René Descartes: Difference between revisions

{{a|author|[[File:Rene Descartes.jpg|450px|center|thumb|[[Rene Descartes]], yesterday. Or is it?]]}}René Nigel Descartes (1596-1650) was a conveyancer on Provincial Dijon, and that rare thing among land law types: a [[prose stylist]]. Yes, he was one of ''us'', my gorgeous little contrarian friends — fluent in three or four languages, and grew so enraged by loathesome syntax of mid-enlightenment Bourgogne that he set out to change it. His first approach was an attempt to conclusively define the expression “[[for the avoidance of doubt]]”.  He never quite got there — the phrase remains a staple of [[legal eagles]] to this day — but he did manage to conclusively prove his own existence, at least to his own satisfaction — if you don’t believe in yourself, how can you expect anyone else to... right, [[LinkedIn]] denizens? — and also the existence of a specifically Christian deity, the latter being a bit more controversial.