Joachim Descartes fell into this latter category and spent most of his career as a member of the provincial parliament.ДЄfter the death of their mother, which occurred soon after RenГ©вЂ™s birth, the three Descartes children were sent to their maternal grandmother, Jeanne Sain, to be raised in La Haye and remained there even after their father remarried in 1600. The Descartes clan was a bourgeois family composed of mostly doctors and some lawyers. His sister, Jeanne, was probably born sometime the following year, while his surviving older brother, also named Pierre, was born on October 19, 1591. The oldest child, Pierre, died soon after his birth on October 19, 1589. He was the youngest of the coupleвЂ™s three surviving children. RenГ© Descartes was born to Joachim Descartes and Jeanne Brochard on Main La Haye, France near Tours. Absolute Certainty and the Cartesian Circle.The presentation below provides an overview of DescartesвЂ™ philosophical thought as it relates to these various metaphysical, epistemological, religious, moral and scientific issues, covering the wide range of his published works and correspondence.

All of this eventually culminating in a moral system based on the notion of вЂњgenerosity.вЂќ Descartes also applied this mechanistic framework to the operation of plant, animal and human bodies, sensation and the passions. This points toward his second, major break with the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition in that Descartes intended to replace their system based on final causal explanations with his system based on mechanistic principles. These beliefs, which are re-established with absolute certainty, include the existence of a world of bodies external to the mind, the dualistic distinction of the immaterial mind from the body, and his mechanistic model of physics based on the clear and distinct ideas of geometry. Once this conclusion is reached, Descartes can proceed to rebuild his system of previously dubious beliefs on this absolutely certain foundation. This, in turn, serves to fix the certainty of everything that is clearly and distinctly understood and provides the epistemological foundation Descartes set out to find. It is from this point that Descartes proceeds to demonstrate GodвЂ™s existence and that God cannot be a deceiver. He eventually discovers that вЂњI existвЂќ is impossible to doubt and is, therefore, absolutely certain. From here Descartes sets out to find something that lies beyond all doubt. This clearing of his previously held beliefs then puts him at an epistemological ground-zero. This вЂњhyperbolic doubtвЂќ then serves to clear the way for what Descartes considers to be an unprejudiced search for the truth. His basic strategy was to consider false any belief that falls prey to even the slightest doubt. Second, he wanted to replace their final causal model of scientific explanation with the more modern, mechanistic model.Дescartes attempted to address the former issue via his method of doubt.

First, Descartes thought that the ScholasticsвЂ™ method was prone to doubt given their reliance on sensation as the source for all knowledge. His fundamental break with Scholastic philosophy was twofold. RenГ© Descartes is often credited with being the вЂњFather of Modern Philosophy.вЂќ This title is justified due both to his break with the traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy prevalent at his time and to his development and promotion of the new, mechanistic sciences.

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