This weekend I visited Descartes, France. Once called La Haye en Touraine, the small town was rechristened “Descartes” in 1967 in honor of the famous French philosopher’s birth in the city in 1596. My eventual dissertation may involve a study of neglected aspects of Descartes’ philosophy, including the understudied influence of his philosophic project on the historical development of Europe.
The fame of Descartes’ “method,” in which he first doubts all things of which he is not certain, and then constructs a new system of knowledge upon the edifice of this doubt, conceals a more supple philosophic mind than most philosophic commentators have appreciated. The Descartes you were taught in “Philo 101,” in short, hardly resembles the real man. This trip was therefore a wonderful opportunity to discover a living memorial to one of the towering geniuses in the history of Europe.
The town has turned the family home of Descartes into a museum, which turned out to be far more elaborate than one has a right to expect of a museum in a town this size. After an initial awkward conversation with the woman working the museum, I was outfitted with an audio guide and given as much time as I wanted to tour the birthplace of M. Descartes. Or was it? The first piece of information given me by the audio guide was in fact local gossip. Legend has it that Descartes was not actually born in the home, but in a carriage on the way to the home as his parents rushed to arrive before the baby. But, as the audio guide counseled me, let’s not bother ourselves with such spurious rumors.
Inside the museum, I discovered the resolution to a question I have wondered about for some time: could Descartes read Ancient Greek? The answer is “yes.” The museum had on display a replica of Descartes’ schedule and curriculum at the famous Jesuit school of La Flèche, in Northwest France. He studied both Latin (never in dispute) and Ancient Greek at the school. This information helped resolve, for me, the further question of whether Descartes had read Aristotle in the original Greek or whether he had only read the Latin translations of William of Moerbeke and the scholastic interpreters of Aristole. It is likely, to the point of near certainty, that Descartes had read Aristotle in his own tongue.
Beyond this important historical fact, the museum itself offered one fascinating panorama after another about the life and work of Descartes, including panels on his famous friendships with Fr. Marin Mersenne, S.J., Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Queen Christina of Sweden. I was pleased with how many of the panels I could make sense of without needing to search for English translations in the audio guide. Although I certainly had to work to interpret each display, I could follow the developments in Descartes’s life. I was aided by the fact that I was already familiar with many of these developments, but it was a reassuring moment in my French language studies.
Before this weekend visit to the town of Descartes ever took place, however, I was witness to the most interesting and contentious dinner conversation I’ve yet experienced in France. My host family invited a family friend over for a wonderful dinner, preceded by the opening of a bottle of Champagne( from Champagne…) and political discussion in the living room. While the French are keen to keep political discussion away from strangers, they are eager to engage in political dispute among family and friends. In truth, I was the precipitating cause of the dispute. I posed a question I thought would be mostly factual: How is it that so many people of Northern African descent ended up settling in Tours? I asked this question in part because immigrants from former French colonies had settled, or so I had thought, for the most part in the South, along the Côte d’Azur, and in Paris.
My question set off a conversation that outlasted the pre-dinner apéritif and dinner itself. The main point of contention was the extent to which the French had a right to demand that immigrants adapt to the French way of life. The particular point of dispute was not whether the French had a right to demand this—all were of accord that this right existed—but rather the degree to which it could be demanded by French society. Of particular importance was the question of whether the French, an historically Catholic country with a secular constitution and increasingly secular mores, should demand secularization from Muslim immigrants of Northern African descent. The table was certainly not of accord on this point.