Introduction to René Descartes
Background Notes:
Descartes 1596-1649. The correspondence with princess Elizabeth of Sweden; her lifelong psycho-somatic illness; she hires RD to tutor her in philosophy and in effect works him to death.
At this time: Kepler Erasmus Galileo Hobbes Harvey Montaigne Boyle Pascal
RD’s famous dream of Nov. 10 1619: God instructs him to unite all the sciences on a firm foundation. (Descartes decides mathematics is the foundation.)
Accomplishments: Mathematics: He invented analytic geometry (which, essentially, reduces space to number). Philosophy: Discourse on Method; Meditations on First Philosophy; The Passions of the Soul; Principles of Philosophy. (Meditations written in 1641 in Latin. There are six meditations: Why six?)
With Descartes something “happens” to Western philosophy and hence Western culture in general. It ceases to be Platonic or Aristotelian. It becomes an obsession with Ego and with knowing, with Truth, but now with Truth as certainty, or as “clear and distinct” ideas which can resist any skepticism.
One should be careful in comparing Descartes and Cartesian thought to classical Greek thought. Is Cartesian thinking or modern consciousness the same thing as nous, or are they two entirely different conceptual schemas? Certainly Aristotle’s On the Soul [De Anima] corresponds in many ways with the Cartesian project, but that treatise was only one of dozens and dozens of similar treatises taught by Aristotle. For A, the problem of the soul seems not to have had a central place in his thought as a whole; whereas for Descartes, the Ego is indeed the central point, the absolute beginning of any rigorous thought…
Descartes will begin the Meditations by doubting all knowledge that comes from the senses. Why?
1. The 3 bowls of water: one is hot, one room temp. and one is ice water; I put a hand in the hot and the other in the cold, then both in the room temp. bowl: same water, same bowl, same person yet one hand feels warm and the other cool: which is correct?
2. Remember what happened after Copernicus and Galileo: sun and earth changed positions! Related to this is one of Wittgenstein’s great philosophical jokes. Wittgenstein asks the historian why people could have been so stupid as to think the sun revolves around the earth; the historian answers: Well, obviously because it looks like the sun revolves around the earth; Wittgenstein objects: Well, what would it look like if the earth turned on its axis and revolved around the sun?
The point is: do we ever get any knowledge from our senses?
First Meditation
(All citations are from Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings. Trans. Desmond M. Clarke. Penguin, 2000)
First, the book is a meditations; Descartes is free to let his thinking roam about from here to there, changing directions, etc. It is not a rigorous treatise in its form. Second, it is a narrative, a dramatic account written in the first person. Is it philosophy, drama, or psychology?
18 “…everything should be completely overturned…”
19 famous passages about the insane and short commentary about Derrida/Foucault debate; refer interested students to F: “My Body, This Paper, This Fire” and “Reply to Derrida” from History of Madness [Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie á l’âge classique] and D: “Cogito and the History of Madness” from Writing and Difference
20 knowledge from the senses but they sometimes are deceptive so it is “prudent never to trust those who have deceived us”
20 of the sciences; “…whether or not they exist in nature, contain something that is certain and beyond doubt…”
21 it is possible that “I am made in such a way that I am always mistaken”
21 I will “deceive myself”
22 the famous “evil genius” who always deceives RD about everything…note that the evil God produces an apparent world that is the same as what RD saw created by the good God. The evil God and the Good God are twins!
End of first meditation: RD is in “inextricable darkness” (At end of first Day of creation in Bible, there is light…)
Second Meditation
First, we note that RD does not mention one single other philosopher classical or contemporary; he is going alone, solo…important characteristic of his work…
23 “Thus I will assume that everything I see is false. I believe that, among the things that a deceptive memory represents, nothing ever existed; I have no senses at all; body shape extension, motion, and place are unreal. Perhaps that is all there is, that there is nothing certain.”
24”Therefore it is indubitable that I also exist, if he deceives me […] Thus … it must finally be stated that this proposition ‘I am, I exist’ [Ego Sum, Ego Existo] is necessarily true…” A Certainty.
