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René Descartes
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René Descartes Article

What was René Descartes’s family like?

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René Descartes was born in 1596 in La Hay en Touraine, France, to Joachim and Jeanne Descartes. Jeanne died shortly after Descartes turned one. Descartes was thought to have been fairly ill throughout his childhood. He and his siblings were raised by their grandmother, while Joachim was busy elsewhere with work and as a council member in the provincial parliament. Descartes never married, but he fathered a child in 1635 with Helena Jans van der Strom. The child, named Francine, died at age five of scarlet fever.

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