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The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes
How a famous painting opens a window into the life, times, and philosophy of René DescartesIn the Louvre museum hangs a portrait that is considered the iconic image of René Descartes, the great seventeenth-century French philosopher. And the painter of the work? The Dutch master Frans Hals—or so it was long believed, until the work was downgraded to a copy of an original. But where is the authentic version, and who painted it? Is the man in the painting—and in its original—really Descartes?A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter investigates the remarkable individuals and circumstances behind a small portrait. Through this image—and the intersecting lives of a brilliant philosopher, a Catholic priest, and a gifted painter—Steven Nadler opens a fascinating portal into Descartes's life and times, skillfully presenting an accessible introduction to Descartes's philosophical and scientific ideas, and an illuminating tour of the volatile political and religious environment of the Dutch Golden Age. As Nadler shows, Descartes's innovative ideas about the world, about human nature and knowledge, and about philosophy itself, stirred great controversy. Philosophical and theological critics vigorously opposed his views, and civil and ecclesiastic authorities condemned his writings. Nevertheless, Descartes's thought came to dominate the philosophical world of the period, and can rightly be called the philosophy of the seventeenth century.Shedding light on a well-known image, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter offers an engaging exploration of a celebrated philosopher's world and work.
241 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 21, 2013
11 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Steven Nadler
58 books106 followersSteven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. His books include Rembrandt's Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Spinoza: A Life, which won the Koret Jewish Book Award; and A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton).
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 5, 2014
This is a short book--it felt more like a long essay than a book. What puzzled me is the reasoning behind the book. The relationship of the three people of the title seem tangential. Descartes was friends with the priest but he was friends with others. Descartes was probably painted by Hals but he was painted by others, if less famous. The priest commissioned a painting of Descartes from Hals. I can't see any larger meaning behind the stories told. Nadler gives descriptions of Descarte's philosophy though it's not clear how this fits into the book.
May 21, 2018
This sensitive and informed portrayal of the leading incisive and groundbreaking philosopher of the 17th century, René Descartes, provides a smooth conduit into the life and thinking of a doyen of his times. The sound rationality of his approach and his desire to explore the new and challenging in thought and faith, rather than adhering to the dictates of the authorities, has an innate appeal. For a young person, Descartes is extremely appealing, ranging from his wanderlust, which saw him traveling the length and breadth of Europe, through to his desire for close and supportive friendship with those who were most meaningful to him, above all the priest Father Augustijn Bloemaert.
Descartes’s opposition to aspects of the established church and state no doubt should also go a long way to entrenching a positive approach towards him among the young. His rejection of what man perceives through the senses in favor of the overpowering superiority of reason should serve as a wake-up call to any reader heralding from the contemporary ‘instant gratification’ society who comes upon his work for the first time. The contentious nature of Descartes’s writings led to them being listed in the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books for eons, which, no doubt, should also appeal to the young, who have long tended to be attracted to subversive and outlawed works. For undergraduate students and relative newcomers to the field of philosophy, Steven Nadler’s writing is bound to prove riveting reading—there are just so many points of common interest and approach with the modern-day thinker (keeping in mind that he, in fact, abandoned academic studies in a keen desire to investigate the world for himself).
In the portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals that appears on the front cover of this exploratory work, despite his starched collar, the philosopher looks less concerned with being genteel than he is with making a conscious effort to be intensely aware of what is going on around him, and interrogative of it. Instead of “think” in the stock phrase that is associated with his outlook on life and raison d’être, “I think, therefore I am,” one might, perhaps, just as easily insert “am intellectually aware.” In short, Descartes had a deep concern with both the mental and the physical, a concern that Nadler reveals in relation to his progression throughout life, on both the intellectual and the material plane.
In The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes, Nadler, the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, uses Frans Hals’s portrait of Descartes as a fitting centerpiece and starting point from which to launch an examination of the philosopher’s life against the political and cultural backdrop of Europe, and specifically the Low Countries, during the Dutch Golden Age.
Above all, the humaneness of Descartes, which is remarkable for any academic, but especially for any philosopher, is what stands out in this text. Nadler’s many excerpts from Descartes’ letters and other writings also help to bring this work alive. The work is well illustrated with full-color plates and multiple half-tones throughout. In the comprehensive index, particular care is taken with the detailed entries on the priest Augustijn Bloemaert, on René Descartes and his numerous works, and on Frans Hals and the multiple references to his various paintings. In order to find a comparable introductory reader to Descartes, one would have to go extremely far. The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes should serve to enlighten many a newcomer regarding the origins of modern philosophy, and encourage them to inquire much more deeply about said philosopher in future.