24 But who is this ‘I’ [Ego]? RD denies that ‘I’ is human…denies ‘I’ is rational…denies ‘I’ is animal…important since RD is so often characterized as the supreme rationalist—yet he explicitly denies that Ego is rational! Also, importantly for modern thought Ego is not human…
25 Well, then what belongs to Ego if not rationality, animality, sensation? : “To think? That’s it. It is thought…I am, I exist; that is certain. But for how long? As long as I think, …But I am a genuine thing and I truly exist. But what kind of thing? I just said: a thinking thing” [res cogitans]
26 “But what then am I? A thinking thing. And what is that? A thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, and which also imagines and senses.” Disputed passage…I read an alternate translation and then read the Latin. Commentary on the many meanings of Latin Sentio, sensi, sensum, a term by its nature ambivalent, like the English verb to feel. Also, we note that Ego may be a faculty an I can…doubt, affirm, will or not will [volens, nolens]. In short even when I am willing not-to (do this or that), I am still thinking (in RD’s special sense).
27 “…see light, hear sound, and feel heat. Those are false, because I am asleep. But I certainly seem to see, to hear and to get warm…” Latin videre videor. Lengthy commentary: RD is talking about seeming, appearing and he seems to affirm them without the corresponding Platonic reality…
28-30 The famous passages about the wax: conclusion is that perception [percipio] is a purely mental experience, not sensual. The wax was a thing of the mind but that thing is actually slightly less certain than that mind feels itself thinking.
30 Indeed “there are also so many other things in the mind itself…that it hardly seems worth considering those that emanate from the body to the mind.” The infamous mind/body split begins here…
Summary and Discussion of Meditations 1 and 2
The Meditations are just that: meditations; that is, not strictly formal but nonetheless intellectually rigorous. There is no clear procedure laid out, no clear form that will be adhered to throughout as in a Platonic dialogue, an Augustinian confession, or a summa by St. Thomas Aquinas. Likewise, the previous work in which Descartes introduced the same themes as in the Meditations was entitled Discourse on Method. That work was not a method but a discourse on or about method; it too, although intellectually rigorous, is free of rigorous form: it is a discourse, an informal, non-methodical talking about method. Thus, the way Descartes chooses to present his central thought in each book already reflects that thought: thinking (or writing) and existing become a single fundamental experience (or undergoing or undertaking).
The first two meditations are those which have become the cornerstone to various interpretations which have sometimes flowered into powerful philosophical traditions such as German Idealism (beginning with Hegel) and Phenomenology (beginning with Husserl). When the third meditation is referred to, it is often referred to disparagingly, as if Descartes abandoned his fundamental insight, as if he did not realize what he had managed to accomplish for thought in his opening meditations.
By the end of the first meditation Descartes has managed to place all of reality in doubt by way of the “evil genius” who devotes all its strength to deceiving René Descartes. In spite of this, Descartes wishes to find or establish some certainty even if that only certainty is that he is always mistaken and that the only certainty is that nothing is certain. By the end of the second meditation Descartes has discovered two things. First, he finds a certainty: I am, I exist [Ego sum, ego existo]. Then he finds what modern philosophy will call the subject of this certainty of being, existing. The subject is ‘I’, Ego. And who is ‘I’? It is “a thinking thing” [res cogitans]. And what is that? “A thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, and which also imagines and senses.” (Earlier, near the very beginning of the first meditation, Descartes had informed his reader that he intends to doubt all that he had “up to now acquired from the senses or through the senses” (19). Thus he clarifies that by the “same subject who senses” he means, more precisely, a subject “who notices physical things as if through the senses; for example, I already see light, hear sound and feel heat. Those are false, because I am asleep. But I certainly seem to see [At certes videre videor…], to hear and to get warm. This cannot be false. This is what is meant, strictly speaking, by me having a sensation and, understood precisely in this way, it is nothing other than thinking” (italics mine, 26-7).
Note that the exact formulation Ego sum, ego existo is redundant in Latin. In Latin sum already means ‘I am’ (sum, es, est: I am, you are, he-she-it is). That Descartes writes Ego must therefore signal that Descartes is concerned not only with certainty but with a subject of certainty.
