Descartes and Cartesianism

Descartes and Cartesianism

edited by

Nathan D. Smith and Jason P. Taylor

Cambridge Scholars Press

Descartes and Cartesianism

Descartes and Cartesianism edited by Nathan D. Smith and Jason P. Taylor This book first published 2005 by Cambridge Scholars Press 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © Cambridge Scholars Press All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-904303-45-5

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Abbreviations

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Introduction: On the Appreciation of Our Debt to Descartes Nathan D. Smith, Boston College Jason P. Taylor, Boston College

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PART ONE 1. The Baconian Matrix of Descartes’ Regulae Robert C. Miner, Baylor University

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2. Descartes and Leibniz on the Concept of Substance and the Possibility of Metaphysics Corey W. Dyck, Boston College

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3. Sum Res Cogitans Elliot S. Paul, Syracuse University

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4. Descartes as Philosopher of Action Anne Davenport, Boston College

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PART TWO 5. Descartes and the Possibility of Ethics Sterling Berry-Whitlock, Fordham University

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6. The Status of Moral Knowledge in Descartes’ Passions Gwendolyn Bradford, Yale University

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7. Geometry and Imagination: An Inquiry into a Cartesian Ambiguity Matthew S. Linck, Purchase College

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8. The Limits of Silence: Descartes, Heidegger and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Poesy Narve Strand, Boston College

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9. The Apple and the Tree: Descartes and Marion on Divine Incomprehensibility Adam Konopka, Fordham University

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10. Sensory States, Consciousness, and the Cartesian Assumption Gregg Caruso, City University of New York

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Table of Citations from Descartes’ Works

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Index

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Acknowledgments

The present volume began as a collection of presentations for the Fifth Annual Philosophy Conference of the Graduate School at Boston College in the Spring of 2004. Accordingly, we begin by acknowledging all of the people who made that conference such a success. First, thanks to the tireless efforts of the planning committee (including Jon Burmeister, Tony Carusi, Michael Formichelli, Michael Fournier, Joseph Haggarty, Ayli Lapkoff, and Joshua A. Shmickler), who initially conceived of the theme for the conference, selected the papers that were presented, and carried the conference forward to its completion. Thanks also to Deans Michael Smyer and Joseph Quinn from the Graduate School at Boston College whose continued support makes this conference possible each year. In the philosophy department, we are especially grateful to the chair, Professor Patrick Byrne, for his support and vigorous interest in this yearly conference and the many other scholarly activities that take place in the department. In addition, thanks to the department staff, Peggy Bakalo, Rosemarie Deleo, and Bonnie Waldron, for assisting in many of the administrative details of the conference. Finally, a heartfelt thanks to Stephen Gaukroger, whose work we admire, and who, undeterred by jet lag and hotel accommodations, graciously attended every presentation at the conference, offered his warm and helpful insights, and provided a synoptic and enlightening keynote address. The present collection is very much the result of the collegial atmosphere and energetic dialogue engendered at that conference, but publication would not have been possible without the interest and guidance of Andy Nercessian from Cambridge Scholars Press. As the project progressed, our readers, Carlos Bohorques, Bret Doyle, Jonathan Lagdameo, John O'Connor, and Lynn Purcell, helped to shape the contributions with their careful review and instructive comments. Thank you to Professor Richard Cobb-Stevens for his thoughtful comments on the introduction. As editors, we would also like to thank the contributors for their patience and hard work; it has been pleasure to be a part of a volume containing their philosophical efforts. Finally, we would not be who we are, and we would not be able to do what we do, without the loving support of our families: thank you to Joanna, and Mindy, Samuel, and Madeline.

Abbreviations

According to the standard conventions in Descartes scholarship, all direct citations of Descartes will be provided parenthetically. When pertinent, we cite first the standard English translation of Descartes’ philosophical writings and correspondence (CSM, CSMK, and CB), and then the corresponding page and volume numbers from the standard Latin and French volumes (AT). We also append a table of Descartes citations to the end of the volume. AT I-XII

Adam, Charles and Paul Tannery eds. Oeuvre de Descartes, rev. edition, 12 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1964-76.

CB

Cottingham, John ed. and trans. Descartes’ Conversation with Burman. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

CSM I, II

Cottingham, John, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch eds. and trans. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

CSMK

Cottingham, John, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny eds. and trans. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Correspondence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Introduction: On the Appreciation of Our Debt to Descartes Nathan D. Smith Jason P. Taylor We are certainly indebted to Descartes for wanting one’s own sensibility to be the rule of truth because it was too abject a servitude to let everything stand upon authority. We are indebted to him for wanting order in thinking because those before him thought in a far too disorderly a way (with their endless and careless “obiicies primo” and “obiicies secundo”). However, that none other than one’s own judgment should govern, that none other than the geometric method should set things in order—this is just too much. Now would be the time to return from these extremes to a middle way: to follow one’s own judgment, but with some regard for authority; to make use of a method, but one which the things themselves will support. Otherwise, all will realize—but too late—that Descartes has done what aspiring tyrants have always been wont to do, namely to advance their credit by championing the cause of liberty. Once, however, they are securely in power, they become tyrants far more burdensome than the oppressors. Giambattista Vico

Each of the essays in this volume is dedicated to Descartes’ philosophical achievement and to the response that it has evoked. Together, they inquire into the nature and range of Descartes’ legacy. Vico’s judgment is altogether helpful in this regard, not simply because it calls attention to Descartes’ decisive and spectacular break with the tradition, but because it coordinates that break in a farsighted way with Descartes’ powerful and enduring attraction for those who would come after him. Writing in the early eighteenth century, Vico could well appreciate the profound impression that Cartesian philosophy had in “the republic of letters.” Even though he recognizes Descartes’ singular importance as a kind of “founder,” he had reason to be concerned about the new consolidation of so much intellectual authority in one person. Though provocative, Vico’s assessment is today quite commonplace: standard narratives on the history of philosophy cast Descartes as the “father of modern philosophy.” Indeed, such a portrait finds support in Descartes’ own writings: he consistently favors his own judgment over the judgments of others and claims to

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introduce ideas without precedent in the history of philosophy. Accordingly, our task is to assess the currency of common opinions concerning the Cartesian legacy: the clarion call of intellectual freedom; the introduction of a new order and method, central to making true judgments; and the rationalist promise that human beings could become “masters and possessors of nature.” 1 Undoubtedly, from beginning to end, Descartes’ aim was to secure the indisputable foundations of knowledge for the purpose of making true judgments. While still young, Descartes had done considerable work in various areas of mathematics, particularly in solving geometrical problems, and understanding astronomy and harmonics (his earliest scientific effort was a short treatise, the Compendium Musicae, composed in 1618). He was rewarded by and encouraged in these pursuits, through friendship, mentorship, and mutual admiration, by Isaac Beeckman, with whom he maintained some written correspondence until the early 1630’s.2 It was during this time that Descartes had a vision, recounted in the Discourse on the Method, of the possibility that his early success in mathematics could be extended to all objects of knowledge. This could be accomplished, he claimed, by outlining some basic principles of a method that would establish, once and for all, a solid foundation for any scientific inquiry (cf. CSM I, 116 / AT VI, 11).3 As Descartes relates it in the Discourse, the basic plan “has never gone beyond trying to reform my own thoughts and construct them upon a foundation which is all my own” (CSM I, 118 / AT VI, 15). Descartes gives a variety of reasons for seeking a foundation which is all his own: he seems to have been driven by a basic desire to know and understand the truths of the world for himself. In the Discourse, he tells the reader that he is much more enchanted by “the great book of the world” than by the many histories and literary works of the ancients (CSM I, 115 / AT VI, 9). In some of his earliest writings, he describes the effort to understand the inventions of scientists without reading the inventor’s account, so that he might come upon the principle of invention on his own (CSM I, 2 / AT X, 214). Furthermore, he had a high esteem for philosophy, understanding philosophy to provide the foundation for all other sciences and admiring the “excellent minds” that had written the great philosophical works. Nevertheless, he continually found philosophers to be at odds with one another. Accordingly, he could not find any good reason to side with one particular philosopher rather than another (Discourse: CSM I, 114-15 / AT VI, 8-9; cf. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule III: CSM I, 13 / AT X, 366-67). Thus, distrustful of his inherited opinions, Descartes

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turned to the light of his own reason as the only sufficient foundation for knowledge: there is not usually so much perfection in works composed of several parts and produced by various different craftsmen as in the works of one man. Thus we see that buildings undertaken and completed by a single architect are usually more attractive and better planned than those which several have tried to patch up by adapting old walls built for different purposes. (Discourse: CSM I, 116 / AT VI, 11)

It is by way of this vision of a method of science, constructed wholly from foundations that could be personally verified, that Descartes sets forth, so famously in the Meditations, to demolish all his previously held opinions. Once the previous edifice is razed, however, it becomes necessary to determine the plan according to which it should be rationally and willfully reconstructed. Shortly after having his vision of a universal method of science, Descartes begins to work out the specifics of such a method. From 1619 to 1620, and again from 1626 to 1628, Descartes devised a series of “rules” for the operation and application of the mind to philosophical problems. These rules outlined the basis for a mathesis universalis and would be published after his death under the heading Regulae ad directionem ingenii.4 The first of these rules clearly affirms what we have already suggested, namely, that their purpose is “to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgments about whatever comes before it” (CSM I, 9 / AT X, 359). If the rules for directing the mind to attain all and only true judgments can be defined, then, Descartes believes, scientific knowledge (scientia) can be secured once and for all. Thus, he famously proposes to achieve true judgments by rigorously attending to only two operations of the mind, “intuition” and “deduction.” By intuition, he tells us that he means “the conception of a clear and attentive mind, which is so easy and distinct that there can be no room for doubt about what we are understanding” (Rule III: CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368). The notion that science ought to be guided by easy and distinct conceptions of the mind ought to be conjoined with Descartes’ continued disdain for the schoolmen, who “heedlessly take up a position on some controversial question,” “employ the most subtle arguments,” and present what they claim to be true “wrapped up in various obscurities” (CSM I, 13 / AT X, 366-67). For Descartes, an intuition is true only if it can be grasped in a way that is simple, distinct, and easily perceived by an attentive mind. This does not mean that some work may not be necessary in order to make one’s mind

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attentive and clear, e.g., the general demolition of previous opinions, but a clear and attentive mind should have no trouble seeing the truth of an intuition, if it is indeed true. Conversely, the meaning of deduction is perhaps more obscure. However, if one attends to what Descartes says about deduction, it will become clear that deduction and intuition are closely related insofar as they are both modes knowing. When he introduces the concept, he says, “There may be some doubt here about our reason for suggesting another mode of knowing in addition to intuition, viz., deduction”; and he continues by defining deduction as “the inference of something as following necessarily from some other propositions which are known with certainty” (CSM I, 15 / AT X, 369). This distinction between the modes of knowledge allows Descartes to account for a clear and distinct perception of complex things: But this distinction had to be made, since very many facts (res) which are not self-evident are known with certainty, provided they are inferred from true and known principles through a continuous and uninterrupted movement of thought in which each proposition is clearly intuited. This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, and keep in mind that each link from first to last is attached to its neighbor. (CSM I, 15 / AT X, 369)

Each step in a sequence of reasoning requires a clear, simple and distinct intuition in the manner described above. However, since it is impossible to intuit a chain of reasons clearly, simply and distinctly (precisely because a chain is necessarily complex, i.e., composed of parts), and since Descartes would like to be able to claim that a chain of reasons preserves truth, he calls the knowledge (scientia) that one has of a chain of reasons deduction, while he maintains that each link in that chain is known through intuition.5 The reason why we draw this definition out is to indicate that, for Descartes, intuition remains paramount in importance. Deduction draws its validity from the sequence of intuitions of which it is composed. For Descartes, it is simply not good enough to have knowledge through deduction, if by deduction we mean the capacity to rehearse a series of arguments. Consider the following passage from the same rule that we have been quoting:

xv For example, even though we know other people’s demonstrations by heart, we shall never become mathematicians if we lack the intellectual aptitude to solve any problem. And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgment on matters (rebus) which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science (scientia) but history (historias). (CSM I, 13 / AT X, 367)

The primary target of this accusation is, again, the schoolmen, who had become so caught up in their various systems of knowledge and had defined themselves according to their allegiance to these systems that they had neglected the most important element: to apprehend the basic principles of knowledge. As we have seen here, the primacy of intuition makes clear why Descartes scorned the opinions passed down from the schools, preferring his own judgment as the rule of truth. But in order to advance beyond simple intuition and to fulfill his desire to establish certain knowledge in the sciences, Descartes claims that it is necessary for intuition to be extended only by following a simple and precise method of reasoning. For Descartes, intuition and deduction are the most simple operations of the mind, equally possessed by all (Rule IV: CSM I, 16 / AT X, 372).6 What characterizes the capacity for human reason to attain knowledge is not the magnitude or kind of intellect but its methodical application. In Rule IV, Descartes distinguishes the methodical direction of the mind from blind wandering. The method by which human reason can attain the most complete knowledge would apply the principles of mathematics, i.e., geometrical analysis and algebra, to general scientific problems. Again, Descartes’ early success in solving mathematical problems encouraged him to apply that reasoning to other matters. In Rule IV, Descartes indicates that he was lead to this conclusion by examining the word mathesis, which is related to disciplina, suggesting that a mathesis universalis would be applicable to any discipline of thought. Descartes claims that because “the exclusive concern of mathematics is with questions of order or measure . . . there must be a general science which explains all the points which can be raised concerning order and measure irrespective of subject-matter, and this science should be called mathesis universalis” (CSM I, 19 / AT X, 378). He continues by explaining that the way to properly discern the order and measure of all objects of inquiry is to concentrate on what is simplest and easiest to understand, going beyond them only after there is nothing further to understand with respect to these simple things.

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Clearly, this is the Cartesian picture of a new science. However, if we are no longer wandering blindly but with methodical direction, toward what are we progressing? To put it differently, to what end has the architect designed this new edifice? Although resolving such questions offers no simple answer, Descartes is sufficiently aware of the importance of such a resolution. He notes, for instance, in Rule IV that “so useful is this method that without it the pursuit of learning would, I think, be more harmful than profitable” (CSM I, 17 / AT X, 373).7 In the Discourse Part VI, Descartes relates his own internal struggle about whether or not to publish the scientific treatises he had been working on for some time, which we now possess under the titles Treatise of the World and Treatise on Man. On the one hand, he notes that “some persons to whom I defer and who have hardly less authority over my actions than my own reason has over my thoughts, had disapproved of a physical theory published a little while before by someone else” (CSM I, 141-42 / AT VI, 60). This, of course, refers to the condemnation of Galileo by the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1633, because of which Descartes felt it necessary to withhold the results of his scientific investigation. On the other hand, he was sincerely motivated to publish his principles of physics. I believed I could not keep them secret without sinning gravely against the law which obliges us to do all in our power to secure the general welfare of mankind. For they opened my eyes to the possibility of gaining knowledge which would be very useful in life, and of discovering a practical philosophy which might replace the speculative philosophy taught in the schools. (CSM I, 142 / AT VI, 61-62)

As Descartes conceives it, the potential to benefit “the general welfare of mankind” is possible only by dint of the previously razed edifice of opinion and subsequently regulated construction of a scientific system. Therefore, while Descartes always pursued knowledge in its complete and most certain form, it is also necessary to note that science, as Descartes conceives it, contains a constitutive practical component. In spite of the dignity of this cause, supporters and detractors alike would question both its coherence and the facility of its execution. The present collection will attend to these very questions, about the merits and possibility of Descartes’ philosophical project, from a variety of perspectives. If, indeed, we are indebted to Descartes, as Vico suggests, we must endeavor to give back what is owed. The papers in Part I of the collection inquire into the character of Descartes’ originality with respect to the foundations, method and trajectory of his

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philosophical project. The papers in Part II focus more exclusively on the consequences and challenges of that originality. In “The Baconian Matrix of Descartes’ Regulae,” Robert C. Miner calls into serious doubt the customary opinion that there is a Baconian-Cartesian dualism, as it were, in modern scientific method, that Descartes’ method in science is fundamentally different in kind from that of Francis Bacon. Miner locates numerous striking affinities between Bacon and Descartes in the field of scientific investigation on his way to demonstrating that the distinction between deduction and induction is not a sufficient criterion for making a real distinction between Descartes’ and Bacon’s respective scientific methods. Ultimately, Miner argues, those features which we can identify in the Regulae as specifically Cartesian must be understood as emerging from a Baconian matrix, that is, an essentially Baconian conception of the nature and aims of scientific inquiry. Corey W. Dyck also investigates the genuine character of Descartes’ originality, examining, first, Descartes’ reworking of the traditional notion of substance and, second, Leibniz’s measured response to that reworking. Dyck argues that Descartes’ forceful criticisms of substance in the Regulae are the result of his shift in focus from things as they are in themselves to things as they are known to us. This “Copernican revolution” motivates Descartes, later, to formulate, in his more explicitly metaphysical treatises, a notion of substance which could serve as a satisfactory foundation for a reconstructed metaphysics. Further, in spite of his explicit rejection of Descartes’ new formulation, Leibniz will remain committed to the aim of Descartes’ project, that is, to championing the cause of metaphysics through a new, more serviceable notion of substance. Finally, in spite of the revolutionary ambitions of Descartes and Leibniz, both remain committed to the traditional understanding of metaphysics as a discipline concerned with substance. If, indeed, Descartes aspires to liberate us from those things which obscure the truth, his famous res cogitans, that uncompromising identification of our human essence with the activity of thinking, is essential to fulfilling that aspiration. In “Sum Res Cogitans,” Elliot S. Paul argues that this identification is, in fact, axiomatic: the res cogitans of Meditation II is a first principle which Descartes discovers not deductively, but intuitively. Such intuitions, because they are difficult to achieve, must be elicited by means of “thought-experiments.” Paul suggest that thought-experiments are characteristic of the method of analysis which Descartes uses to “engage the minds of those that are eager to learn” (CSM II, 111 / AT VII, 156).

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What, then, does this discovery of the res cogitans and its faculties imply? Anne Davenport, in “Descartes as Philosopher of Action,” argues that this discovery requires not simply a self-healing through self-discipline, but, more boldly, a duty to serve humankind. Because Descartes’ altruism emerges deductively from the principles of his new science, it is not an accessory, but an essential component of his project. Davenport demonstrates this thesis in three stages: first, she examines Descartes’ theory of free will in Meditations I and IV, isolating a distinctively Cartesian view of self-determination; second, she shows that this self-determination is crucial to the work of Mediation V, the movement from the realm of the intellect to real, complex objects other than itself; third, she argues that Descartes’ insistence that he has framed a science “joined to charity” reveals the true extent to which action is a component of Descartes’ scientific project. Nevertheless, as the next three papers attempt to show, elaborating the consequences of Descartes’ real distinction between the mind and the body has proved challenging for Descartes’ readers, both with respect to ethical self-determination and with respect to those real, complex objects which mathematics studies. In “Descartes and the Possibility of Ethics,” Sterling Berry-Whitlock argues that Descartes’ avowed preference for the mechanism of efficient causality in the natural world constitutes a severe restriction of the scope of our practical freedom. Thus, the realm of freedom is confined to the activities of the res cogitans because it alone allows for voluntary action, action undetermined by the mechanism of material causality. In specifying the precise scope of that freedom with a view to the relationship between a subject’s soul and his or her body, Berry-Whitlock surveys and rejects two possible attempts, first, the traditional notion of the soul as the pilot of the body, second, the more recent formulation by John Cottingham, “trialism,” the proposal that the “hybrid faculties” of imagination and sense-perception warrant the designation of a third substance. Berry-Whitlock adopts instead Stoicism, an ethic of selfcertainty and self-discipline, as the doctrine which most consistently accords with Descartes’ own presentation of the nature of our practical freedom and of the relationship between soul and body. Addressing a similar range of concerns, Gwendolyn Bradford focuses more exclusively on the Passions of the Soul in “The Status of Moral Knowledge in Descartes’ Passions.” Bradford argues that Descartes’ account of certain passions goes well beyond the scope of his explicit definition of the passions in terms of regulating bodily health. Bradford locates several decisive examples of this kind of passion (most importantly, generosité) and shows that, generally, all these passions are the effect rather than the cause of moral judgments con-

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cerning the status and worth of other people in relation to ourselves. Because the function of such passions cannot be properly understood within the narrow economy of regulating the well-being of the body, Bradford proposes instead that they function to regulate the well-being of the soul, signaling the status of our progress on the path towards virtuous tranquility (ataraksia). In “Geometry and Imagination: A Study in Ambiguity,” Matthew S. Linck argues that Descartes’ sometimes equivocal use of the terms “image” and “idea” is an indication of a more fundamental ambiguity concerning how we think about geometrical objects. Linck begins by situating this ambiguity historically, tracing its contours in both Plato and Proclus as the difficulty of distinguishing between the faculties of intellection and imagination with respect to geometrical objects. This historical context allows Linck to specify the particularly Cartesian form this ambiguity takes, i.e., a difficulty in maintaining the real distinction between thinking and extended substance with respect to a single human being. Linck ultimately argues that the necessary role Descartes sees for the imagination in our thinking about geometrical objects commits him to a more unified conception of the mind and body their real distinction can support. The final three papers consider Descartes’ continuing influence in the fields of contemporary philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. In “The Limits of Silence: Descartes, Heidegger and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Poesy,” Narve Strand would question the hegemony of the Cartesian paradigm of science insofar as that paradigm does not sufficiently recognize the claims of ordinary language with regard to the relationship between scientific and ordinary experience. Simply stated, ordinary language is not expendable on the grounds that it is non-scientific. Strand argues that Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt at the beginning of the Meditations commits him to such a view of ordinary language and challenges him from the perspectives, first, of Heidegger, then, of Wittgenstein, philosophers who rose to prominence as champions of the prerogatives of pre-theoretic discourse. However, in Strand’s paper, this challenge itself is enacted as an ironic parody of these towering figures of “ordinary language,” suggesting that they, too, might be trapped within the limits of non-discursive knowledge. In “The Apple and the Tree: Descartes and Marion on Divine Incomprehensibility,” Adam Konopka fruitfully investigates, first, Descartes’ conception of God as “formally incomprehensible” according to the interpretation proposed by Jean-Luc Marion, then Marion’s conception of God as “saturated phenomenon” according to its Cartesian heritage. Konopka argues that Marion’s work on Descartes iso-

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lates and accords an important primacy to the concept of infinity amongst the divine attributes of omnipotence, infinity and perfection. This primacy assists in clarifying the precise sense in which, for Descartes, our idea of God is, at once, incomprehensible and the most clear and distinct idea. Subsequently, Konopka explores the extent to which Marion’s own construal of divine incomprehensibility—in terms of the “saturated phenomenon”—hangs from a specifically Cartesian branch. In “Sensory States, Consciousness, and the Cartesian Assumption,” Gregg Caruso approaches the res cogitans from the concerns of contemporary philosophy of mind, investigating, specifically, the relationship between sensation and consciousness. Caruso challenges the assumption, which he calls the “Cartesian assumption,” that the range of sensation is co-extensive with consciousness: to have a sensation is to be aware of having a sensation. With examples from both ordinary experience and cognitive science, Caruso argues that this assumption can be undermined in two ways. First, we can have real sensations which do not appear to us as sensations. Second, we can appear to have sensations which are not really sensations for us. Caruso concludes by offering an alternative theory of mind, the HOT (Higher Order Thought) model, which he believes more adequately represents the variety of our experience. With respect to appreciating our debt to Descartes, now would be the time to turn to a middle way: to follow our own judgment in reading Descartes, but with some regard for his established authority in the philosophical tradition; to approach Descartes from a critical perspective, but a perspective variegated enough to capture the richness and complexity of the matter at hand, Descartes’ philosophical originality.

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1

See John Cottingham’s helpful paper “The Cartesian Legacy,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 61 (1992): 1-21. This article offers a helpful reconstruction of what might actually be the legacy of Cartesian rationalism. Rather than the usual image of an “armchair a priorist,” Cottingham finds Descartes’ approach to scientific knowldege to be much more philosophically akin to, e.g., Quinean holism, metaphysical coherentism, and hypothetico-deductive experimental science. 2 Cf. Letter to Beeckman, 23 April 1619 (CSMK, 4 / AT X, 163): “For it was you alone who roused me from my state of indolence and reawakened the learning which by then had almost disappeared from my memory; and when my mind strayed from serious pursuits, it was you who led it back to worthier things.” 3 In the Discourse, Descartes refers to staying shut up alone “all day,” serenely detached from “cares or passions.” His biographer Baillet takes this quite literally and marks the day as 10 November 1619. Stephen Gaukroger, on the other hand, in Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1995): 104-11, does an admirable job of linking this event historically with the Descartes’ famous “three dreams” or visions. He points out, by reference to a source contemporary with Descartes, that it is just as plausible that during this period of time Descartes experienced what might have amounted to a nervous breakdown as it is that Descartes serenely and rationally laid out a plan for a method of philosophical inquiry while he “stayed all day shut up alone in a stove-heated room.” 4 Again Gaukroger, Descartes, 111-34, is extremely helpful in outlining the history of the composition of this text. He argues, convincingly we think, that the text was composed during two major periods (1619-20 and 1626-28), though the rules as later published in no way represent a chronological order of composition. See also Jean-Luc Marion, Sur L’Ontologie Grise de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1975), “La question de Regulae”: 13-23, where he provides an extensive historical account of the compilation, and eventual publication of the text under the current title. 5 For more on the role of intuition as founding deduction, see Marion, Sur L’Ontologie Grise, 53-54, where Marion makes an important and provocative observation. He notes that, while Rule II, and much of the conception of scholastic/Aristotelian philosophy, would support the belief that deduction surpasses intuition in terms of its certainty, i.e., that certainty is guaranteed through a deductive demonstration, Rule III makes it clear that intuition is primary, since it grants or sustains (permet) the certainty of deduction. This observation occurs within the context of his effort to reinvigorate a Cartesian sense of experientia as that which confirms and sustains scientia: “dès lors, la raport s'inverse; l'intuitus non seulement certain, mais qui permet la production de certitude jsuqu'à investir et récapituler l'experientia entière, devient le paradigme d'une certitude, que la déduction ne produit, et ne possède plus qu'en second.”

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6

Cf. Discourse: CSM I, 111 / AT VI, 2: “the power of judging well and distinguishing the true from the false—which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’—is naturally equal in all men, and consequently that the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thoughts along different paths and do not attend to the same things.” 7 Cf. Discourse: CSM I, 111 / AT VI, 2: “the greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues.”

PART ONE: Chapter 1 The Baconian Matrix of Descartes’s Regulae Robert C. Miner For traditional histories of philosophy, and those influenced by them, nothing is more routine than to oppose Bacon and Descartes. According to the conventional picture, Bacon’s approach is more or less empiricist, grounded in observation, driven by induction, pragmatic in character, perhaps even probabilist and fallibilist. Descartes, by contrast, is a rationalist who, in the grip of the quest for certainty, spurns experience and observation in favor of an a priori foundationalism that exalts deduction and intuition over induction. Such are the pictures of Bacon and Descartes familiar to us from canonical histories of philosophy.1 As Brian Vickers observes, the problem with many standard narratives is that “scholars do not pay accurate attention to what the texts actually say.”2 Paolo Rossi notes that “simplifications often get a better hearing than complex questions, and slogans (even in philosophy) are frequently more powerful than arguments.”3 (One reason for this, as Rossi points out, is that many contemporary professors of early modern philosophy have “a tendency to consider the community of epistemologists as coinciding with the universe.”4) In this essay, I hope to show that the early thought of Descartes, particuarly as embodied in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, is not opposed to Bacon in the manner assumed by the usual historiography. Far more adequate, I will contend, is a view of the Regulae as operating within an essentially Baconian matrix. When Descartes thinks about method, he does not oppose Bacon’s primary conceptions, but reformulates and develops them. In the course of illuminating the context in which Descartes begins to reflect on method, Stephen Gaukroger writes that “we must not neglect the possible influence of Francis Bacon.”5 What follows is an attempt to amplify this suggestion, although my argument does not depend upon any direct causal influence. I leave open the possibility that Descartes derives his view from a source other than Bacon, or else comes to it independently.6 My aim is to document the presence of continuities and isomorphisms between the Novum Organum and the Regulae, connections that are often neglected or explained away.