Descartes’s opposition to aspects of the established church and state no doubt should also go a long way to entrenching a positive approach towards him among the young. His rejection of what man perceives through the senses in favor of the overpowering superiority of reason should serve as a wake-up call to any reader heralding from the contemporary ‘instant gratification’ society who comes upon his work for the first time. The contentious nature of Descartes’s writings led to them being listed in the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books for eons, which, no doubt, should also appeal to the young, who have long tended to be attracted to subversive and outlawed works. For undergraduate students and relative newcomers to the field of philosophy, Steven Nadler’s writing is bound to prove riveting reading—there are just so many points of common interest and approach with the modern-day thinker (keeping in mind that he, in fact, abandoned academic studies in a keen desire to investigate the world for himself).
In the portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals that appears on the front cover of this exploratory work, despite his starched collar, the philosopher looks less concerned with being genteel than he is with making a conscious effort to be intensely aware of what is going on around him, and interrogative of it. Instead of “think” in the stock phrase that is associated with his outlook on life and raison d’être, “I think, therefore I am,” one might, perhaps, just as easily insert “am intellectually aware.” In short, Descartes had a deep concern with both the mental and the physical, a concern that Nadler reveals in relation to his progression throughout life, on both the intellectual and the material plane.
In The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes, Nadler, the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, uses Frans Hals’s portrait of Descartes as a fitting centerpiece and starting point from which to launch an examination of the philosopher’s life against the political and cultural backdrop of Europe, and specifically the Low Countries, during the Dutch Golden Age.
Above all, the humaneness of Descartes, which is remarkable for any academic, but especially for any philosopher, is what stands out in this text. Nadler’s many excerpts from Descartes’ letters and other writings also help to bring this work alive. The work is well illustrated with full-color plates and multiple half-tones throughout. In the comprehensive index, particular care is taken with the detailed entries on the priest Augustijn Bloemaert, on René Descartes and his numerous works, and on Frans Hals and the multiple references to his various paintings. In order to find a comparable introductory reader to Descartes, one would have to go extremely far. The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes should serve to enlighten many a newcomer regarding the origins of modern philosophy, and encourage them to inquire much more deeply about said philosopher in future.
November 29, 2013
I know, I know, one start. Seems pretty mean. But I was soooo disappointed with this book! I mean, it starts so well, with this little bit of a mystery - who is the painter? Is it Descartes? And the Priest? It is a lovely little bit of tantalising...
And then it turns out that this book is really a dyed-in-the-wool, postgraduate research-style look at deservedly forgotten details of life in seventeenth century Holland.
The Big Newspapers salivated over the book: "Nadler’s detective work makes for fascinating reading, but where he really catches fire is in his exposition of Cartesian philosophy, especially the “Discourse on Method” and the “Meditations on First Philosophy,” wrote the Washington Post. They lied.
The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter is an elegant, sleek looking book, beautifully produced by Princeton University Press for Steven Nadler, author of a well-received intellectual history of Spinoza. What is on offer here is an entire book based on one rather small idea - about Descartes being misunderstood, as per the conventional image of him which is taken from a famous painting in the Louvre.
Indeed, that Descartes is often misinterpreted is not a position many scholars would dispute, and despite going into much careful circumstantial detail to support the case, the book is something of a sheep in wolf's clothing: a plodding and jobsworthy text presented as a subversive intellectual adventure. I suspect it will not be read very much, even if it finds a place on the display shelf in many departmental libraries. The whole exercise seems rather self-indulgent, an impression not entirely dispelled by the foreword, wherein the author thanks those who provided grants to him to research his theme, to explore in great detail things that at the end of the day, seem to be trivia. He even remarks cosily on how the publisher owes him the next dinner....!
Nonetheless, and at the very least, if you want to know about pictures of Descartes, this is the place to look. The colour plates in themselves are a justification for having the book to hand, (let alone the many black and white images including one of Descartes in a baseball cap) even if, the text never manages to create quite the detective story that made books like Wittgenstein's Poker or even Rousseau's Dog (both by John Eidenow and David Edmonds) both readable and insightful.
