pension) was suspended. Mazarin’s dispute with the Parliament came to a head in August 1648, when, after the arrest of the president and two other counselors, the people of Paris took to the barricades. This event is commonly known as the Fronde, from the word for the slings used by gangs of youth in street battles.

Descartes risked being implicated in a conspiracy against Richelieu by way of his connection with the Duc de Luynes, translator of the Meditations. Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps simply to avoid what looked to be civil war, he left Paris on 27 August. The threat of civil war was defused the next day, when Mazarin gave in to the Parliament and released the prisoners. But Descartes did not return. In letters of the period he said that he “seemed to have gone to Paris merely to buy a parchment, the most expensive and useless that I have ever held in my hands” (31 Mar 1649, AT 5:?!?; Watson 2002:266–268).

The Passions; last days (1648–50)

In September 1649 Descartes left for Stockholm. He had, through the intermediary of Pierre Chanut, the French ambassador to Sweden, been invited by Queen Christina in March. Christina was an avid reader; she had had Chanut and her librarian Johannes Freinshemsius explain the contents of the Meditations and the Principles to her, and now she wanted to Descartes himself to explain them to her. He had already corresponded with her through Chanut, answering questions on the sovereign good (To Chanut ?!?); he even sent her letters he had sent to Elisabeth. It is likely that among his motives for going to Sweden, along with his disillusionment and chagrin at what had happened to him in Paris, was lack of funds (Watson 2002:289–290).

Descartes arrived in Stockholm in October. Almost immediately, he expressed regret about his decision, as the long winter began, one of the worst, as it turned out, of the seventeenth century. The Passions of the soul, which had existed in manuscript since 1647, were published in November. By January, the Queen had seen him only a few times, and had asked of him only that he draw up statutes for a Swedish Royal Academy, which he did. This he did, submitting them on 1 February. The next day he caught cold; on 3 February he was stricken with fever; and on 11 February between three and four o’clock in the morning, he died.

His estate, other than his papers and personal goods, amounted to 200 rischedales, a modest amount, half of which went to his servant and half to pay his funeral expenses. According to his niece Catherine, and a contemporary, Samuel de Sorbière, Descartes dictated, a few hours before his death, a letter asking his brother and half-brother to continue a small pension being paid to his nurse. The last words attributed to him by his literary executor Claude Clerselier and his biographer Baillet, neither of whom was present, are in all likelihood apocryphal.

Descartes’ remains

As a Catholic in a Protestant nation, he was interred in a graveyard mainly used for unbaptized infants in Adolf Fredrikskyrkan in Stockholm. Later ªªª, his remains were taken to France and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont in Paris. A memorial erected in the 18th century remains in the Swedish church.

During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Panthéon among the great French thinkers. The village in the Loire Valley where he was born was renamed “La Haye-Descartes” in 1802, which was shortened to "Descartes" in 1967. Currently his tomb is in the church Saint Germain des Prés| in Paris.

References

Works of Descartes

Collected editions

Adam, Charles (?!?). Œuvres de Descartes. Paris: Vrin. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

This is the standard edition, usually cited as ‘AT’.

Alquié, Ferdinand (?!?). Œuvres de Descartes. Paris: Garnier. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)

Biographies

Baillet, Adrien (?!?). Vie de Monsieur Descartes. ?!?: ?!?. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help) English translation: Baillet, Adrien (1693). Life of Monsieur Descartes, containing the history of his philosophy and works. London: R. Simpson.

The earliest biography regarded as having documentary value. It is, however, a defense of Descartes. Baillet’s claims, where they are not corroborated by other sources, should be treated with caution.

Gaukroger, Stephen (1995). Descartes: an intellectual biography. Oxford: Clarendon.

Includes a detailed treatment of Descartes’ natural philosophy.

Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève (1995). Descartes. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. (Eng. trans. Jane Marie Todd, Descartes. Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1998.)

A sympathetic summation by the doyenne of Descartes studies in France.

Watson, Richard A (2002). Cogito, ergo sum: the life of René Descartes. Boston: David Godine.

Firmly sets Descartes in his place and time.

Other works

Åkerman, Susanna (1991). Queen Christina of Sweden and her circle: the transformation of a philosophical libertine. Leiden: Brill.

Ariew, Roger and Marjorie Grene, eds. (1995) Descartes and his contemporaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. (Science and its conceptual foundations)

A collection of essays specifically devoted to the Objections and replies.

Beyssade, J.-M. and J.-L. Marion. (1994) Objecter et répondre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.

Twenty-four essays on topics from the Meditations and the Objections and replies.

Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris). (1937) Descartes. Exposition organisée pour le III^e Centenaire du Discours de la Méthode. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1937.

Catalogue of the exposition. Includes black-and-white reproductions of portraits of Descartes, Constantijn Huygens, Queen Christina.

Gaukroger, Stephen (2002). Descartes' system of natural philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Verbeek, Theo (1992). Descartes and the Dutch. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press.