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René Descartes (1596–1650) The Passions of the Soul (1649)
Part First: Of the Passions in General, and Incidentally of the Whole Nature of Man
escartes lived in a time when European civilization began to change rapidly, when many of the cultural and scientific foundations of the modern world were laid. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Monteverdi, and Molière; Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, and Hobbes were a few of Descartes’ contemporaries. European powers were expanding rapidly overseas. Most significant, perhaps, for understanding Descartes is the fact that this was a time when science was beginning to show its power to explore the mysteries of the natural world and when the Church was beginning to lose its power to control those mysteries. As an example, consider the earth and the sun. In 1500 the geocentric (earth at the center) universe was not only the scientific state of the art, it was the dogma of the Roman Catholic church. In the early 16th century, the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus convinced himself that the geocentric description of the world was incorrect and proposed a heliocentric (sun at the center) description. Early in the 17th century the German astronomer Johannes Kepler improved Copernicus’s system by replacing his circular planetary orbits with elliptical ones. The Copernican system was gaining ground, and in 1616 the Church banned it. In 1632 Galileo published a work for the lay reader supporting the Copernican system; in 1633 he was tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant his belief in the heliocentric theory, and put under house arrest. (Luckily, his conviction was annulled in 1979 and the ban on the Copernican theory was lifted in 1992.) Although it was unable to contain the Copernican system, the Church was still quite prepared to persecute heretics. This threat was not lost on Descartes, and as a result he delayed or refrained from publishing certain things and published others anonymously, even though
Source: Descartes, R. (1975). The philosophical works of Descartes (Vol. 1, E. S. Haldane & G. R. T. Ross, Trans.). London: Cambridge University Press.
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he lived much of his life in voluntary exile on Holland’s Protestant soil. It is clear that Descartes had no wish to share Galileo’s fate. Perhaps he might have done more had he been less cowed by the Church, but even so Descartes’ achievements are astonishing. His invention of analytic geometry assures his place among the great mathematicians, and while his philosophical contributions have not held up as well, his influence and historical significance cannot be overstated. One of the boldest ideas in the history of philosophy is Descartes’ suggestion that to know what is true, and only what is true, we should try to doubt everything we believe. That which can be doubted is not necessarily false, but that which cannot be doubted must be true. In his first published work, the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences (1637), Descartes applied this method of doubt to his own beliefs and arrived at a very important (and famous) result, summarized in the phrase usually translated as I think, therefore I am. This doesn’t mean that thinking is the cause of existence; Descartes’ point is that thinking is evidence of existence. Here is the argument: I had noticed long before, as I said just now, that in conduct one sometimes has to follow opinions that one knows to be most uncertain just as if they were indubitable; but since my present aim was to give myself up to the pursuit of truth alone, I thought I must do the very opposite, and reject as if absolutely false anything as to which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I should not be left at the end believing something that was