Nadler offers optimistically just this, writing:
The true story behind Frans Hals' painting, as familiar as that image has become, can well serve as the scaffolding for an accessible study of Descartes himself. Just as 'I think, therefore I am' represents only the starting point of a grand philosophical project that became the dominant intellectual paradigm of the seventeenth century, Hals' small painting can provide entrée to the life and mind of the ambitious thinker it so effectively portrays..
The book's project is to say whether Frans Hals, the celebrated Dutch portrait artist behind 'The Laughing Cavalier', and many other iconic images, painted Descartes, perhaps in Haarlem province, on the eve of his ill-fated final trip to tutor the Queen of Sweden. Certainly, a few lines later on, (accompanied by a picture of Descartes wearing a cycling cap,) Nadler adds:
The Haarlem artist has given us a small, intimate portrait of a great thinker. I want to do the same: a presentation of Descartes and his ideas in the form of a small, intimate portrait, a rendering of those years that culminated in some groundbreaking philosophical doctrines and a modest but intriguing work of art.
That then is Nadler's project. But the portrait here is indeed better described as 'small' than it is by the word 'intimate'. Yes, we are shown that Descartes often complains - in the manner of the great philosophe he always sought to present himself as - that people, not least his 'friends and neighbours', constantly interrupt him, but Nadler does not seem to know about (or if he does, he is not telling us) the various controversies that might have made for a more interesting character study. Not here, the ridiculous Renatus Des Cartes, aptly summed up by Jonathan Rée, as a great pretender, let alone the rather sad, touching Descartes who supposedly carried a model of his lost and lamented daughter, Francine with him. (Descartes' personal life, and his affair with a servant woman, gets just a passing two or three line mention here.)
Instead it is a faithful paraphrase of Descartes' view of himself that we are given.
My reason for choosing to live elsewhere [in Holland rather than France] was that I had so many friends and relatives who I could not fail to entertain, and that I would have had little time and leisure available to pursue studies which I enjoy and which, according to many people, will contribute to the common good of the human race.
So uncritical is Steven Nadler that he readily takes Descartes' account of his own motives as unvarnished truth. He readily accepts, for instance, that Descartes' choice of an obscure house in an obscure Dutch province was because it was the 'ideal setting for a natural philosopher who was more intent on serious scientific work than on seeking a reputation and honors conferred by polite society'.
Of Amsterdam itself, Descartes writes:
Where else in the rest of the world could... all the commodities of life and all the curiosities that might be wished for be so easily found as here? In what other country might one enjoy so complete a liberty, or sleep with less disquiet, since there are armies on the march explicitly to safeguard us; or where else are poisons, betrayals, and calumnies less known, and can there still be found the remaining innocence of our ancestors.
Nadler notes that between 1600 and 1640 some one and half million, yes, million, new paintings came on the market in the Dutch province of Haarlem alone. There are at least five of Descartes, of which the earliest known image is an engraving by Frans van Schooten the Younger in 1644, which depicts an hirsute (hairy) Descartes looking very much like a Dutch aristocrat.
Descartes explains, in the Principles of Philosophy, that philosophy is 'like a tree' with metaphysics being the roots, physics being the main trunk, and 'all the other sciences' being the branches. These he adds can be reduced to just three: medicine, mechanics and morals.
Morals is a branch of physics? Truly the Cartesian philosophy seems to be, as his accusers regularly said, reducing the world to a machine. In fact, the account of Descartes' brush with, if not exactly 'the law', but certainly the elders of the Utrecht city council, is an interesting aside in this respect. As Nadler says (twice) one of the strongest accusations against him was that his arguments for the existence of God were so weak that they must really have been sneaky ways of causing people to doubt the existence of God!
There is a long explanation of Descartes' idea the existence of God necessarily implies the thought that God exists, and hence that God not actually existing is a logical contradiction. However, this is not Descartes' argument, rather the old Ontological argument of Catholic orthodoxy. Similarly, Nadler explains Descartes' cogito - I think therefore I am - could equally well be expressed as 'if I am deceived, I am' - but without noting for the reader (as early on he promised he would explain Descartes to), that this was the formulation that Descartes would have been taught as a student in his Jesuit college in France.
At least, the critique is made that if Descartes seeks to deduce the laws of nature necessarily from certain properties of God, then it would appear that God is indeed trapped within some kind of overarching logical framework, unable to do what He pleases anymore.
