Publisher's Synopsis
"Theology and the Cartesian Doctrine of Freedom, now for the first time available in English,was Étienne Gilson's doctoral thesis and part of a larger project to show the medieval roots of Descartes at a time when the very existence of medieval philosophy was often ignored. Young Descartes was sent to La Flèche, one of the Jesuits schools that offered a complete philosophical program, and Descartes would have had the same philosophical training as a Jesuit. There is some controversy about the exact dates of Descartes's stay at La Flèche and consequently about his philosophy instructor. By Gilson's calculations François Véron taught Descartes for three years. Véron eventually left the Jesuits to be free to engage in extraordinarily aggressive anti-Calvinist polemics. If anything, Véron's overbearing manner may have contributed to Descartes antipathy toward Scholastic philosophy. (Whatever Descartes's objections to its philosophy curricul