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In what follows, I will begin by noting six areas of striking continuity between the Novum Organum and the Regulae. These will add up to a preliminary suspicion that the traditional view which imagines Descartes to be antithetical to Bacon is seriously misleading. A second section will articulate and respond to the most powerful objection to the view that Descartes operates, consciously or not, within a Baconian matrix. The objection is that, whatever the similarities between the two, they do not change the fact that Descartes diverges sharply from Bacon by placing intuition and deduction, rather than observation and induction, at the center of his thinking about method. If this view is correct, the parallels between the two would be peripheral, and the differences central. I will attempt to refute this objection by showing that it depends upon misunderstandings of both Descartes and Bacon. A third section will venture a positive statement of what the Baconian and Cartesian reflections on method have in common. In a fourth and final section, I will take account of some important differences, followed by a concluding reminder that the differences are intelligible only within a new conception of the telos of philosophy, to which Bacon and Descartes are firmly committed. 1. Preliminary Suspicions Descartes begins the Regulae ad directionem ingenii with a warning. Whenever people notice similarity between two things, they are in the habit of ascribing to the one what they find true of the other, even when the two are not in that respect similar. (CSM I, 9 / AT X, 359)

This warning is sufficient to prevent facile identifications between Bacon and Descartes. But is the traditional perception of sharp opposition between the two thinkers well-grounded? We recall that in their reflections on method, Bacon and Descartes have a common target: the Aristotelian syllogism, the principal tool of “dialectic.” Bacon’s critique of the syllogism involves three main claims: (1) The syllogism depends upon generalizations that are “muddled and carelessly derived from things” 7; (2) Because of this dependence on poorly derived generalizations, the syllogism is unable to furnish new knowledge of nature, but remains at the level of “common notions” (Book 1, Aphorisms 13, 18); (3) For all that, the syllogism is not altogether useless, but is well-suited for sciences based on supposition and opinion, where the goal is to command assent (Book 1, Aphorism 29).

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In the Regulae, Descartes reproduces each of these three claims with precision. Failure to attend to what is easy but seemingly trivial, accompanied by enthusiasm for what is difficult but apparently profound, causes many to regard as true notions that are improperly drawn from sense-experience (Rule II: CSM I, 10 / AT X, 362). Bacon attributes the confusion of unsound notions to “the flux of matter and the mingling of things with each other” (Book 1, Aphorism 16). Similarly, Descartes locates the uncertainty of common notions in the impure character of the objects from which they are abstracted. Bacon claims that the syllogism fails to provide new knowledge. Descartes agrees: dialectians “are unable to formulate a syllogism with a true conclusion unless they are already in possession of the substance of the conclusion, i.e. unless they already have previous knowledge of the very truth deduced in the syllogism” (Rule X: CSM I, 36-37 / AT X, 406). It is remarkable that Bacon and Descartes use nearly identical images to describe the syllogism’s effect. When it is used for natural research, says Bacon, “nature slips through the hands.”8 For Descartes, syllogistic patterns are such that “truth often slips through these fetters, while those who employ them are left entrapped in them” (CSM, 36 / AT X, 406). Nonetheless, the syllogism is not altogether valueless. Like Bacon, Descartes damns the syllogism with faint praise. “Made for controversies,” Descartes says in Rule II, syllogisms “exercise the minds of the young, stimulating them with a certain rivalry” and thus inform their minds with “opinions” that, although “evidently uncertain,” are better than nothing (CSM I, 11 / AT X, 363-64). The suitability of the syllogism for mental children is notoriously expressed by Bacon, both in his claim that dialectic is appropriate for institutions that are designed merely for the transmission of existing doctrine, and his comparison of the Greeks to young boys, who chatter readily but cannot procreate (Book 1, Aphorism 71).9 A second affinity between Bacon and Descartes is their common deployment of the trope that we (i.e., the moderns) are the most ancient. Along with proclaiming his zeal for the discovery of new knowledge, Bacon delights in announcing that his own approach is the most genuinely ancient. The true meaning of antiquity is the “world’s old age” (Book 1, Aphorism 84). True antiquity, therefore, ought to be attributed to “our own times, not to the world’s youth, when the ancients lived. For their age, which from our own point of view is ancient and older, from the world’s point of view is new and younger.” Thus “Truth is rightly described as the daughter of Time, not of authority” (Book 1, Aphorism 84). Descartes uses the same trope. A fragment preserved by Baillet suggests that “we shouldn’t give great

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credit to the ancients on account of their antiquity; it is rather we who should be called the more ancient ones. For the world is older now than it was then and we have a greater experience of things” (AT X, 204).10 David Lachterman interprets this passage as the exception that proves the rule, holding that Descartes never again cites or alludes to the trope. He overlooks, however, a passage in the Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne that prefaces the Meditations where Descartes suggests that his method is not new, because “nothing is older than the truth” (CSM II, 4 / AT VII, 3).11 Another comparison used by Descartes to indicate his relation to the ancients seems to have Baconian origins. In the Preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes denies that his intention is to detract from the reputation of the ancient philosophers (cf. Novum Organum, Book1, Aphorism 32). Rather, his point is that “so long as we turn our back on the place we wish get to, then the longer and faster we walk the further we get from our destination” (CSM II, 183 / AT IXb 8-9). Compare this to Bacon: “the more active and faster a man is, the further astray will he go when he is running on the wrong road” (Book 1, Aphorism 61). A third important continuity between Bacon and Descartes is that both emphasize the importance of experience. Adherents of the conventional view typically draw a firm line between Bacon and Descartes, holding that the former privileges experience and the latter devalues it. But consider what Descartes says in Rule V. Astrologers fail because they “do not make any accurate observations of celestial motions” (CSM I, 20 / AT X, 380). Those who study mechanics apart from physics construct new instruments for producing motion, but err to the extent that they fail to observe the world. Finally, in this Rule, Descartes blasts “philosophers who take no account of experience and think that truth will spring from their brains like Minerva from the head of Jupiter” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 380).12 We may introduce a fourth parallel by making the following suggestion. If Descartes’s proclamation of the need for experience is insufficiently known, equally neglected is the Baconian quest for certainty.13 Proponents of traditional historiography will often seek to contrast the Cartesian attitude toward certainty with the Baconian. This contrast can be undermined in at least two ways. First, we may observe that Descartes makes certainty neither the only nor the primary goal of his philosophy. Second, we must note that, before Descartes writes, Bacon explicitly rejects “unprofitable conjectures” (Book 1, Aphorism 116) in favor of certain knowledge. Here are Bacon’s own words, from the Preface of the Novum Organum:

5 If there are any men who have the wish and the will not only to cling to and make use of knowledge already discovered, but to penetrate further; to conquer, not an opponent in argument, but Nature herself in action: to seek, in short, not elegant and probable conjectures, but certain and demonstrable knowledge.14

Bacon’s own words are sufficient, I think, to disturb any alleged tidy contrast between Cartesian certainty and Baconian probability.15 When Descartes, in Rule II, demands that we be “attuned only to those objects of which our minds seem capable of having certain and indubitable cognition” (CSM I, 10-11 / AT X, 362),16 he is reiterating a Baconian desire. His view that the demand for certainty entails the rejection of merely probable cognition has already been expressed in the Novum Organum. In the passage we just quoted, Bacon contrasts certain knowledge with probable conjectures. The rest of the passage invites “true sons of learning” to join Bacon if they will, so that we can pass by the outer halls of Nature, which any number of men have already trodden, to where at length the way into her inner chambers shall be revealed.17

At Rule IV, Descartes uses the same metaphor, distinguishing between the “outer garments” of the new method and its “inner parts” (CSM I, 117 / AT X, 374). Here and throughout, we are not claiming that Descartes necessarily derives these figures from his own reading of Bacon, although he may well have. In this case, it is possible that there is a source common to Bacon and Descartes, viz. the Rosicrucians.18 We suspect that regarding the determination to achieve certainty, Bacon and Descartes are united rather than divided.19 Strengthening this suspicion is a fifth area of continuity. Neither the Novum Organum nor the Regulae advocate certainty on the ground that only the provision of certain knowledge can answer the skeptic. As Gaukroger argues, there is simply no evidence to support the view that Descartes was in the grip of a skeptical crisis prior to writing the Regulae (if he ever was).20 Descartes wants certain knowledge, as Daniel Garber observes, not to fight skepticism, but to provide an alternative to any philosophy “willing to make do with probability.”21 Perhaps the two still differ in giving rival and incompatible accounts of the cause of uncertainty. Descartes seems to locate the origin of uncertainty in dependence upon the senses, whereas Bacon does not. But is this true? In his account of the Idols of the Tribe, Bacon catalogs several vices of the human understanding. Which is the worst? “But by far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises

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from the dullness and inadequacy and deceptions of the senses” (Book 1, Aphorism 50). Even the Cartesian critique of the senses may be understood as a variation on a fundamentally Baconian theme. Let us note a sixth substantive parallel between Bacon and Descartes. Both thinkers not only have the same goal, viz. the attainment of knowledge that is certain rather than probable, but also have the same solution, viz. the invention of a new method. Both hold that a key component of the method is to begin with what is easy. Bacon describes the common method as the way that “flies from the senses and particulars to axioms of the most general kind” (Book 1, Aphorism 19).22 To “fly” from the senses is to be impatient, to make conjectures about difficult things because one judges it unworthy to attend to what is clear but seemingly trivial. Bacon repeats the claim that the “deep-rooted errors in the primary notions” are those that “arise from carelessness and oversight” (Book 1, Aphorism 122). Descartes makes this claim more explicitly. Application of the method requires that we be freed from the common habit of “neglecting easy tasks and occupying ourselves only with difficult matters” (CSM I, 12 / AT X, 364).23 Both Descartes and Bacon insist upon eradicating from the mind its habit of making premature flights into difficult matters.24 Without the invention of method—which both take to occur by artificial means, akin to tool-making25—the scientist is at the mercy of chance. Both Bacon and Descartes hold that the alternative to the intervention and employment of a new method is dependence upon luck. Here is Bacon: Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented, not methods of invention or directions for new works. (Book 1, Aphorism 8)

For Bacon, the method is not merely to conduct “experiments.” Without guidance by a method, such experimentation is no more than chance. Similarly, Descartes condemns the random pursuit of experiments (CSM I, 12 / AT X, 365). In place of luck, Descartes writes in Rule IV, “we need a method if we are to investigate the truth of things” (CSM I, 15 / AT X, 371). The reason? Those deprived of a method hope that they will “chance upon what they are seeking, rather like someone who is consumed with such a senseless desire to discover treasure that he continually roams the streets to see if he can find any that a passer-by might have dropped” (CSM I, 15-16 / AT X,

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371). Both Bacon and Descartes construe the method as the great alternative in scientific inquiry to reliance upon luck. The critique of dialectic and the syllogism, the idea that we are the true ancients, the need for experience, the quest for certainty, the response to probabilism rather than skepticism, the conviction that only method can save us—these six themes common to Bacon and Descartes make a cumulative case for suspecting that something is gravely wrong with historiographical narratives that draw sharp contrasts between the two 17th century philosophers.26 2. An Objection: Induction vs. Deduction Against this suspicion, one may wish to lodge an objection. No list of affinities between Bacon and Descartes, however long, can overcome a basic fact. Bacon holds that our “only hope” is induction (Book 1, Aphorism 14), whereas Descartes exalts intuition and deduction. Despite the common animus against Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes conceive methods that are polar opposites. So runs the objection. The objection needs to be specified, in order to be addressed. One version of the objection would argue that intuition is fundamental for the Regulae in a way that it is not for the Novum Organum. Rule III describes intuition as “the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason” (CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368). Descartes supplies four examples of truths that a person can know through such attention: “he exists, he is thinking, a triangle is bounded by just three lines, and a sphere by a single surface” (CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368). Thinking these truths, while perhaps not entirely divorced from experience (i.e. inner experience), does not involve observation of the world as perceived by sense. It would seem that Bacon’s method does not involve cognition of this sort. The source of this appearance is the understanding of Bacon as an “empiricist” who relies exclusively upon the senses, exhorting the scientist to engage only in the collection of facts.27 The texts, however, complicate this appearance. When Bacon declares that truth is to be sought “in the light of Nature and in experience” (Book 1, Aphorism 56), he is not using these terms as synonyms. The light of Nature is not the same as experience; it is prior to experience. In the Novum Organum, Bacon distinguishes two kinds of experience: simple experience that is mere groping, and “deliberately sought” experience, the proper name for which is “experiment” (Book 1, Aphorism 82). Experiment has a structure or order. This order is “first to kindle a light, then with that light to show the way, beginning with experience

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ordered and arranged, not irregular or erratic, and from that deriving axioms, and from the axioms thus established deriving again new experiences” (Book 1, Aphorism 82). Bacon concludes the aphorism with a warning. Failure to bring a light to experience will result in “becoming entangled in it and wandering as if in a labyrinth” (Book 1, Aphorism 82). In other words, the starting point is not raw experience. It is a light of the mind that will enable the investigator to order and arrange experience. Let us compare this Baconian thought to the summary statement of Rule V: “the whole method consists entirely in the ordering and arranging of the objects on which we must concentrate our mind’s eye if we are to discover some truth” (CSM I, 20 / AT X, 379). In the body of this Rule, Descartes warns the reader about the cost of neglecting this Rule, using the same image that Bacon employed. “Anyone who sets out in quest of knowledge of things must follow this Rule as closely he would the thread of Theseus if he were to enter the Labyrinth” (CSM I, 20 / AT X, 379-80). Here Descartes has restated Bacon’s idea. Failure to order experience by use of a method will result in becoming entangled in it, lost in a labyrinth. The point is not that Bacon has the Cartesian theory of intuition; he does not. But the relation between the two thinkers is not one of direct antithesis. Descartes follows Bacon in asserting the need for a light whose function is to enable the proper arrangement of experience. Cartesian intuition is an attempt to spell out more precisely what the mind needs to know in order to perform the operation of ordering and arranging experience, so as to avoid getting lost in the labyrinth. As Garber concludes, while there are important differences in detail, “Descartes’ account here is not unlike Bacon’s; for both there is an important sense in which theory must constitute experimental facts.”28 Some have recognized this kinship. Lisa Jardine observes that both Gassendi and Mersenne “read Bacon as a system-builder, intent on finding the indemonstrable first principles of science—the hidden essential natures of things—by means of a new logic.”29 According to Gassendi, Bacon and Descartes shared the aim to construct a new Philosophy from its very foundations, and especially to strip it of every kind of preconception (praeiudicium). And thereupon, having discovered some very certain (solidissimus) Principle, to build upon it as foundation an entire system. Not, however, that Descartes’ procedure is the same as that undertaken by Verulam; for where Verulam seeks support from things (res) in completing the cogitation of the Intellect, Descartes sets aside all consideration of things, and estimates that cogitation itself is adequate to enable Intel-

9 lect to arrive at a perfect notion of all things, however abstruse, by its own force.30

A second formulation of the objection under consideration would argue that any method which accords a central place to deduction differs essentially from one that privileges induction. Descartes’s method, the objection continues, is mathematical, and therefore deductivist, whereas Bacon’s method is non-mathematical and inductive. To examine this objection, clarity about its terms is required. Whatever the relation between deduction and induction in logic textbooks, are the two opposed for Descartes? To answer this question, we must seek to ascertain the actual relationship between deductio and inductio as the terms occur in the Regulae. In Rule III, Descartes recognizes only two means by which we can attain an error-free knowledge of things. The text of the first Latin edition published in Amsterdam in 1701 labels these two means as “intuitus” and “inductio” (CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368). Following any number of other translators, the editor of the Cambridge English translation of Descartes assures us in a footnote that inductio is “almost certainly a misprint for deductio.”31 This assurance derives, presumably, from the fact that the remainder of Rule III consists of a discussion of the relation between intuitus and deductio, not intuitus and inductio. Thus one might be led to conclude that, aside from a printing error, inductio has no presence in the Regulae. Such a conclusion would be misguided. Inductio reappears several times later in the text (Rule VII: CSM I, 25 / AT X, 388; CSM I, 27 / AT X, 390; CSM I, 26 / AT X, 389; Rule XI: CSM I, 37 / AT X, 408). None of these reappearances can be blamed on the printer. In Rule X, Descartes describes deductio as the movement of the mind from one truth to another (not, one might note, from general truths to particular truths.) Such deductio, Descartes claims, cannot be conflated with syllogistic reasoning. We have seen Descartes echo the Baconian critique of the syllogism. Those who use it “are unable to formulate a syllogism with a true conclusion unless they are already in possession of the substance of the conclusion, i.e. unless they already have previous knowledge of the very truth deduced in the syllogism” (CSM I, 36-37 / AT X, 406). Whatever Descartes means by deductio, he cannot mean deductive reasoning as paradigmatically embodied in the syllogism. To put the point more sharply: Cartesian deductio is not the opposite of inductio. In Rule XI, Descartes explains deductio more fully, distinguishing two kinds of deductio. First, there are simple deductions that involve only two or three steps, and therefore can be grasped all at once. Such

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deductions, Descartes says, are “made through” intuition, because they are “simple and transparent” (CSM I, 37 / AT X, 408). This kind of deductio approaches the status of intuitio. There are, however, other deductions that involve more than two or three steps. They will be “complex and involved” (CSM I, 37 / AT X, 408). Chains of reasoning that fall under this pattern can, Descartes writes, be called enumeratio or inductio. It would thus appear that inductio is a species of deductio. If this is true, then the traditional supposition that Descartes straightforwardly opposes “deduction” and “induction” is seriously misleading and lacks textual support. 3. Question and Answer Neither Bacon nor Descartes propose that we choose between induction or deduction. In Aphorism 95 of the Novum Organum, Bacon proposes an alliance between the experimental and rational faculties. The Regulae should be understood as making a similar suggestion. In order to discern what Bacon and Descartes have in common, we need to cultivate some distance from the supposition that the basic unit of discourse is either a “proposition” from which other propositions can be deduced, or a “fact” which, if accumulated in sufficient quantity, forms the basis of an induction. For both Bacon and Descartes, what comes first is a question.32 In the Regulae, Descartes suggests that we use our knowledge of the simple natures to pose questions that are tractable (“easy,” he would say). Likewise, Bacon thinks that nature cannot be interpreted unless it is interrogated, “put to the torture.” One sign of the priority of the question in the Novum Organum is the “the forensic tone with which Bacon invests his writings.”33 Only after a question has been formulated can observations be collected. This is what Bacon means by “literate experience,” experience that is not a mere groping in the dark.34 Descartes echoes the need for literate experience. In Rule XII’s discussion of the magnet, Descartes ridicules the inquirer who, failing to have constructed the right type of question, proceeds “in the vague expectation that by rambling through the barren field of manifold causes he will hit upon something new” (CSM I, 49 / AT X, 427). By contrast, the Cartesian inquirer will “carefully gather together all the available observations (experimenta) concerning the stone in question” (CSM, 49 / AT X, 427). Epistolary evidence suggests that Descartes has Bacon explicitly in mind as a model. In 1632, he writes to Mersenne: You once told me that you knew some people who were so dedicated to the advancement of science that they were willing to make every

11 kind of experiment at their own expense. It would be very useful if some such person were to write the history of celestial phenomena in accordance with the Baconian method and to describe the present appearances of the heavens without any explanations or hypotheses, reporting the position of each fixed star in relation to its neighbours, listing their differences in size and colour and visibility and brilliance and so on. (CSMK, 38 / AT I, 251)

Descartes sees Bacon not as a haphazard fact-collector, but as someone whose “histories” proceed along the lines that he advocates. The injunction to describe without explanations or hypotheses is not an invitation to engage in observation without having a guiding question in mind. It is a request to delay the formulation of the answer to the question until observations have been made. After the posing of questions and gathering of observations, the inquirer is in a position to formulate a hypothesis—an “axiom,” as Bacon would say. For both Bacon and Descartes, a hypothesis is not a free-floating proposition. It is an answer to a question, framed suppositionally on the basis of observations. In the magnetism example, Descartes describes this as an attempt “to deduce from this (i.e. from the gathered observations) what sort of mixture of simple natures is necessary for producing all the effects which the magnet is found to have” (CSM I, 49 / AT X, 427). By now, it is evident that although Descartes says “deduce,” he could have just as easily said “induce” or “infer.” The movement is from the gathered observations to the construction of an answer to the question. Whether one uses the term “induction” or “deduction” to describe this movement is (for Descartes) a matter of indifference. What is the relationship between hypothesis and observation? For Bacon, an observation at odds with the hypothesis constitutes a “negative instance.” Only one negative instance is required to contradict a proposed axiom, and thereby cast serious doubt upon it.35 Does Descartes affirm anything like this? Rule XII’s discussion of the magnet appears to suggest that he does not. In that example, Descartes seems to move immediately from the deduction of Step Three to the conclusion that, once the investigator has discovered the mixture of simple natures which produce the observed effects, “he is in the position to make the bold claim that he has grasped the true nature of the magnet, so far as it is humanly possible to discover it on the basis of given observations” (CSM I, 50 / AT X, 427). But notice that Descartes does not exclude the possibility of making additional observations that contradict the deduction. He specifies that deduction cannot occur until all the available observations have occurred, and that the deduction must

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delineate the mixture of simple natures that produce all the effects of the magnet. In other texts, as Garber has shown, Descartes more clearly indicates a place for something like crucial experiments. The role of such experiments in Descartes is to eliminate incorrect deductions—not by showing that other possible deductions are precisely false, but rather by showing that, as Garber writes, they “simply lead to possible effects of our first principles not realized in the specific group of particulars with which we are dealing, which we are trying to explain . . . Experiment does not eliminate incorrect deductions by showing them false, but by showing them inappropriate to the particular phenomena at hand.”36 If Garber is correct, then Descartes uses experiment to eliminate incorrect hypotheses. But this (at least roughly) is what Bacon does in searching for negative instances! Scientific inquiry, for both Bacon and Descartes, begins with the asking of questions. It does not terminate with answers to those questions; it is renewed by the generation of new questions. Commenting on Descartes’s discussion of the rainbow, Garber observes that “experiment helps us determine what question we should next ask ourselves.”37 Both Bacon and Descartes project an open-ended future where the process of inquiry continues ad infinitum. As Caton writes in his book on Descartes: “the concept of wisdom that terminates in a moral doctrine is altogether traditional. But the notion of wisdom that reaches into the future for completion by generations to come is new and Baconian.”38 4. Distinctions of Method, Unity of Aim Our hypothesis is that the Regulae’s venture into the question of method, if not directly influenced by Bacon, proceeds under Baconian auspices. We do not deny that significant distinctions exist between the Baconian and Cartesian reflections on method. They include the following: (1) As we have seen, Descartes emphasizes that the light required to guide the investigation of nature consists in the intuition of simple natures. Bacon affirms the necessity of guidance by a light of nature, and he even has a doctrine of simple natures. But with respect to method, the Novum Organum does not lay nearly the degree of emphasis on the simple natures as does the Regulae. If Urbach is correct, Bacon doubts that we possess distinct notions of simple natures.39 (2) Descartes is confident that his science, although experimental, is also certain. His confidence derives from the conviction that the attentive mind is capable of verifying the necessity with which one simple nature is linked to another. Given this necessity, along with the

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absence of conflicting observations, we are able, according to Descartes, to attain certainty. As we have seen, Bacon also aspires to certain knowledge. But he does not seem to link certainty to the necessity of intuited simple natures in the same way that the Regulae does.40 Although Bacon and Descartes both desire certain knowledge, the implications of their texts about our ability to attain it may be somewhat different. Bacon is far more circumspect than Descartes about saying how we can attain certainty, although he shares Descartes’s commitment to the goal. (3) Descartes’s method involves the mathematization of the portion of the world that we can hope to know. Bacon, by contrast, does not rely so much upon mathematics. There is a genuine contrast here, but it is frequently overdrawn.41 Against the tendency of commentators to attribute an unequivocal anti-mathematical animus to Bacon, we must weigh and consider Aphorism 8 of Book 2: “the study of Nature proceeds best when physics is bounded by mathematics.” Bacon invokes the stability of mathematical discourse in order to assuage those worried by the possibility of excessive subtlety in the inquiry. Mathematics will keep science well-grounded: “no one should be afraid of large numbers or of fractions. For in things that are dealt with by number, it is as easy to posit or conceive a thousand as one, or a thousandth part of one as the whole number one” (Book 2, Aphorism 8). (4) Descartes and Bacon have different attitudes regarding the role of the community in science. Commenting on Part Six of the Discourse, Garber remarks: The message is clear: send your money, not your observations, to R. Descartes, care of the publisher. (And, do not visit, either.) Experimental science is thus, for Descartes, a solitary activity, one that does not require a community, one that would in fact be hindered by having to take place within a community.42

Bacon, by contrast, thinks of scientific practice in expressly collaborative terms. These distinctions serve to indicate the difference between the Baconian and Cartesian reflections on method. None of them involve a commitment to the traditional contrast between intuition and deduction. For both Bacon and Descartes, induction and deduction are moments in the application of the new method. Both regard the method as ordered to the attainment of a goal. The goal is wisdom, of course. But wisdom how conceived? According to the traditional picture, Bacon aims for distinctively practi-

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cal wisdom, while Descartes’s chief goal is to acquire theoretical certainty. Thus Stephen Toulmin: Using our understanding of Nature to increase comfort, or to reduce pain, was secondary to the central spiritual goal of Science. Rejecting in both method and spirit Bacon’s vision of a humanly fruitful science, Descartes and Newton set out to build mathematical structures, and looked to Science for theological, not technological, dividends.43

Here we see the popular conception of Descartes as haunted by the “quest for certainty.” Although this conception performs a vital function in some “pragmatist” narratives of the history of philosophy, since it enables Descartes to serve as a foil, it is difficult to reconcile with the full range of Cartesian texts. A more adequate reading of Descartes would understand the attainment of theoretical certainty as the proximate goal of Cartesian thought. Its ultimate aim coincides precisely with the Baconian imperative to conquer nature. A hint of the practical orientation of Cartesian thought may be seen in the Correspondence’s obsession with medicine and health. A clearer indication is his warning to Elizabeth that studying metaphysics more than once in a lifetime is harmful, impeding the intellect’s co-operation with the imagination and the senses (CSMK, 228 / AT III, 695). The theme is sounded even louder in the Conversation with Burman. Metaphysics draws the mind “too far away from physical and observable things, and make it unfit to study them. Yet it is just these physical studies that it is most desirable for people to pursue, since they would yield abundant benefits for life” (CSMK, 346-47 / AT V 165). Lest one fear reliance upon the Conversation, we may cite the climatic passage from Part Six of the Discourse: But as soon as I had acquired some general notions in physics and had noticed, as I began to test them in various particular problems, where they could lead and how much they differ from the principles used up to now, I believed that I could not keep them secret without sinning gravely against the law which obliges us to do all in our power to secure the general welfare of mankind. For they opened my eyes to the possibility of gaining knowledge which would be very useful in life, and of discovering a practical philosophy which might replace the speculative philosophy taught in the schools. Through this philosophy we could know the power and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens and all the other bodies in our environment, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans; and we could use this knowledge—as the artisans use theirs—for all the purposes for which it is appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature. (CSM I, 142-43 / AT VI, 61-62)

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For Descartes, the aspiration to acquire wisdom for its own sake (“speculative philosophy”) must be supplanted by a new conception of wisdom (“practical philosophy”). Wisdom is to be pursued not for its own beauty, but for its capacity “to secure the general welfare of mankind”—i.e., to provide for the relief of man’s estate. But how can wisdom thus be transformed? This is the overarching question to which Bacon’s and Descartes’s reflections on method are intended as an answer. If Descartes desires that his own philosophy serve a Baconian goal, is it any surprise that he should make ample use of Baconian materials in constructing his own set of means to the end? Attending to his use of these materials will promote the recovery of Descartes from the clutches of simplifying historiography, and enable a sharper discernment of what is genuinely original about Cartesian thought.