At the end of this painstaking survey of portrait-painting in seventeenth century Dutch Haarlem, we appear to have little to show in terms of insights into Descartes - either as a man or as a philosopher. Steven Nadler offers only this: that Descartes was 'a philosopher who believed that through his divinely guaranteed rational faculty he was able to discover nature's deepest secrets... and who derived, a priori, and simply from consideration of God's essence, the laws of nature themselves.'
Does it deserve a second star for the pictures? In the pre-internet days, yes. But now now. We can all see images of Descartes too easily for publishers to justify themselves like that. (If you'd like to see my own 'slidesho' of Descartes, please visit here:
And then it turns out that this book is really a dyed-in-the-wool, postgraduate research-style look at deservedly forgotten details of life in seventeenth century Holland.
The Big Newspapers salivated over the book: "Nadler’s detective work makes for fascinating reading, but where he really catches fire is in his exposition of Cartesian philosophy, especially the “Discourse on Method” and the “Meditations on First Philosophy,” wrote the Washington Post. They lied.
The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter is an elegant, sleek looking book, beautifully produced by Princeton University Press for Steven Nadler, author of a well-received intellectual history of Spinoza. What is on offer here is an entire book based on one rather small idea - about Descartes being misunderstood, as per the conventional image of him which is taken from a famous painting in the Louvre.
Indeed, that Descartes is often misinterpreted is not a position many scholars would dispute, and despite going into much careful circumstantial detail to support the case, the book is something of a sheep in wolf's clothing: a plodding and jobsworthy text presented as a subversive intellectual adventure. I suspect it will not be read very much, even if it finds a place on the display shelf in many departmental libraries. The whole exercise seems rather self-indulgent, an impression not entirely dispelled by the foreword, wherein the author thanks those who provided grants to him to research his theme, to explore in great detail things that at the end of the day, seem to be trivia. He even remarks cosily on how the publisher owes him the next dinner....!
Nonetheless, and at the very least, if you want to know about pictures of Descartes, this is the place to look. The colour plates in themselves are a justification for having the book to hand, (let alone the many black and white images including one of Descartes in a baseball cap) even if, the text never manages to create quite the detective story that made books like Wittgenstein's Poker or even Rousseau's Dog (both by John Eidenow and David Edmonds) both readable and insightful.
Nadler offers optimistically just this, writing:
The true story behind Frans Hals' painting, as familiar as that image has become, can well serve as the scaffolding for an accessible study of Descartes himself. Just as 'I think, therefore I am' represents only the starting point of a grand philosophical project that became the dominant intellectual paradigm of the seventeenth century, Hals' small painting can provide entrée to the life and mind of the ambitious thinker it so effectively portrays..
The book's project is to say whether Frans Hals, the celebrated Dutch portrait artist behind 'The Laughing Cavalier', and many other iconic images, painted Descartes, perhaps in Haarlem province, on the eve of his ill-fated final trip to tutor the Queen of Sweden. Certainly, a few lines later on, (accompanied by a picture of Descartes wearing a cycling cap,) Nadler adds:
The Haarlem artist has given us a small, intimate portrait of a great thinker. I want to do the same: a presentation of Descartes and his ideas in the form of a small, intimate portrait, a rendering of those years that culminated in some groundbreaking philosophical doctrines and a modest but intriguing work of art.
That then is Nadler's project. But the portrait here is indeed better described as 'small' than it is by the word 'intimate'. Yes, we are shown that Descartes often complains - in the manner of the great philosophe he always sought to present himself as - that people, not least his 'friends and neighbours', constantly interrupt him, but Nadler does not seem to know about (or if he does, he is not telling us) the various controversies that might have made for a more interesting character study. Not here, the ridiculous Renatus Des Cartes, aptly summed up by Jonathan Rée, as a great pretender, let alone the rather sad, touching Descartes who supposedly carried a model of his lost and lamented daughter, Francine with him. (Descartes' personal life, and his affair with a servant woman, gets just a passing two or three line mention here.)
Instead it is a faithful paraphrase of Descartes' view of himself that we are given.
My reason for choosing to live elsewhere [in Holland rather than France] was that I had so many friends and relatives who I could not fail to entertain, and that I would have had little time and leisure available to pursue studies which I enjoy and which, according to many people, will contribute to the common good of the human race.
