Rene Descartes: a Great Thinker of the Western World

Rene Descartes: A Great Thinker of the Western World “I think therefore I am” are the words that come to mind as we encounter the subject of Descartes. We see man full of knowledge and ideas ready to expand and break free. His interest in knowledge and the acquisition of truth itself brought him to doubt all around him, including God and his very own existence. He is even considered to be the Father of Modern philosophy because he guided the thinkers of his time to deviate from the Scholastic-Aristotelian method. This is due to his belief that the scholastic method was prone to doubt since it relied on sensation as the source for all knowledge, meaning that teachings adhered to traditional methods posed by the church. However we cannot simply look at Descartes without knowing anything about his background and inspirations. Rene Descartes is credited with being the father of modern philosophy. Not only is he accredited to being a man of extraordinary genius, but his ideas changed the way western European thinkers viewed theology. Having his mother die after he was born caused young Rene to live with his grandmother in La Haye. He was sent to a Jesuit college called La Fleche, where he studied grammar, rhetoric, and a philosophical curriculum of verbal arts and logic. He was disappointed in the courses he had to take, except for mathematics, thus explaining his infatuation with the subject along with physics. Either way he left La Fleche with a very broad liberal arts education in 16141. He received his degree and license in civil and canon law at the University of Poiters. From there, Descartes became a volunteer for the army of Maurice of Nassau in the Netherlands during the summer of 1618. It is said that before he went to Netherlands, Descartes had lost all interest in science and mathematics and experienced a period of depression or mental breakdown. However while at Nassau, he met the most important influence of his early adulthood: Isaac Beekman3. It