Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

I hear that, having privately taught some of what I had published to some students

there, they liked it so much that they all asked the magistrate to appoint him their

professor. (ii.)

Descartes was obviously contrasting the spontaneous welcome his theo-

ries had received in Utrecht with the stubborn resistance of critical math-

ematicians in France. However, the rhetoric of the contrast camouflages

an obvious dissimulation. He knew that Regius had learned what he knew

about Descartes from one of his most ardent and loyal supporters, Reneri,

and Utrecht was not therefore ‘a university in which I have neither friends

nor influence’.

Despite the plans for frequent visits to Descartes and an introduction of

the new recruit to Cartesianism, Reneri seems to have been sick through-

out most of the following winter and was unable to take up Descartes’

invitation. Regius thus wrote to him in February, thanking him for

his invitation the previous year and accepting a new offer to visit on his own

because of Reneri’s continued indisposition.Unfortunately, this revised

plan was frustrated by Reneri’s death the following month. Regius wrote

again, onMarch, informing Descartes that his friend had died

and that the funeral oration, pronounced by Antonius Aemilius, profes-

sor of rhetoric and history, had been in praise of Descartes as much as of

the recently deceased Reneri.Regius’ own plans for visiting Descartes

in September of the same year were cancelled because his wife was more

than eight months pregnant and expected her husband to remain at home

in Utrecht.

Descartes confirmed the extent of his support at Utrecht when he was

asked by Debeaune for advice (in the autumn of) about where he

should send his son to study. Having first mentioned La Fleche as the`

best place in France, Descartes evaluated the merits of various Dutch

universities. His earlier experience at Leiden led him to believe that the

food and accommodation were good but that the teaching was poor. In

contrast, he thought that Utrecht University would be much better. It

had been built ‘only four or five years ago’;therefore ‘it had not yet had

time to get corrupted, and there is a professor there, Mr Reneri, who is

myintimate friend and, in my judgment, is better than all those at Leiden’

(ii.).

Apart from dedicated supporters in Utrecht, however, some other early

readers of theEssayswrote supportive letters. It is difficult to gauge how