So uncritical is Steven Nadler that he readily takes Descartes' account of his own motives as unvarnished truth. He readily accepts, for instance, that Descartes' choice of an obscure house in an obscure Dutch province was because it was the 'ideal setting for a natural philosopher who was more intent on serious scientific work than on seeking a reputation and honors conferred by polite society'.
Of Amsterdam itself, Descartes writes:
Where else in the rest of the world could... all the commodities of life and all the curiosities that might be wished for be so easily found as here? In what other country might one enjoy so complete a liberty, or sleep with less disquiet, since there are armies on the march explicitly to safeguard us; or where else are poisons, betrayals, and calumnies less known, and can there still be found the remaining innocence of our ancestors.
Nadler notes that between 1600 and 1640 some one and half million, yes, million, new paintings came on the market in the Dutch province of Haarlem alone. There are at least five of Descartes, of which the earliest known image is an engraving by Frans van Schooten the Younger in 1644, which depicts an hirsute (hairy) Descartes looking very much like a Dutch aristocrat.
Descartes explains, in the Principles of Philosophy, that philosophy is 'like a tree' with metaphysics being the roots, physics being the main trunk, and 'all the other sciences' being the branches. These he adds can be reduced to just three: medicine, mechanics and morals.
Morals is a branch of physics? Truly the Cartesian philosophy seems to be, as his accusers regularly said, reducing the world to a machine. In fact, the account of Descartes' brush with, if not exactly 'the law', but certainly the elders of the Utrecht city council, is an interesting aside in this respect. As Nadler says (twice) one of the strongest accusations against him was that his arguments for the existence of God were so weak that they must really have been sneaky ways of causing people to doubt the existence of God!
There is a long explanation of Descartes' idea the existence of God necessarily implies the thought that God exists, and hence that God not actually existing is a logical contradiction. However, this is not Descartes' argument, rather the old Ontological argument of Catholic orthodoxy. Similarly, Nadler explains Descartes' cogito - I think therefore I am - could equally well be expressed as 'if I am deceived, I am' - but without noting for the reader (as early on he promised he would explain Descartes to), that this was the formulation that Descartes would have been taught as a student in his Jesuit college in France.
At least, the critique is made that if Descartes seeks to deduce the laws of nature necessarily from certain properties of God, then it would appear that God is indeed trapped within some kind of overarching logical framework, unable to do what He pleases anymore.
At the end of this painstaking survey of portrait-painting in seventeenth century Dutch Haarlem, we appear to have little to show in terms of insights into Descartes - either as a man or as a philosopher. Steven Nadler offers only this: that Descartes was 'a philosopher who believed that through his divinely guaranteed rational faculty he was able to discover nature's deepest secrets... and who derived, a priori, and simply from consideration of God's essence, the laws of nature themselves.'
Does it deserve a second star for the pictures? In the pre-internet days, yes. But now now. We can all see images of Descartes too easily for publishers to justify themselves like that. (If you'd like to see my own 'slidesho' of Descartes, please visit here:
July 14, 2023
Tutto inizia da un ritratto famosissimo, quello di Descartes (1649) attribuito al pittore olandese Frans Hals e detenuto in una saletta poco frequentata del museo Louvre a Parigi. Il volto del filosofo, solcato da un sorriso, è entrato in pianta stabile nell’immaginario collettivo come simbolo della vittoria della serenità sulle fatiche dell’intelletto e suggerisce all’osservatore quasi un senso di complicità.
Non senza voli pindarici, Steven Nadler ritiene di poter trarre spunto da quest’immagine fissata al di fuori del tempo per risalire ai fatti e alle vicende a essa precedenti. Si racconta in particolare il lungo soggiorno di Descartes nei Paesi Bassi (1628-44) alla ricerca, comune a molti intellettuali del tempo, di un’oasi di libertà per gli studi in un’Europa per il resto funestata dalla censura. Ma si narra diffusamente anche della vita del pittore Frans Hals e di due ecclesiastici cattolici, Augustijn Bloemaert e Johan Albert Ban, dalle idee poco convenzionali e per questo perseguitati. Quindi si giunge all’illustrazione delle vicende politiche, culturali e sociali dell’Olanda dell’epoca e di come questi personaggi, fra dispute teologiche e meno ‘alte‘, siano riusciti a incontrarsi e a stabilire tra loro una rara amicizia.
