Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason

by Russell Shorto

Book Overview

Sixteen years after Ren Descartes' death in Stockholm in 1650, a pious French ambassador exhumed the remains of the controversial philosopher to transport them back to Paris. Thus began a 350-year saga that saw Descartes' bones traverse a continent, passing between kings, philosophers, poets, and painters. But as Russell Shorto shows in this deeply engaging book, Descartes' bones also played a role in some of the most momentous episodes in history,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307275663
• ISBN13: 9780307275660
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

An entertaining, readable introduction to a complicated history of ideas

Descartes' Bones highlights the emergence and evolution of "enlightenment" thinking from Descartes' Discourse on Method, to the present day. It is a light history that refreshed my mind about deeper and more complicated issues and questions. It was nice to step back from the minutia of history and philosophy, and get a big picture overview and summary. Also, Descartes' bones is a light history that provides an introduction for the beginning student. It deals in simplifications, sometimes gross oversimplifications. But then Shorto is not writing for the hard core scholar and philosopher. He's making important ideas and threads of history accessible to the general reader. Among other things, Shorto shows how abstract ideas shape, and are shaped by, flesh and blood human beings. While Shorto celebrates reason, and celebrates the products and advances resulting from rationalist and empiricist thinking, he also shows how such thinking, always performed by human beings, can involve mistakes, create its own problems and lead us in odd directions. One useful idea I took away from this book is Shorto's breaking up of enlightenment rationalists into the "radical" and "moderate" camps. This simplification masks complexities, but it also helps to sort out complexities. One oversimplified example is the French revolution, which was driven primarily by more radical enlightenment thinkers and ideas, and the American revolution, driven by more moderate enlightenment thinkers and ideas. In the French revolution, the radical's wanted to "dechristianize" society. In the American revolution, the moderates wanted a secular state, but also wanted to leave a space for religion and religious thinking. Christianity flourished and remains influential in the United States, the first country founded from scratch on enlightenment principles. In Europe, religion and Christianity has a greatly reduced presence and influence. We find echo's of these examples in our contemporary church-state debates. The current church-state issues being played out in Spain is another interesting example. Some of the arguments of the 1600's and 1700's are alive and well in today's world. Descartes himself was more of a moderate. While he celebrated reason, he kept a place for religion and God. He formulated a proof for the existence of God. But he also opened the doors for the radicals and more secular ways of understanding the world. Subsequent thinkers such as Spinoza, Leibnitz and Hume would extend these ideas in various directions as the world became more "modern" and more "Cartesian". Descartes was a product of his times, and his thinking changed the world in which he lived. Our world is a product of the changes that flowed from Descartes. Shorto wants us to start thinking about how and why we came to think the way we do about current events and issues in our world. I think Shorto would be pleased if, after reading Descartes' Bones, reade

It turns out the body of Descartes is as interesting as his mind

Russell Shorto's engaging book is an exciting tour through the history of politics, religion and ideas from the 17th Century onwards, that takes the bizarre and fascinating story of the vicissitudes of the late philosopher's bones as an occasion to illuminate and ruminate on the question what makes us modern. Descartes is, of course, widely acknowledged to be the father of modern philosophy. This is not because he was the most brilliant modern philosopher, or scientist, or mathematician -- although he was brilliant in all of these, and he came of age in a time when these three were not at all as clearly differentiated as we now conceive them to be -- but because his thinking set the stage for a new approach to thinking that has dominated the landscape of philosophy ever since (at least until the twentieth century). Systematic inquiry, beginning with and always returning to a careful analysis of the foundations of that inquiry, is the modern approach to philosophy, and Descartes is the one to have established this approach as the only one proper to a philosophy that would aim for certainty. Even those successors who challenged some of his most distinctive results -- i.e. his claim that the mind and the body are distinct, and yet somehow able to interact in the pineal gland -- took for granted that philosophy must begin with an investigation of how we know what we claim to know, that even metaphysics is always subject to the demands of epistemology. Even Immanuel Kant -- probably the most important philosopher since Aristotle -- can be seen to be following in Descartes' footsteps and merely attempting to do his project over with greater rigor. So Shorto is right to suggest that the story of Descartes' remains should have some wider interest. What I was unprepared for, however, was how rich the story of his remains turns out to have been. What Shorto does is identify several episodes in the story of his bones, and he outlines the historical and political and religious background necessary to appreciate these episodes. It turns out that to tell the story of Descartes' bones it really is necessary to tell the story of how we "moderns" came to be what we are -- and to outline many of the tensions and ambiguities in the thinking and practices that have led us to where we have come. Descartes died of pneumonia in Sweden, after having agreed to tutor Queen Christina -- and to give up his usual practice of writing in bed until mid-morning, and travel through the wintry climes to give her lessons at 4 in the morning. The question what to do with him became important, not only because it was a national embarrassment to have indirectly caused the death of the famous philosopher, but because Descartes was a Catholic and Sweden was Protestant -- so rather than go under in style, he had to be buried with infants from a distant orphanage, since the young are innocent and their religion was not a factor in their burial site. Fourteen years later, h

