Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy

A critical biography of René Descartes, whose first principle (“I think therefore I am.”) reshaped modern philosophy.

Often called the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes set the intellectual agenda for seventeenth-century philosophy, mathematics, natural science, and beyond. In this critical biography, based on compelling new research, Steven Nadler follows Descartes from his early education in France to the Dutch Republic, where he lived most of his adult life, to his final month...