Volume 7 — RENÉ DESCARTES
Reading edition
Born in Touraine in 1596, died in Stockholm in 1650; founder of modern general philosophy; educated at a Jesuit college in France; lived in Paris in 1613-18; at the siege of La Rochelle in 1628; in retirement in Holland in 1629-49; defending his philosophical ideas; his first famous work, "Discours de la Methode," published in Leyden in 1637; published "Meditations of Philosophy" in 1641; a treatise on the passion of love in 1649; other works published after his death; famous as a mathematician as well as philosopher, his geometry being still standard in Europe.