MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY
RENÉ DESCARTES was born at La Haye near Tours on 31 March 1596. He was educated at the Jesuit Collège de la Flèche in Anjou, and at the University of Poitiers, where he took a Licenciate in Law in 1616. Two years later he entered the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau in Holland, and met a local schoolmaster, Isaac Beeckman, who fostered his interest in mathematics and physics. After further travels in Europe he settled in Paris in 1625, and came into contact with scientists, theologians, and philosophers in the circle of the Minim friar Marin Mersenne. At the end of 1928 Descartes left for Holland, which he made his home until 1648; he devoted himself to carrying forward the mathematical, scientific, and philosophical work he had begun in Paris. When he learned of the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633, he abandoned his plans to publish a treatise on physics, and under pressure from his friends consented to have the Discourse on the Method printed, with three accompanying essays on topics in which he had made discoveries. In 1641 his Meditations appeared, setting out the metaphysical underpinnings of his physical theories; these were accompanied by objections written by contemporary philosophers, and Descartes’s replies to them. His writings provoked controversy in both France and Holland, where his scientific ideas were banned in one university; his works, however (including the Principles of Philosophy of 1644) continued to be published, and to bring him notoriety and renown. In 1648 he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden to settle in Stockholm; it was there he died of pneumonia on 11 February 1650.
MICHAEL MORIARTY is Centenary Professor of French Literature and Thought at Queen Mary, University of London. Among his publications are Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (2003) and Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (2006).