German Idealism. In his critique of Enlightenment philosophy, principally that which was inspired by Kant, Hegel “returned” to Descartes in order to show the incompleteness of the Enlightenment project. A characteristic passage (with characteristic density) can be found in the Phenomenology of Spirit:
Or again, they [Enlightenment thinkers] have not arrived at the Notion found in Cartesian Metaphysics, that being and thought are, in themselves, the same; they have not arrived at the thought that being, pure being, is not something concretely real but a pure abstraction, and, conversely, pure thought, self-identity or essence, partly is the negative of self-consciousness and therefore being, partly, as immediately simple, is likewise nothing else but being; thought is thinghood, or thinghood is thought (352, Miller trans., Oxford Press 1977, translation modified).
Being is thinking, Thought and Being are One. That is the central Notion of German Idealism: Descartes wished to establish a truth beyond all doubt. What can resist doubt? What if all that is and all the contents of my thinking are merely a dream created by an evil genius, an evil god? What if 2+3=5 is merely an apparition placed in my mind by this demon? What if every thought I have does not represent any reality? What if every thought is only a chimera? Well, even if that is the case it is still certain that I am thinking. The contents of my thinking may be false but that I am thinking cannot be falsified. My thoughts may not correspond to any reality but it is certain that I am really thinking, and if I am thinking—even if my thoughts are all false representations—then certainly I am. I think, therefore I am. (But it is not really a deduction as the ‘therefore’ indicates. There are no steps as in an argument. It is an immediate, present, certainty: I think, I am: cogito sum.)
In this way, being is reduced to thought. Thought reveals being. Truth, for Descartes, is certainty and the only indubitable certainty is the equation I think, I am. It is not the presence of an object before (in front of, outside) thought. It is simpler: if there is thinking, I am: hence I am subject. The ego is inasmuch as it is thinking, and ego is, essentially, thinking: a thinking thing. Hence ego is its own foundation, its own ground, its own thing [res]. Thinking-ego is subjectum (meaning foundation or that which is ‘thrown under’, sub-jectum). Being is reduced to thought (not to its being thought of (as if it were an object of thought)).
It does not matter anymore if thought represents some object or something objectively true, something that would emanate from outside thought or mind “for it hardly seems worth considering those [things] that emanate from the body to the mind” Descartes audaciously declares near the end of second meditation (30). The criterion of truth is to be beyond any doubt and only the ego-cogito achieves this status. All else is in principle dubious. Subject is that which thinks, Ego is subject. Truth is subjective. This is not merely a subjective point of view in the sense that it is merely Descartes’s opinion. More radically, there is no point anymore in even asking if thought represents something outside of thought. Reality is my thinking—my representing—my idea. This does not mean that René Descartes is certain of his actual existence, his body, e.g. What he means by Ego is, can only be, a thinking-thing, res cogitans. It (i.e. ‘I’) is thought thinking itself.
Every reality but this is henceforth negated, suspended, doubted. What remains is the identity of subject and object (i.e. the object is not outside the subject). That which is is insofar as, and for as long as, there is thinking (some “I”, some thinker). I am insofar as I think and only if and for as long as I think. For-itself=in-itself, in Hegel’s schema. The For-itself (the thinker, the subject) is the In-itself (that which is thought, the object of thought). Being is precisely as it appears insofar as we now agree that the only certain being is the res cogitans.
Is the Cartesian subject an Absolute subject? For Hegel, Yes and No. Yes, insofar as Subject=Object, insofar as being is as it appears. (If it seems to me I am thinking, if it appears to me that I am thinking, then I am thinking.) There is no point anymore in distinguishing the two (as, of course, Platonism does). But, on the other hand, the ego-cogito is a merely subjective certainty. The fact that Descartes appeals to God (in meditations 3-5) to guarantee everything else betrays that he still separates his reality from an objective reality. So, there isn’t, really, an Absolute identity between thought and reality, between being and appearing (the phenomenon, or seeming to be). This is the problem Kant inherited and failed to resolve, according to Hegel.
Cartesian certitude is bought at the price of hyperbolic doubt and as only the res cogitans can be made certain, all else (presuming, of course, that there is more to the whole of reality than a thinking-thing) is uncertain. I can perceive what seems to be the chair and I immediately reflect that it is indeed I (or, the res cogitans) that is perceiving, but I can reflect nothing more than this with the same degree of certainty. Hence Descartes must appeal to a benign god that would not fundamentally deceive him. In the modern world the appeal is to science: there must be some guaranteeable reality even if this or that theory is proven false or is indeed only truly scientific (this is Karl Popper’s thesis) insofar as it is doubtable, falsifiable.
