France, 1596–1650
René Descartes
French mathematician and philosopher. His method of doubt sought an indubitable foundation for knowledge — and found it in 'I think, therefore I am.'
René Descartes in 9 lines
Every René Descartes passage in thinkr's library, with the theme each one speaks to.
“I think, therefore I am.”
“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
“The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.”
“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”
“I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.”
“As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition.”
“In the theory of the state of the seventeenth century, the monarch is identified with God and has in the state a position exactly analogous to that attributed to God in the Cartesian system of the world.”
Where René Descartes lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
You have to decide before you feel certain.
You are honoring the difference between confidence and knowledge. The risk is making doubt infinite.
A belief you hold arrived from your parents, unexamined.
You are demanding your convictions earn their place. The cost is that some true things cannot be proved on demand.
Lessons that quote René Descartes
- Descartes & Doubt — Tearing it down to find bedrock
- Knowledge and Doubt — What counts as really knowing?
- Apply It Today — Turn an idea into a move
Reading René Descartes today
René Descartes wrote in 1596–1650, from France — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, René Descartes is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The 9 passages above are what the app draws on.
Working at roughly the same time
- Baruch Spinoza — Netherlands, 1632–1677
- David Hume — Scotland, 1711–1776
- Immanuel Kant — Prussia, 1724–1804
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Switzerland/France, 1712–1778
- John Locke — England, 1632–1704
- Thomas Hobbes — England, 1588–1679
Argues the same cases
Bertrand Russell, Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Confucius take positions on the same dilemmas as René Descartes, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.