Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

Descartes was among those who had been appointed from outside the

region to help cement the relationship between Brittany and the crown.

However, the fundamental reason for multiplying these nominally royal

appointments was the soaring demand for extra taxes to support the central

administration in Paris. External wars, the suppression of internal chal-

lenges to the court’s jurisdiction, and the constantly expanding demands of

a highly centralizing system of government made ever-increasing demands

ontaxpayers. Royal appointments were effectively purchased, and they

included an exemption from the extremely burdensome taxes that were

levied on everyone else in the third estate.Since the nobles and clergy

were already exempt from taxes, there thus emerged a new bourgeois class

of people who were exempt from taxes themselves while ensuring that

all their social inferiors paid theirs. The range of royal officials who were

involved in this complex administrative system included not only mem-

bers of localparlements,but also various tax collectors and local police

who were charged with enforcing their financial decisions.In the period

during which many of Descartes’ immediate predecessors acquired their

offices and titles, between approximatelyand,the total number

of royal offices in France increased significantly.Although Descartes’

paternal grandfather was a medical doctor, as was his paternal grand-

mother’s father, Jean Ferrand I, most of his other ancestors were mem-

bers of this newly emerging bourgeois class of tax collectors and lawyers

that developed in sixteenth-century France. In particular, all three of

his godparents were associated with this group of upwardly mobile legal

office-holders.

Descartes’ godmother at his baptism was Jeanne Proust, wife of Jean

Sain, the comptroller of taxes at Chatellerault.ˆ One of his godfathers was

Michel Ferrand, his paternal great-uncle. He was brother of Claude Fer-

rand, the wife of Descartes’ paternal grandfather, Pierre. Michel Ferrand

was principal lawyer of the Chˆatellerault district at the time of Descartes’

baptism. The third godparent was a son of Jeanne Sain and Rene Brochard ́

I, and thus the maternal uncle of the philosopher. He also had a legal

career, and became dean of the Pr ́esidial of Poitiers in.With this

symbolic representation at his baptism, the young Descartes might have

been expected to follow the family tradition and become a lawyer. This is

exactly what his older brother, Pierre, did. He became counsellor to the

king in theparlementof Brittany in, due to his father’s influence; in

the next generation, Pierre’s son, Joachim, did likewise and followed his