Often called ‘the father of modern philosophy’, René Descartes’ contributions to philosophy, mathematics and natural science set the intellectual agenda for the seventeenth century. In this biography and assessment of his works, based on the most up-to-date research, Steven Nadler follows Descartes from his early years and education in France to the Dutch Republic, where he lived most of his adult life, to his final months as tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden. Nadler shows how Descartes’ ‘renewal’ of philosophy involved a transformation in both the way in which philosophy is done and the fundamental understanding of the cosmos, the natural world and human nature. His work was a springboard for many of the metaphysical and epistemological problems that continue to engage philosophers today.

Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy is a masterly account of one of the best-known figures of modern philosophy. Steven Nadler shows us the steps in the expressions of Descartes’ ideas as they emerged during a life itself in rapid motion: from the young gentleman’s French education, to his travels throughout Europe in the midst of the Thirty Years War, to his self-imposed exile in the Dutch Republic where he wrote and published, to his death at the court of Queen Christina in Sweden. Along the way, Nadler lets us see not only Descartes’ views but the nature of the threats he posed for Scholastically inclined theologians of his day. A clear, distinct, and lively guide. * Harold J. Cook, John F. Nickoll Professor of History, Brown University, and author of The Young Descartes *
Steven Nadler’s outstanding biography achieves a fine balance of life, ideas and context, allowing Descartes’s philosophy to emerge from its eclectic seventeenth-century milieu in all its dazzling originality and strangeness. Lucid, compelling and unfailingly judicious, this is a marvellous new study of a magisterial modern thinker. * Clare Carlisle Tresch, Professor of Philosophy, King’s College London *

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his books include Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (2020).