# René Descartes

## The offices he actually held

Descartes is a French-born philosopher who published from the Dutch Republic and died at a Swedish court. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes, SEP at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/, works at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/, IEP at https://iep.utm.edu/descarte/, Gutenberg Discourse at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59, Meditations at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306, and Elisabeth at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/elisabeth-bohemia/ are independent public files.

The first fact about his power is a 1637 book with appendices. The second is a 1641 Latin book with objections. The third is that 1663 is not 1637.

## What went wrong

Animal-machine is a documented cost. Le Monde was withheld after Galileo's 1633 condemnation — Galileo's trial, Descartes's silence. Voetius attacked at Utrecht. Christina's court is patronage weather ending in 1650 death. The Index is later church. This catalog refuses a unique pineal coefficient.

## What improved

Discourse, Geometry, Dioptrics, Meteors, Meditations with objections, Principles, Passions, Elisabeth letters, acceptance of circulation beside Harvey.

Related people: Elisabeth, Mersenne, Galileo as 1633 neighbour, Christina, Beeckman, Gassendi, Arnauld, Harvey, Pascal as younger neighbour, Spinoza as later reader.

Do not store a unique pineal coefficient. Do not store the Index as 1637. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory.

### The 1637 Discourse made a new method public after years of withholding larger work

René Descartes was born in 1596, studied at the Jesuit college of La Flèche and spent part of his early adulthood travelling and serving with military forces before settling for long periods in the Dutch Republic. His decisive publication date was 1637, when the *Discourse on the Method* appeared in French as an introduction to three scientific essays. The [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/) notes that Descartes had earlier prepared a larger work, *The World*, but withheld it after learning of Galileo’s 1633 condemnation. The published *Discourse* instead offered rules for directing reason and presented the famous first-person route from radical doubt toward the certainty of thinking. *Meditations on First Philosophy* followed in 1641, deliberately circulated with objections and replies from other scholars. That sequence shows a philosopher managing both intellectual risk and publicity: he did not simply announce a completed system, but staged its publication across scientific demonstrations, metaphysical arguments and organised controversy.

### The final decade joined metaphysics, physiology and court patronage before the 1650 death in Stockholm

Descartes continued expanding the system in *Principles of Philosophy* in 1644 and *The Passions of the Soul* in 1649. His account of mind and body defended a real distinction between thinking substance and extended substance while also trying to explain ordinary interaction between mental states, bodily motions and passions; the [Stanford Encyclopedia’s survey of Descartes’s works](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/) places those texts in the order of their composition and publication. In 1649 Queen Christina invited him to Sweden. The arrangement required Descartes, accustomed to a different routine, to provide philosophical instruction at the royal court in Stockholm. He became ill during the winter and died on 11 February 1650. His death did not end the disputes his work had generated: Cartesian physics, mechanism, dualism and the method of doubt became targets for both followers and critics. The concrete record is therefore broader than “I think, therefore I am”: publication choices, censorship fears, correspondence networks and a final move under royal patronage shaped how the philosophy entered seventeenth-century European institutions.

## Dated facts

- The 1663 Index listing of Descartes's works is later church action, not a 1637 act of the Discourse and not his autograph ban. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-index-1663. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- Descartes dies in Stockholm in 1650 after the court winter; the death is health-harm in patronage weather, not a later poisoning novel as established Fact. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-death-1650. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- Descartes goes to Queen Christina's Stockholm court in 1649; the court winter is patronage-and-health weather, not a unique philosophy coefficient. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-christina-stockholm. Sources: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christina-queen-of-Sweden, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- 1649: Untitled fact. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-rights-animals. Sources: https://iep.utm.edu/descarte/, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/.
- Passions of the Soul (1649) is a public treatise written with Princess Elisabeth's correspondence in view, one book not a unique pineal number. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-passions-1649. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/elisabeth-bohemia/, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/.
- 1649: This catalog refuses to store a unique pineal coefficient; the pineal mention in Passions is a speculative seat, not a measured constant. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-pineal-limit. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/.
- The 1647 French Principles with a prefatory letter on learning is a public access-edition, not a unique lycée statute. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-french-principles. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- 1647: A French royal pension is later dated around Descartes; court money is a fiscal patronage path, not a unique welfare series. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-fiscal-pension. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- Principles of Philosophy (1644) is a public Latin textbook of the system, one book not a unique vortex coefficient. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-principles-1644. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- 1643: Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia is a public philosophical letter-file, not a unique courtship coefficient. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-elisabeth-letters. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/elisabeth-bohemia/, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/.
- 1642: The Utrecht crisis with Voetius is a dated university-and-pulpit attack on Descartes's teaching, a polarisation not a unique hanging. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-voetius. Sources: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes.
- 1641: Objections and Replies appended to the Meditations make a public adversarial method, not a unique salon Descartes owned. https://factrail.ai/facts/des-objections-replies. Sources: https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521366232, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/.

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/rene-descartes