A fascinating blend of philosophy and (admittedly morbid) history

Award-winning historian Russell Shorto presents the unabridged audiobook rendition Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, a fascinating blend of philosophy and (admittedly morbid) history. Rene Descartes, famous for saying "I think, therefore I am," a phrase with the underlying tenet that true knowledge lies in facts and research rather than church teachings. After Descartes' death, his remains became subject to surprisingly ghoulish greed - humans have fought over, stolen, and sold his bones, and the location of his skull remains a perplexing mystery to this day. A saga that spans six nations, three centuries, and three burials, while also exploring the philosophical implications of Descartes' legacy, Descartes' Bones is a truly remarkable look at how one man's ideas can literally affect himself and all around him long after his passing. Tracks are present every three minutes for easy bookmarking. 8 CDs, 9.25 hours.

Fascinating Study of the Impact of Decartes on History

Using Decarte's bones as the medium of storytelling, Russel Shorto provides a fascinating study of Rene Descarte and his impact on history. His new way of thinking literally changed the way people thought in general and led the way to the modern world and to all the various conflicts that exist today between modernity and the past, particularly the conflict between faith and reason. Shorto takes us through this story by following the story of Decarte's remains - his skeleton and his skull, which were originally buried in Sweden but were ultimately translated back to his French homeland. Shorto presents Descarte's revolutionary thinking during the early part of the 17th century, which led to the breaking away from the autorities at the time, both church and state, that basically set the framework from which man saw the world. By using his own reason, man would now begin the process of deconstructing and analyzing his own reality; by creating and apparent duality between mind an body, man would also begin the process of searching for answers from a scientific perspective, breaking down reality into its components parts, in an attempt to find ansers to how things work, rather than by relying solely on religious explanations. This new way of thinking would set in motion intellectual forces that would lead to democracy and advances in the sciences, while at the same time threatening the powers that be. Decarte's Bones at times reads like a detective story, as Shorto explores the journey of the deceased's bones and what ultimately happened to them. It is also fascinating to read about how the great minds of the times came together at different moments for a variety of reasons - to discuss the authenticity of the bones, to debate Descarte's philosphy, and other matters - all as a result of Descarte's revolutionary view. Objectively, Descartes is one of the few men in the history of humanity whose thinking reconfigured dramatically the course of history and to this day continues to have an impact. This book does justice to the man's impact and does so while drawing the reader into the heart of the times in which he lived and in which his legacy grew. If you love history in general or the history of thought and philosophy in particular, this book is highly recommended.

."Cogito, Ergo Sum":I think therefore I am

It is rare to find such an endeavor as Descartes Bones outside the space of academic research. Russell Shorto gives us a well documented dissertation of the end of pre-modern thinking through the real birth and evolution of modern scientific philosophy. Although most works are too heavy for the average reader, this fascinating little book can engage even the novice interest. This discussion is not so much about the life of Rene Descartes but of his death and how his influence had engaged a serious interest in who might enjoy the ownership of his bones. Pre-modern philosophy saw life as a spiritual balance. Science was less of an independent examination and more of an homage to the works of God or gods. Rene Descartes was on the cusp between this pre-modern thought and the modern philosophies geared toward investigation separate from the constraints of religious teaching. This reader feels that Shorto was attempting to demonstrate in his description of the movement of the remains of Descartes post mortem a parallel between Descartes life and death. The continuous controversy over the burial of Descartes bones reflects the tension evolving from pre-modern to modern philosophy. Not only were his bones exhumed and moved but they were examined and measured along with the bones and brains of others in some of the original attempts to link body and mind. The tension over his bones was the result of his having opened the gates of thoughts and allowed the growth of intellectualism that others had wanted but feared. Such was the socio-political atmosphere that nurtured the French Revolution. People saw themselves capable of greater things than servitude to a religious rule that they feared more than understood. Russell Shorto steps outside the traditional philosophical discussion and provides a meaningful work that is available to a larger audience. Descartes Bones can be useful to to graduate seminar as well as the fireside chat. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in the birth of Natural Philosophy as well as the philosophy of Science and Medicine.