On the Zeedijk | Georgia Review - Spring 1989

On the Zeedijk - Richard Watson
The link takes you to the Prologue to Dr. Watson's book Cogito, Ergo, Sum: The Life of Rene Descartes, which is the essay that was originally published in the Georgia Review.

I do like philosophy, though I am no intellectual.  Discussions of first causes, morality, the nature of the cosmos, questions of divinity, they all get the brain going.  Many of my favorite non-fiction books are lay works on philosophy.  Among the large gaps in my knowledge though, is the actual lives of the philosophers.  What was Kant's life like?  At least with Rousseau we can read his Confessions.  But who the heck was Hegel and would I buy him a beer?

Well, Dr. Watson, wrote the above biography of Rene Descartes in order to find out what sort of person he was, not to deify him as a master scientist or mathematician.  In order to do this effectively (or to have a great vacation with Mrs. Watson) he lived and traveled in Europe wherever Descartes lived and traveled.

The essay covers Dr. Watson's stay in Franeker, in Friesland, in the Netherlands.  This place should be underwater, except the zeedijk holds back the sea.  Dr. Watson intersperses discussions of why Descartes came to this place and his own interactions with the locals and their food and geography.  Claims of wild variations in topography and flavors are met with doubt by the author and the enthusiasm of the initiated by the local population.

Dr. Watson wants to know why Descartes stayed here, having immediately dispensed with why he came there originally; implied threat of death or imprisonment being the primary motivator.  Is it food?  Does Descartes love cheese?  Is it solitude?  Did the Dutch have the habit of entering a home, uninvited, or looking in windows then as they do now?

These little tidbits are charmingly told (if you're in the right mood, otherwise Dr. Watson can seem like some sort of jerk) but it is tough to picture Descartes dealing with these same issues.  Were there dozens of varieties of licorice and gingerbread in those days or has that evolved over time?  Did kids vault between the dikes on twelve foot poles?

The essay closes with Descartes fatal trip to Sweden to visit the court of Queen Christina.  Don't make trips to visit young queens in cold places was the best lesson I gleaned from this fiasco.

A very enjoyable read and I might pick up the entire book.  Apparently, there are some historical inaccuracies with the names of kings and members of courts and such, but I wasn't intending on committing those to memory any more than I would try to categorize the thousand cheeses of Friesland.