Descartes’ Bones — Russell Shorto

Russell Shorto describes the very strong influence that Rene Descartes had in fomenting the Enlightenment and establishing reason rather than faith as the best way to discover truths about the world.

But the author traces the influence of Cartesian ideas through the novel approach of following what happened to Descartes’ physical remains after his death, a fascinating story in itself. The reason it’s a story at all is that Descartes died in Sweden, and was buried there. It wasn’t until 16 years after his death that the French woke up to the fact that there was one of their intellectual giants, buried in a modest rural cemetery in a distant country, so they decided they should bring him home. Not everything went to plan…

A really interesting, entertaining and informative read.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Related

Originally published at rightword.com.au on March 11, 2016.