Jacques Lacan will dismantle the Idealist immediacy being-thinking. He will merely note that Descartes first establishes being, existing and then tries to glue the ‘I’ to being, existing via thinking. But Descartes himself describes the ‘I’ who thinks as a ‘thing’. Thus Lacan can easily say that the thing thinks, on the one hand; and I exist, on the other; or It [ça] thinks wherever and whenever I (am not), and where I am, when I exist, thinking (is elsewhere). For Lacan (and I know I am simplifying greatly) “it” thinks, not ‘I’, and “it” finally is language—which thinks in me and which thinks me. This psychoanalytic critique is not too too far from a Wittgensteinian critique in which the subject is a grammatical exigency. In the Indo-European languages every action word, every verb, implies a subject, and the rule for a clause (the basic grammatical unit of any thought) requires that the subject be named, affirmed; but, Wittgenstein soberly observes, it only makes sense in certain practical circumstances to affirm the existence of that subject. For example, if I were to walk into class and begin by affirming that “my dear students, I am conscious, I am thinking and therefore I am and therefore I shall begin today’s lesson” you would think I had gone mad. On the other hand, if I have skipped my breakfast, and you see me swoon and then recover, then it would make sense to declare to you that “I’m OK, I’m aware I’m here in class, I’m fully conscious…” [see Philosophical Investigations §416 ff].
My reading is still preliminary. When Descartes refers to the thinking thing, I wonder if that ‘thing’ might not be a faculty, a power to, a potentiality which is in itself insubstantial but also undeniable... I wonder if the Cartesian ‘I think’ means I can, I am able to…doubt or not doubt (believe, affirm), will or not will, understand something clear and distinct and also be confused (by the notion of animal and rational, for example). I don’t see how this is not possible and such a reading could be developed along with the work of Giorgio Agamben on potentiality. I think Descartes text supports at least the possibility.
In addition to this power, there is a passive side to thinking which is expressed in the passage at certes videre videor…which I cite above. If I’m not wrong then seeming, appearing, having the impression that… precedes being and is not equal to it, as in the Idealist philosophy I mention above. First, what is Descartes talking about? Suppose I am walking: I can feel pressure on the soles of my feet, I can feel the muscles in my calves and thighs, my hips coordinate the overall movement, etc. At the same time I have the impression of walking, which is incorporeal because in dreams sometimes I am being chased by some evil creature of some kind and my impression is that I am unable to walk, or it feels like I am walking through water although no water is represented in my dream. That is to say, I have the impression of my faculty for (my power to) walk without being able to walk: I sense a privation, I sense the faculty itself in its impotence, its insubstantiality: I sense my power abandoning me, that is, I sense the insubstantiality that I am, that faculty is (and is not). Now, if this is true then is Cartesianism properly a philosophy or a psychology—or a blend of the two? Anyways, that which I have the impression of—whatever it may be—is posterior to the impression itself. What matters is not that I seem to see some thing, for example, a house across the street. What matters is the sheer seeming (to see). This would solve the problem of the three bowls I mentioned earlier since what would matter is that I seem to feel. Whether what I feel is warmth here and coolness there makes no primary difference. What I seem to—see, feel, hear, taste, whatever—is always confused. What matters is sheer appearing, sheer seeming. In the formulas ‘I seem to be,’ ‘I seem to exist,’ being would be secondary, seeming would be primary.
In class the question came up whether this is an anti-humanism, since Descartes specifically denies that ‘I’ is human, is animal and rational. I think there is no question that the text permits a post-, non-, or proto-anti-humanism.
It also came up that there is a comparison between the first two meditations and Plato’s cave. This now seems so obvious a comparison that I am stunned I have never read anyone think it through. For my part I would say that Descartes never leaves the cave. Why? Well, when Plato’s brave philosopher breaks his chains, turns round, gets outside, is at first blinded by the light, etc….Descartes is saying: Why all that work? Why the pain and suffering? Look, stay right here. What difference does it make if all that we see are shadows? That some other more real reality is elsewhere? Or even that you yourself and all the others in this cave are unreal?
