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Author Russell Shorto in Conversation with Gary Rosen
A conversation between Russell Shorto, author of Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason and Gary Rosen, John Templeton Foundation
The Harvard Club, New York City
Saturday, March 21, 2009
On a brutal winter day in 1650, the Frenchman René Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried in Stockholm after a cold, lonely death far from home. Sixteen years later, the French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed the body and transported it home. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about a philosopher who was hounded from country to country on charges of atheism? And why would Descartes' bones take such a strange path over the next 350 years?
To many believers of his era, the radical skepticism developed by Descartes seemed like heresy. But the philosopher considered himself a good Catholic and thought that his famous "method" served the ends of faith. In Descartes' Bones, Russell Shorto provides an intellectual and historical detective story about the misunderstood philosopher who declared "I think, therefore I am" ("Cogito, ergo sum") and thereby helped to create not just the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution but the modern mind itself.
Russell Shorto is the bestselling author of The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (2004), Saints and Madmen (1999), and Gospel Truth (1997). A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, he directs the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam, where he lives.
Gary Rosen is the chief external affairs officer of the John Templeton Foundation. Formerly the managing editor of Commentary, he holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.