The Young Descartes

Cook does a very fine job of weaving Descartes into the complex world of seventeenth-century Europe: its politics and especially its military campaigns. He's written a book that--provocatively and compellingly--seats intellectual history in the real world and helps make Descartes into a real human being. --Russell Shorto, author of Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason Anyone who starts reading will quickly be drawn into the life of a young and intriguing French noble who only gradually found his way to becoming the Descartes later generations know, love, or sometimes hate. This is a fascinating study of the personal, social, and political complications of living in early seventeenth-century Europe, just as the modern nation-state was starting to form. --Dennis L. Sepper, University of Dallas The Young Descartes is an engaging and intriguing work. Harold Cook follows Rene Descartes through the political minefields of the French court, riven by the rivalry between Marie de Medici and her son, Louis XIII, and his eminence grise, the formidable Cardinal Richelieu, and over the dangerous intellectual terrain of the seventeenth century, into a world that is rich while also complex, contested, and often veiled by caution or secrecy. This book makes central the fact that Descartes, frequently relegated to the status of arm-chair philosopher, actually traveled widely, indeed, almost incessantly for crucial periods of his life, and asks important questions about where he traveled and to what ends. --Kathleen Wellman, Southern Methodist University