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1

The pictures may be found in virtually any “standard” (i.e., post-Kantian) history of philosophy. A partial corrective may be had in Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy Through Cartesian Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 307. “For us, Bacon and Descartes are opposites, the experimentalist versus the rationalist. There is, of course, a good deal of truth in this. But at the same time, it is important for us to recognize that the two are not so distant from one another as we might think.” 2 Brian Vickers, “Francis Bacon and the Progress of Knowledge,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 3 (1992): 499. 3 Paolo Rossi, “Ants, Spiders, Epistemologists,” in Francis Bacon: Terminologia e Fortuna nel XVII Secolo, ed. M. Fattori (Rome, 1984): 247. 4 Rossi, “Ants, Spiders, Epistemologists,” 258. 5 Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995): 435n21. Cf. Hiram Caton, “Analytic History of Philosophy: The Case of Descartes,” The Philosophical Forum 12, no. 4 (1981): 273. Caton observes that Anglo-American history of philosophy pays little attention to Descartes as “free-thinker and Baconian advocate.” 6 On this point I am indebted to the limpid formulation of E.M. Curley in Descartes Against the Skeptics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978): 19. He comments on the relation between Descartes and Montaigne, observing that “to find parallel thoughts in Descartes and Montaigne can never, of course, prove that Montaigne influenced Descartes.” 7 Translations are generally those appearing in Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, trans. and ed. Peter Urbach and John Gibson (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1994), Book I, Aphorism 14; cf. Aphorism 17. Parenthetical references are by (Book number, Aphorism number). 8 Quoted in Rossi, “Ants, Spiders, Epistemologists,” 256. 9 Cf. Preface to the Magna Instauratio (Urbach and Gibson eds., Novum Organum, 8). 10 Quoted in David Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry (New York and London: Routledge, 1989): 127. 11 See also Principia Philosophiae, IV, §200: “I should also like it to be noted that in attempting to explain the nature of material things I have not employed any principle which was not accepted by Aristotle and all other philosophers of every age. So this philosophy is not new, but the oldest and most common of all” (CSM I, 286 / AT VIIIa, 323). 12 The experimentalist side of Descartes remains largely unrecognized. Exceptions include: Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied, 85-110, 301-21; Stephen Voss, “Scientific and Practical Certainty in Descartes,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1993): 131. Voss cites the following: Ralph M. Blake, “The Role of Experience in Descartes’ Theory of Method,” Philosophical Review 38 (1929): 125-43; Alan Gewirth, “Experience and the Non-mathematical in the Cartesian Method,” Journal of the History of Ideas 2 (1941): 3-21; Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science

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(Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), chap. 3; Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes’ Philosophy of Science (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1982). 13 This Baconian quest may have been better known to former generations. Ellis’s 1857 Preface is clear on the point that Bacon desires “absolute certainty” (quoted in Peter Urbach, Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science: An Account and a Reappraisal (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1987): 1718). 14 Preface to Novum Organum, Urbach and Gibson eds., 40. 15 Cf. Book 1, Aphorism 122, which calls for the “surest rules and demonstrations.” Nonetheless, Stephen Toulmin in Cosmopolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990): 37, speaks of the “intellectual modesty of the humanists led by thinkers like Bacon and Montaigne.” Cf. Toulmin, 70, on “that honest examination of experience in which Montaigne and Bacon had alone been ready to place their trust.” 16 Translation modified. 17 Preface to Novum Organum, Urbach and Gibson eds., 40. 18 See Vickers, “Francis Bacon and the Progress of Knowledge,” 503. Vickers seems to reject Yates’s suggestion that Bacon takes this metaphor from the Rosicrucians. For the suggestion, see Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1972), as well as Vickers’ hostile review in Journal of Modern History 51 (1979): 287-316. 19 It would be instructive to compare the thinking of Bacon and Descartes on the kinds and degrees of certainty. For Bacon on degrees of certainty, see Preface to the Novum Organum, Urbach and Gibson eds., 38. On Descartes’s contrast between metaphysical and moral certainty, see Voss, “Scientific and Practical Certainty in Descartes” and Murray Miles, Insight and Inference: Descartes’s Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999): 111-64. 20 See Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, 11 and 184. 21 Daniel Garber, “Science and Certainty in Descartes,” in Descartes: Critical Essays, ed. M. Hooker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978): 122. 22 Cf. Bacon, The Refutation of Philosophies, quoted in Urbach, Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science, 35, for a comparable passage: “[the ancients] started from worthless inductions and jumped at once to conclusions of the highest generality. These they took as the poles on which their world of discourse revolved; everything else they adapted to conform with these fixed and changeless truths.” 23 The absolute necessity of beginning with what is easy will find summarized expression in the third rule of the Discourse. 24 Caton suggests in The Origin of Subjectivity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973): 52, that the foil against which both Bacon and Descartes recommend pursuing “the easy” is the kind of view expressed by Thomas Aquinas: “the slenderest acquaintance with the highest things is more desirable than certain knowledge of the lower” (Summa theologiae, Part I a, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1).

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For the application of this point to both Bacon and Descartes, see Robert Miner, Truth in the Making (London: Routledge, 2003), particularly 41 and 61. 26 Other possibilities beyond these six that deserve further exploration are the following: (i) the tendency of Descartes to use the term histoire in its Baconian sense. Cf. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 130; (ii) the common polemic against final causality, buttressed by the notion that humans are presumptuous if they think themselves capable of knowing divine purposes. Cf. Meditation IV: CSM II, 39 / AT VII, 55, Conversation with Burman: CSMK, 341 / AT V, 158; (iii) the critique of Aristotelians in the Preface to the French edition of the Principia Philosophiae (CSM I, 179-90 / AT IXb, 1-20)strongly recalls the critique of “superstitious” philosophers in Novum Organum (Book 1, Aphorism 64); (iv) the need for memory, and its connection with writing. For the presence of this theme in Bacon, see Miner, Truth in the Making, 47; (v) the critique (sincere or not) of atheists. Descartes’s mention of “atheists who are generally posers rather than people of real intelligence and learning” (CSM II, 6 / AT VII, 6) strongly recalls Bacon’s Essays; (vi) both Bacon and Descartes take artisans and mechanics as paradigms worthy of imitation by scientific inquirers; (vii) the affinity between Aphorism 35 and the conclusion of Descartes’s notorious letter to Mersenne detailing the real strategy of the Meditations (28 January 1641: CSMK, 172-73 / AT III, 297-98). Both Descartes and Bacon are propagandists who use style in a very deliberate way; see Caton, Origin of Subjectivity, 16-20; (viii) the “Averroistic” segregation of faith and reason, accompanied by the willful disinterest in the project of providing a satisfactory theology. Each of these eight points would merit separate treatment. 27 For a definitive critique of the popular image of Bacon as fact-collector, see Rossi, “Ants, Spiders, Epistemologists,” especially 248-55. 28 Garber, Descartes Embodied, 314. Cf. 307: “facts, as embodied in a natural history, determine theory. But, Bacon holds, theory determines fact as well; for a purported experimental or observational fact to enter the body of knowledge, it must conform to theory.” 29 Lisa Jardine, “Experientia literata or Novum Organum?” in Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990): 47-67. 30 Gassendi, Opera Omnia (Lugduni, 1658), I, 65, quoted in Jardine, “Experientia literata or Novum Organum?”, 49. Also noting Gassendi’s awareness of parallels between Descartes and Bacon is L.J. Beck, The Method of Descartes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952): 163n1. 31 CSM I, 14n. In Jean-Luc Marion’s edition of the Regulae (La Haye: Nihoff, 1977), 117, he notes that “ce passage soulève une considérable difficulté.” Marion observes that most editors and translators (e.g., Crapulli, Springmeyer, Cousin, Hamelin, Leroy, Brunschwig, Gäbe) “correct” inductio with deductio. One justification for this “correction,” as Marion notes, is the frequency with which inductio occurs elsewhere in the Regulae within the conjunction enumeratio sive inductio (rather than by itself). But Marion notes two occurrences

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in the Correspondence (neither of which are translated in CSMK) where Descartes does use the term on its own: Letter to Mersenne, 27 July 1638: AT II, 254, and Letter to Mersenne, July 1641: AT III, 395. He adds that the closely related term illatio (translated by Murdoch as “pure inference”) occurs several times in the Regulae: CSM I, 12 / AT X, 365; CSM I, 26 / AT X, 389; CSM I, 36 / AT X, 406. Illatio is related to inferre, which occurs at (CSM I, 26 / AT X, 389; CSM I, 47 / AT X, 407; CSM I, 52 / AT X, 431; CSM I, 70 / AT X, 460). In Rule II, as Marion notes, we have the phrase “deductio vero, sive illatio pura unius ab altero.” The equivalence of deductio with illatio, combined with the kinship between illatio and inductio, suggests that Descartes may have meant after all to speak of “intuitus & inductio” (CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368). Thus, Marion follows the 1701 Amsterdam text, as do AT and RodisLewis, who concludes that “Descartes semble avoir usé indifféremment des termes deduction . . . , ou parfois inductio, en accentuant l’analogie avec l’inférence, ou illatio, qui marque étymologiquement que l’ésprit ‘se porte sûr’ telle conclusion.” A recent treatment concurs, suggesting that the substitution of inductio for deductio is not a misprint, but rather “strikes one as perfectly natural, deductio being used at times to designate inferential processes more akin to inductive and/or hypothetical-deductive strategies than to strictly logical inferences” (Murray Miles, Insight and Inference, 337). 32 As the title of this section would suggest, my inspiration for yoking Bacon and Descartes together in this fashion derives from R.G. Collingwood. For the Baconian and Cartesian roots of Collingwood’s “logic of question and answer,” see R.G. Collingwood, Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 30. Also illuminating is R.G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), 246-56 33 Perez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 240. 34 A fuller reading of Bacon on this point would examine the construction of his famous “tables.” On the sense in which Bacon’s tables are constructs, see Miner, Truth in the Making, p. 47. 35 Book 1, Aphorism 46. Cf. Book 2, Aphorism 18: “every contradictory instance overthrows a conjecture as to the form.” For a discussion about the relation between Bacon’s thinking about negative instances to Popperian notions of falsification, see Peter Urbach, Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science, 49-58. 36 Garber, “Science and Certainty in Descartes,” 136. Cf. Garber, Descartes Embodied, 93: “Experiment is somehow supposed to help us find the right deductions, the ones that pertain to our world and to the phenomena that concern us. In this way, experiments seem not to replace deductions, but to aid us in making the proper deductions.” 37 Garber, Descartes Embodied, 311. 38 Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity, 9. 39 Urbach, Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science, 22. Cf. Descartes’s optimism in Rule II: CSM I, 10 / AT 362; Rule III: CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368.

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It is jolting, however, for a reader of the Regulae to discover this sentence in Aphorism 8 of Book 2 of the Novum Organum: “the closer the inquiry comes to simple natures, the more intelligible and clear will everything become.” 41 For instance, Anthony Quinton in Francis Bacon (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980): 47, remarks that “it has long been a familiar, and well-founded, criticism of Bacon’s philosophy of science that it does not adequately recognise the role of science in mathematics . . . he does not recognise the indispensable places of mathematics in science,” quoted in Urbach, Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science, 134. More nuanced is Collingwood’s observation in The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945): 101: “In his metaphysics Bacon followed the sixteenth-century tradition, and regarded all qualitative differences as functions of structural differences which are ultimately quantitative in character of amenable to mathematical study; thus he believed firmly in the homogeneity or unity of substance; but his grasp on the implications of this principle was very inadequate, and he never realized the paramount importance of mathematics in physical science. Hence, although it would be quite wrong to identify him with the empiricist tendency in scientific method, from which in theory he sharply dissociated himself, in practice he constantly lapsed into it, substituting the classification of qualitative differences for their explanation in quantitative terms.” 42 Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied, 315. 43 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis, 105.

Chapter 2 Descartes and Leibniz on the Concept of Substance and the Possibility of Metaphysics Corey W. Dyck We might say that Descartes’ Regulae ad directionem ingenii* takes us to the threshold of metaphysics,1 though it is not clear whether we are being led in or on our way out. In favour of the latter vector, we might note that the Regulae is not only silent concerning the possibility of metaphysics as such, but it is also unmistakable in its criticism of key metaphysical concepts, like that of substance. This could be taken to suggest that, for Descartes, any future metaphysics will have little to do with substance, yet Descartes’ own subsequent foray into metaphysics, accompanied by the rehabilitation of the concept of substance, suggests that this is a deceptive impression. Rather, in this paper I will argue that the Regulae should be taken as issuing a broad challenge concerning the possibility of metaphysics as such, namely, to formulate a new and workable notion of substance to serve as a stable foundation for a reconceived metaphysics: “For I do not wish to be one of those jobbing builders who devote themselves to refurbishing old buildings because they consider themselves incapable of undertaking the construction of new ones” (CSM II, 407 / AT X, 509). I take it that answering the challenge of the Regulae motivates Descartes’ turn to metaphysics, and moreover, that Descartes’ answer would in turn motivate Leibniz to pick up the same challenge after him, albeit with radically different results. Additionally, I hope to show that Descartes’ revolutionary architectural ambitions, in fact, belie a commitment to a rather traditional conception of metaphysics, one which is also vividly brought out in Leibniz’s discussion: for both Descartes and Leibniz, innovators in everything else, the fate of metaphysics remained, as it long had been, tied to the notion of substance. 1. The Critique of Substance in the Regulae As some commentators have noted, Descartes’ most thorough and explicit critique of this traditional notion of substance is presented early on in his Regulae.2 As I will present it, this criticism is a function of two innovations contained in the work: the first can be broadly

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described as a shift from an ontological focus in the investigation of things to what we might (anachronistically) term an epistemological focus. The second innovation, an apparent consequence of the first, is an innovation in method according to which a serial, and progressive, arrangement of our cognitions of things is preferred to the traditional categorical division. With regard to the first innovation, Descartes clearly signals this distinction between types of investigation in Rule XII: “Our aim here is to distinguish carefully the notions of simple things from those [things] which are composed of them” (CSM I, 43 / AT X, 417). This distinction is vital inasmuch as a focus on the notions of simple things, or considering things in terms of “the order that corresponds to our knowledge of them” requires that “our view of them must be different from what it would be if we were speaking of them in accordance with how they exist in reality (existunt)” (CSM I, 44 / AT X, 418). And, while Descartes notes that the investigation of those things composed of simple natures has a limited usefulness in revealing a possible source of falsity and error (CSM I, 43 / AT X, 417), he is clear that this investigation is subordinate to that which considers things according to the order of our knowledge. Thus, in Rule VIII, Descartes argues that we “should deal with [the things themselves] only in so far as they are within the reach of the intellect” (CSM I, 32 / AT X, 399; emphasis added). Given this focus on things as they are known rather than as they are in themselves, Descartes claims that our task is not to refer given things to an “ontological genus (genus entis) (such as the categories into which the philosophers divide things)”, but instead to investigate them insofar as “some things can be known on the basis of others” (CSM I, 32 / AT X, 381). This latter method of investigation tokens what I have labelled the second innovation of the Regulae where, as Descartes writes in Rule V, the “whole method consists entirely in the ordering and arranging of the objects on which we must concentrate our mind’s eye if we are to discover some truth” (CSM I, 20 / AT X, 379). This method consists in arranging various (cognitions of) things3 into a series in which the more complex propositions are reduced to simpler ones from which the complex propositions are subsequently deduced. In order to conduct this ordering of cognitions properly and to make the distinction within the series between simple and complex, Descartes suggests that we designate elements in the series as either “absolute”, which denotes a “pure and simple nature (naturam pura et simplicem)” or “relative (respectivum)” which is related to the absolute in that it “shares the same nature, or at least something of the same nature” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 381-82). Yet, Descartes explains, the real focus of the investigation lies upon the relative parts of the

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series, by means of which we can compare the natures of things “with each other so that some may be known on the basis of others” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 381-82). Consequently, the goal of this division is to make evident these relations [i.e., of relative natures to the absolute] . . . and the interconnections between them, and their natural order. . . so that given the last term we should be able to reach the one that is absolute in the highest degree (maxime absolutum), by passing through all the intermediate ones. (CSM I, 22 / AT X, 382)4

As I have suggested above, this preference for serial arrangement over the search for an ontological genus can be taken as a consequence of Descartes’ epistemological turn. Insofar as the object of investigation is finding the absolute, simple nature by means of the relative elements in any given ordered series, this investigation should never yield an element over and above that series in the way, for instance, an ontological genus is taken to range over a set of particulars. On the contrary, Descartes stresses in Rule VII that the goal is not to explain away the relative in favor of the absolute, but rather to combine both “in a continuous and wholly uninterrupted sweep of thought” (CSM I, 25 / AT X, 387). It was for this reason, Descartes explains, that he classed relational elements like “cause” and “equal” among the absolutes, namely, to stress the connection between the absolute element and the series (CSM I, 22 / AT X, 383).5 As Descartes was well aware, these two innovations jointly conspire to deny the concept of substance any useful application in metaphysics. Indeed, Descartes reserves special criticism for the conception of substance as the underlying subject of predication. The discussion of substance begins in Rule VI where without much fanfare Descartes demonstrates that neither of Aristotle’s favorite candidates for (secondary) substances, the universal and species,6 can be considered a maxime absolutum: For some things are more absolute than others from one point of view, yet more relative from a different point of view. For example, the universal is more absolute than the particular, in virtue of its having a simpler nature, but it can also be said to be more relative than the particular in that it depends upon particulars for existence, etc. . . . Thus a species is something absolute with respect to particulars, but with respect to the genus it is relative. (CSM I, 22 / AT X, 382)

After eliminating substance considered as universal or species among the absolutes, Descartes also questions the use of substance in

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establishing relations by which the absolute can be known. In this critique, substance is explicitly considered in terms of its three traditional, Aristotelian criteria: substance exists separately (or is separable), is a subject, and is a particular or a “this.”7 First, concerning the criterion of separate existence, Descartes objects (in a passage partially presented above) both to the obvious ontological character of the criterion and, further, to the fact that to focus on a thing taken as existing separately would undermine the task of serial arrangement, “our project being not to inspect the isolated natures (naturas solitarias) of things, but to compare them with each other” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 381; emphasis added).8 This criticism is developed in the later discussion in Rule XII where Descartes takes up the other two criteria as well— being a subject and a particular—and argues that substance considered according to these criteria will not have a role in considering things as they correspond to the order of our knowledge. Descartes makes clear that considering a thing in terms of its particularity is a purely ontological mode of consideration since it excludes consideration of the various simple natures through which it is known: If, for example, we consider some body which has extension and shape, we shall indeed admit that with respect to the thing itself, it is one single and simple entity (esse quid unum et simplex). For viewed in that way, it cannot be said to be a composite made up of corporeal nature, extension and shape, since these constituents have never existed in isolation from each other. (CSM I, 44 / AT X, 418; emphasis added)

Next, Descartes directly engages the Aristotelian notion of primary substance and claims that the consideration of a given thing as a subject is in fact secondary to the knowledge of a thing as a composite of simple natures. Yet with respect to our intellect we call it [the thing under consideration] a composite made up of these three natures, because we understood each of them separately before we were in a position to judge that the three of them are encountered at the same time in one and the same subject. (CSM I, 44 / AT X, 418; emphasis added)

From the point of view of the order of our knowledge of things, these criticisms reduce substance to a “useless assumption and pointless invention of some new entity” (CSM I, 41 / AT X, 413) inasmuch as the posit of a simple subject in particular is forced to give way to the consideration of the thing in terms of a composite of simple natures. Descartes puts the last nail in the coffin by excluding substance from

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the lists of simple natures: among “those simples . . . termed ‘common’,” he lists only “existence (existentia), unity, duration and the like (et similia)” (CSM I, 45 / AT X, 419). 2. The Revival of Substance in the Later Metaphysics One might find it surprising, then, that Descartes would rehabilitate the notion of substance for use in his later metaphysical writings, especially in the Meditations and Part I of the Principles of Philosophy.9 Rather than claiming that Descartes later abandoned the critique of the Regulae,10 we might instead see the Meditations and the later metaphysical works as answering the challenge of the Regulae, especially concerning the notion of substance. Indeed, insofar as metaphysics for Descartes is primarily a discourse concerning (infinite and thinking) substance, we might venture to assert that until Descartes had discovered a workable notion of substance, one that fulfilled the various conditions set in Rules VI and XII, a Cartesian metaphysics would have been unthinkable. In order to entertain this hypothesis seriously, however, we will first need to isolate and explain the apparent inconsistencies between the later treatment of substance and the previous criticism of that notion. Descartes’ seeming change of heart is clearly indicated by the fact that substance is now explicitly included in the list of simple natures.11 And strikingly, given his hostility to the Schools, Descartes’ definition of substance in the Second Set of Replies as “every thing in which whatever we perceive properly resides, as in a subject, or . . . every thing by means of which whatever we perceive exists” (CSM II, 114 / AT VII, 161) reproduces the definition of substance provided by Suarez in the Disputationes Metaphysicae. There, Suarez indicates two characteristics of substance that, he claims, are revealed through the term’s etymology: substance (substantia) as a subject “standing under” its accidents (substare) and substance as existing or subsisting through itself (subsistere).12 Since these characteristics of substance are roughly parallel to the Aristotelian criteria of separable existence and subjecthood, Descartes’ endorsement of this definition clearly threatens to render the later metaphysical treatises inconsistent with the critique of the Regulae. In order to square these accounts, we will have to investigate three principal points of friction. First, and perhaps most evidently, this definition of substance, especially as that which subsists through itself, appears straightforwardly to violate the epistemological emphasis of the Regulae. Second, and even assuming a solution to the first difficulty in which Descartes’ understanding of substance admits of an epistemological interpretation, the usefulness of

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the notion of substance in the serial arrangement of knowledge, a function which was earlier denied substance, will have to be demonstrated. Finally, given Descartes’ direct criticism of the notion of substance as subject in Rule XII, we will have to investigate whether there is a distinction to be made between a conception of substance primarily in terms of subsistence and only secondarily as a subject such that this earlier criticism need not be rescinded. Before turning to the resolution of these difficulties, a preliminary problem is encountered in the variations of the definition of substance throughout the Meditations. For instance, in the Synopsis, Descartes refers to “substances, or things which must be created by God in order to exist” (CSM II, 10 / AT VII, 14). Yet, in the third Meditation, where the concept occurs for the first time in the work proper, substance is considered simply as “a thing capable of existing independently (rem quae per se apta est existere)” (CSM II, 30 / AT VII, 44), which definition carves out a narrower extension than the previous one—it applies only to God. Descartes, however, explains this apparent disparity in the Principles, I, §§ 51-52, where he confirms that substance, understood strictly as “a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence” (CSM I, 210 / AT VIIIa, 24) applies only to God and that, in the case of finite substances, we must add the qualification that they are “things that need only the concurrence of God in order to exist” (CSM I, 210 / AT VIIIa, 25). As Descartes points out, “substance” does not apply univocally to finite and infinite substances: “that is, there is no distinctly intelligible meaning of the term which is common to God and his creatures” (CSM I, 210 / AT VIIIa, 24). Whether this further implies that, from the point of view of substance, there is no point of contact, not even by way of analogy, between infinite and finite will be discussed below. This exegetical difficulty aside, we can turn to the problem of rendering this apparent ontological definition of substance in the Meditations consistent with what I have called the epistemological focus of the Regulae. First, it should be noted that Descartes prosecutes the question of independent subsistence in the context of the capacity to make a “real distinction” regarding substances. Such a distinction, as Descartes explains in the Principles, applies “only between two or more substances” (CSM I, 213 / AT VIIIa, 28). So, even though Descartes has already defined substance in the Synopsis of the Meditations and in the third Meditation in terms of its subsistence through itself, it is not until the sixth Meditation that he actually demonstrates the real distinction obtaining between the two finite substances and, consequently, that thinking and extended substance each subsist

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through themselves.13 In conducting this demonstration, however, Descartes subordinates the ontological question of the actual separate subsistence of a substance to the epistemological question of whether one substance can be conceived (as existing) as completely separate from the other. Accordingly, he claims that “everything which I clearly and distinctly understand is capable of being created by God so as to correspond exactly with my understanding” and, therefore, “the fact that I can clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from the other [as in the case of thinking and extended substances] is enough to make me certain that the two things are distinct” (CSM II, 54 / AT VII, 78). Against, among others’, Suarez’s definition of substance in terms of subsistence through itself, Descartes argues that such subsistence can only be judged to obtain providing that the substance in question can be understood clearly and distinctly as separate from any other substance. Thus, for Descartes, the question does not concern the actual subsistence or separate existence of a (putative) substance but whether such a substance can be clearly conceived as subsisting apart from other substances. In addition to demonstrating that the judgment of subsistence is subject to this condition of conceivability, Descartes claims at various points in the Replies that substance as it really is, as opposed to as it is known, is both unavailable and unreliable for this task of making a real distinction. In response to Mersenne’s criticism of the means by which Descartes demonstrates the real distinction between thinking and extended substance, Descartes is clear in rejecting any criterion that would focus on the actual subsistence of a given substance as opposed to the way in which this subsistence is known: Perhaps [one might suggest] that there is a real distinction between two things if one can exist apart from the other? But now I ask how you know that one thing can exist apart from the another. You must be able to know this, if it is to serve as the criterion for a real distinction. (CSM II, 95 / AT VII, 132; emphasis added)

Indeed, though one might claim that the senses provide an alternative means through which a real distinction can be known, this is rejected as unsatisfactory since “the evidence of the senses is less reliable than that of the intellect” (CSM II, 95 / AT VII, 132). Descartes would testily emphasize this distinction between the actual independent subsistence of a substance and the clear and distinct understanding that a substance subsists independently in response to Gassendi’s similar challenge to the real distinction between mind and body:

28 But whether this [thinking] substance was in actual fact distinct from any body whatsoever is something that I said I was not arguing about at that point . . . But you show that you have completely failed to understand any of this, since you confuse the question of what we may understand this substance to be with the question of what it really is. (CSM II, 265 / AT VII, 386-87)14

By claiming that independently subsisting substances can only be understood to be such, then, Descartes is reformulating Suarez’s definition of substance as that which subsists per se in a way that renders it consistent with the epistemological focus of the Regulae. In this way, Descartes’ retooled notion of substance takes its place squarely in the order of knowledge of finite intellects: “in order for us to recognize a real distinction . . . it cannot be required that our knowledge of them be adequate if it is impossible for us to know that it is adequate” (CSM II, 155 / AT VII, 22). Yet, despite accommodating the notion of substance to finite intellects, it remains to be seen whether this notion fulfills the strict methodological criteria of the Regulae, namely, whether considering given items in terms of substances can yield a serial organization, making “some things . . . known on the basis of others” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 381). Indeed, JeanLuc Marion has expressed doubts concerning just this point: “the definition of substance as absolute subsistence does not satisfy the rules of knowing: it remains through itself a natura solitaria, inaccessible because separated.”15 Nonetheless, this analysis cannot be rendered consistent with Descartes’ use of substance in the third Meditation. There, Descartes proceeds in a manner quite consistent with that outlined in the Regulae, beginning with things known only relatively and advancing towards what is most absolute. This serial ordering is, in fact, vital for Descartes’ first proof of the existence of God. In the middle of this proof, Descartes examines his ideas, searching for one the objective reality of which exceeds his own (formal) reality. Turning first to his ideas of corporeal things, he notes that he thinks that “a stone is a substance, or is a thing capable of existing independently.” Yet, Descartes realizes, this idea of the stone as a substance “could have [been] borrowed . . . from my idea of myself, namely [as] substance, duration, number and anything else of this kind” since “I also think that I am a substance” (CSM II, 30 / AT VII, 44). In this way, the idea of the stone as substance is shown to be dependent upon my idea of myself as substance. Descartes pushes the series further, towards that upon which my conception of myself as substance is dependent, that is, God considered as infinite substance. Unlike the notion of substance involved in the idea of the stone, Descartes claims that the notion of

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substance implied in an infinite substance could not have been borrowed from myself (CSM II, 31 / AT VII, 45). Despite the lack of a univocal use of the concept of substance with regard to finite and infinite substances, Descartes still argues for a dependence, indeed a dependence in the order of knowledge, of finite upon infinite substances. Thus: I clearly understand that there is more reality in an infinite substance than in a finite one, and hence that my perception of the infinite, that is God, is in some sense prior to my perception of the finite, that is myself (ac proinde priorem quodammodo in me esse perceptionem infiniti quam finiti, hoc est Dei quam mei ipsius). (CSM II, 31 / AT VII, 45; emphasis added)

Further, Descartes clearly subordinates the knowledge of at least one vital and purely intellectual simple nature to the prior perception of infinite substance: For how could I understand that I doubted or desired (me dubitare, me cupere)—that is, lacked something—and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison? (CSM II, 31 / AT VII, 45-6)

