The Man Who Doubted Everything — Descartes Explained

Description: On the night of November 10, 1619, a twenty-three-year-old French soldier sat alone in a stove-heated room in Bavaria. Everything he had learned at the Jesuit college of La Flèche amounted to a heap of disputed claims. That night, he had three dreams — phantoms, a thunderclap, a book of poetry falling open — and took them as a sign. His path would be to find a method that could give all knowledge the certainty of geometry. Descartes begins with demolition. Suppose your senses deceive you. Suppose you're dreaming. Suppose a malicious demon is feeding you illusions. What survives? One thing: the act of doubting itself cannot be doubted, because to doubt is to think, and to think is to exist. Cogito ergo sum. From this single certainty, he rebuilds the world. But the fracture he leaves behind — how does an immaterial mind move a physical body? — has never been repaired. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia posed the question in 1643, and Descartes never answered it. He dedicated a book to her instead. 📖 Further Reading: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes, Discourse on the Method Lisa Shapiro, ed.. The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ #theparlor #philosophy #descartes