John Cottingham, welcome to the show.

Nice to be here.

Who was René Descartes?

Well, Descartes often described as an early modern philosopher.

He wrote in the 17th century, and he was born in France in what's now called Descartes, which is somewhat odd.

He said Descartes was born in Descartes, but in the Turin district.

He went to school at La Flesch at the Jesuit College, which he later described as one of

the best in Europe.

But most of his life, he was in Holland, where he wrote his great masterpieces.

The best known works are the discourse on the method, written in French, published anonymously in 1637.

And then his, I think, his masterpiece, the meditations.

The meditations on first philosophy, that's to say, metaphysics, which were published in Latin in 1641.

But as well as being a philosopher in the modern technical sense to do with theory of knowledge, metaphysics and so on.

He was also what we now called a scientist.

He was a great mathematician, and he published a massive compendium of his scientific views,

which was called the Principia Philosophia,

written in Latin, four parts in 1644.

Towards the end of his life, he died quite young.

He wrote another very important work, I think, the passions of the soul, which is about the human being

and the emotions and the feelings. So, I think he's important, well, what attracted me to him

was that his philosophy spans so many areas. In my own work, I've argued for a synoptic conception of philosophy that

instead of just focusing on narrow issues, takes in a broad range and sees how different parts

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