Within philosophy, the meaning that images and diagrams have for René Descartes' reasoning is marginalized and systematically undervalued. The lecture wants to show that diagrams and pictures play a crucial role throughout Descartes' scientific and philosophic oeuvre. Images not only serve to illustrate knowledge, but are tools to produce insight and evidence. Descartes can be reconstructed as a thinker of the cognitive power of figuration.

Sybille Krämer retired from full Professor for Philosophy at the Free University April 2018; since March 2019 Senior-Professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. 2000-2006 member of the German ‘Scientific Council’; 2005-2008 ‘Permanent Fellow’ at the ‘Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin’ (Centre for advanced study), Berlin; 2007 – 2013 Member of the European Research Council; 2010 -2016 member of the ‘Senat’ of German Research Foundation;. Guest professorships in Zurich, Lucerne, Graz, Vienna and Tokyo. Doctor honoris causa Univ. Linköping/ Sweden. Research Areas: Rationalism, mathematics and philosophy in 17th century; theory of mind and epistemology; philosophy of language, theory of media and ‘diagrammatology’. Selected books: Media, Messenger, Transmission. An Approach to Media Philosophy, Amsterdam 2015 (dtsch: 2008, jap.: 2014); ed. with Chr. Ljungberg: Thinking with Diagrams, Berlin 2016; Figuration, Anschauung, Erkenntnis: Grundlinien einer Diagrammatologie, Frankfurt 2016; ed. with S. Weigel: Testimony/ BearingWitness, London 2017