Background
Clerselier was born on March 21, 1614, in Paris, France, the son of Claude Clerselier, adviser and secretary to the king, and Marguerite l’Empereur.
Clerselier was born on March 21, 1614, in Paris, France, the son of Claude Clerselier, adviser and secretary to the king, and Marguerite l’Empereur.
Nothing is known of Clerselier's education.
Clerselier was responsible for the first edition of the French translation of the Méditations (1647); he himself translated the “Objections” and the “Réponses.”
Clerselier completely revised and corrected the second edition (1661). After Descartes’s death he published three volumes of Lettres (1657-1667). In 1659 he brought out in the same volume L’homme and the Traité de la formation du foetus. In 1677 he published a second edition, to which he added Le monde ou Traité de la lumière, based on the original manuscript, which he had in his possession (the first edition of Le monde had been based on a copy).
In his zeal to defend Cartesianism, Clerselier was sometimes lacking in critical judgment; but without him a portion of Descartes’s work would be unknown to us.
Quotes from others about the person
Descartes said of Clerselier, that he had been “at once his translator, his apologist, and his mediator.”
Clerselier’s fortune was very large - on 5 November 1630 he had married Anne de Virlorieux, who had brought him a considerable dowry.
Through love of Cartesianism, Clerselier permitted the marriage of his daughter Geneviève to Jacques Rohault (whose Oeuvres postumes he published in 1682) even though the Clerseliers saw this marriage as a misalliance, Rohault being of a much lower social class.