Nadler è uno storico della filosofia molto apprezzato anche in Italia, dove è conosciuto soprattutto per i suoi lavori su Spinoza. Non ho letto questi lavori, ma non fatico a comprendere le ragioni di tale successo: Nadler ha una scrittura chiara, leggera, quasi amichevole. Spiega la filosofia cartesiana come si potrebbe insegnare a contare con i regoli, senza mai scadere in semplificazioni per ‘dumbs‘. Magari i nostri manuali scolastici fossero stati così…
‘Il filosofo, il sacerdote e il pittore‘ cerca di essere al tempo stesso un libro di divulgazione filosofica, di storia generale e persino di storia dell’arte. Così come si individuano i debiti culturali e il carattere di rottura delle opere di Descartes in relazione al contesto del tempo, viene così raccontata anche la posizione di Hals nella produzione pittorica a lui contemporanea. Pochi riuscirebbero a realizzare un’impresa dal simile approccio multidisciplinare, e quindi sorprende la leggerezza con cui Nadler pretende di condensare tutto in appena duecento pagine.
Difatti non ci riesce: troppo vasto il materiale, troppo complesse le relazioni fra una parte e l’altra perché si possa evitare che il libro si frazioni in capitoli simili a comparti stagni isolati fra loro. C’è il capitolo dedicato a Cartesio. C’è quello dedicato a Hals, C’è quello relativo alle guerre di religione. Manca però il senso del disegno, a meno che non ci si conceda qualche forzatura interpretativa. Troppo impegnato ad appiccicare l’un coll’altro i pezzi del suo ambiziosissimo puzzle, Nadler priva sé e i suoi lettori dell’opportunità di approfondire anche solo uno dei tanti argomenti proposti. Neppure, va da sé, di proporre interpretazioni nuove.
Buona introduzione biografica alla figura e al pensiero di Descartes, ‘Il filosofo, il sacerdote e il pittore‘ adempie quindi a ben pochi degli obblighi previsti da una pubblicazione di questa portata.
“Spero che i posteri mi giudicheranno con benevolenza, non solo per le cose che ho spiegato, ma anche per quelle che ho intenzionalmente omesso, così da lasciare ad altri il piacere della scoperta”
Non senza voli pindarici, Steven Nadler ritiene di poter trarre spunto da quest’immagine fissata al di fuori del tempo per risalire ai fatti e alle vicende a essa precedenti. Si racconta in particolare il lungo soggiorno di Descartes nei Paesi Bassi (1628-44) alla ricerca, comune a molti intellettuali del tempo, di un’oasi di libertà per gli studi in un’Europa per il resto funestata dalla censura. Ma si narra diffusamente anche della vita del pittore Frans Hals e di due ecclesiastici cattolici, Augustijn Bloemaert e Johan Albert Ban, dalle idee poco convenzionali e per questo perseguitati. Quindi si giunge all’illustrazione delle vicende politiche, culturali e sociali dell’Olanda dell’epoca e di come questi personaggi, fra dispute teologiche e meno ‘alte‘, siano riusciti a incontrarsi e a stabilire tra loro una rara amicizia.
Nadler è uno storico della filosofia molto apprezzato anche in Italia, dove è conosciuto soprattutto per i suoi lavori su Spinoza. Non ho letto questi lavori, ma non fatico a comprendere le ragioni di tale successo: Nadler ha una scrittura chiara, leggera, quasi amichevole. Spiega la filosofia cartesiana come si potrebbe insegnare a contare con i regoli, senza mai scadere in semplificazioni per ‘dumbs‘. Magari i nostri manuali scolastici fossero stati così…
‘Il filosofo, il sacerdote e il pittore‘ cerca di essere al tempo stesso un libro di divulgazione filosofica, di storia generale e persino di storia dell’arte. Così come si individuano i debiti culturali e il carattere di rottura delle opere di Descartes in relazione al contesto del tempo, viene così raccontata anche la posizione di Hals nella produzione pittorica a lui contemporanea. Pochi riuscirebbero a realizzare un’impresa dal simile approccio multidisciplinare, e quindi sorprende la leggerezza con cui Nadler pretende di condensare tutto in appena duecento pagine.
