Descartes biography clarke

There has developed, in recent years, a small industry in the writing of philosophical biographies -- books detailing the lives of great philosophers, providing background to the development of their thoughts, or describing the relationships between philosophers.

Descartes scholarship is no exception, and Desmond Clarke's recently published biography joins other titles on Descartes published in the last decade or so by Stephen Gaukroger, Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, and Richard Watson.^[1] Clarke's work is notable for its exhaustive detail, drawing helpfully upon Descartes' voluminous and revealing correspondence to reconstruct as best as possible Descartes' movements and mindsets throughout his almost 54 years of life.

His focus is on Descartes' life, but he also provides succinct and accessible descriptions of the major developments in Descartes' philosophical thinking. Another virtue of the book is the context -- theological, political, social, and scientific