Descartes would defend this subordination of the knowledge of our imperfection to the knowledge of God’s perfection in the conversation with Burman. So, although the knowledge of our imperfection precedes the knowledge of God’s perfection inasmuch as we attend to our imperfection before attending to God’s perfection (as in the proof presented in the third Meditation), “the knowledge of God and his perfection must implicitly always come before the knowledge of ourselves and our imperfections” since “our imperfection is a defect and negation of the perfection of God” (CB, 13 / AT V, 153). In this way, Descartes uses the notion of substance in a novel and unanticipated way, completely in accordance with the method suggested in the Regulae: he moves from the most relative element—a(n idea of a) corporeal substance—through to a thinking substance upon which the conception of the corporeal substance depends, and ultimately demonstrates the dependency of the conception of the thinking substance itself, insofar as it doubts, upon the maxime absolutum, naturally in this case, infinite substance.16 The foregoing has shown how Descartes answers the challenge set by the Regulae by formulating a conception of substance that both reflects that work’s shift from an ontological to an epistemological

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focus and demonstrating how a conception of substance can play a role in the serial ordering of knowledge. The last knot remaining in Descartes’ rehabilitation of this notion is to reconcile the later, apparently metaphysical, usage of the concept, considered now in terms of an underlying subject, with the claims made in the Regulae regarding the secondary character of this consideration of substance. This task is made that much more difficult by Descartes’ frequent use of the language of predication and inherence in his discussion of substance. Indeed, this has led commentators like Desmond Clarke to claim that Descartes prefers the account of substance as subject to that of substance as subsistence,17 though he points out that Descartes says little about the metaphysical character of this subject.18 We should note, however, that the language of predication and inherence is itself subject to crucial qualifications when it comes to the two finite substances, thinking and extended substance. First, Descartes distinguishes between the various possible, non-essential predicates or properties of a substance and a single, essential property of that substance. Strictly speaking, only the essential property (thought or extension) of substance can be said to relate directly to an underlying substance, since the non-essential properties only relate to the substance through the essential property. This point is made in Principles, I, §53: A substance may be known through any attribute at all; but each substance has one principal property which constitutes its nature and essence, and to which all its other properties are referred. Thus extension in length, breadth and depth constitutes the nature of corporeal substance; and thought constitutes the nature of thinking substance. (CSM I, 210 / AT VIIIa, 25)

Consequently, we must look to the relation between a putative subject and its essential attribute in order to evaluate properly Descartes’ metaphysical employment of the concept of substance understood as underlying subject. With regard to this relation, we find that rather than positing either substance or attribute separately, Descartes instead consistently emphasizes the intimate, even inseparable, relation between them. Thus, while I can conceive of myself without the faculties of senseperception and imagination,19 I cannot similarly conceive myself as not thinking: “thought; this alone is inseparable from me” (CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 27). For this reason, Descartes claims that the substance can only be known by means of its attribute and that the pure subject is never known as it is in itself but, if anything, only inferred subse-

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quently: “it is only a kind of conjecture that leads us to think that there must be something underneath (subesse debere aliquid) the accidents” (CSM II, 189 / AT VII, 271).20 Thus, in the Fifth Set of Replies, Descartes claims that “I have never thought that anything more is required to reveal a substance than its various attributes” (CSM II, 249 / AT VII, 360). The very reduced role played by the underlying subject is emphasized, even radicalized, in the conversation with Burman where Descartes identifies a substance with its attribute(s): “it is true that the attributes are the same as the substance . . . when they [the attributes] are all taken together” (CB 15 / AT V, 154-55). This leads Descartes in Part I of the Principles to admit only a “conceptual” distinction between substance and attribute, that is, a distinction between a substance and some attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible. . . . Such a distinction is recognized by our inability to form a clear and distinct idea of the substance if we exclude from it the attribute in question (CSM I, 214 / AT VIIIa, 30)

The natural conclusion of this analysis is drawn by Descartes in the next section of the Principles, namely, that in metaphysics the concept of substance considered as an underlying subject, is completely without use: “Thought and extension can be regarded as constituting the natures of intelligent substance and corporeal substance; they must be considered as nothing else but thinking substance itself and extended substance itself” (CSM I, 215 / AT VIIIa, 30-31; emphasis added).21 In tune with his usual method of critiquing indulgent scholastic doctrines, Descartes modestly submits that simply taking thought and extension on their own without the additional substantial posit “is much easier for us to [understand] . . . than it is for us to understand substance on its own” (CSM I, 215 / AT VIIIa, 31).22 While without metaphysical use, the notion of substance as subject does play an important role for Descartes, especially in his conception of the union of the soul and body. In a number of places Descartes suggests that the posit of a subject is needed particularly where an agent of an action (and, presumably, the sufferer of a passion23) is required. Among the few points of agreement between Descartes and Hobbes is just that “we cannot conceive of an act without its subject” (CSM II, 123 / AT VII, 175).24 The consideration of action implies the consideration of a single, unified acting subject, and it is just this requirement that prevents the posit of the acting subject from being metaphysical, as he writes to Elizabeth, 21 May 1643: “There are two facts about the human soul on which depend all the things we can

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know of its nature. The first is that it thinks, the second is that it is united to the body and can act and be acted upon along with it,” and he goes on to write that “[a]bout the latter I have hardly said anything” given that metaphysics proper is concerned with “the distinction between soul and body” (CSMK, 217-18 / AT III, 664-65). So, in the case of the human being, we are not given a single subject from a metaphysical perspective but a composite of independently conceived substances: “A composite entity is one which is found to have two or more attributes, each of which can be distinctly understood apart from the other” (CSM I, 299 / AT VIIIb, 350). Yet, in what Descartes calls “the ordinary course of life and conversation (usant seulement de la vie et des conversation ordinaries)” what is, metaphysically considered, a composite, is (rightly) taken as a single entity. Descartes explains this in a well-known letter to Elizabeth: That is why people who never philosophize and use only their senses have no doubt that the soul moves the body and that the body acts on the soul. They regard both of them as a single thing, that is to say, they conceive their union; because to conceive the union between two things is to conceive them as one single thing. (CSMK, 227 / AT III, 692) 25

Thus, the additional posit of a subject is not needed in metaphysics since there the real distinction between substances, and not their combination in a single subject, is the principal concern.26 It should by now come as no surprise that this distinction between the metaphysical conception of the human being as a composite of thought and extension and the ordinary conception of the human being as a single acting subject closely parallels Descartes’ relegation of the notion of subject to a secondary status in the Regulae: “with respect to our intellect we call [something] a composite made up of these [. . .] natures, because we understood them separately before we were in a position to judge that [they] are encountered at the same time in one and the same subject” (CSM I, 44 / AT X, 418).27 3. Leibniz and the Inversion of the Cartesian Analysis of Substance In the previous sections, we have seen that Descartes’ later turn to metaphysics involved, indeed was conditioned by, the discovery of a notion of substance which satisfied the requirements outlined in the Regulae. Far from simply providing new scaffolding for an ancient metaphysical concept, Descartes’ new and strictly metaphysical un-

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derstanding of substance entails the rejection of what was once thought essential to it, namely, subjecthood. The case is quite different when we turn to Leibniz who, as I will show in this final section, in fact accepts the two competing alternatives offered by Descartes (and adapted from Suarez) yet argues that it is subjecthood that constitutes the properly metaphysical definition of substance. However, even though Leibniz would arrive at the inversion of the Cartesian position (and our aim will not be to evaluate the cogency of his arguments on the way), his treatment betrays a motivation similar to that of Descartes’, namely, to rescue metaphysics by crafting a new approach to the notion of substance.28 Leibniz accuses Descartes of “a failure to understand the nature of substance in general” (L 433 / G IV, 469), especially insofar as taking substance as that which can be conceived through itself results in God constituting the sole substance. This point is made in the “Conversation between Philarete and Ariste,” where Leibniz claims that “only God can be thought independent of any other being” (L 620 / G VI, 582) and suggested in the correspondence with De Volder: “you say that substance is that which is conceived in itself, an opinion to which I have opposed the proposition that an effect cannot be conceived better than through its cause, but that all substances except the first have a cause” (L 524 / G II, 225; emphasis added). Leibniz further objects to this definition for his own, external reasons inasmuch as he does not think it possible to conceive of a finite substance which does not at least depend on its accidents in order to be individuated from other finite substances.29 Even granting this difficulty and turning to finite substances, Leibniz doubts that this definition yields only the two substances Descartes claims it does. As Leibniz continues in the “Conversation”: But if you restrict your definition by adding that substance is that which can be conceived independently of every other creature, we may perhaps find things which have as much independence as extension and yet are not substances. For example, active force, life, and antitypy are something essential and at the same time primitive, and one can conceive of them independently of other concepts. (L 620 / G VI, 58)

It might be pointed out that Descartes anticipates these difficulties in his Principles, admitting that substance as that which is conceivable through itself, taken strictly, only applies to God, and that we must add a qualification to this definition when considering finite substances such that, to be considered through themselves, they must be thought as needing only “the concurrence of God in order to exist”

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(CSM I, 210 / AT VIIIa, 25). Leibniz is even less satisfied with this addition, however, claiming that this entails the occasionalist hypothesis that all activity and change, or “all the modifications and operations which go beyond matter” (L 624 / G VI, 589) are to be ascribed only to God, which in turn invokes the specter of Spinoza: the doctrine of occasional causes which some defend . . . is fraught with dangerous consequences. . . . So far is this doctrine from increasing the glory of God by removing the idol of nature that it seems rather, like Spinoza, to make out of God the nature of the world itself, by causing created things to disappear into mere modifications of the one divine substance. (L 506-7 / G IV, 515)30

Leibniz concludes that concurrence too results in the exclusion of finite substances. Inasmuch as this definition collapses rather than preserves the distinction between finite and infinite substances, “if we insist on such a concept alone as the concept of substance, I fear that we shall have to cut the knot, not to untie it” (L 526 / G II, 227). Leibniz’s dissatisfaction with the Cartesian conception of substance is no more apparent than in his criticism of Descartes’ designation of extension as a substance. First, Leibniz does not agree that extension can be conceived through itself, contending that extended substance is composed of (in the end, non-extended) parts, apart from which it cannot be conceived. So, in the “Conversation” he claims that, even if we were to accept that extension constitutes a substance, it cannot be because it meets the criterion of independent conceivability: I hold the opinion that not only extension but body as well cannot be thought independently of other things. Thus we should have to say either that bodies are not substances at all or that it is not a property of all substances to be thought of as independent, even though it may be of some single substances. For being a whole, the body depends essentially upon other bodies of which it is composed and which constitute its parts. (L 622 / G VI, 585)31

Indeed, Leibniz does not think that extension constitutes a substance at all, but accuses the Cartesians of an inconsistency in describing extension both as “something essentially passive” (L 503 / G IV, 511) and yet ascribing a force to it, such as inertia.32 According to Leibniz, Descartes’ identification of substance with its essential attribute (here, extension) rules out force and all that it entails, especially, activity and change: “For a substance . . . which has only a simple representation or one attribute, will have only one mode, and it does not appear how

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any diversity can arise” (L 525 / G II, 226). This is, then, an instructive error for Leibniz since it illustrates that substance, and especially extended substance as posited by the Cartesians, itself depends on the notion of force or activity: “action and passion must be added to the extension in the thing itself” (L 525 / G II, 227). Leibniz goes so far as to accept that even in the case of extension a subject of active force must be posited: “we must assume, besides extension . . . a seat or first bearer of actions, namely soul, form, life, primary entelechy, or whatever you wish to call it” (L 512 / GM III, 552).33 Leibniz, then, rejects Descartes’ privileged definition of substance. Instead, he stresses throughout his metaphysical writings the importance of substance considered as subject, albeit never to the exclusion of that subject’s predicates or accidents. Thus, in the much-discussed §8 of the “Discourse on Metaphysics,” Leibniz endorses the classic Aristotelian notion of primary substance (“that when a number of predicates are attributed to a single subject while this subject is not attributed to any other”: L 307 / G IV, 432-33), but adds that a given predicate, if truly predicated of a subject, will be included in the complete notion of the subject: “the subject term must always include the predicate term” (L 307 / G IV, 433). Thus, a focus on subjecthood as the criterion of substance does not have, for Leibniz, the negative consequences feared by Descartes since Leibniz never claims that the subject is encountered on its own, nor does this entail that Leibniz’s subject is a mere conceptual posit; rather—and this is developed in Leibniz’s later metaphysical writings—the underlying subject provides the ground of its predicates or accidents insofar as it is considered as an active force. The first sentence of the Principles of Nature and Grace confirms this: “Substance is a being capable of action” (L 636 / G VI, 598) and, again invoking Aristotle, Leibniz ascribes to substances “primitive forces, which contain not only the actuality or the completion of possibility but an original activity as well” (L 454 / G IV, 479). This primitive force allows for an account of change internal to the substance itself, rather than ascribing the only genuine activity to God as Descartes’ account of substance threatened to do: “the nature of substance necessarily demands and essentially involves progress or change and would have no force of action without it” (L 458 / G IV, 485). Leibniz further characterizes this primitive force as an “internal law (legem insitam) from which their [i.e., substances’] actions and passions follow” (L 500 / G IV, 507). We can see that Leibniz accepts the very terms laid out by Descartes in his account of substance—substance is either that which can be conceived through itself or that which is the subject of an action— yet argues that it is the latter concept that truly concerns metaphysics.

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Indeed, Leibniz argues that subsistence can only be understood through the prior notion of force, and he would point out that the Cartesians’ reliance upon the continued activity of God in order to account for subsistence constitutes a tacit admission of that fact.34 So, Leibniz accepts that created substances are the product of divine activity, but argues that active force itself, and not a perpetual and passive reliance on God’s concurrence, is the “subsistent effect (effectum subsistentem)” of this activity (L 500 / G IV, 507): “that which persists (persistens), insofar as it involves all cases, contains primitive force” (L 533 / G II, 262).35 For Leibniz, it is substance as subject, and in particular as the subject of an active force, that constitutes the properly metaphysical notion of substance: “You say that a subject of change is merely a logical concept; but it is enough that it is true, though you could just as well have called it metaphysical” (L 519 / G II, 186). Instead of an attempt to demonstrate the irrelevance of metaphysics, Descartes’ Regulae must be interpreted in the light of his later metaphysical writings as a call for its renewed justification. Leibniz too takes up the challenge of Descartes’ little known work (of which Leibniz had a copy), and, while accepting the Cartesian outline of the problem, he arrives at the inverse conclusion. What is perhaps the most interesting conclusion of this analysis, however, is that in the end Descartes and Leibniz remain, despite their revolutionary track records, alike in being guided by their commitment to the traditional conception of metaphysics as principally a discourse concerning substance and, furthermore, alike in their commitment to the dignity of that discourse. Descartes, too, would, endorse Leibniz’s declaration to Arnauld that when it comes to metaphysics “one cannot find a better way of restoring [its] prestige . . . and transforming it into something precise than by distinguishing the only substances or complete entities, endowed with genuine unity” (M 101 / G II, 101).

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*

In addition to the standard edition and method of citation for Descartes used for this volume, I have used the following (with these abbreviations): Die philosophische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols., ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1875-90 (reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1960) (G); Die mathematische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols., ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin and Halle, 1849-55) (GM); Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. L. Loemker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1956) (L); The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, trans. H. T. Mason (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1967) (M). 1 Jean-Luc Marion makes such a suggestion in “What is the Method in Metaphysics” in his Cartesian Questions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999): 50. 2 See, in particular, J.-L. Marion’s Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1975), §§13-14. I will have occasion to comment on this analysis below. 3 I am, admittedly, glossing over the inconsistency apparently generated by Descartes’ designation of simple natures as “the simplest things” (CSM I, 21 / AT X, 381). For a brief discussion of this problem, and a questionable solution (“if they do not exist in the full ontological sense of this term, they at least subsist”), see L.J. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970): 72ff. 4 On this point see J.-L. Marion’s L’ontologie grise, §13 et passim. 5 See also L.J. Beck, The Method of Descartes, 69 and 78. 6 Aristotle’s Categories 2b6-7, in The Organon. Trans. H. P. Cooke (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938): “Of secondary substances species is better called substance than genus: it is nearer to primary substance, while genus is removed from it” (though this same claim is denied in the Metaphysics 1038b10-16). 7 On the separateness, or separability of substance, see Aristotle’s Metaphysics ∆.11 in Metaphysics (I-IX). Trans. H. Tredennick (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989): a thing “which can exist apart from other things”—1019a1-4, Ζ.1 (1028a31-4); on substance as subject see Categories V (2a10-14, b15-17) and Metaphysics ∆.8 (1017b23-26, 1028b36-7); on substance as a particular see Categories V (3b10-13). For a useful discussion of the various differences in the use of these criteria in the Aristotelian texts, see G. Fine’s “Plato and Aristotle on Form and Substance” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 209 (1983): 23-47. 8 See also J.-L. Marion, L’ontologie grise, 82. 9 This apparent inconsistency has not escaped commentators. One instructive attempt to reconcile the texts concerning the possibility of metaphysics in general is provided in J.-L. Marion’s “What is the Method in Metaphysics?” 10 This hypothesis is rendered less likely since Descartes’ declared intention in writing the Regulae is “to bring together and arrange in an orderly manner whatever I thought noteworthy in my previous studies, so that when old age dims my memory I can readily recall it hereafter, if I need to, by consulting this book” (CSM I, 20 / AT X, 379).

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11 Cf. Meditations: CSM II, 30 / AT VII, 43, and Principles: CSM I, 208 / AT VIIIa, 22-23. 12 See Francisco Suarez Disputationes Metaphysicae. Reprint, vol. II (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965), XXXIII, I, 1: “Juxta quam interpretationem in verbo substandi, et in nomine substantiae ab eo sumpto, duae rationes seu proprietates indicantur: una est absoluta, scilicet, essendi in se ac per se, quam nos propter ejus simplicitatem, per negationem essendi in subjecto declaramus; alia est quasi respectiva, sustentandi accidentia.” That this definition of substance was not simply taken for granted is evident in Aquinas’ explicit exclusion of the criterion of subsisting through itself in his definition of substance. On this point, see M. Ewbank’s “The Route to Substance in Suarez’s Disputationes Metaphysicae” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. LXI (1987): 98-111 (see esp. 104-05). 13 Thus, in the Fifth Set of Replies, Descartes accuses Gassendi of missing the fact that the actual proof for the real distinction between thinking and extended substance is deferred until the sixth Meditation (CSM II, 265 / AT VII, 386-87). 14 See also the Fourth Set of Replies, where Descartes indicates that what is really at stake is whether “the mind can be understood as a subsisting thing (mentem ut rem subsistentem intelligi) despite the fact that nothing belonging to the body is attributed to it, and that, conversely, the body can be understood as a subsisting thing despite the fact that nothing belonging to the mind is attributed to it” (CSM II, 159 / AT VII, 226; latter emphasis added). 15 J.-L. Marion, “A propos de Suarez et Descartes,” in Revue Internationale de Philosophie 195 (1996): 122. 16 On the basis of Descartes’ skepticism regarding the use of substance in a serial arrangement of knowledge, Marion also casts Descartes as rejecting the analogy (pushed by Suarez) between finite and infinite substance (cf. “A propos de Descartes et Suarez”, 119n19). The foregoing analysis, however, suggests the contrary conclusion. Without denying that Descartes rejects a univocal conception of substance, which covers both infinite and finite, it would seem that the above presentation of the first proof for the existence of God turns upon a similarity between infinite and finite substances, insofar as the latter depends (insofar as it is known and, we see at CSM II, 33-34 / AT VII, 49-50, insofar as it exists) on the former. Indeed, in the conversation with Burman, Descartes claims unambiguously that, with regard to substances, and in particular with regard to God, “[a]nything produced by this cause [that is, a cause of being itself] must necessarily be like it. For since the cause is itself being and substance (ens et substantia), and it brings something in to being, i.e. out of nothing . . . , what is produced must at the very least be being and substance” (CB 17 / AT V, 156). 17 Desmond Clarke, Descartes’ Theory of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003): 210: I am referring to Clarke’s claim that “the fundamental problem [regarding substance] being addressed by Descartes is the problem of predication. The further subdistinction between (a) God and (b) other substances [i.e., in

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terms of the former’s subsistence per se and the latters’ subsistence through the concurrence of God], is secondary.” 18 Clarke, Descartes’ Theory, 216. 19 Cf. CSM II, 51and 54 / AT VII, 73 and 78. 20 See also CSM II, 156 / AT VII, 222 and CSM II, 130 / AT VII, 185. 21 Descartes can be taken to make a similar point in his account of perception, especially inasmuch as he claims that “what affects our senses is simply and solely the surface that constitutes the limit of the dimensions of the body which is perceived by the senses” (CSM II, 173 / AT VII, 249), a claim that Descartes develops particularly with regard to his explanation of the Eucharist. I am indebted to Nathan Smith for drawing this to my attention. 22 It is in this way as well that we should understand Descartes’ claim in the Notae in Programma: “I did not say that these [essential] attributes are present in the substances as in subjects distinct from them” (CSM I, 297 / AT VIIIb, 348). 23 The Passions of the Soul, I, §1: “I note that whatever takes place or occurs is generally called by philosophers a ‘passion’ with regard to the subject to which it happens and an ‘action’ with regard to that which makes it happen. Thus, although an agent and patient are often quite different, an action and passion must always be a single thing which has these two names on account of the two different subjects to which it may be related” (CSM I, 328 / AT XI, 328). 24 In the Third Set of Replies, see also CSM II, 124 / AT VII, 175-76. 25 On the nature of the human composite, see also the Sixth Set of Replies where Descartes distinguishes between a “unity of nature” and a “unity of composition”: “But now the question is whether we perceive that a thinking thing and an extended thing are one and the same by a unity of nature. . . . Alternatively, when they are said to be ‘one and the same’ is this not rather in respect of unity of composition . . . ?” (CSM II, 286 / AT VII, 423-24). 26 This allows Descartes to circumvent Hobbes’ objections to the effect that Descartes owes us an explanation of the nature of the subject, or even material substratum, which supports the attribute (CSM II, 121-23 / AT VII, 172-74). Descartes’ reply to this charge indicates that he finds that such speculation offers little interest for metaphysics: “We cannot conceive of thought without a thinking thing, since that which thinks is not nothing. But then [Hobbes] goes on to say, quite without any reason, and in violation of all usage and all logic: ‘It seems to follow from this that a thinking thing is something corporeal.’ It may be that the subject of any act can be understood only in terms of a substance (or even, if he insists, in terms of ‘matter’, i.e. metaphysical matter); but it does not follow that it must be understood in terms of a body” (CSM II, 124 / AT VII, 175). 27 We might also note that, along with the denial of a metaphysical (account of the) subject, Descartes also finds little place for the notion of force, or activity, in his metaphysical treatises. Thus, in the Principles, force only comes up for discussion in the second and, especially, the third part. On this point, see

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Desmond Clarke’s “The Concept of vis in Part III of the Principia” in Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994) (Naples: Vivarium, 1996), 321-39. 28 It should be noted that, in what follows, I will not be interested in the important differences between Leibniz’s early discussions of substance and his later treatment. For a useful contrast of the principal changes, see Mark Kulstad’s “Leibnizian Meditations on Monsim, Force, and Substance, in relation to Descartes, Spinoza and Malebranche”, The Leibniz Review (1999): 17-42. 29 See Leibniz’s comment on §51 of the “Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes”: “For not only do we need other substances; we need our own accidents even much more” (L 389 / G IV, 364). 30 See also the Theodicy, where Leibniz calls Spinozism “an exaggerated Cartesianism” (§393). 31 It is for precisely this reason, of course, that Descartes privileges extension over impenetrability as the attribute of corporeal substance. See the Letter to More, 5 February 1649: “tangibility and impenetrability involve a reference to parts and presuppose the concept of division or limitation” (CSMK 361 / AT V, 269). 32 See, among many texts, “On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Concept of Substance” (L 433 / G IV, 469-70) and “On Nature Itself” (L 503 / G IV, 510-11). 33 See also “On Nature Itself”: “it must be concluded that there must be found in corporeal substance a primary entelechy or first recipient of activity” (L 503 / G IV, 511). 34 As Descartes writes in the third Meditation: “For it is quite clear to anyone who attentively considers the nature of time that the same power and action (vi & actione) are needed to preserve anything at each individual momnet of its duration.” (CSM II, 33 / AT VII, 49). 35 See also the “Conversation”: “the exact and incomplete subject, or the simple, primitive concrete term which, joined to an essential attribute, constitutes the complete substance . . . since neither the abstractions nor the complete concretes could be conceived or could exist without it” (L 620 / G VI, 582).

Chapter 3 Sum Res Cogitans Elliot S. Paul 1. Introduction Descartes asserts, in Meditation VI, that his essence consists exclusively in thought: “absolutely nothing else belongs to my essence or nature except that I am a thinking thing” (CSM II, 54 / AT VII, 78). This expresses a conjunction of two claims: (E1) my essence consists in having thought, and (E2) my essence does not consist in having a body. At this point in Meditation VI, Descartes has just come to deny that he is essentially embodied (E2). That he is essentially thinking (E1), however, is something he affirms rather earlier on – in Meditation II. It is there, upon using the cogito to establish the certainty of his own existence, that he first inquires into his essence or nature, asking “What this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists” (CSM II, 17 / AT VII, 25). A page later, he makes a first pass at an answer as follows: Thinking? At last I have discovered it—thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist, that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. At present I am not admitting anything except what is necessarily true. I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks (res cogitans); that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect or reason—words whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now. But for all that I am a thing which is real and which truly exists. But what kind of thing? As I have just said—a thinking thing. (CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 27)

If we stop here we might conclude that Descartes already commits himself to E1 and E2 when he says: “I am . . . only a thing that thinks.” But he goes on to suspend judgment on E2 for the time being. The passage continues: What else am I? I will use my imagination. I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs—a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing. Let this supposition stand; for all that I am still some-

42 thing. And yet may it not perhaps be the case that these very things which I am supposing to be nothing, because they are unknown to me, are in reality identical with the ‘I’ of which I am aware? I do not know, and for the moment I shall not argue the point, since I can make judgments only about things which are known to me. (CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 27)

Though Descartes is certain that thought is of his essence, he admits, in effect, that he is not yet in a position to rule out the materialist conception of thought as a property of the body, and therefore cannot say with certainty that having a body is not, after all, essential to him as well. The materialists, Hobbes (CSM II, 122 / AT VII, 173) and Gassendi (CSM II, 183-84 / AT VII, 262-63), as well as Arnauld, playing devil’s advocate (CSM II, 87-88 / AT VII, 122), complain that Descartes has done nothing in the second Meditation to refute a materialist view of thought and (therefore) of himself. Descartes replies consistently (CSM II, 93-95, 123-24, and 246 / AT VII, 129-32, 175, and 355-56) that he never meant to at that point. Referring to the passage just cited, he says he thought he had made that abundantly clear: “Here I wanted to give the reader an express warning that at that stage I was not yet asking whether the mind is distinct from the body, but was merely examining those of its properties of which I can have certain and evident knowledge” (CSM II, 93 / AT VII, 129). In his Preface to the Reader, Descartes stresses that it is crucial for understanding the Meditations that we grasp the “proper order of (his) arguments and the connection between them” (CSM II, 8 / AT VII, 910). Failing to understand arguments early in the book tends to undermine one’s reading of the rest. And we can see, in particular, how a failure to understand his commitment to E1 would render one’s understanding of the later argument for E2 incomplete. For even having understood how Descartes tries to the establish the independence of the mind from the body (as implied by the “real distinction,” the dualism, between the two), it will remain unclear how he thereby establishes his independence from his body, so long as one fails to understand how he has antecedently established that he is a mind. Getting clear on how Descartes arrives at E1 will therefore be of interest not only in its own right, but also as a necessary preliminary for understanding Descartes’ later assertion of E2. I will be concerned exclusively with the former claim in this essay.1 In particular, I will argue that E1 is an axiom or first principle in Descartes’ system, and that the meditator is not meant to derive it from any prior premises, but to have an intuition of it by performing a thought-experiment.

