The Strange René Descartes on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: René Descartes was born on this day in 1596. You may know him for his axiom "I think therefore I am" (Cogito Ergo Sum) and his mind-body dualism, but did you know that he had a fetish for cross-eyed women? He also slept in ovens. Many philosophers had strange peccadilloes. Kant was a hypochondriac and kept an intense and prolonged obsessive daily routine. Albert Camus feared that he would die young, and he died in a car crash at the relatively young age of 46. Soren Kierkegaard believed his family was under a curse from God that seemed prophetic as most of his family died young. Nietzsche was obsessed with eating fruit — sometimes as much as 6.5 pounds per day. Voltaire would drink upwards of 40 cups of coffee a day. Arthur Schopenhauer didn't much like people, but he loved his poodles and he kept a bunch of them...and they all shared the same name: BUTZ! Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an expert on children, but he selfishly abandoned all of his 5 kids. Karl Marx wrote of capitalists that exploited their workers, yet he never paid his maid.

See also Norman Smith's Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy 1903
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2016/03/norman-smiths-studies-in-cartesian.html

Descartes, Spinoza & Philosophy - 230 Books on DVDrom (Rationalism, Hume, Kant)
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2015/10/descartes-spinoza-philosophy-230-books.html

Rene Descartes and the Soul by John Pancoast Gordy 1890
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/02/rene-descartes-and-soul-by-john.html

Descartes and the Pineal Gland By HP Blavatsky
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/01/descartes-and-pineal-gland-by-hp.html