Early modern · 1596–1650
Who influenced René Descartes?
Influences and legacy
Doubted everything down to the thinking self and rebuilt knowledge from there.
René Descartes was influenced by Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas and Michel de Montaigne, and went on to influence Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. That is 12 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: After Frans Hals, Public domain See the whole map
Who was René Descartes?
A French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, Descartes refused to take earlier philosophers on authority and set out a systematic method of inquiry that shaped early modern philosophy. His best-known statement is "cogito, ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am", and his Meditations on First Philosophy are still widely studied.
In mathematics he joined geometry and algebra into analytic geometry, which paved the way for calculus, and the Cartesian coordinate system bears his name. He was a leading figure of the Scientific Revolution and also contributed to epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced René Descartes?
5 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Augustine of Hippo AD 354–430
- Anselm of Canterbury 1033–1109
- Al-Ghazali c. 1058–1111
- Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274
- Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592
Who did René Descartes influence?
7 thinkers on this map draw directly on René Descartes.
- Thomas Hobbes 1588–1679
- Margaret Cavendish 1623–1673
- Anne Conway 1631–1679
- John Locke 1632–1704
- Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
- Nicolas Malebranche 1638–1715
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
The line of teachers behind René Descartes
The longest documented line of influence ending at René Descartes runs 14 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from René Descartes
Indirect influences
- Through Thomas Aquinas: Aristotle, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Averroes, Maimonides, Albertus Magnus
- Through Michel de Montaigne: Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Erasmus
- Through Augustine of Hippo: Plato, Tertullian, Plotinus
- Through Al-Ghazali: Avicenna
The second generation
- Through John Locke: George Berkeley, Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Denis Diderot, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Robert Nozick
- Through Baruch Spinoza: Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Georg W. F. Hegel, F. W. J. Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze
- Through Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Christian Wolff, Émilie du Châtelet, Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege
- Through Thomas Hobbes: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Contemporaries of René Descartes
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of René Descartes, with no direct line between them.
- Hugo Grotius 1583–1645
René Descartes by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 5
- Direct followers
- 7 — #11 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 55
- Thinkers downstream
- 131
- Wikipedia languages
- 182 — #2 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Questions about René Descartes
- Who influenced René Descartes?
- Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas and Michel de Montaigne.
- Who did René Descartes influence?
- Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
- When did René Descartes live?
- 1596–1650. The map files René Descartes under the early modern period.
- How rare is the René Descartes card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on René Descartes in 182 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- John Locke 1632–1704
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662