Descartes: A Biography

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

 Descartes: A Biography

see the wordarcanum[secret] in a proposition, I begin to think poorly of

it’ (i.).

Descartes eventually set sail for Copenhagen onApril, and

travelled overland through Germany during the initial skirmishes of the

Thirty Years’ War. Rudolph II had died in, and his brother Mathias

had succeeded him. Mathias’s rule was short-lived, and the resulting

contested succession was the immediate occasion of Descartes’ travels.

Ferdinand of Styria became king of Bohemia in. His allegiance to

the Counter-Reformation politics of Catholic supremacy prompted the

electors to choose as emperor Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate in

the Rhine. Frederick had married Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James

IofEngland, inand had returned to Heidelberg the same year

with his new wife. He accepted the invitation to become emperor on

September, and was crowned in Prague Cathedral. However, the

other contender, Ferdinand, had been elected emperor in Frankfurt in

August, and the die was thus cast for a bloody resolution of the contest

between Catholic and Protestant claimants to the imperial throne. During

this winter,–, the so-called winter king of Bohemia exercised his

disputed royal powers briefly while Descartes attended the coronation of

his Catholic counterpart. The occasion is summarized as follows in the

Discourse:

Iwas then in Germany, where I had been drafted because of the wars that are still

being waged there and, as I was returning to the army from the emperor’s coronation,

the arrival of winter delayed me in quarters. Since I had no acquaintances to distract

me there and, luckily, I had no cares or passions to trouble me, I used to spend the

whole day alone in a room that was heated by a stove, where I had plenty of time to

concentrate on my own thoughts. (vi.)

Descartes was in the service of a Catholic army, and was temporarily

lodged at Neuburg. He subsequently claimed that he had three dreams,

onthe night of November(the same date assigned to his first meeting

with Beeckman), which changed the course of his life.

Olympian Dreams

It is impossible to know whether Descartes actually had some significant

dreams while billeted at Neuburg. The way in which he recorded them

gives them the status of a major turning point in his life, a transition