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2. The Interpretive Problem Consider the situation Descartes is in as he raises the question about his essence, about what he is. After carrying out the “general demolition of his opinions” in the first Meditation, he has recovered one single item of certainty from the rubble: “that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind” (CSM II, 17 / AT VII, 25). Anthony Kenny has suggested that “by ‘necessarily true’ Descartes does not mean ‘logically true’.”2 But the use of “necessarily” gives rise to a standard scope ambiguity, whereby the sentence can be taken to mean either: If I conceive of my existence, necessarily (I exist),

or, Necessarily (if I conceive of it, then I exist).

The first reading says that so long as I consider my existence, I am guaranteed to be a necessary being, which is nonsense. Reading “necessarily” with this narrow scope, we certainly would not want to interpret it as expressing logical or metaphysical necessity. Descartes obviously intends the second reading, and so long as we see this, we need not deny that by “necessarily” Descartes means to express metaphysical necessity; we need only to give it wide scope.3 Remember that Descartes is operating, here and throughout, under the constraint of his Maxim of Doubt, by which he has resolved himself not to believe—let alone to use as a premise from which to derive further beliefs—anything but what is “completely certain and indubitable” (CSM II, 12 / AT VII, 18); as he alternatively puts it, he will “accept nothing unless it has been so clearly and distinctly perceived that he cannot help but assent to it” (CSM II, 112 / AT VII, 158). The above claim, the cogito4, is the only claim that he has come to recognize as having this status thus far. So, by his own lights, it is the only claim he is entitled to use as a premise from which to derive an answer to the question he raises immediately after asserting it: the question as to “what this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists” (CSM II, 17 / AT VII, 25). The answer he comes to is that he is (at least) “a mind . . . a thing that thinks” (CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 26). But how might he even presume to move from nothing more than the certainty of his existence to the claim that he thinks essentially? Richard Rorty assumes that Descartes actually does attempt such an inference. Rorty is happy to pin Descartes with a “splendid non

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sequitur . . . which depends upon a confusion between the cogito as proof of my existence and as isolation of my essence.”5 Margaret Wilson is more charitable and tries in earnest to make sense of Descartes’ argument here. But in the end, where E2 is concerned, she simply concludes that “Descartes does not seem to offer a justification for the transition from ‘I think’ to ‘Thought belongs to my nature or essence.’”6 Indeed, so long as the “transition” is presumed to be an inference, it will remain unclear what justification there could be. Any such inference would seem inevitably to commit the fallacy of moving from nothing more than Necessarily: so long as I think, I exist,

to the reverse, Necessarily: so long as I exist, I think.

Presumably we find it rather obvious that this inference is invalid. Are we to believe that Descartes was unable to see as much? Without denying that even great philosophers make mistakes, this ought to give us pause. Let me get right to the heart of the matter by raising an overdue concern about a certain, very common interpretive assumption. The assumption is that whatever justification Descartes offers for E1 must take the form of a deduction (deriving it from antecedently established premises).7 Working with this assumption, one is apt to notice that Descartes offers nothing like a plausible deduction beginning with the cogito and ending with E1, and then to conclude either with Wilson that he doesn’t seem to offer any justification, or with Rorty that the justification he does offer is but a “splendid non sequitur.” On the other hand, the absence of any good deduction for E1 may suggest to us that Descartes means to justify the claim by some non-deductive procedure. So what could that procedure be? 3. Intuitions and the Method of Analysis 3.1 The answer, I believe, begins by observing that claims about essences are modal claims. When Descartes identifies himself with a “thinking thing” and says that thought is “inseparable” from him, he means: it is not possible for him to be without any thoughts; thought is essential to him.8 It is a commonplace of modal epistemology that in conceiving of something, one is apt to be persuaded of its possibility; in trying but failing to conceive of something, its impossi-

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bility.9 The method of argument which specifically exploits this fact is the thought-experiment. A philosopher who tries to persuade readers of something by means of thought-experiment does not thereby display it to them as a deductive conclusion. Rather, the author guides them through a series of reflections designed to elicit in their minds the intuition that the claim being offered is correct. To limit the point to claims about what-is-possible, readers who conduct the thoughtexperiment in their own minds, as the author trusts they will, are ipso facto trying to conceive of how something could be the case. Upon so conceiving it, they each find themselves with the intuition that it is possible; upon failing to conceive it, the intuition that it is impossible.10 What I propose is this: (a) Descartes means to persuade his reader of E1 not through a deduction, but rather by eliciting an intuition of it (b) through the performance of a thought-experiment. 3.2 It may have seemed natural to try and reconstruct Descartes’ support for E1 as some kind of deduction, but Descartes says rather plainly that it is not: “When we become aware that we are thinking beings, this is a primary notion, which is not derived by means of any syllogism” (CSM II, 100 / AT VII, 140). When Descartes first introduces his dichotomy between intuition and deduction, in the Regulae, he explains that “the first principles . . . are known only through intuition” (CSM I, 14-15 / AT X, 370). So, given that first principles are primary notions, it is clear that Descartes thinks the E1 is to be known through intuition, as the first part of my thesis states. 3.3 The second part of my thesis is that Descartes uses a thought-experiment to elicit an intuition of E1. I will begin to make a case for this by drawing attention to Descartes’ insistence that the benefit of the Meditations will be lost on anyone who is not “able and willing to . . . really concentrate and meditate seriously with [him]” (CSM II, 8 / AT VII, 9; cf. CSM II, 110 / AT VII, 155-56). On the face of it, this entreaty may appear to be nothing more than a plea for the reader to pay attention. But I think there is a deeper point behind it, and in bringing that point out we will find some interesting support for the new interpretation. Consider the difference between merely stipulating an axiom as the starting point of an argument and supporting such a claim with a thought-experiment. When an axiom is presented merely as a stipulation, nothing is offered to make the axiom seem true—except perhaps the author’s apparent endorsement of it. And to the extent that the readers accept the axiom on the basis of what is presented, they will be doing so in a relatively passive and uncritical way, amounting at

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best to an appeal to the author’s authority. By contrast, readers who intuit axioms as the result of performing thought-experiments would not be conducting themselves in such a passive way. It does not suffice for intuiting a given claim that one recognizes the author’s approval of it or passively observes and understands the reflections through which the author claims to have been lead to that claim. The persuasive power of a thought-experiment depends rather on the readers’ actively replicating it in their own minds, so as to have the relevant intuition themselves. Descartes’ requiring his readers to “really concentrate and meditate with him” is, I think, best understood as an acknowledgement of this fact.11 We may call this requirement that of assuming the intuiting point of view. 3.4 Interestingly, Descartes writes the Meditations in a way that is specifically designed to facilitate doing this. The main place where he explains the importance of the style of writing he employs in the Meditations is in the Second Set of Replies. There, Descartes says that he fashioned the order of the Meditations after that of a geometrical proof, so “the items which are put forward first must be known entirely without the aid of what comes later; and the remaining items must be arranged in such a way that their demonstration depends solely on what has gone before” (CSM II, 110 / AT VII, 155). But the “method of demonstration” he chose to use is what he calls the “analytic” method, which he contrasts with the “synthetic” or “geometrical” method conventionally employed in treatises on geometry. The geometrical method is purely deductive: it begins by laying out “a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems,” and proceeds from there to show how certain conclusions are derivable given those primary notions. The disadvantage of it is that “it does not engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered” (CSM II, 111 / AT VII, 156). This limitation is no impediment to having the reader recognize the validity of the proofs; on the contrary, the method enables the author to present his reasoning so concisely as to allow the reader to see the overall structure of it “at a glance,” so that “even the less attentive” will be able to see how the conclusion follows with logical necessity. The disadvantage would apply specifically to the primary notions from which the proof begins. In a purely deductive method of demonstration these are necessarily presented with no demonstration, no justification, at all. Descartes says this is unproblematic in the case of geometry because “the primary notions presupposed for the demonstration of geometrical truths are readily accepted by anyone, since they accord with the use of our senses” (CSM II, 111

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/ AT VII, 156). But matters are different where First Philosophy is concerned: In metaphysics by contrast there is nothing which causes so much effort as making our perception of the primary notions clear and distinct . . . [for] they conflict with many preconceived opinions derived from the senses which we have got into the habit of holding from our earliest years, and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdraw their minds from corporeal things, so far as possible, will achieve perfect knowledge of them. (CSM II, 111 / AT VII, 156-57)

Now, it may seem as if Descartes is saying that the conflict is between the content of metaphysical first-principles and what the senses would have us believe. But this cannot be what he has in mind, or not the whole of it. After all, what he takes to be the most primary of all primary notions—I exist—is something my senses would have me believe as surely as they would have me believe anything. I hardly have to undertake a “general demolition of my opinions” to believe that. At least part of what Descartes has in mind, then, is a distinction not just among the things we believe, but concerning the bases on which we believe them: the deliverances of sense-perception versus those of pure reason or intellect. What he wants each of us to do is not not simply to believe in our own existence, but to have an “adequate perception” of it, a perception which is strictly a priori and so “requires a mind . . . which can easily detach itself from the senses” (CSM II, 5 / AT VII, 4).12 Hence the Method of Doubt brings the meditator to affirm his existence only after undermining his reliance on the senses. It is significant that this very Method culminates with the use of a thought-experiment, the one involving the pretense of an evil deceiver, and that, of the occasions for doubt that Descartes brings to bear, it is this one that he deems especially useful to undo “the distorting influence of habit,” the habit of taking the senses as a basis for his beliefs which had “prevented [his] judgment from perceiving things correctly” (CSM II, 15 / AT VII, 22-23).13 In performing this thought-experiment, Descartes finds it conceivable, and so possible, that he is wrong about everything he hitherto believed on the basis of experience. And yet he finds that he cannot conceive, and so it strikes him as impossible, that he could be wrong about his own existence. Thus the same method that undermines his reliance on his senses brings him to be certain of his own existence. And, by the same token, it is no longer on the questionable authority of the senses that he believes he exists; rather, he perceives it—clearly and distinctly— from the intuiting point of view.

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We noted that intuiting a proposition requires one to be actively engaged in rational reflection, and that it is just by enjoining this kind of reflection, this effort of conceiving, that a thought-experiment may serve to enable a person to intuit something, perhaps something he or she might not otherwise intuit. It is likewise in facilitating this activity of reflection that the method of analysis proves its distinctive worth. Whereas the geometrical method does nothing to “engage the mind, . . . analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered” so that if the reader “gives sufficient attention . . . he will make the thing his own . . . as if he had discovered it for himself” (CSM II, 110 / AT VII, 155). What Descartes continues to say here provides resounding evidence that what distinguishes the method of analysis is the use of thought-experiments. He says he chose to use analysis because in so doing I wanted to make it clear that I would have nothing to do with anyone who was not willing to join me in meditating and giving the subject attentive consideration. . . . I am therefore right to require particularly careful attention from my readers; and the style of writing that I selected was one which I thought would be most capable of generating such attention. (CSM II, 112 / AT VII, 158)

Now, we noted that Descartes says that the claims which are to be intuited are axioms. But not all axioms are difficult to intuit; not all require the use of the thought-experimental argumentation distinctive to the method of analysis. Even in metaphysics, Descartes does not think that all the primary notions are ones for which he needs to employ any elaborate “method of demonstration.” Some of them are like the axioms of geometry, in that readers can be left more or less to their own intellectual devices to perceive them adequately. Among these easy intuitions (as I will call them) are the causal principles of the third Meditation in support of which Descartes says nothing but that they are “manifest by the natural light,” trusting that they will be immediately compelling to anyone who considers them. (In this Descartes was probably trusting too much, but that is another story.) The point is just that principles like these are what Descartes must have in mind when he says that, even as he employs the method of analysis, “there are many truths which—although it is vital to be aware of them—this method often scarcely mentions, since they are transparently clear to anyone who gives them his attention” (CSM II, 110 / AT VII, 155). So we are distinguishing between primary notions that are easy to intuit and others which, due to the mind’s customary reliance on the

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senses, are more difficult. I am suggesting that the method of analysis is uniquely suited to bring the reader to intuit the latter, and that it is so suited because it involves arguing by thought-experiment as exemplified par excellence in the culminating scenario of the Method of Doubt. If I am right, then we should expect that if Descartes offered a geometrical version of the Meditations, he may well include the easy intuitions such as the causal principles and so forth in the list of axioms, while he would be reluctant to include the tougher intuitions. And his reluctance to include the latter would be an indication that he felt those claims in particular needed to be argued for with the special, thought-experimental method of demonstration that the original, analytic presentation of his work was specifically designed to provide. As is well known, we have a geometrical version of the Meditations available for comparison. Descartes provides it only at the request of his friend, Mersenne, and only with reservations even then, warning the reader to “please realize that I do not intend to include as much material as I put in the Meditations . . . partly to prevent anyone supposing that what follows is adequate on its own” (CSM II, 113 / AT VII, 159). The choices he makes about what (and what not) to include are very telling. As we have noted, the claims to be intuited are the axiomatic claims. We have noted also that Descartes calls E1 a “primary notion” and that it is therefore to be seen as an intuition. In addition, we may note that in the same connection he goes on to classify the cogito as an intuition: “When someone says ‘I am thinking, therefore I am, or I exist’, he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind” (CSM II, 100 / AT VII, 140). Thus he regards both the cogito and E1 as axioms or first principles in his philosophy. But, significantly, he does not include them among the list of ten axioms he provides in the geometrical version of the Meditations (CSM II, 116-17 / AT VII, 165-66). Within that list, the claims I am suggesting are tough intuitions, to be elicited through thoughtexperiment—the claims that I think, that I exist and that thought is of my essence—are conspicuously absent.14 Let us pause to observe how all of this hangs together. In this section I have argued the following: (1) The analytic method is uniquely suited to demonstrate difficult intuitions, and it is so suited because, unlike the purely deductive geometrical method, it involves arguing by thought-experiment. (2) Descartes regards both the cogito and E1 as axioms, but he includes neither of them in the list of axioms he gives in the geometrical version of the Meditations. This could hardly be an oversight on his part, given the centrality of these claims to his philosophy. (3) Given (1), the suggestion that Descartes sees these as

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tough intuitions which need to be secured through thought-experiment makes sense of Descartes’ decision to exclude them from the company of the axioms presented in “geometrical fashion,” the latter being the kinds of axioms which are “transparently clear to anyone” and which are “scarcely mentioned” even by the method of analysis. My thesis that E1 (as well as the cogito) are meant to be established by thoughtexperiment is therefore evidenced by that decision. 4. Meditation II Returning, at last to Meditation II, we are fortunate to find that after asking himself what he is, Descartes is perfectly explicit about how he intends to go about answering that question: I will . . . go back and meditate on what I originally believed myself to be, before I embarked on this present train of thought. I will then subtract anything capable of being weakened, even minimally, by the arguments now introduced, so that what is left at the end may be exactly and only what is certain and unshakeable. (CSM II, 17 / AT VII, 25)

This could be used verbatim as a textbook example of instructions for a thought-experiment if it were not couched in the language of the Method of Doubt: where we would speak of “subtracting” from a thing (excluding from its essence) what we can conceive of it as existing without, Descartes speaks of what can be “weakened” (or doubted); where we would speak of “what is left” (what proves essential) as what the thing cannot be conceived as existing without, Descartes speaks of what is “certain and unshakeable.” However, the transposition between these idioms is perfectly natural when we consider this: to doubt something just is to entertain or conceive of the possibility that it is false. And conversely, to be certain of something is just to find it inconceivable—and thus impossible—that it is false. One might complain that this is not what we ordinarily mean by “doubt” or “certainty.” One might argue that “doubts” of this variety have no practical bearing on our everyday lives and therefore do not count as real or genuine cases of doubt. But Descartes makes it clear that, for the purposes of philosophy, he is not concerned with doubt and certainty as-ordinarily-understood; clearly he means neither to give an “analysis” of our ordinary use of those words, nor to restrict himself to the more practically oriented standards by which those words are typically applied.15 On the contrary, his method of calling things into doubt—most effectively with the pretense of an evil deceiver—is precisely an attempt to bring the reader to recognize what

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he calls the “hyperbolic” or “metaphysical” possibility that (a successively expanding class of) one’s beliefs might be false. Now, the situation is this. Descartes begins with a set of claims, attached to the “conception he always had of himself,” which he describes as follows: The first thought to come to mind was that I had a face, hands, arms and the whole mechanical structure of limbs which can be seen in a corpse, and which I called the body. The next thought was that I was nourished, that I moved about, and that I engaged in sense-perception and thinking; and these actions I attributed to the soul. (CSM II, 17 / AT VII, 26)

In trying to doubt these claims, he is ipso facto trying to conceive of their being false. Conceiving of a proposition as false brings with it the intuition that it could be false. So if Descartes conceives it is false that he has a certain property, he will have the intuition that he could exist without that property—that it is not essential to him. And indeed this is the case with respect to the properties of having a body, along with properties that depend on having a body, like being nourished, moving about, and having sense-perception (in the sense that requires suffering the impacts of the physical world on one’s sensory organs). Under the pretense of an evil-deceiver, the meditator still exists but has none of these properties. And holding that pretense in mind, finding it coherent, he has the intuition that he could exist without these properties—that they are not essential to him. In other words, he intuits E2. As we saw at the beginning, Descartes is careful to withdraw his commitment to E2 for the time being, postponing it until Meditation VI.16 Meanwhile, in being unable to conceive of himself as existing without a certain property, Descartes should have the intuition that he could not exist without it—that it is essential to him. And indeed this is the case where the property in question is the (determinable) property of having some-or-another thought. Thus, at the conclusion of this thought-experiment, Descartes declares: Thinking? At last I have discovered it—thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist, that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. At present I am not admitting anything except what is necessarily true. I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks (res cogitans); that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect or reason—words whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now. But for all that I am a thing which is real and which

52 truly exists. But what kind of thing? As I have just said—a thinking thing. (CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 27)

Thus we see that Descartes comes to this claim—that thought is inseparable from him, essential to him—not through some deductive argument involving a “splendid non-sequitur” from the cogito. Rather, he performs a thought-experiment and thereby comes to see it, clearly and distinctly, from the intuiting point of view.17

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1

This paper is part of a larger project that will attempt to relate the conclusions derived here to the broader issues of mind-body distinctness. 2 Anthony Kenny, Descartes (Toronto: Random House, 1968): 85. 3 Ultimately, I want to argue that E1, which is the concern of this paper, and also the cogito, which I can only treat in passing here, are both axiomatic for Descartes and are both meant to be established as modal intuitions elicited through thought-experiment. To that end, it is crucial to understand that the cogito is, like E1, a modal claim, and the formulation I have given allows us to do just that. 4 So-called because of the more famous formulation which appears in the corresponding passage of Descartes’ later Principles: “cogito ergo sum” (CSM I, 195 / AT VIIIa, 7). The French of the earlier Discourse equivalently reads “Je pense, donc je suis” (CSM II 127 / AT VI 32). 5 Rorty, Philosophy in the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979): 62. 6 Wilson, “The Epistemological Argument for Mind-Body Distinctness,” reprinted in Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 187; cf. Wilson’s book, Descartes, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978): 74. 7 For our purposes, what is important about a deduction is that it is an inferential pattern of argument: it serves to persuade one of its conclusion only insofar as one is antecedently committed to the premises from which it is inferred. It is not a question of arguments which exhibit deductive as opposed to nondeductive patterns of inference (inductive, abductive or what have you). As we shall see, it is rather a matter of deductions—as the only kind of inferential argument that is suitably certainty-preserving for Descartes’ purposes—versus a method of persuasion that does not involve inferring a claim from any premises at all. 8 See Descartes’ own account of “essence” in _Comments on a Certain Broadsheet CSM I, 297 / AT VIIIb, 347: “We must distinguish between those things, which of their nature can change, as that I am now writing or am not writing, that one man is wise and another unwise; and those things which never change, as are all those things that belong to the essence of a thing. Cf. CSM II, 155 / AT VII, 219: “if something can exist without some attribute, then it seems to me that that attribute is not included in its essence.” 9 See Conceivability and Possibility, eds. Tamar Gendler and John Hawthorne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): 1-3. 10 I am using the term “intuition” with its contemporary sense. In applying the term “intuition” to any “intellectual seeming” (as it is alternatively called), even when it does not compel the subject’s assent, our use of the term is more inclusive than Descartes’ use of intuitus. Descartes defines intuitus in the Regulae as “the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind” (Rule IV: CSM I, 14 / AT X, 368; emphasis added). In effect, Descartes regards intuitus, along with deduction, as a class of “clear and distinct perceptions,” though the latter terminology appears only in later works like the Discourse,

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Meditations and Principles. It will be important to the sequel of this essay that—as I am using the term—the “intuition” Descartes has of E2 in Meditation II is not clear and distinct, and so not, in Descartes’ sense, an intuitus. For the present discussion of E1, however, the difference between my use of “intuition” and Descartes’ intuitus is innocuous, for Descartes explicitly regards the intuition of E1 to be clear and distinct. At the beginning of Meditation III, reflecting on what has gone before, Descartes writes, “I am certain that I am a thinking thing. Do I not therefore also know what is required for my being certain about anything? In this first item of knowledge there is simply a clear and distinct perception of what I am asserting” (CSM II, 24 / AT VII, 35). The intuition of E1 therefore counts as a genuine intuitus. 11 I hope it goes without saying that it does not at all count against my claim that Descartes means to argue by thought-experiment that he never refers to his strategy by that name. The term as we use it dervies from Ernst Mach’s discussion of Gedankenexperiment some two centuries later. 12 Cf. Principles I, §13: CSM I, 197 / AT VIIa, 9. 13 This is not to say that the preceding occasions for doubt did not serve to cast doubt upon the evidence of the senses. The point is that although the remarks about being unable to distinguish illusory perceptions from veridical ones, or dreaming ones from waking ones, serve to call the senses into disrepute, they are insufficient to release the mind from their authority. It is the thoughtexperiment of the evil deceiver which Descartes finds most effective to that end. 14 The cogito appears nowhere in the geometrical version. Something approximating E1 does appear. But, significantly, Descartes does not place it among the Axioms. He puts it, instead, under the “Postulates,” and as the editors of the CSM edition note, “Descartes is here playing on words, since what follows is not a set of postulates in the Euclidean sense, but a number of informal requests” (CSM II, 114n3). The request is in effect for his readers to perform a thought-experiment: “I ask them to reflect on their own mind, and all its attributes. They will find that they cannot be in doubt about these, even though they suppose that everything they have ever acquired from the senses is false” (CSM II, 115 / AT VII, 162-63). 15 “A man who makes it his aim to raise his knowledge above the common should be ashamed to derive the occasion for doubting from the forms of speech invented by the vulgar” (CSM II, 21 / AT VII, 32; cf. CSM II, 15 and 106 / AT VII, 22 and 149). 16 Explaining why he postpones it will be the subject of future work. 17 I am grateful for feedback from Gail Fine, Thomas Holden, Karson Kovakovich, Dan Orr, Eric West, Stephanie Wykstra, audiences at Boston College, UT Austin, Princeton/Rutgers, and two anonymous reviewers for Descartes and Cartesianism.

Chapter 4 Descartes as Philosopher of Action Anne A. Davenport To Yves and Jacqueline Demnar “Pour bien penser, il faut bien agir” – Maurice Blondel When he was still a graduate student at the Ecole Normale, nine years before completing his thesis on the philosophy of action,1 Maurice Blondel privately recorded his surprise that a lecture he gave on Descartes made a lasting impression on his students and noted the following: “I deeply sense the dignity, value and accomplishment that action possesses . . . and how action, born of the intellectual finite and of the voluntary infinite, is really all of man, bearing him to his end.”2 Later on in the same diary, as his idea evolved, Blondel wrote: “Reason is the consciousness of the infinite. Freedom is the power of the infinite.”3 These insights form the core of L’Action, where Blondel defines rational action as “the synthesis of power and the idea of the infinite.”4 Blondel’s philosophy of action thus seems to bear a debt to Descartes, namely to the doctrine that the free will or vis eligendi is essentially marked by its infinity. Should we not, in turn, follow this suggestive lead back to its source and ask whether action does not hold the same central importance for Descartes as it does for Blondel? Let me emphasize that while Blondel in many places stresses the concrete character of action, he counts thinking about God as acting: Penser à Dieu est une action.5 He privileges action in the first place because he interprets the Gospel to “attribute to action alone the power to manifest love and acquire God.”6 Action, he argues, is where thought, life, science and faith, individual originality and the social order all meet.7 Philosophically, Blondel proposes to ask, as an original initiative: what does action add, with regard to moral good or evil, to mere intention? 8 Our task is to see if Descartes anticipates Blondel in addressing and answering this question. An obvious first step is to reconsider Descartes’s appeal to altruism in the decision to publish his method. In a famous digression in

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the unpublished Regulae, Descartes speculated that ancient mathematicians “maliciously” withheld their method of analysis from the public out of self–interest and a spirit of vainglory (perniciosa quadam astutia) (Rule IV: AT X, 376).9 Specifically, they preferred dazzling crowds to instructing them.10 In sharp contrast, Descartes, who was keenly aware that the whole importance of a new and genuinely scientific paradigm lay in unlocking new areas of research and discovery,11 argues in the Discours de la Méthode that withholding his method from the public would be to “sin greatly (grandement pecher)” against the “law that makes it our duty to procure as far as we are able the general welfare of all human beings” (IV: AT VI, 61).12 We might be tempted to dismiss the argument as transparently rhetorical were it not for Descartes’s elaborate claim, in the Sixth Set of Replies, that his new science is rooted in charity (AT VII, 429; AT IXa, 231). How central to Descartes’s scientific project is altruism? Does it emerge deductively from his new philosophical principles? Does the discovery of res cogitans and its faculties imply, over and beyond self– healing through self–discipline,13 a new vocation to act for the service of humankind? In order to penetrate this issue, we must, I think, scrutinize the root experience of acting that appears in Cartesian descriptions of resolve. No one doubts the importance for Descartes not only of “firmly resolving” to act well (Letter to Elizabeth, 4 August 1645: AT IV, 265), but of the many pivotal prises de résolution that mark the Cartesian journey of philosophical awakening. Over and beyond Descartes’s debt in this regard to classical fortitudo,14 the question arises of a distinct Cartesian philosophy of action based on formally identifying reflexive self–determination with the actual infinity of human freedom. The purpose of my paper is to argue that Descartes, far from promoting self–conduct in the autarchic sense of neo–Stoic self– mastery, instead appropriates for philosophy the key idea that the free will, first and foremost, is the power that is left in us to cooperate with reason, and eventually with the higher light of grace. On the cooperation model, autonomous human action does not foster egoism and self–enclosure but instead exposes the ego to the alterity of Providence and brings it into concrete communion with all of creation. As Descartes writes to Chanut, “I have no doubt that through the power of our nature alone we are capable of truly (véritablement) loving God” (1 February 1647: AT IV, 607–08).15 I will defend my interpretation in three steps: first, I will review Descartes’s doctrine of self– conduct and of mental acts. Secondly, I will review the infinity of human freedom as established by Meditations I and IV; third, and most critically, I will show that the perception of acting with infinite free-

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dom is required for objective cognition and is therefore crucial to the work of Meditation V, which is to pass from persuasio to scientia. In conclusion, I will briefly return to Blondel in order to contest his criticism of Cartesian rationalism. 1. Resolutions and mental acts In the first published narrative of the “story of his mind,”16 Descartes testifies to a key turning point: “after employing a few years to study in the book of the world, I made the resolution one day also to study in myself and to employ the forces of my mind (esprit) to choose the paths that I should take” (Discours, I: AT VI, 10–11). Descartes’s resolution marks the end of a receptive state of cognitive browsing and inaugurates a new state of active inner mobilization aimed at making a choice. Once the resolution is made, Descartes will no longer spend his time gathering impressions of the world but instead apply his spiritual forces (which we will have to explicate) to deciding on the course of his life. The resolution, in short, has the formal character of a self–commissioning. It brings about a transition between two contrasting Intentional modes: the first mode corresponds to perceiving the world as it impinges on the mind; the second mode consists in acting in order to intervene in the world and deliberately shape events.17 The first question for us to ask is: does the resolution to act count as an act? In resolving to act, does the Cartesian subject already act? According to Descartes’s classification, since a resolution is not received from the outside but is made by the soul, a resolution is an action, rather than a passion, of the soul.18 Whereas our perceptions and cognitions are passions in so far as they are received from the things that are represented by them, our volitions are actions since they “come directly from the soul and seem to depend on it alone” (Passions, §18: AT XI, 143) Another Cartesian way to put it is to say that making a resolution is an operation of the will (operatio voluntatis) rather than a perception of the intellect (perceptio intellectus).19 The criterion used by Descartes to distinguish between a perceptio intellectus or passion of the soul and an operatio voluntatis or action of the soul broadly resembles the notion of “direction” elaborated more recently by John Searle: our actions are effective in shaping the world because their causal direction goes from us to things, while our perceptions are objective in representing the world in so far as the causal direction goes from things to us.20 For Descartes as for Searle, to perceive the world is basically to suffer the effect of things on the soul; to act, inversely, is to intervene and impose our activity on things

