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After fifty years of outstanding research in Descartes’s life and thought, G. Sebba’s work establishes quite clearly Baillet’s basic reliability as the chronicler of Descartes’s life. Gregor Sebba conducted a meticulous study of Baillet’s unique access to these documents and witnesses, and his scrupulous probity in reporting The starting point for any historical investigation of Descartes’s life is the first full-scale biography by Adrien Baillet (Paris, 1691), who had access to a great deal of original manuscripts through Descartes’s associate Clerselier, which have long since vanished.
![scolastic newslife in the 1620s scolastic newslife in the 1620s](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2d/8f/0a/2d8f0aa0282790a4de685676994f8477.png)
Several conferences and symposia in 1996 commemorated the 400th anniversary of Descartes’s birth in addition to discussion of his philosophical doctrines and heritage, several respected scholars have taken the opportunity to reevaluate his philosophical contributions in the context of his life story. An underlying curiosity focuses on those long gaps and peculiar hiatuses between his infrequent early letters a curiosity aggravated by his penchant for leaving so many things unsaid. What is known about Descartes’s life story falls somewhere between these two extremes-enough to whet the appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. One approaches the life of Lucretius, for example, compressed in a single paragraph, with a sense of forever knowing too little and leaves a thousand-page biography of Russell with a sense (perhaps) of knowing too much. This fascination is even more evident in cases where enough is known to sketch the figure’s outline or silhouette, but not quite enough to fill in the details.
![scolastic newslife in the 1620s scolastic newslife in the 1620s](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/54/ef/3454ef5aad032091ce38e0db95f3a9f8.jpg)
The lives of great figures in the history of ideas exert a perennial fascination for those who find their ideas exciting. Paul S MacDonald. Journal of the History of Philosophy.