Descartes: Historical and Philosophical Context Explained

Introduction: Descartes and His Era

René Descartes is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern philosophy. But geniuses are not born out of thin air — rather, they are products of the era into which they are born. With this in mind, this paper examines Descartes's life and thought from the perspective of the historical context in which he lived, as well as the philosophical context that gave rise to his unique method. In doing so, it sheds light on how Descartes came to form some of his most important contributions to rational thought.

Like many philosophers both before and after him, Descartes lived in relative isolation from the pressures of the external world — an isolation that was no doubt self-imposed. For this reason, history did not interfere with Descartes's life in a strictly practical way, although his thinking and the presentation of his ideas were certainly influenced by the major events of his era. This is especially true of the debates between religion and science during the first half of the seventeenth century — a debate that was difficult for any philosopher to avoid. As Descartes emerged as one of the leading figures of the mechanistic science of this era, it is important to examine his involvement in that struggle.

The Scientific Revolution and the Church

By the time Descartes reached adulthood, the Scientific Revolution was already proceeding at full speed. Scientists such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Nicolas Copernicus had posited a new scientific worldview that contradicted Biblical accounts of the origins of the universe — a contradiction without precedent in the history of Western civilization. Their thinking gave humanity a new conception of its place in the cosmos. The Church reacted angrily to these developments. It banned many of the ideas advanced by these scientists from publication; where they were published, the ideas were to be offered only as theories rather than established facts.

The Galileo Affair and Its Impact on Descartes

In 1633, this conflict reached new heights. The Church formally condemned Galileo and had him arrested for asserting that his cosmological findings were the truth rather than a fiction. This occurred around the same time that Descartes had completed his major cosmological work, The World. In that work, he had undertaken a project similar to Galileo's, attempting to assert that the heliocentric system was in fact true rather than mere theoretical speculation.

After news of Galileo's harsh treatment reached Descartes, he decided not to publish The World, fearing similar punishment. For this reason, the work was not published until after the philosopher's death.

It is likely that Descartes suppressed the work for other reasons as well. Descartes was a deeply religious man. He did not merely fear for his own well-being in the wake of Galileo's punishment — he also respected the Church and wanted it to be sympathetic to his work. Approval by the religious establishment mattered to Descartes for moral reasons. He was certainly not a radical, but rather someone who wished to unite Christian theology with rational thought.

Nevertheless, the Galileo incident would remain in the background of Descartes's intellectual activity for the rest of his life, as his work attests. He would tread very lightly on matters of scientific thought so as not to offend. Even when he incorporated his cosmological theories into his Principles, he modified them considerably from the original, leaving the earth static. Moreover, Descartes went to considerable trouble to add lengthy caveats to each of his philosophical works, denying that anything he had asserted could contradict the word of God. At the same time, he wrote that God could confirm all of the arguments he was making. In this respect, God became an integral part of Descartes's philosophy (Baird and Kaufmann 1997).

Descartes's Philosophical Project and the Tree of Knowledge

While Descartes's scientific achievements in the seventeenth century were not unique, he was the first figure to offer an ambitious, comprehensive philosophical response to the new ways of viewing the world that Galileo, Copernicus, and others had developed. Thanks to Descartes, philosophy underwent a major, radical transformation.

In the preface to his Principles, Descartes explains his reasons for providing a philosophical explanation for the new science. He viewed the whole of human knowledge as a tree, with each part relying on the others for its functioning and, in a philosophical sense, its validity. The trunk of the tree was comparable to physics. The branches represented the applied sciences of morals, medicine, and mechanics. The roots provided support and nourishment to the entire system; these roots, Descartes believed, were metaphysics, which he defined as the study of the nature of God, the universe, and everything contained within it. Descartes intended the Principles to serve as a coherent picture of that tree — a foundational guide to his own thought and to philosophical thought in general.

Works Cited

Baird, Forrest E., and Walter Kaufmann. Modern Philosophy. Philosophic Classics, Vol. 3, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.

Descartes, René. Principles of Philosophy. New York: Springer, 1984.

Descartes, René. The World. 1664. Retrieved 5 May 2008 at http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/texts/descartes/world/worldfr.htm.

Franklin, James. "The Genius of the Scholastics, and the Orbit of Aristotle." N.D. Retrieved 5 May 2008 at