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in order to submit them to our action and transform them accordingly.21 As soon as Descartes resolves to stop browsing in the book of the world, he has already stopped browsing in the book of the world. He has intervened to bring about a new state of affairs, namely his own active mobilization. In other words, by resolving to act, he has already acted. Making a resolution is not the same as a prior intention to make one, which represents the action to the mind without being an action in itself.22 Descartes implicitly marks the difference between a prior intention to act and actually acting when he contrasts the freedom that is in the will before acting—a freedom which includes the possibility of not carrying out the action—to the freedom that is in the will while it performs the action, which by definition no longer includes the possibility of not performing it.23 The difficulty hinges on rescuing the valid notion of mental actions from confusing talk of perceptions as “intentional acts.”24 Like Searle,25 Descartes explicitly affirms that there are mental acts, which he distinguishes not only from perceptions, which are passions, but from physical acts as follows: Our volitions are of two kinds. For indeed some of them are actions of the soul that terminate in the soul itself, as when we will ourselves to love God, or generally apply our thought to some immaterial object. The others are actions that terminate in the body, as when our legs move and we walk, simply as a result of our willing to walk. (Passions, § 18: AT XI, 343)26

The first mental act cited by Descartes, vouloir aymer Dieu, is equivalent to resolving to act well, as two separate Cartesian texts confirm.27 Descartes holds that we have the power to make ourselves pleasing to God by acting reflexively on ourselves so as to deliberately act well (accidentally acting well does not count). He points out, for example, that since human attention tends to wander off, it is in itself a good action to strive deliberately to keep one’s attention focused on the good that must be done (Meditation II: AT VII, 29). Notice that two separate actions are involved, analogous to first making a promise and then carrying it out: first is the deliberate resolve to act deliberately, then is the carrying out of the resolve through a series of deliberate acts. The resolve to act deliberately is in itself a challenge if sustained over time, as the (proto–Freudian) metaphor of the horseback rider, invoked in Meditation II, suggests.28 The will, in effect, must first mobilize itself to keep itself durably mobilized before it can perform further actions. One last feature deserves mention. On the Cartesian analysis, the

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resolve to love God is an action of the soul that terminates in the soul’s self–commitment, whereas giving alms to a beggar is an action of the soul that terminates in the physical motion of the hand. In the case of a physical action, the Intentional experience of acting and the physical change that takes place are not as such identical: if I raise my arm and the nerves of my arm have been severed, the arm will remain on the table.29 Analogously, if you tell me to think of the John Hancock Building, I might instead form an image of the Prudential Tower. Both would be instances of failed mental acts. In contrast, when I make a resolution, I cannot fail to make it. No possible hiatus separates my experience of acting and the active mobilization that is brought about. The singular efficacy of my action in this particular case stems from its reflexive character: I act directly and exclusively on my very power to act. I can eventually fail to carry out my resolution over time, but I cannot fail to make it when I make it, since I mobilize my power to mobilize myself rather than a physical limb or some idea: I intervene reflexively to grasp myself at the core.30 We may now propose a first conclusion: the paradigmatic Cartesian action, the action that serves as the corner stone of Descartes’s philosophy of action, is the voluntary self–commissioning that we describe as making a resolution. 2. The infinity of freedom. Let us now turn to Descartes’s second and more famous resolution, namely the resolution to divest himself of all of the opinions that he has previously received into his credence.31 This time, Descartes warns that the project is “too bold” (trop hardie) for many and that the resolution is not one that all should make (Discours, II: AT VI, 15).32 Descartes tells us elsewhere that boldness (hardiesse) “is a sort of courage that disposes the soul to execute the most dangerous things” (Passions, §171: AT XI, 460). Cowardice, inversely, “prevents the soul from carrying out the execution of things” and “turns the will away from useful actions” (Passions, § 174 and 175: AT XI, 462 and 463). Boldness, moreover, testifies in his view to a secret hope that the action will succeed,33 as well as to the presence of love.34 In sharp contrast to the skeptics who doubt for the sake of doubting and “affect to remain forever irresolute,” the Cartesian meditator vows to push doubt to its limit in order to slay it once and for all (Discours, II: AT VI, 29). The resolve to reject systematically whatever is dubitable pulls the subject out of a cowardly lethargy by a “bold” first action that “depends on the soul alone.” Meditation I reiterates the inaction/action contrast by framing it

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ethically: the meditator would be at fault (in culpa) if he “continued to spend in deliberation the time that he has left to act” (Meditation I: AT VII, 17).35 Why specifically “at fault”? Before whom? Is there in human beings an inherent rational instinct to act, requiring that we mobilize ourselves, semel in vita, to “learn to distinguish the true from the false, so as to have clear insight into our actions and walk with assurance in this life” (Discours, I: AT VI, 10)? Descartes’s desire to “increase the natural light,” as we know, is motivated by the desire to know how best to act (Rule I: AT X, 361).36 What exactly is the source of this desire? The pursuit of Truth is not aimed at solving puzzles for their own sake but at acquiring a practical science of life. The resolve to embark on the epistemological project is thus an ethical action rather than merely the expression of cognitive curiosity. What resolving to meditate adds to the mere intention of one day seeking Truth, is the concrete affirming that Truth is a moral Good, desired as such by the will before any particular truth is known to the intellect.37 Note that Descartes at one point describes the natural light as an instinct that belongs to human being qua human, to be sharply distinguished from the instinct that belongs to us qua animal and is “a certain impulse” to corporeal self–preservation (Letter to Mersenne, 16 October 1639: AT II, 599). The implication is that reason is a spiritual propensity to seek Truth and unite with Truth through both will and intellect. Perhaps Descartes implies that the soul’s resolve to seek Truth in order to act well implements a rational impulse in the soul to spiritual self–preservation, analogous to the fleshly impulse to physical self-preservation. Be this as it may, no sooner is the resolution made to meditate than reason already persuades the soul with regard to its course of action: iam ratio persuadet. Long before any certainty is perceived by the intellect concerning existence or the properties of substances, reason persuades the will to act in a specific manner, namely to withhold assent from whatever is doubtful as though it were plainly false. Reason, in short, persuades the meditator to preserve himself deliberately from error. Reason thus manifests itself most fundamentally to the soul as a practical rule, specifically as an injunction to inhibit action when action risks uniting the soul with untruth: assensionem esse cohibendam (AT VII, 18).38 Meditation I consists in a series of trials aimed at testing the meditator’s resolve. Each trial seeks to shatter the soul, terrify it, isolate it, discourage it. The meditator is systematically stripped of all familiar reference, forced to acknowledge that he might be living in dream, that two added to three might not amount to five, that he himself might be a random effect of material processes or the hapless experiment of a creator “no less cunning and false than powerful,” who is

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bent on deceiving him (Meditation I: AT VII, 22).39 The point is, not a single belief is left intact, so that all the meditator has left is his resolve. He must boldly act or sink. Trusting himself to act, he resolves to oppose the demon by means of a thought experiment rather than passively suffer deceit. The meditator actively persuades himself that nothing of which the demon seeks to persuade him is more than an illusion. He resolves to consider himself to have no eyes, no flesh or blood (Meditation I: AT VII, 22).40 We recognize in this new resolution the Ignatian technique of contra agere: not a passive withstanding of the enemy so much as an active counter–attack.41 Rather than let himself be persuaded, he persuades himself, as a free causal agent, to regard things as nothing. He blocks passive perception by acting on himself and taking charge of the passions that are suffered by his soul. The soul is now acting reflexively and suffering only the effects of its own actions. The meditator thus brings about new experimental conditions in which he discovers that if it is not in my power to know anything true, nonetheless it is in me certainly (certe) not to assent to falsehoods. (Meditation I: AT VII, 23)42

The thought experiment isolates the will’s action on itself as the soul’s radical empowerment. Note that the power to suspend belief through thought experiment underlies the freedom to suspend judgment. The thought experiment that I have no hands or senses originates in a radical freedom of action and ends in the immediate experience that the will is radically free: in nobis libertatem esse experimur.43 The experiment of contra agere cannot establish the certainty of rational freedom without at the same time rooting freedom in the acting ego and therefore disclosing the ego as such to itself: certe in me est. As Blondel will put it, in a transparent reformulation of the Cartesian cogito: “no one thinks he acts without attributing to himself the principle of his action and believing himself therefore to be someone or something.”44 What must we make of the fact that the first Cartesian experience of certainty, before the entailment (the ergo) of the cogito, is the meditator’s certainty of acting reflexively on his very capacity to act? As Meditation II presents it in the first of four formulations of the cogito, if I persuade myself that there is no sky, no earth, no bodies, then I myself certainly am.45 What convinces the meditator of the validity of the conditional is that an act of rational self-persuasion implies a causal agent. If I acted on myself, persuaded myself, I myself, the

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agent, must have existed to carry out the action. Descartes, as we know, explicitly uses cogitatio to refer to both perceptions and volitions, which is to say both for passions of the soul and actions.46 Mental actions, such as self-persuasion or suspending judgment, are immediately perceived by the first-person agent who performs them.47 The Principia, which explicitly lists “affirmare, negare, dubitare” as operations of the will rather than operations of the intellect, implies that the primary form of the cogito is dubito, ergo sum.48 Is the cogito of I think, therefore I am the perception that I perceive, or the perception that I act? Descartes’s certe in me est, in connection with deliberate doubt and suspension of judgment, implies that the immediate certainty of acting mentally and deliberately is immune to deception in ways that other perceptions are not. The Cartesian cogito works with new force if we interpret the first clause (“cogito”) as the immediate experience of acting. The cogito means I act, therefore I am. Philosophically, the problem is simply transferred to the equally thorny problem of causal agency, but the emergence of the ego and its identity as a causal agent are clarified.49 What the cogito adds to the ego’s immediate certainty of acting is the logical entailment that derives the ego’s actual existence from its agency. The recognition, as we will see when we turn to Meditation V, that the ergo of necessity is independent of both my actions and my intellect will both consolidate and transform the initial cogito. When he summarizes his doctrine of the will more geometrico, Descartes formulates the following axiom: “the will bears itself voluntarily and freely (since this belongs to its essence), but nonetheless infallibly, to whatever good is clearly known to it” (Second Set of Replies: AT VII, 166; AT IX, 128).50 Retroactively, we are entitled to ask: when the meditator suspends his judgment rather than consent to falsehoods, exactly what good is clearly known to the will? The case indeed is not an example of indifference: the meditator does not hesitate but rather acts very resolutely to refrain from acting wrongly, freely but infallibly embracing the “party where the most good is seen” (Letter to Mesland, 9 February 1645: AT IV, 173–74). Now, according to Descartes, every action of the soul, as we saw, is accompanied by a perception of the action: “for it is certain that we could not will anything without perceiving by the same token that we will it” (Passions, I, §19: AT XI, 343).51 Descartes emphasizes that willing and the perception of willing are one and the same: consequently, since things are always described by what in them is most “noble” and since actions are more noble than passions, we describe willing simply as acting.52 It follows that in Meditation I, when the soul acts resolutely to oppose deception, it simultaneously acts and perceives its

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action. What is therefore clearly known to it as a good is the will acting deliberately on itself. The resolute soul, in short, at once exercises and perceives its own radical freedom—which the will right away freely, but infallibly, embraces. Confirmation of this analysis is given by the synopsis presented in the Principia. When Descartes wants to establish that “the freedom of our will is known without proof, through the immediate experience that we have of it,” he explicitly cites the general epoche performed by the meditator at the end of Meditation I. “Nothing is more certain,” Descartes proclaims, than the freedom that we experience while acting on ourselves to refrain from endorsing falsehood (Principia, I, §39: AT VIIIa, 19-20). Let us now appeal to Meditation IV to point out that when the will, by boldly exercising its freedom, embraces it as a clearly known good, it embraces a good that is (a) formally indistinguishable from the ego and (b) formally incomprehensible. The meditator exercises, affirms and loves a freedom that the intellect as such does not and cannot comprehend. Indeed, as we know, the free will is “so great that it is actually infinite,” just as it is “what principally makes me know that I bear the image and the resemblance of God” (Meditation IV: AT VII, 51).53 In other words, by acting resolutely on myself to refrain from uniting with untruth, I do nothing less than elect the very image in me of God’s incomprehensible infinity. We thus reach a second conclusion: the Cartesian meditator discovers his radical freedom by electing in himself an infinity that exceeds him. In a similar vein, Blondel, in turn, will argue that freedom imposes itself on consciousness as an experience of the infinite precisely when the experience of a general epoche pulls the subject out of the totality of conditioned responses—when, in his words, “a new power suspends the whole motion of spontaneity.”54 The special artificiality of the Cartesian context allows Descartes to isolate the problem of spontaneous knowledge as underlying the problem of conditioned behavior. When the Cartesian meditator suspends “the whole motion of spontaneity,”55 he specifically blocks ideas that invade the mind automatically without any activity on his part. He overturns a natural passivity. Descartes stresses to Elizabeth that, by “passions,” we mean most properly “thoughts that are excited in the soul without the concourse of the will” (6 October 1645: AT IV, 310), which are the same thoughts, not surprisingly, that “deceive us with regard to the goods of this world” (15 September 1645: AT IV, 295).56 By suspending judgment, the meditator overcomes vanity and seduction. He elects to stand epistemologically naked rather than be dressed in imaginary royal garments:57 what other thought but this concrete election is available that

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presents the will with a clearly known good, worthy to be embraced? 3. The infinity of Truth. This brings us to Meditation V and to the reflexively–perceived mental acts that bring about the experience that Truth is sought by the will as a Good precisely because Truth is mind–independent. Quite apart from the initiative of accounting for the essence of material things geometrically, Descartes in Meditation V focuses on mathematical ideas because mathematical truths, as we know from Meditation I, sharply reveal the rift between subjective indubitability (persuasio) and justified validity (scientia).58 The meditator has so far relied on the will’s rational embrace of what is clear and distinct in order to claim the entailment: “I am certain that x, therefore x.” What prevents a failure of Truth-Functionality in this case as in the kindred case “I believe that x”—from which “x” hardly follows? 59 A critical aim of Meditation V is to overcome the psychologism that inevitably clings to the doctrine of subjective indubitability.60 Mathematical ideas play a key role in allowing the meditator to pass from persuasio to scientia,61 because mathematical ideas, as Rodis–Lewis emphasizes,62 are innate and therefore are presented to the mind by the mind, through a sequence of immediately tractable mental acts. Since figures and numbers “perhaps exist nowhere in the world” and are not derived from sensation but are freely “excogitated,”63 the Intentional activity that thinks them and grasps their logical properties is radically immanent to the separate soul qua res cogitans. This will allow the meditator to identify Truth precisely as what lies beyond the ego’s operational freedom and, therefore, as what gives itself to cognition in excess of what the ego is able to give itself. What do we know so far about cognition? In Meditation IV, rather than cite the cogito as the exemplary case of cognitive infallibility, Descartes cites the special case of rational contemplatio Dei, when thought is wholly and exclusively fixed on God. The intellect in this privileged intentional state detects no source of error or falsity.64 Error appears possible only when I turn away from God and turn back toward myself (ad me) (Meditation IV: AT VII, 54).65 Since focusing on the essence of res extensa, which is to say on figure and number, means shifting attention away from God to what is, by definition, divisible and multiple, it should entail a similar risk—unless there is something that I perceive about figure and number that prevents me from reverting ad me. What gives mathematical ideas their distinctive character? To solve the riddle of mathematical knowledge is to discover the very essence of the vis cognoscendi. Meditation V is indi-

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visibly Descartes’s treatise on cognitive Intentionality and on the philosophy of mathematics.66 Having recovered full conscious access to the infinite freedom of his will or vis eligendi in Meditation IV, the meditator on the fifth day turns to the faculty in him to think about things other than himself, whether such things exist or not. He discovers, in particular, that he has the power to think about innumerable figures: Possum innumeras figuras excogitare (AT VII, 64). The point of the day’s meditation is to bracket myself as an existing res cogitans in order to investigate the inherent Intentionality of the vis cognoscendi that puts me in mental contact with things that I am not. How does this contact happen? How does mens grasp what most radically differs from itself, namely the essence of body? What matters for our purposes is the central role played by mental acts. If the soul were not free to deliberately act on itself, mathematical objects could not be conceptualized, nor, consequently, the truth of their logical features perceived. The meditator on day five first distinctly imagines (imaginor)67 a continuous quantity extended in length, breadth and depth, then counts (numero) various parts in it, and finally assigns (assigno) to these parts various shapes, sizes, positions and motions (AT VII, 63).68 Distinct (non–overlapping) parts can then be numbered, and various curves imagined to construct figures of various shapes and sizes.69 Figures display “position” (situs) and can be moved imaginatively at various rates and for various lengths of time.70 Descartes, in short, grasps that the essence of mathematics is its freedom. Free mental acts thus present the intellect with an ideal manifold of interrelated quanta. Active construction is followed by intentional attending and then perceiving: attendendo percipiendo. When the meditator applies his attention to numbers and figures, he perceives innumerable particulars (particularia innumera) whose truth appears so openly and conforms so well to my nature that it seems to me, as I start to discover them, that I am not learning anything new but rather remembering (reminisci) what I already knew. (AT VII, 63–64)71

Descartes’s qualified anamnesis doctrine72 is not a metaphysical theory but a phenomenological description of how mathematical truths trigger in the investigator a rational experience of the familiar: I seem to be remembering what I already knew before, which is to say to be noticing (advertere) for the first time things that were in some sense (quidem) in me all along, although I had not previously turned

66 my mind’s gaze (obtutum mentis convertissem) to them. (Meditation V: AT VII, 64)73

The first leg of Descartes’ description suggests that mathematical truths are already known to me, since I “seem to remember what I already knew before,” while the second leg insists on a first encounter.74 Intentional “turning to” (advertere, convertere) coincides with my becoming aware that I re-cognize truth as soon as I grasp the least “particular” truth (2+3=5)—that I am “re-minded” of what I had only forgotten. What my intentional gaze “hits” in illa and re-cognizes as familiar, as already “known” to me, is indeed the evident truth that they manifest: aperta veritas. Mathematical truths concern extension and therefore what I myself most emphatically am not, yet each one as such conspicuously “accords” with my nature: naturae meae consentanea (AT VII, 63-64).75 What exactly “accords” with me? What do I know of a triangle and about it that “re–minds” me of what I would not be seeking if I did not already in some sense know it? This is explained when Descartes turns, next, to what he finds to be “most worthy of consideration (maxime considerandum puto)” (AT VII, 64). Since innate mathematical ideas, unlike sensations, do not impose themselves on consciousness involuntarily, but are voluntarily summoned through deliberate mental acts, whatever alterity they display—and they could not “accord” with my nature without being “other” than me in some crucial sense—is a radically different sort of alterity than the alterity “suffered” in sensation, when, for example, we feel cold whether we want it or not.76 Once innate mathematical ideas are freely brought before the mind’s gaze, the special alterity they exhibit alerts me that “they cannot be judged to be nothing even though they perhaps exist nowhere” (AT VII, 64).77 In this regard, they differ notably from fictions of my own making, since although (quamvis) they are thought by me, so to speak, at will (quodammodo ad arbitrium cogitentur), they are nonetheless not feigned by me (finguntur), but have their own true and immutable natures. (AT VII, 64)78

The Intentional states that converge in the presentation of a thought thus allow me to distinguish true ideas (ideas veras mihi ingenitas) from false suppositions (falsas positiones) which I myself invent.79 In particular, what makes it possible for me to distinguish true ideas from chimeras of my own making is precisely the experience of acting—which is the experience of making things happen at will (ad arbitrium cogitare). Only if I act and perceive that my actions are effective do I also perceive the limits of my actions and have the

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contrasting experience of failing to make things happen by acting. This means that only a being (1) capable of operating freely and (2) reflexively conscious of operating freely can ever be in a position to judge that purely logical relations resist efforts to change them at will and are, as such, real, regardless of whether they exist “anywhere in the world.” The alterity that innate ideas oppose to mental manipulation attests to a positivity that transcends the ego’s causal agency without in any way being tied to extramental existence. Descartes, in short, far from pointing in the disastrous direction of Kant, anticipates Peirce, Frege and Russell, in arguing that relations are real. Now, we know from Meditation III that the innate idea of God is paradigmatic of the positivity that marks true ideas since (1) the actual infinite is “a true idea, not a mere negation of finitude” (Meditation III: AT VII, 45) and since (2) I recognize, as soon as I think it, that it is not in my power to “add or subtract anything” (AT VII, 51).80 Moreover the content presented to cognition by the paradigmatic innate idea of God, namely absolute incomprehensibility, is supremely “clear and distinct.”81 In contrast, in the case of ideas that I “feign,” the same initial freedom is experienced that marks the intentional presentation of innate ideas, but the content that appears, much like the content of sensory ideas, fails to impose precise constraints on cognition. If I think of a chimera, a receding horizon of indeterminacy clings to my thought. I must myself continue to invent and determine its properties. When I just as deliberately think of a triangle, I encounter a forma determinata with properties that are fully fixed in advance of my thinking: there is no “last” property beyond which confusion and indistinctness take over. To recognize that the triangle is a vera res possessed of “its own true and immutable essence” is equivalent to grasping that its properties comply in advance and ad infinitum with the principle of excluded middle:82 this is why the idea of the triangle includes, as Descartes clarifies to Gassendi, the “perfection of possible existence,” which a chimera lacks.83 This brings us to a special sort of “attending and perceiving,” namely demonstration. A vera res existing objectively in the mind, unlike a figment of my own invention, possesses properties that can be known demonstratively.84 Descartes points out that mathematical demonstration is characterized by what Poincaré will call its “ampliative” character:85 the mathematician demonstrates more properties than were explicitly or intentionally attributed to a given figure beforehand.86 Thus it is possible for me to prove, for example, that the sum of the three angles of a triangle equals two right angles, which I now (nunc) clearly acknowledge whether I want to or not

68 (velim nolim), even though I had in no way thought about them beforehand (antea), when I imagined a triangle. (AT VII, 64)87

Demonstrative properties are grasped by the subject precisely as mind-independent and as pre-existing because they transcend arbitrary subjective action.88 Part of the perceptual content is that the perceptual content is caused by the properties of the triangle, not the other way around. Demonstration saves me from myself by converting me to the positivity of true things that clearly and distinctly determine my thought velim nolim—according to their own “proper and determinate nature,” immutable and eternal (imutabilis et eterna) (AT VII, 64).89 Ordered operations converge to present me with truths that precede the time at which I first become aware of them and therefore appear to me precisely as time-invariant. What I acknowledge nunc as necessary (velim nolim) belonged as such to the triangle antea, without beginning. Thus whereas I initially imagine a triangle and freely apply my rational gaze to its three sides, I now witness truths that I never myself put there nor could have put there. When my thoughts are thoughts of true things, I grasp that My thought does not make [the thing be such and such], or impose any necessity to the thing, rather the necessity [that belongs] to the thing itself determines my thought [to be such and such]. (Meditation V: AT VII, 67)90

My intellect comprehends the (finite) content of the theorem, but my will affirms its (infinite) necessity as a saturated alterity. The theorem is intelligible, but its necessity exceeds me. To the source of the logical necessity that determines my thought velim nolim whenever I grasp a fact as “true,” I have no cognitive access and therefore affirm logical necessity as absolute quoad me. We must keep in mind that the “eternal truths” decreed freely by God and imprinted on the mind are necessary quoad nos but are merely eternal quoad Deum, since God is not necessitated to decree them.91 To grasp the Pythagorean Theorem as time-invariant is to grasp its independence from my thought and from my temporal acts, and therefore to submit to its logical necessity as an irreducible feature of its Intentional presentation.92 The Truthrule is thus critically enriched by the (clear and distinct) perception that I cannot change what I clearly and distinctly perceive to be true because logical necessity is not something I can command and put in a thought myself. Truth exceeds me absolutely and is incomprehensible to me as such. I witness it and embrace it precisely because I myself cannot supply it any more than I can change it. I “give myself” over to the alterity that exceeds me and gives me to know what I cannot give

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myself whenever I am “re-reminded” of even the least mindindependent truth.93 A general corollary of rational Intentionality can consequently be framed that simply affirms logical necessity quoad nos by acknowledging that the defining characteristics that make up a valid concept (“true and immutable nature”) actually belong as properties to the (necessarily) possible elements that fall under the concept: “whatever we clearly conceive to belong to the nature of a thing can be said or affirmed of that thing with truth” (Second Set of Replies: AT VII, 149).94 But wait, the rule itself is necessary quoad nos. Does it say anywhere that logical necessity applies only to the finite domain? No. Therefore it would be arbitrary to restrict the rule to innate ideas that are marked by limits and to exclude the infinite case of God’s (unbracketable) existence. Rejected by Aristotelians,95 embraced by a number of Oratorians,96 Descartes’s reformulation of Anselm’s proof97 fails to convert the modern critic,98 but deserves new scrutiny as the “first truth upon which all truths depend” (Letter to Mersenne, 6 May 1630: AT I, 150).99 The meditator never sets out in Meditation V to prove God’s existence but rather to bracket extramental existence generally in order to examine ideal quanta. As with all true science, logic leads to new discovery. No sooner does mathematical anamnesis lead to the general rule of rational Intentionality than we are forced to admit velim nolim that the rule of logical necessity governs all innate ideas, including therefore the idea of God. In this case, what we cannot arbitrarily change is God’s infinite possibility, which is to say his per se necessity. We cannot bracket existence. Far from “reducing” God to finite parameters of conceptualization, the intentional parity of innate ideas100 testifies to the infinite range of logical truth and therefore, once again, testifies that Truth exceeds me and is not of my own making. I find the idea of God in me no less than I find in me the idea of a given figure or number; I understand no less clearly and distinctly that it belongs to God’s nature to exist than that what I demonstrate to belong to the nature of a given number belongs to it; I must therefore be no less certain of the truth of God’s existence than of mathematical truths. To deny God’s existence per essentiam would be arbitrarily, even perversely, to deny the generality of a rule that I have just endorsed as true because necessary quoad me. The paradox lies in the incomprehensible mind-independence of a concept that says about itself that it can neither be empty nor contain more than one member. Descartes captures this saturated necessity with a double negative: “I am not at liberty to think of God without existence” (AT VII, 67).101 Descartes of course hopes that God’s per se existence will “extort” a cry of assent from even the “most stubborn” meditator,102 just as the

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cogito had earlier elicited a spontaneous “cry” from the ego affirming its own existence in Meditation III (AT VII, 36).103 Once God’s (incomprehensible) necessity is grasped as unsurpassably certain (certissimum videtur), I remark (animadverto) that the certainty of all other things depends on this [first certainty] to such an extent that nothing could ever be known perfectly without it. (AT VII, 69)104

The Truth-rule, in effect, can now be grasped as a mind– independent truth about the mind. Introduced in Meditation III as a possibly valid general rule105 and stated at the end of Meditation IV as a matter of subjective indubitability,106 the Truth–rule is finally stated as a demonstrated theorem in Meditation V: “I gathered that all those things which I perceive clearly and distinctly are by necessity true (collegi illa omnia quae clare et distincte percipio necessario esse vera)” (AT VII, 70; emphasis added). Once God’s per se existence is known, the Truth–rule, like the Pythagorean theorem, is true “whether I want it or not”—velim nolim. Moreover God’s existence, once “remembered,” is per se unforgettable since rational anamnesis has reached its own extrinsic validation in the truth that Truth cannot not be. In contrast, the atheist or agnostic mathematician uses the Truth– rule as pragmatically expedient, ignorant (ignarus) of what makes it true. If he wants to redeem mathematics from psychologism (or idealism), he must resort to the pis-aller argument that “if logic is doubted, then nothing at all can be said.” His science is true, but he himself cannot validate its truth as long as he regards reason as self-validating. On the other hand, did reason not just validate itself precisely by renouncing self-validation and deriving itself from the paradox that God cannot be thought as non-existent? 4. Beyond Autarchy. Although Descartes seems to target atheism as such,107 his focus is more subtle. The key insight reached in Meditation V is that all things depend on God: intellexi omnia ab eo pendere.108 The consequence regarding altruism is twofold. First, the meditator acknowledges that God wants/wills all of these material possibilities no less than he wants/wills my existence as a spiritual thing and as a witness of his myriad possibilities.109 Second, the meditator acknowledges that everything that he has and is comes from God as a gift.110 By renouncing himself as center and autarch of his own being, he is cured, not only or even primarily of hyberbolic doubt, but, more importantly for the

