Descartes: A Biography

c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

 Descartes: A Biography

skilled lens grinders. He had made new friends in Paris, some of whom

would continue to correspond with him for the next two decades. The

aspiring young philosopher had apparently given up hope of buying an

appropriate royal appointment in France and had decided to pursue his

intellectual interests abroad. He had a modest income from the proceeds

of the inherited properties he had sold, and he looked north again in the

direction of the United Provinces. Beeckman remarked, on one occasion,

that Descartes suffered from wanderlust [peregrinandi cupidus:i.]; that

was as plausible an explanation as any alternative for his return to the

United Provinces in.

However, when he reflected on the period between November

andin theDiscourse on Method,hegavetheimpression that he had

purposefully travelled widely with a view to implementing his planned

restauration of human knowledge. He was convinced, he claimed, that

philosophy ‘still contains nothing that is not disputed and consequently

doubtful’ (vi.), and that there was ‘nothing one could imagine which is

so strange and incredible that it was not said by some philosopher’ (vi.).

He decided, therefore, to begin afresh or, in the metaphor he preferred,

to rebuild the house of his knowledge from the foundations up. Apart

from the provisional moral rules he adopted and ‘the truths of faith that

have always been among my primary beliefs’, he began the task of ridding

himself of all his other beliefs and of applying the rules or guides that

he had invented for himself. The period that he wished to describe, in

retrospect, as the time for practising his new method and acquiring the

experiences to which he could apply it lasted much longer than he might

have anticipated.

Those nine years passed by, however, before I had made up my mind about the questions

that are usually debated among educated people or had begun to look for foundations

foraphilosophy that would be more certain than what is generally adopted. The

example of many excellent minds who had previously had this plan, but who seemed

to me not to have succeeded, made me imagine such great obstacles that I might not

have dared to embark on it so soon if I had not seen that some people were already

spreading the rumour that I had finished the task....I thought I should try by every

possible means to become worthy of the reputation that I had acquired. It is exactly

eight years since this desire made me resolve to move away from all the places where I

had acquaintances and to retire here to a country where the long duration of the war

has resulted in a situation in which the armies involved serve only to make the fruits

of peace available with much greater security and where, among a great crowd of busy

people, who are more concerned with their own business than they are inquisitive