Descartes: His Life and Thought

by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis

Book Overview

Genevi?ve Rodis-Lewis is uniquely qualified to celebrate Ren? Descartes. This major intellectual biography illuminates the personal and historical events of Descartes's life, from his birth and early years in France to his death in Sweden, his burial, and the fate of his remains. Concerned not only with historical events but also with the development of Descartes's personality, Rodis-Lewis speculates on the effect childhood impressions may have...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801486270
• ISBN13: 9780801486272
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A splendidly researched and vividly written biography.

Genevieve Rodis-Lew is Professor Emerita at the Sorbonne and has written a splendid biography on the life and thought of a major and influential 17th Century European philosopher. Ably translated into English by Jane Marie Todd, Descartes is vividly presented in the context of his time. Drawing upon his own correspondence, Rodis-Lewis traces his disillusion with the Jesuit scholastic method and his attraction mathematics and then to metaphysics. Descartes emerges for the modern reader as a complete and complex man, so much more than a mere footnote in the history of science or the evolution of western philosophical traditions.