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practical science of life that he seeks, of the originary egoism that marked the cogito.111 The design of Meditation V is clarified in a letter to Chanut. Outlining the steps that lead human beings to love God (the same steps that “raise human nature to its highest perfection”) Descartes says that we must first convince ourselves that the human soul bears a similitude to God’s own nature, “as though it were emanated from his sovereign intelligence like a spark” (Letter to Chanut, 1 February 1647: AT IV, 608).112 Because our knowledge, aiming for God’s own infinite knowledge, seems to have the power to increase indefinitely, we risk, however, falling into “the extravagance of wishing to be gods ourselves” (AT IV, 608).113 To correct the pull of this secret extravagance, we must “pay close attention to the infinity of God’s power” and take note that “all things depend on God” (AT IV, 608-09). The res cogitans must recognize both its spiritual dignity (the infinity of rational freedom) and its dependence on God (the infinity of necessity quoad nos).114 Whoever properly understands that all things depend on God is filled with a joy so extreme that, far from being so injurious and ungrateful towards God as to wish to take his place, he feels that his life is fulfilled already by the fact that God gave him the capacity to reach such a level of knowledge; and, joining himself wholly to God through his will, he loves God so perfectly that he desires nothing in the world except that God’s will be accomplished. (AT IV, 609)115

As Jean–Luc Marion points out, Descartes’s definition of charity in the Letter to Voetius implies a passing of the ego from self and from self–representation to loving God’s infinite alterity and therefore to loving other egos for God’s sake.116 This is precisely the transition that is initiated in Meditation V: the meditator discovers that the essence of cognition is not self-reflexive certainty, but exposure to alterity and above all to the alterity of “God who is Truth” and who shines on all creatures equally and gives le bon sens, the inner light, equally to all human beings.117 The altruistic law invoked in the Discours to justify publication but also therefore to recast science from a self– serving trade into a vocation to serve the human community stems directly from passing from persuasio to scientia and therefore subordinating the cogito to God. In the Sixth Set of Objections, when Descartes is challenged by theologians to defend himself against Biblical passages that warn against the vanity of human knowledge,118 he argues that St. Paul rejects only

72 science that is not conjoined to charity, which is to say the science of atheists. For indeed anyone who knows God, as he should, cannot not love Him and not have charity. (AT VII, 429)119

Turning to Ecclesiastes, Descartes explains that Solomon repents of his faults and testifies that, as long as he wished to rely exclusively on human knowledge without referring it to God and without regarding it as a gift from God’s hand, he was unable to find anything that fully satisfied him or did not appear to him to be full of vanity. (AT VII, 430)120

Before Solomon referred science to God, he lived unsatisfied, centered on himself, perhaps keeping his discoveries to himself rather than sharing them publicly to serve humankind. As Descartes explains to Elizabeth, whoever sufficiently knows God and loves him, in contrast, sets aside his own self-interest121 and finds “incomparably” higher satisfaction in acts that “stem from a pure altruistic affection, without regard for oneself, which is the Christian virtue known as charity” (6 October 1645: AT IV, 308–09).122 5. Conclusion. This brings us back to Blondel. Like Blondel, Descartes means by human action radically free rational action. Like Blondel, he conceptualizes the freedom that we have to act precisely as infinite. Like Blondel, albeit in his own mathematical way, he shows that action is required for thought and sheds light on thought.123 Like Blondel, Descartes depicts action as the highest (“noblest”) human calling and argues that loving God is the highest fulfillment of human action.124 Let us now address Blondel’s main criticism. While he praises Descartes for affirming the incomprehensibility of the divine infinite and therefore the heterogeneity of human and divine understanding, Blondel blames him for promoting rationalism as a self–enclosed sphere where human “reason is sovereign.”125 The charge is twofold: Descartes on the one hand undermines rational theology (including rational preambles) and on the other hand promotes the “self–sufficiency of human being qua purely human.” The first charge can be put to rest based on the explicit statement to Father Charlet that Cartesian philosophy will serve advantageously to explain (expliquer) the truths of Faith.126 The second charge implies that Cartesian philosophy is insufficiently “penetrated” with Christian recognition of the infirmity of man in statu isto. Should we recall that the last injunction of the Meditations is to acknowledge the infirmity

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of our nature: infirmitas est agnoscenda? Blondel denounces Descartes’s claim that Pour bien agir, il suffit de bien penser,127 but fails to sufficiently appreciate that free, bold and resolute actions are required by Descartes in order to think well in the first place. Far from being self-sufficient, the Cartesian meditator at every step and with his whole active freedom cooperates with the many degrees of light that he receives from God and for which he expresses gratitude: debeo gratias eius datori.128 The centrality of free action, in this regard, cannot be overemphasized: once the infinity of freedom is formally conceived, in Meditation IV, the Cartesian meditator mobilizes this infinite freedom to resolve to remember his infinite freedom each time he acts—thus freely acquiring by his own free effort the habit of not acting out of habit.129 Such liberation is a critical goal of the Ignatian Exercises and a cherished principle of Salesian devotion. What is at stake, in the resolve to cooperate with reason as an innate gift and first level of grace,130 is the hope of “staying awake for good”—of spiritual action that is no longer hostage to selfish impulses and therefore no longer feels like effort.131

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1 L’Action. Thèse présentée à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris par Maurice Blondel, ancien élève de l’Ecole normale supérieure, agrégé de philosophie (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1893). 2 Maurice Blondel, Carnets Intimes (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1961), I, 48–49: “26 mars, 1884: “J’ai été surpris de voir combien on avait retenu de mon pauvre Descartes . . . Je sens vivement tout ce qu’est, ce que peut, ce que vaut la charité, dans la communication des âmes . . . Je sens aussi tout ce que l’action, – la pensée fécondée par l’amour, – l’enfant de l’entendement et de la puissance, l’activité du Saint–Esprit, a de dignité, de prix, d’achèvement; et comment, née du fini intellectuel et de l’infini volontaire, elle est tout l’homme qu’elle porte à sa fin.” I warmly thank Joseph Blondel for giving me a copy of the Carnets. 3 Carnets Intimes, I, 110. 4 Maurice Blondel, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: PUF, 1995), I, 155 (L’Action, 121): “Pour agir, il faut participer à une puissance infinie; pour avoir conscience d’agir il faut qu’on ait l’idée de cet infini pouvoir. Or c’est dans l’acte raisonnable qu’il y a synthèse de la puissance et de l’idée d’infini; et cette synthèse c’est ce que l’on nomme la liberté.” 5 M. Blondel, Carnets Intimes, I, 93. Cf. also: ”Les contemplatifs font une pure action. Pensant et priant et souffrant, tout en Dieu, c’est une vie très active et très opérante.” 6 Carnets Intimes, I, 85: “Je me propose d’étudier l’action, parce qu’il me semble que dans l’Evangile il est attribué à l’action seule le pouvoir de manifester l’amour et d’acquérir Dieu.” 7 Itinéraire Philosophique, 66–67; cited in J.–M. Parys, S.J., La Vocation de la liberté (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1968): 7. 8 Blondel, Carnets Intimes, 82: “Montrer par l’analyse rigoureuse de l’action ce qu’elle ajoute de bien moral ou de mal à l’intention. Personne n’a tenté cela. Et c’est l’essentiel.” 9 References to Descartes will be provided according to the Adam and Tannery editions with the original text quoted in the endnotes. All translations of Descartes are my own. 10 “nam sicut multos artifices de suis inventis fecisse compertum est, timuerunt forte, quia facillima erat et simplex, ne vulgata vilesceret” (AT X, 376). 11 See Principes de Philosophie, “Lettre de l’Autheur,” AT IXb, 18: “lorsqu’on a de vrai Principes en Philosophie, on ne peut manquer en les suivant de rencontrer parfois d’autres veritez; et on ne sçauroit mieux prouver la fausseté de ceux d’Aristote, qu’en disant qu’on n’a sceu faire aucun progrez par leur moyen depuis pluseirus siecles qu’on les a suivis.” 12 “I’ay creu que ie ne pouvois les tenir cachées, sans pecher grandement contre la loy qui nous oblige à procurer, autant qu’il est en nous, le bien general de tous les hommes.”

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13

See on this important subject Matthew Jones’s illuminating study , “Descartes’s Geometry as Spiritual Exercise,” Critical Inquiry 28, Autumn (2001): 40–71. 14 Nicely studied by Jean–Luc Solère, “Remédier aux passions: de la fortitudo antique et médiévale à la résolution cartésienne,” in Les Passions antiques et médiévales, eds. Bernard Besnier, Pierre–François Moreau and Laurence Renault (Paris: PUF, 2003): 213–48. 15 “Toutefois ie ne fais aucun doute que nous ne puissions veritablement aimer Dieu par la seule force de notre nature.” 16 Descartes’s promised “histoire de mon esprit” (see Balzac’s letter to Descartes, 30 March 1628: AT I, 570) will appear as Discours de la Méthode. The second published narrative of his personal espitemologic journey is in Meditation VI: AT VII, 74–78. 17 Using John Searle’s analysis (and capitalization of Intentional, to distinguish it from the ordinary meaning of “intentional”) in Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 18 See e.g. Les passions de l’âme, §17: AT XI, 342. See also Descartes’s letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV, 113: “il me semble que c’est une passion de l’ame de recevoir telle ou telle idée, et qu’il n’y a que ses volontez qui soient des actions.” 19 See Principes, I, §32, AT VIIIa, 17: “Qu’il n’y a en nous que deux sortes de pensées (modos cogitandi), à savoir la perception de l’entendement (perceptionem intellectus) et l’action de la volonté (operatio voluntatis).” 20 Searle, Intentionality, 4–13. 21 Cf. Searle, Intentionality, 112–40. Note that while Searle works with a very broad definiton of acting, which includes, for example, a dog chasing a ball, Descartes restricts “action” to self–consciously deliberate actions. Walking in one’s sleep and even while awake do not qualify, in Descartes’s view, as bona fide actions, but merely stem from habit. Cf. Descartes’s Letter to Newcastle, 23 November 1646: AT V, 573. 22 Cf. Searle, Intentionality, 91–93. Using Searle’s analysis, we would say that the representative content of the prior intention would be expressed as “I perform the action of making a resolution by way of carrying out this intention”; whereas the presentational content of the intention in action is “My resolution is made as a result of this intention in action.” See also p. 84: “the characteristic linguistic form of expression of a prior intention is ‘I will do A.’ The characteristic form of expression of an intention in action is ‘I am doing A.’ The intention in action is the Intentional content of the action.” 23 Letter to Mesland, 9 February 1645, AT IV, 173 and 175: “Notandum etiam libertatem considerari posse in actionibus voluntatis, vel antequam eliciantur, vel dum eliciantur. . . . Libertas autem spectata in actionibus voluntatis, eo ipso tempore quo eliciuntur, nullam indifferentiam . . . quia quod fit, non potest manere infectum, quandoquidem fit. Sed consistit in sola operandi facilitate.”

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See Searle’s discussion, Intentionality, 3; and Richard Taylor, “Mental Acts,” in Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice–Hall, 1966), 153–66. 25 Intentionality, 102–103. 26 “Nos volontez sont de deux sortes. Car les unes sont des actions de l’ame, qui se terminent en l’ame mesme, comme lorsque nous voulons aymer Dieu, ou generalement appliquer notre pensée à quelque objet qui n’est point matériel. Les autres sont des actions qui se terminent en nostre corps, comme lors que de cela seul que nous avons la volonté de nous promener, il suit que nos jambes se remuent et que nous marchions.” 27 See (1) the Dedication Letter to Elizabeth of the Principia philosophiae, AT VIIIa, 3: “modo tamen firmam et constantem retineant voluntatem nihil omittendi, quo ad recti cognitionem perveniant . . . Deo gratissimi esse possint.”; and (2) Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV, 117: “car l’homme pouvant n’avoir pas tousiours une parfaite attention aux choses qu’il doit faire, c’est une bonne action que de l’avoir, et de faire, par son moyen, que notre volonté suive si fort la lumiere de nostre entendement.” Emphasis added. 28 “Esto igitur, et adhuc semel laxissimas habenas ei permittamus, ut, illis paulo post opportune reductis, facilius se rei patiatur” (Meditation II: AT VII, 29). 29 Cf. Searle’s analysis of the experience of acting (Intentionality, 16) which starts with Wittgenstein’s famous question: “When I raise my arm, what is left over if I subtract the fact that arm goes up?” 30 The special religious importance of vows is, quite obviously, tied to these philosophical features. 31 Discours, II, AT VI, 15: “se défaire de toutes les opinions qu’on a reçu auparavant dans sa créance.” 32 “Ie crains bien que cetuy–cy ne soit desia que trop hardi pour plusieurs. La seule resolution de se défaire de toutes les opinions qu’on a receues auparavant en sa creance, n’est pas un exemple que chascun doive suivre.” 33 Cf. Passions, §173, AT XI, 461–62: “Comment la hardiesse depend de l’esperence.” 34 See the Letter to Chanut, 1 February 1647: AT IV, 615–16. 35 “si quod temporis superest ad agendum, deliberando consumerem.” Cf. Passions, §171: AT XI, 459. 36 “rationis lumine augendo, non ut hanc aut illam scholae difficultatem resolvat, sed ut singulis vitae casibus intellectus voluntati praemonstret quid sit eligendum.” 37 Cf. in this regard Baillet’s account of Descartes’s state in November 1619, AT X, 180: “Il ne lui restoit que l’amour de la vérité, dont la poursuite devoit faire dorénavant toute l’occupation de sa vie.” 38 “jam ratio persuadet, non munus accurate ab iis quae non plane certa sunt atque indubita, quam ab aperte falsis assensionem esse cohibendam.” 39 Cf. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. A. Mottola (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 132: “The enemy’s behavior is like that of a military leader

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[. . .] who studies the strength and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks on the weakest side.” 40 “considerabo meipsum tanquam manus non habentem, non oculos, non carnem, non sanguinem, non aliquem sensum, sed haec omnia me habere falso opinantem.” Cf. Discours, IV, AT VI, 31: “ie pensay qu’il faloit que je fisse tout le contraire.” 41 On the Ignatian technique of contra agere, see W. Meissner, “Transformative Processes in the Spiritual Exercises,” in Psyche and Spirit, eds. Meissner and Schlauch (New York: U. Press of America, 2003): 141–43. 42 “siquidem non in potestate meae sit aliquid veri cognoscere, at certe hoc quod in me est, ne falsis assentiar.” 43 See the summary of Meditation I given in the Principia, I, §6, AT VIIIa, 6: “Sed interim, a quocunque tandem simus, et quantumvis ille sit potens, quantumvis fallax, hanc nihilominus in nobis libertatem esse experiemur, ut semper ab iis credendis, quae non plane certa sunt et explorata, possimus abstinere; atque ita cavere, ne unquam erremus.” 44 Maurice Blondel, L’Action, 118, in Oeuvres Complètes, I, 152. 45 Meditation II, AT VII, 25: “Sed mihi persuasi nihil plane esse in mundo, nullum coelum, nullam terram, nullas mentes, nulla corpora; nonne igitur etiam me non esse? Imo certe ego eram, si quid mihi persuasi.” 46 See in particular Descartes’ Letter to Mersenne of 27 April 1637, AT I, 366: “pour ce que vous inferez que, si la nature de l’homme n’est que de penser, il n’a donc point de volonté, ie n’en voy pas la consequence; car vouloir, entendre, imaginer, sentir, etc., ne sont que des diverses façons de penser, qui apartiennent toutes à l’ame.” 47 Letter to Mersenne, 28 January 1641: AT III, 295. 48 AT VIIIa, 7: “Sic autem rejicientes illa omnia, de quibus possumus dubitare, ac etiam falsa esse fingentes, facile quidem supponimus nullum esse Deum, nullum coelum, nulla coprora; nosque etiam ipsos non habere manus, nec pedes; non autem ideo nos, qui talia cogitamus, nihil esse . . . Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima et certissima, quae cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurat.” 49 In answer, e.g., to the criticisms raised by Peter Markie in “The Cogito and its Importance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 140-73. See especially 165: “[Descartes] seems committed to the view that he thinks of himself by conceiving some concept of himself. Yet, no adequate concept of him seems available.” The problem disappears on my analysis that the ego by acting perceives itself as the causal agent who acts. 50 “la volonté se porte volontairement, et librement (car cela est de son essence), mais néanmoins infalliblement, au bien qui lui est clairement connu.” 51 “il est certain que nous ne sçaurions vouloir aucune chose, que nous n’apercevions par mesme moyen que nous la voulons.” 52 Passions, §19, AT XI, 343: “Et bien qu’au regard de nostre ame, ce soit une action de vouloir quelque chose, on peut dire que c’est aussi en elle une

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passion d’apercevoir qu’elle veut. Toutefois, à cause que cette perception et cette volonté ne sont en effect qu’une mesme chose, la denomination se fait tousjours par ce qui est le plus noble; et ainsi on n’a point coustume de la nommer une passion, mais seulement une action.” Emphasis added. 53 “sola est voluntas, sive arbitrii libertas, quam tantam in me experior, ut nullius majoris ideam apprehendam; adeo ut illa praecipue sit, ratione cujus imaginem quandam et similitudinem Dei me referre intelligo.” 54 L’Action, in Oeuvres Complètes, I, 150. 55 Although Descartes sometimes uses the word “spontaneous” (sponte) in connection with reason (Meditation III: AT VII, 36), he also uses it, like Blondel, to describe “natural inclinations” (impetus naturales) or the “blind impulse” that underlies naïve empiricism (ex caeco aliquo impulsu). See Meditation III, AT VII, 38-39: “Cum hic dico me ita doctum esse a natura, intelligo tantum spontaneo quodam impetu me ferri ad hoc credendum.” Cartesian dualism thus seems to imply, as we saw, two “instincts,” a rational instinct for rational action and Truth, and an animal instinct for physical selfpreservation. (I thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested that I clarify this point.) 56 Note that the Letter of 6 October is a veritable mini–treatise on animal conditioning. 57 Cf. Meditation I, AT VII, 19: “ut constanter asseverent se esse reges cum sunt nudi.” 58 As Harry Frankfurt points out in “Descartes’s Validation of Reason” in American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 264, Descartes does not take “indubitable” and “true” to be synonyms. See also 266, where Frankfurt summarizes the problem facing clear and distinct intuitions: “The fact that he is persuaded of their truth to this extent is not the same as their being true; nor is his inability at the time to conceive that he could be mistaken the same as his being in fact free of error.” 59 For analysis of the “Failure of Truth–Functionality” and intentionality, see R.M. Chisholm, “Sentences about Believing,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955/56): 125–48. 60 For a strong statement against psychologism, see e.g. Bertrand Russell, “The Axiom of Infinity” (1904), reprinted in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, ed. Alasdair Urquhart (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), vol. IV, 478: “The truth is that, throughout logic and mathematics, the existence of the human or any other mind is totally irrelevant; mental processes are studied by means of logic, but the subject–matter of logic does not presuppose mental processes, and would be equally true if there were no mental processes. A truth and the knowledge of it are as distinct as an apple and the eating of it.” 61 Cf. Janowski, Cartesian Theodicy, 76n59, who emphasizes the distinction made by Descartes to Regius between science and persuasion: “ac proinde, ne tunc quidem, cum illas ex istis principiis deduximus, scientiam (sic), sed tantum persuasionem, de illis (sc. de conclusionibus ex claris principiis deductis) nos habuisse” (Letter to Regius, 24 May 1640: AT III, 64–65).

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Rodis-Lewis, “On the Complementarity of Meditation III and V,” in Essays on Descartes’s Meditations, 282. 63 Gassendi will challenge him about this (AT VII, 320–21) as will Berman (AT V, 161–62), but Descartes holds firm against Gassendi (AT VII, 381–82) and explains succinctly to Berman (AT V, 162): “Non possem enim concipere imperfectum triangulum, nisi in me esset idea perfecti, quia illud hujus negatio.” Cf. Mark Olson, “Descartes’ First Meditation: Mathematics and the Laws of Logic,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 26, 1988: 427. Olson points out that rejecting the Aristotelian/Thomistic theory of abstraction “paves the way for the Ontological argument.” 64 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Part II, q. 180, a. 6, ad. 2: “the soul’s gaze (is) fixed on the contemplation of the one simple truth. In this operation of the soul there is no error.” Cf. as well François de Sales, Traité de l’Amour de Dieu, I, c. 15, in Oeuvres Complètes, I, 395. 65 “quamdiu de Deo tantum cogito, totusque in eum me converto, nullam erroris aut falsitatis causam deprenhendo; sed postmodum ad me reversus experior me tamen innumeris erroribus esse obnoxium.” 66 See in this regard Charles Parsons’ statement in Mathematics in Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1983), 176: “The ‘philosophy of mathematics’ when it has not concentrated on specific methodological issues in mathematics, has chiefly sought to explain a single impressive gross feature of mathematics: its combination of clarity and certainty with enormous generality.” 67 Cf. Letter to Elizabeth, 6 October 1645, AT IV, 311. 68 “Nempe distincte imaginor quantitatem; numero in ea varias partes; quaslibet istis partibus magnitudines, figuras, situs, et motus locales, motibusque istis quaslibet duratione assigno.” Cf. Albert Einstein’s remark in Mein Weltbild (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934), English translation by Sonja Bargmann in Ideas and Opinions (New York: Laurel, 1976), 2nd edition, 272: “It is clear that the concept of space as a real thing already existed in the extra-scientific conceptual world. Euclid’s mathematics, however, knew nothing of this concept as such; it confined itself to the concepts of the object, and the spatial relations between objects [. . .]. Space as a continuum does not figure in the conceptual system at all. This concept was first introduced by Descartes, when he described the point-in-space by its coordinates. Here for the first time geometrical figures appear, in a way, as parts of infinite space, which is conceived as a three-dimensional continuum.” 69 See Einstein’s further remark in Ideas and Opinions, 272–73: “The great superiority of the Cartesian treatment of space is by no means confined to the fact that it applies analysis for the purposes of geometry. . . In the Cartesian treatment . . . all surfaces, for example, appear, in principle, on equal footing, without any arbitrary preference for linear structures in building up geometry.” In his 1684 Entretien sur les Sciences, the Oratorian priest Bernard Lamy, similarly, remarks: “Des–Cartes dans sa geometrie nous a apris la veritable methode de connoitre toutes sortes de lignes courbes.” See

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Bernard Lamy, Entretiens sur les Sciences, eds. F. Girbal and P. Clair (Paris: PUF, 1966): 221. 70 The meditator, in short, is invited to “emerge from doubt” by embracing Cartesian geometry as the essence of material things. See Letter to Mersenne 27 July 1638, AT II, 268 and Principia, II, §16, AT IXb, 71; see also Daniel Garber’s classic study, “Descartes’s Physics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes: 286–334. 71 “quorum veritas adeo aperta est et naturae meae consentanea, ut, dum illa primum detego, non tam videar aliquid novi addiscere, quam eorum quae jam ante sciebam reminisci.” 72 Cf. Descartes’s defense of innate ideas in Letter to Voetius, AT VIIIb, 166– 67: “Sed notandum est eas omnes res, quarum cognitio dicitur nobis esse a natura indita, non ideo a nobis expresse cognosci; sed tantum tales esse, ut ipsas, absque ullo sensuum experimento, ex proprii ingenii viribus, cognoscere possimus. Cujus generis sunt omnes geometricae veritates, non tantum maxime obviae, sed etiam reliquae, quantumvis abstrusae videantur. Atque inde Socrates apud Platonem, puerum quemdam de Geometricis elementis interrogando, sicque efficiendo ut ille puer quasdam veritates ex mente propria erueret, quas prius in ea fuisse non notaverat, reminiscentiam suam probare conabatur.” 73 “eorum quae jam ante sciebam reminisci, sive ad ea primum advertere, quae dudum quidem in me erant, licet non prius in illa obtutum mentis convertissem.” 74 Does Descartes suppose two distinct states of knowledge, one latent and one conscious, in the same way that Augustine draws a distinction between the “more remote” memory where intellectual ideas lie scattered and the conscious commemorative activity of cogitatio—a distinction which in turn evokes the Neoplatonic distinction between nous and dianoia? See Richard Sorabji, “Why The Neoplatonists Did Not Have Intentional Objects Of Intellection,” in Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden: Brill, 2001): 106. While O’Meara argues that discursive reason (dianoia) has an intentional “aboutness” and “directedness,” Sorabji argues that intellect as such (nous) does not. 75 “particularia innumera de figuris, de numero, de motu, et similibus, attendendo percipio, quorum veritas adeo aperta est et naturae meae consentanea.” 76 See e.g. Meditation III, AT VII, 51: “nec unquam non expectanti mihi advenit, ut solent rerum sensibilium ideae.” 77 AT VII, 64: “Etiam si extra me fortasse nullibi existant, non tamen dici possunt nihil esse.” 78 “quamvis a me quodammodo ad arbitrium cogitentur, non tamen a me finguntur, sed suas habent veras et immutabiles naturas.” 79 Descartes draws this distinction a little later in Meditation V, AT VII, 68: “Magna differentia est inter ejusmodi falsas positiones, et ideas veras mihi ingenitas.” See on this subject two articles that clarify the questions raised by this distinction and the problems involved: Calvin Normore, “Descartes’s

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Possibilities” and Gregory Brown, “Vera Entia: The Nature of Mathematical Objects in Descartes,” both reprinted in Georges J. D. Moyal, ed., René Descartes: Critical Assessments (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), III: 68–83 and 84–102. 80 The phrase is repeated in Meditation V, AT VII, 68: “nihil a me detrahi potest nec mutari.” 81 As Descartes explains in First Set of Replies, AT VII, 112: “prudenter vero hic quaerit, an clare et distincte cognoscam infinitum; . . . qua infinitum est, nullo quidem modo comprehendi, sed nihilominus tamen intelligi, quatenus scilicet clare et distincte intelligere aliquam rem talem esse, ut nulli plane in ea limites possint reperiri, est clare intelligere illam esse infinitam.” 82 A good way to appreciate the importance of the principle of excluded middle for mathematical “Platonism” is to read Paul Bernays’s discussion, “On Platonism in Mathematics,” and Brouwer’s opposing view in “Consciousness, Philosophy and Mathematics,” both in Philosophy of Mathematics, eds. P. Bernacerraf and H. Putnam (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 258-271 and 90-96. 83 Descartes adopts the classical position that a chimera “cannot be supposed to exist” after affirming that existentia possibilis is a perfection of the idea of the triangle (see Fifth Set of Replies, AT VII, 383). The best article on this subject, in my view, is Calvin Normore, “Meaning and Objective Being: Descartes and His Sources,” in A. Rorty, ed., Essays on Descartes’ Meditations: 223-41. 84 Cf. Descartes’ answer to Berman (AT V, 160), who questioned the difference between a triangle and a goatstag in this regard: “Sed sic nec chimera erit ens fictum, cum etiam de ea varias proprietates demonstrare queam.” Descartes uses the term connexum to indicate the notion of logical entailment when he discriminates for Burman between idea vera and suppositio. See also John Cottingham’s remarks in CB, 91. 85 See Henri Poincaré, “On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning,” in Philosophy of Mathematics, Selected Readings, eds. Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, 394 –402. Reprinted from Science and Hypothesis (New York: Dover, 1952) 1–19. 86 AT VII, 64: “demonstrari possint variae proprietates de isto triangulo.” See further Anthony Kenny, Descartes (New York: Random House, 1968): 154, together with Gregory Brown’s new step in “Vera Entia: The Nature of Mathematical Objects in Descartes,” René Descartes, Critical Assessments, III, 89–90. 87 “quas velim nolim clare nunc agnosco, etiamsi de iis nullo modo antea cogitaverim, cum triangulum imaginatus sum.” Emphasis added. 88 Compare Descartes’s view to Kurt Goedel’s satement, in “What is Cantor’s Continuum Problem ?” in Philosophy of Mathematics, 484: “despite their remoteness from sense perception, we do have something like a perception also of the objects of set theory, as is seen from the fact that the axioms force themselves upon us as true. I don’t see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, i.e., in mathematical intuition, than in

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sense perception.” 89 “Ut cum, exempli causa, triangulum imaginor . . . est tamen profecto determinata quaedam ejus natura, sive essentia, sive forma, immutabilis et aeterna.” 90 “non quod mea cogitatio hoc efficiat, sive aliquam necessitatem ulli rei imponat, sed contra quia ipsius rei, . . . necessitas me determinat ad hoc cogitandum.” Cf. Russell’s statement in Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1920), 169: “Logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology.” 91 Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV, 118: “Et encore que Dieu ait voulu que quelques veritez fussent necessaires, ce n’est pas à dire qu’il les ait necessairement voulues.” 92 Cf. Bertrand Russell, “Necessity and Possibility,” (1905), in Collected Papers, IV, 508–520, especially 511: “The view of necessity which we have been hitherto considering is the one which connects it with independence of particular times. This is the view which caused necessary propositions to be spoken of as ‘eternal truths.’” Bonaventure captures the experience of timelessness associated with necessary truths by saying that intellectual memory “has present in itself a changeless light in which it recalls changeless truths.” See Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. cap. III in The Journey of the Mind to God, ed.Stephen Brown (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1993), 64: “Ex tertia habetur, quod ipsa habet lucem incommutabilem sibi praesentem, in qua meminit invariabilium veritatem.” 93 Thus the whole argument of Jean-Luc Marion’s Étant donné (Paris: PUF, 1998) applies to Truth exactly to the same extent that it applies to Beauty. The Pythagorean theorem is as saturated with Truth as a Rothko canvas is with Beauty, and both are equally “unobjectifiable.” Nor does it serve to say that a mathematical theorem is a “phenomenon poor in intuition” since what is grasped Intentionally is a pure positivity/alterity that exceeds the ego and, by exceeding it, reveals itself as a case of Truth. (God, who says of himself that he is Love, also says that he is the Way and the Truth. Marion should say that all three transcend the finite ego.) 94 “quod clare intelligimus pertinere ad alicujus rei naturam, id potest de ea re cum veritate affirmari”; cf. Second Set of Replies, AT VII, 162, “cum quid dicimus in alicujus rei natura, sive conceptu, contineri, idem est ac si diceremus id de ea re verum esse, sive de ipsa posse affirmari” and 163 “Advertantque illa omnia, quae in iis contineri percipimus, vere de ipsis posse affirmari.” Cf. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, IV, ix, in Oeuvres, Collection Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), I, 457: “On doit attribuer à une chose ce que l’on conçoit clairement être renfermé dans l’idée qui la représente.” Cf. Gottlob Frege’s clarification in Foundations of Arithmetic, English trans. J.L.Austin (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern U. Press, 1980), 64: “By properties which are asserted of the concept I naturally do not mean the characteristics which make up the concept. These latter are properties of the things which fall under the concept, not of the concept.”

