Remarks about the question whether René Descartes was a philosopher or not

Plakát

René Descartes is considered to be one of the most important philosophers of all time. But readers of Descartes' oeuvre who do not only know about his philosophical works may perhaps doubt whether Descartes would ever have viewed himself as a philosopher. Therefore, we should try to understand to which purpose Descartes was doing philosophy and what this meant for his philosophical theses. We will learn that Descartes' "philosophy" had more to do with his doing science than with a genuine interest in classical philosophical questions.