René Descartes

Today we enter the seventeenth century, a moment when philosophy took a decisive turn into what we now call modernity.

Our guide is René Descartes, born in 1596 in La Haye in France, a man whose restless mind and relentless pursuit of certainty reshaped the intellectual map of Europe.

He is remembered for his famous declaration, cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am – a phrase that became the rallying cry of rationalism and the cornerstone of modern philosophy.

But Descartes was not only a philosopher. He was also a mathematician, a scientist, and a moral thinker who wrestled with questions of faith, doubt, method, and how to live a steady life in a time of upheaval.

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