Difatti non ci riesce: troppo vasto il materiale, troppo complesse le relazioni fra una parte e l’altra perché si possa evitare che il libro si frazioni in capitoli simili a comparti stagni isolati fra loro. C’è il capitolo dedicato a Cartesio. C’è quello dedicato a Hals, C’è quello relativo alle guerre di religione. Manca però il senso del disegno, a meno che non ci si conceda qualche forzatura interpretativa. Troppo impegnato ad appiccicare l’un coll’altro i pezzi del suo ambiziosissimo puzzle, Nadler priva sé e i suoi lettori dell’opportunità di approfondire anche solo uno dei tanti argomenti proposti. Neppure, va da sé, di proporre interpretazioni nuove.
Buona introduzione biografica alla figura e al pensiero di Descartes, ‘Il filosofo, il sacerdote e il pittore‘ adempie quindi a ben pochi degli obblighi previsti da una pubblicazione di questa portata.
“Spero che i posteri mi giudicheranno con benevolenza, non solo per le cose che ho spiegato, ma anche per quelle che ho intenzionalmente omesso, così da lasciare ad altri il piacere della scoperta”
December 13, 2024
It's an interesting little book biographing Descartes. What starts as an intriguing premise- i.e., focusing on three friendships of Descartes, ultimately fails to deliver in the length this work is confined to. However, some of the lower reviews of this work are a little unfair. As far as the biographies of Descartes are concerned, this one is concise and will give the reader a nice detail of Descartes's life. I understood Descartes's philosophical project far better after understanding his development as an intellectual and the world he was living in. As a result, modern philosophy has become a much more interesting and prosperous subject.
June 1, 2017
This is a tidy little biography with an interesting angle. It does not try to bite off more than it can chew, and it's cogent, well researched, and well written.
November 1, 2017
Garip bir çevirisi olmakla birlikte, redaksiyondan geçmediği ayan beyan ortada, ne maksatla yazıldığı belli olmayan bir kitap.
April 5, 2022
I got this book primary to read about Descartes and felt I really didn't need the extras of the priest ad the Painter. Overall I enjoyed learning about Descartes life. Very interesting.
May 26, 2014
A book that starts with an interesting promise by the author to examine how the paths of three people intersect. It ultimately disappoints. The author punctuates very tiny amounts of mildly interesting details with a long, dry treatise of political, historical, geographical, and philosophical background. The pay-off of reading all of this unnecessary detail to the end of the book is practically non-existent. The last three pages, in fact, summarize the entire book and outline the only aspects of what justified (in a very loose sense of the term) the unnecessarily in-depth examination of the three people. Having read Russell Shorto's (who ironically gave a raving blurb on the cover of the book)Descartes Bones and being highly impressed with that work, I was sorely disappointed by Nadler's book.
June 25, 2014
Other reviewers commented that this book is "too dry." Perhaps, if you're not interested in learning about the philosophy of Descartes. Indeed, it is exactly what Nadler (a professor of Philopophy at UW Madison) said he set out to do in the prologue--write an accessible (dare I say "cliffs notes"?) "portrait" of Descartes. It's both biography and summary of his epistemology and metaphysics, interwoven with his Catholic beliefs and milieu in Haarlem. Upshot: if you're interested in Descartes, and tangentially interested in the 17th c. Netherlands, this is a very quick and easy introduction/review.
September 6, 2014
Dit boek is vooral aardig, omdat het een flink stuk Nederlandse geschiedenis uit de 17de eeuw beschrijft. Descartes heeft jaren in Nederland (Egmond binnen) gewoond om de Franse censuur te ontwijken. De Nederlandse Republiek had destijds een wat milder klimaat wat boeken betreft.aan het eind van zijn verblijf is waarschinlijk zijn portret geschilderd door Frans Hals, op verzoek van een katholieke priester waarmee Descartes bevriend was. Tussendoor wordt een deel van de filosofische theorie van Descartes behandeld. Toen werd dat godslasterlijk gevonden; we kunnen er ons nu niet meer druk om maken.
November 11, 2017
The story of the famous portrait of Descartes that hangs in the Louvre. Nadler devotes a couple of well-written chapters summarizing Descartes's philosophy.
July 7, 2016
A nice vignette, though nothing new here for anyone who already knows the life of Descartes. I would have liked more focus on the art historical question that frames the book, which is addressed in a relatively superficial way only at the end.
April 2, 2014
Too dry. Couldn't get through it.
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