What matters is that I certainly am; I exist…that reality is always here; it is I, at the very least a thinking thing who is thinking…
Random Summary Speculations
1. A morbid passion animates Descartes’s writings. He wants the world and God, but he is beset by doubts and uncertainties. However, unlike the Medieval thinker/believer, he does not seem so much to be threatened by any of the seven deadly sins, and he is not in search of strength. What threatens him? What threatens thought? Error. (It is an excellent exercise, by the way, to identify that which threatens thought for any major thinker. Finding that which prevents or corrupts thought can be clue to the ambitions and the psychology of the philosopher. Socrates is threatened by the thinking of so many other powerful thinkers of his time, principally the Sophists, and so he sets out to sort out genuine thinking/discourse from any other kind. Plato is threatened by illusion. What threatens thought for Hegel? Kant? Heidegger?)
2. Descartes does not go into the world nor into the thinking of others: he goes only into himself. In doing so he discovers that thinking transforms the thinker. Almost like in a Kafka story he finds that thinking transforms him into a thing: a thinking thing…
3. Descartes goes into himself and what does he find? Thinking, always there is thinking….when there is nothing, when the world is neutralized, when all is dubious, when his own identity is emptied of all that is familiar (not just sight but his very eyes, his hands, this room, this fire…), that is when thinking appears, and with it, some ‘I’, some Ego simultaneously existing and thinking so intimately that the two (existing and thinking) become one thing. And, since the world is neutralized there is no thinking about some thing or other; there is only thinking and the thing that thinks: This is who he (René Descartes) fundamentally is. And he is only for so long as he thinks, hence this thinking is not neutral, dispassionate, detached: it is the very anonymous passion he must be. In short, Descartes finds not who he is as an accomplished fact but instead he finds who he must be, if he is to be at all…there is a kind of passionate imperative that characterizes thinking… he seems to have no power to not-think…
4. Between this thinker and the world there is always thinking: thinking is what separates existence from existents or Being from beings…The I-thing is always at the conjunction, like a mathematical point: real but without extension.
5. Thinking breaks up the world into existential “chunks” whose ‘intentional reality’ is inferior to thinking itself…No longer this room, this fire, this paper; instead there is sheer extension, color, heat, cold…as if Descartes is already picturing what modern artists of the 20th century will “see” when they look at the world. In this way he avoids the classical philosophical problem of universals and particulars. (That which I know is always a universal: a concept or form, while that which I experience is always a particular: a this or a that. Thus the world radically falls apart into two zones that do not communicate: the thinkable which I never experience (I cannot sit down in the concept of a chair) and that which I actually experience but cannot properly identify (it is at most a chair-like thing). In short, a this is what I always experience and that this is what I never know.)
6. Thinking makes appearing appear, not the world, because existence takes place not in the world but in appearing (to be there).
7. When there is thinking there is always ‘I’ which becomes the name of a profound unity, and again, a unity the thinker must be…it is always I that wills to… and I that wills not to…always I that doubts, always I that imagines, always I that understands, always I that senses or I who appear to sense…But is it always the same I?
8. Descartes does not live in his body, he lives in his mind, he lives in the passion that is thinking. This means that the status of the body becomes especially problematic. It becomes, in Lacan’s language ex-timate: an exteriority with which I am nonetheless intimate. Does the body have its own passion? Descartes guards carefully against this; the body (his body, any body whatsoever) is extended and does not think, is not passionate…
9. Political Cartesianism: quite obviously this is the first statement of what will become the Enlightenment: as we have noted, there is no appeal to any authority other than what is in mind, in this mind, this thinker…At the same time there is no particularly revolutionary Cartesianism; that is, there is no attack on authority (of the church, Greek philosophy, on Descartes’ contemporary scientists and philosopher). Authority of any kind is irrelevant. All that matters are the criteria: clear and distinct.
10. It is God who guarantees “all else”. Descartes God is a working God: he is involved in continual creation. And I have the sense that for Descartes this working God seems to exist for the thinker, for the Subject, not the Subject for-God. A theological Copernican reversal?
11. To be sure, when he goes into himself, into his mind (in the 3rd meditation), he finds a thought of which he cannot possibly be the author: the thought of the infinite. But I do not detect in the text that this finding is of any euphoric importance. He does not thank God or praise God for the thought of God, or for creation or for God’s work to maintain creation…
[See a more recent material on Descartes under Lectures: Descartes: NCTU]
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