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See Alan C. Kors, Atheism in France, 1650–1729 (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1990), I, 297–322. 96 Most notably by the Oratorians Nicolas Joseph Poisson (Commentaire ... sur la Méthode de Mr.Descartes, 1671) and Bernard Lamy (Entretiens dur les sciences, 1684). Cited in Kors, Atheism in France, I, 334–36. 97 Which Mersenne had already cited against atheist scientists in Impiété des Deistes, Athees et Libertins. Faksimile-Neudruck der Ausgabe, Paris, 1624 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1975):113–17. 98 See Frege’s rejection in The Foundations of Arithmetic, 65: “Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down.” 99 “si Deus non esset, nihilominus istae veritates essent verae.” Note that Descartes conforms to the letter of Thomist doctrine insofar as he presents his propter quid proof only after he has first established God’s existence by a proof quia in Meditation III. Granted that the effect invoked, namely that the human mind possesses the idea of an actual infinity of perfection, is not given through sensation but through pure thought. For Thomas’s doctrine, see Summa theologiae, Part I a, q. 2, a. 1 and Summa Contra Gentiles I. a, c. 22. Descartes cites Summa theologiae, I b, a. 2, in his First Set of Replies to Caterus, AT VII, 114. For evidence that Descartes consciously ordered his proofs quia and propter quid sequentially, see First Set of Replies, AT VII, 120: “Quia duae tantum sunt viae per quas possit probari Deum esse, una nempe per effectus, et altera per ipsam ejus essentiam sive naturam, prioremque in Meditatione tertia pro viribus explanavi, non credidi alteram esse postea praetermittendam.” For evidence that Descartes’s Thomist opponents failed to appreciate his conformity with Thomas in this regard, see Kors, Atheism in France, I, 297–307. 100 AT VII, 65: “Certe eius ideam, nempe entis summe perfecti, non minus apud me invenio, quam ideam cujusvis figurae aut numeri.” 101 “neque enim liberum est Deum absque existentia cogitare.” 102 See Second Set of Replies, AT VII, 156. 103 “ut sponte erumpam in has voces.” 104 “caeterarum rerum certitudinem ab hoc ipso ita pendere, ut absque eo nihil unquam perfecte sciri posset.” 105 AT VII, 35: “ac proinde jam videor pro regula generali posse statuere, illud omne esse verum, quod valde clare et distincte percipio.” 106 AT VII, 62: “omnis clara et distincta perceptio proculdubio est aliquid ... ideoque proculdubio est vera.” Emphasis added. Note that the French translation at AT IX, 49–50 conveys only the first of these two “proculdubio” (“sans doute”). 107 Note that Mersenne had earlier (1623) diagnosed “quod nullas de Deo notitias habeamus” as a chief axiom of atheists, in Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Lutetiae Parisiorum, sumptibus Sebastiani Cramolsy, via Iacobaea sub Ciconijs): col. 233. Note also that Descartes, in his Letter of 6

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May 1630, specifically connects his doctrine of the creation of mathematical truths and the infinity of God to forestalling atheism. 108 Cf. Francis of Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, IV, c. 6, in Oeuvres Complètes, I (Paris: Gallimard, 1969): 542, cites I Corinthians 4: 7 and emphasizes: “Il est vrai que nous avons tout reçu de Dieu.” 109 The call to human being as “witness” of creation is implied, for example, in Discours, V, AT VI, 42: “et enfin de l’Homme, a cause qu’il en est le spectateur.” 110 Second Set of Replies, AT VII, 114: “nihil reale in nobis esse possit, quod non ab ispo datum.” 111 Cf. Jean–Luc Marion, “La solitude de l’ego,” in Questions cartésiennes (Paris: PUF, 1991), 190: “Le moi souffre et jouit indissolublement d’un egoisme originel, extra-et-pre-moral, involontaire et constitutif.” 112 Descartes is citing from Horace, Sat., II, 2, 79. Cf. Francis of Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, I, c. 15, in Oeuvres, I, 396: “. . . notre âme est spirituelle, indivisible, immortelle; entend, veut et veut librement; est capable de juger, discourir, savoir, et avoir des vertus: en quoi elle ressemble à Dieu.” 113 “Nous pouvons venir à l’extravagance de souhaiter d’estre dieux.” Cf. Rodis-Lewis’s suggestion regarding the first of Descartes’s dreams of 1619, in Descartes (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1995) 65: “Ne s’agirait-il pas du péché originel : vouloir rivaliser avec Dieu ?” 114 See e.g., Robert Bellarmino, S.J., Ascensionis in Deum, Rome, 1615, “Gradus Octavus” in Opera Omnia, ed. Justinus Fèvre (Paris, 1873), Minerva G.M.B.H., Unveränderter Nachdruck – Frankfurt a. M., 1965), 274: “quantum laetari potest anima, quod sit in genere substantiae spiritualis, ac per hoc coelo et sideribus altior nobilitate naturae, tantum humiliari debet, ac Deo conditori subjici, quod ex nihilo facta sit, et ex se nihil sit.” 115 “la meditation de toutes ces choses remplit un homme qui les entend bien d’une joye si extreme, que, tant s’en faut qu’il soit injurieux et ingrat envers Dieu isqu’a souhaiter de tenir sa place, il pense deia avoir assez vecu de ce que dieu luy ait fait la grace de parvenir a de telles connoissances; et se ioignant entierement à luy de volonté, il l’aime si parfaitement, qu’il ne desire plus rien au monde, sinon que la volonté de Dieu soit faite.” Cf. Francis of Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, II, c. 2, in Oeuvres, I, 418: “joindre sa volonté à la Providence”; and V, c. 3, in Oeuvres, I, 576: “Il me suffit que Dieu soit Dieu, que sa bonté soit infinie, que sa perfection soit immense; que je meure ou que je vive il importe peu pour moi.” 116 Marion cites Letter to Voetius, AT VIIIb, 2, 112, and 21–29: “haec Charitas, hoc est, sancta amicitia, qua Deum prosequimur, et Dei causa etiam omnes homines, quatenus scimus ipsos a Deo amari.” See Marion, “La solitude de l’ego,” Questions cartésiennes, 218 ff. 117 I thank Noam Chomsky for pointing out to me that “one cannot consistently be both a Cartesian and a racist.” 118 Descartes agrees, this time only, to discuss Scripture, “lest my silence be misinterpreted as a lack on my part of a good answer” (Sixth Set of Replies: AT VII, 429).

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“debere tantum intelligi de scientia quae non est cum charitate conjuncta, hoc est, de scientia Atheorum, quia quisquis Deum, ut par est, novit, non potest ipsum non diligere, nec charitatem non habere.” The Pauline passage involved is I Corinthians 8:2. 120 Cf. Ecclesiastes, 8:17, which is cited against Descartes in the Sixth Set of Objections: AT VII, 416. 121 Letter of 15 September 1645, AT IV, 294: “losqu’on connoist et qu’on ayme Dieu comme il faut . . . s’abandonnant du tout a sa volonté, on se despouille de ses propres interests.” 122 “elle ne scauroit estre si grande qu’est la satisfaction interieure qui accompagne touiours les bonnes actions, et principalement celles qui procedent d’une pure affection pour autruy qu’on ne rapporte point a soy mesme, c’est a dire de la vertu chrestiene qu’on nomme charité.” 123 Cf. Blondel, Carnets Intimes, I, 97: “Sans méconnaitre que la pensée éclaire l’action, je voudrais montrer que c’est l’action (sic) surtout qui éclaire la pensée.” 124 Cf. Blondel, Carnets Intimes, I, 85: “Je veux montrer que la plus haute manière d’être, c’est d’agir, que la plus complète manière d’agir, c’est de souffrir et d’aimer, que la vraie manière d’aimer, c’est d’adhérer au Christ.” 125 M. Blondel, Le christianisme de Descartes, 1896, in Oeuvres Complètes, II, 192: “Le vice profond de son christianisme, c’est de mettre d’un côté le mystère absolu que la volonté seule atteint par la grâce, et de l’autre la clarté absolue de la pensée qui se repose, pleinement souveraine chez elle; c’est de supprimer toute préparation rationnelle à la foi, tout travail de la raison dans la foi, toute intelligence de la foi . . . c’est d’admettre la suffisance de l’homme purement homme et l’imperturbabilité du chrétien dans sa croyance.” 126 Letter to Charlet of 9 February 1645, AT IV, 157. The fact that Descartes himself lacks the lumen medium required for the difficult entreprise of making the truths of Faith intelligible does not make him a fideist but suggests, rather, that he was perhaps exposed to the teaching of Henry of Ghent. At the very least, it indicates a clear respect for the lumen medium and an acknowledgment that it depends on grace. See Discours, AT VI, 8. 127 Blondel, Carnets Intimes, I, 86: “Pour bien agir, disait Descartes, il suffit de bien penser. Bien penser, continue Pascal, voilà toute la morale. Qu’ils sont loin!” 128 Cf. Second Set of Replies, AT IX, 116 and Meditation IV, AT VII, 60. 129 AT VII, 62. 130 As Descartes implies in Letter to Newcastle, March or April 1648, AT V, 137. 131 Recall the end of Meditation I, AT VII, 23: “Sed laboriosum est hoc institutum, et desidia quaedam ad consuetudinem vitae me reducit.”

PART TWO: Chapter 5 Descartes and the Possibility of Ethics Sterling Berry-Whitlock Virtue, then, is about feelings and actions. These receive praise or blame when they are voluntary, but pardon, sometimes even pity, when they are involuntary. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1109b30) But no one encourages us to do anything that is not up to us and involuntary; people assume that it is pointless to persuade us not to get hot or distressed or hungry or anything else of that sort, since persuasion will not stop it happening to us. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1113b2730)

1. Introduction In discarding the theory of causality offered up by the Aristotelian and Scholastic traditions in favor of explanations that rely on material causes alone, Descartes has established a powerful paradigm with which to organize and dominate the material world. However, the price paid for this advance in efficacy is that Descartes runs the risk of forfeiting any claim to a meaningful ethical system, since an ethical system based on what must be the case does not satisfy our intuitions about what is justified. If we do not have responsibility for our actions, as would be the case if they are determined by efficient causality, then it is philosophically unjustified to assign praise or blame for the consequences of our actions. Yet doing just that is the only option available to a proponent of radical materialism. Although Descartes champions efficient causal explanations of physical phenomena, he seems uncomfortable extending the results of this schema to ethics. In certain places, such as the Preface to the Principles of Philosophy with the famous “tree of wisdom” metaphor, Descartes announces his intention of subsuming his scientific and epistemological researches under the over-arching goal of producing wisdom in and a good life for human beings. The various discoveries and increasing control over nature that the Cartesian scientific paradigm yield are always motivated by practical concerns. As Cottingham notes, this places Descartes’ project very much in the “synoptic” tradition of philosophy, one that is concerned to render

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value judgments as to what constitutes the best life and how best to achieve it. We have, then, two positions that seem to be inconsistent with each other. On the one hand, we have Descartes’ stated intention of providing an ethical system; on the other, we have the actual results of his project which, at first glance, seem to rule out ethics completely. What is at stake in this paper is to discover how much room there is for an ethical system based on Descartes’ writings, and what form it would take. I will conclude that to be internally consistent, Descartes must restrict any ethical system to the domain of the soul, a position that he articulates in his work the Passions of the Soul. Since all bodies, including human bodies, are determined, and Descartes does not put forward a convincing theory of the unity of human soul and human body, he has excluded all bodies from a philosophically justified ethical system (as opposed to one based on “common sense”). Further, our freedom is limited to merely influencing our internal disposition towards our sensations. This position is distinguished from two others often attributed to Descartes: 1) that the soul “pilots” the body and 2) Cottingham’s “trialistic” interpretation. 2. What Is Meant by “Determinism”? There can be no doubt but that Descartes held that the activities of all material bodies are governed by the inflexible laws of mechanical, efficient causality, and thus, are determined in all their activities. Descartes notes that “the nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists . . . in its being something which is extended in length, breadth, and depth” (Principles: CSM I, 224 / AT VIIIa, 42). With this definition, Descartes rules out any explanatory accounts of change that employ the final or formal causes of traditional Aristotelian scientific explanations. Later, he will make this restriction to efficient causality explicit in the Principles and the Meditations.1 In this new schema, matter now lacks any essential form and so no longer has preferences for this form instead of that one. It is “dead” material that can be arranged in various positions and combinations without violence to its essence—an extended thing. Thus, the interactions between bits of matter can best be understood by recourse to mechanical laws of force. The answer to why some thing did some action is to be found in a physical description of the various forces acting upon various particles in certain characteristic ways, and not in appeals to essences and dormitive potencies. A body must play its determined part in a causal series of events; it cannot initiate a new causal chain, nor can it deviate from events already happening. This

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determinism extends to the actions of all physical bodies qua physical body: animate or not, ensouled or not. Insofar as a human being is considered as a body, it is subject to the same determinism by efficient causation that is suffered by a chunk of granite. We do not have a choice about whether or not to undertake most of our actions or to suffer our passions; as physical beings, we must undergo them.2 This position is best summed up in Descartes’ thesis from the preface to the Description of the Human Body. It is true that we may find it hard to believe that the mere disposition of the bodily organs is sufficient to produce in us all the movements which are in no way determined by our thought. So I will now try to prove the point and to give such a full account of the entire bodily machine that we will have no more reason to think that it is our soul which produces in it the movements which we know by experience are not controlled by our will than we have reason to think that there is a soul in a clock which makes it tell the time. (CSM I, 315 / AT XIa, 226)3

From this and from the images reiterated in The Passions of the Soul,4 we learn that the human body, considered as mechanical automaton, can operate in the world quite effectively without conscious awareness (the characteristic product of the soul, functioning as will or intellect). That what Aquinas would call an “action of a human being” need not involve a soul is proved clearly, Descartes thinks, by examining the case of animals. Animals lack a soul, he thinks, and hence also must lack a will, yet animals operate successfully, and often can perform certain tasks better than a human being could.5 Thus, all activities that do not raise us above the animal level, such as eating, drinking, walking, etc. can be accomplished quite successfully without any need of conscious activity.6 Regardless of the utility of such an account, Descartes has not yet shown how his philosophy will provide a better qualitative life for others. There can be no praise or blame in a mechanistic physical world. From this, it is clear that if we are to find an ethics in Descartes, it will not be found in the determined world of physical bodies. 3. The Necessity of Substance Dualism The position that Descartes takes on the mechanical physical world seems to leave him with no way to break the causal chain to allow for a meaningful ethical system. It is a commonplace that our responsibil-

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ity varies proportionally with our freedom to act: the greater our autonomy, the greater our share of praise or blame. We do not blame a stone for failing to remain suspended in midair, unsupported by another body, no matter how many times we throw it up to habituate it. If we do, then it is us who accrue blame and not the stone. Yet we would be right to assign blame if an adult human being, under no coercion, failed to act ethically. Thus, if we are to be held responsible for our decisions, there must be a component (or stage) somewhere in our decision making process that is undetermined by an outside agent. We need to be able to choose freely from among (at least two) live options. Thus, if we are to be held responsible for our actions, our responsibility must come from some source other than our mechanically determined body. In the Principles, we find the equipment necessary for keeping open the possibility of freedom (and hence a Cartesian ethical system) in Descartes’ commitment to a substantial division (a “real distinction”) between mind and body, a claim triumphantly summed up in the sixth Meditation.7 Thus, in the Principles, we find Descartes defining a “real” distinction as follows. “Strictly speaking, a real distinction exists only between two or more substances; and we can perceive that two substances are really distinct simply from the fact that we can clearly and distinctly understand one apart from the other” (Principles: CSM I, 213 / AT VIIIa, 28, emphasis added). The necessary and sufficient condition for being able to judge that two items are substantially distinct is my clear and distinct intellectual perception of them. Even Descartes’ otherwise omnipotent and unbounded God cannot overcome this, since Descartes continues on to claim that even if “God has joined some corporeal substance to such a thinking substance so closely that they cannot be more closely conjoined, thus compounding them into a unity, they nonetheless remain really distinct” (Principles: CSM I, 213 / AT VIIIa, 29) We can distinguish between a “real distinction” and a “conceptual distinction” which is “a distinction between a substance and some attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible” (Principles: CSM I, 214 / AT VIIIa, 30). (Descartes’ example of a conceptual distinction is that of a physical object’s temporal duration and being as that object.) Assuming that this distinction between distinctions follows, then for mind and body to be really distinct, we need to meet the two conditions outlined above: 1) we must be able to perceive intellectually mind and body clearly and distinctly independent from each other and 2) there can be nothing unintelligible about considering one without the other. If these conditions can be met, then Descartes will be justified in concluding that thought and extension

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are to be “considered as nothing else but thinking substance itself and extended substance itself—that is, as mind and body” (Principles: CSM I, 215 / AT VIIIa, 30-31). If such a substantial split is operative, however, it will leave us with the not insubstantial question of how exactly these two substances, with nothing in common, are supposed to interact. The results of such a split could be drastic. As Cottingham puts it succinctly, “The effect of this revolution . . . was to threaten a divorce between ourselves as conscious subjects and the nature not just of the physical world, but of our own biological makeup as human beings.”8 If no way for these two substances to communicate can be found, then we will be forced to accept either mechanical determination or an ethics that is restricted to the soul, but not both. This problem, however, we will lay aside for the moment. 4. The Mind / Body Distinction As expected, we find Descartes eager to distinguish the domains appropriate to body and to soul. Bodies are extended things, as we saw above. The soul is concerned with “thoughts,” loosely defined as concepts and sensory impressions: “everything which we are aware of as happening within us, insofar as we have awareness of it” (Principles: CSM I, 195 / AT VIIIa, 7). With this, Descartes has designated conscious as the realm of the soul. It will be the distinctive mark of the res cogitans to be self-aware, to operate at the (self-)conscious level. This real distinction between substances is documented in the Meditations, where we learn that this “thinking thing” is essentially us, in a way that our body is not and, presumably, that soul plus body is not. “I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind . . . I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body” (Meditation II: CSM II, 18 / AT VII, 27). While we can imagine ourselves existing without a body, we cannot imagine ourselves existing without a mind. While the body is subject to many confused and dubious sensations, the soul is transparent to itself and its self-knowledge is complete; there can be nothing certain that is not consciously known in the form of a proposition. While this position has many problematic assumptions, this separation of res cogitans from res extensa seems to allow for humanity’s escape from determinism by introducing a realm not touched by the efficient causality of physical bodies. However, with this move, as we will see later, it seems that Descartes has limited any potential ethics to the narrow realm of the mind.

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5. The Freedom of the Soul Yet simply distinguishing mind from body is not sufficient to prove that the mind is free of determinism; it simply proves that it cannot be determined by mechanical efficient causes. There are other ways that we could lack the capacity to choose freely. For example, if we are limited to affirming only what is clear and distinct, then we do not have much of a choice, for when some clear and distinct proposition presents itself, we would need affirm it. Or, if human thinking is governed by axiomatic progression, then we do not have much of a choice, since we cannot go beyond our starting axioms and are limited to playing out the implications of the divinely ordained axioms. Finally, if human thinking is dependent upon the body for its content or upon the movements of the pineal gland in response to the flow of (material) animal spirits, then we do not have much of a choice in our decisions. It still remains for Descartes to show that the soul free to choose. Descartes’ own account of the freedom of the soul hinges on discerning several different powers present in the unitary substance that is the soul.9 The soul has the ability to employ itself as intellect and as will, and both are necessary for judgment formation. It seems that the intellect is responsible for forming propositions, to which the will then assents, denies, or withholds judgment. Although it is possible to act (as an animal would act), it is not possible to form a judgment (a conscious statement about a state of affairs) and then act on the judgment unless both the intellect and the will are functioning. Both are necessary, but neither, taken alone, is sufficient for action.10 While the scope of the intellect “extends only to the few objects presented to it, and is always extremely limited” in what it can contemplate, the will has a “scope that extends to anything that can possibly be an object of any other will—even the immeasurable will of God” (Principles: CSM I, 204 / AT VIIa, 17). In short, the intellect is finite, while the will is infinite. It is this disparity that Descartes claims accounts for us “falling into error” (Principles: CSM I, 206-07 / AT VIIIa, 21), since we assent to what we should not assent to, or deny what we should not deny, or fail to withhold judgement to uncertain propositions: in short, error happens when we “extend our will beyond what we clearly perceive” (Principles: CSM I, 205 / AT VIIIa, 18). What propositions we affirm, deny, or withhold judgment on is within our power since neither the intellect nor the will has been designed so as to guarantee that we humans will make mistakes, although certainly they both incline us to do so.11 It is true that the

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intellect can form all sorts of false propositions and that the will can assent to false propositions and deny true ones. However, these actions are voluntary, in the sense that they are not coerced by another agent. Res extensa cannot coerce us, since we have seen that mechanical causality cannot affect the soul. Nor can immaterial beings coerce our will. If we adhere to what we clearly and distinctly perceive, and if we train our will through habit to endorse only certain propositions, then we will not make mistakes which we will “regret.”12 Error is a “defect in the way we act or in the use we make of our freedom, but is not a defect in our nature” (Principles: CSM I, 205 / AT VIIIa, 19). It is, therefore, the use our soul makes of its powers that determine our ethical status. This distinction in the powers of the soul seems to give Descartes the realm of undetermined activity that we need for an ethical system by creating room for a human being to act voluntarily.13 Free of the contamination of material determination, the mind is free to assent, to deny, or to withhold judgment on the various propositions of which it has conscious awareness. Since nothing seems to determine the activity of the will,14 and without the will’s contribution, no action can occur, Descartes is able to claim that error creeps into our actions only when we do not use our freedom carefully. Granting that nothing determines us, it is a short step to the conclusion that we are “the author of [our] actions and deserving of praise for what [we] do” (Principles: CSM I, 205 / AT VIIIa, 18-19). 6. What Does This Leave Us With? Descartes’ system seems to leave us in a quandary. While the substantial division between soul and body has perhaps saved the soul from the ravages of mechanical determination, it also makes a viable ethical system questionable. After all, if we cannot interact with other agents, and there is nothing essential in the material world, it is hard to see what there is to be ethical about. The problem is articulated by Cottingham: “Adopting this picture of an essentially ‘dead’ universe clearly ruled out in advance the type of traditional ethic which saw man’s fulfillment in terms of harmonious adjustment to the natural world of which he was a part. For to put it crudely, man is not a part of the new universe.”15 As we have seen, we are alienated not just from the material world of bodies but also from our own body as simply one more physical body. We now must accept that, whatever Descartes’ intention, the effect of his philosophical system is to limit ethics to the mind, and have seen how he proposes to defend the freedom of the mind. There are several responses to this dilemma that

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are worth exploring, and the remainder of this paper will be devoted to that task. a) Technological Rationality One simply may embrace the results of this division, and certainly one would be in good philosophical company. Plato’s Phaedo points to just such a conclusion, and many of the Neo-Platonic Christian thinkers have followed his lead. Like Descartes, they urge us to consider our non-corporeal, conscious, and rational aspects as representing our true self. Bodies assume a lower status in an ontological hierarchy, and are sometimes equated with corruption and evil. Thus, thinking of my body as a temporary receptacle for my soul to “pilot” will also allow me to free my mind (my essential self) for contemplating the higher good, be it Atman, the life of theoretical contemplation, or the Judeo-Christian God. It will also make the transition from life to death a painless and easy one.16 There are several advantages to interpreting Descartes as advancing this type of ethical orientation and embracing substance dualism. First, we can enjoy the many advantages provided by the exploitation of the resources of his physical system. By treating my body as a machine under the guidance, at least somewhat, of my soul, I need not be attached to the corporeal substances of this world. The value of physical bodies is now measured in purely instrumental terms; I do not need to worry that in my search for increasing control over the matter, I might be infringing on the teleological developmental process of an oak tree. Second, with my increasing mastery of the physical, extended world, my sensations of what seem to be the external world should become more comfortable. My soul will no longer suffer from passions that produce negative or painful sensations, at least to the same degree. Accepting all my sensations as “appearances” without epistemologically certain attributes, will allow me to enhance my physical existence through nutrition and medicine in order to enjoy the leisure that is necessary for philosophizing upon clear and distinct truths to an extent that was not possible before. As Descartes writes, “This [increasing our mastery of nature] is desirable not only for the invention of innumerable devices which would facilitate our enjoyment of the fruits of the earth . . . but also, and most importantly, for the maintenance of health, which is undoubtedly the chief good” (Discourse: CSM I, 143 / AT VI, 62). In short, I can use the power of the new method and model of the physical universe to shape it, to dominate it and “become, as it were, the masters and possessors of it,” to best fulfill my needs and wants.

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In many ways, this is an attractive option. However, it will require certain sacrifices, including the possibility of real interaction with anything other than the concepts that my mind possesses. And, objective reality or not, other people seem a good thing to have around. More convincingly, however, is that Descartes seems to want something more than a technologically driven ethos. When he talks about technology, it is always framed by the hope that this will be in the service of something, that it will allow human beings to advance. Immediately after the famous passage about becoming “masters and possessors of nature,” Descartes writes a telling statement in praise of medicine as a way of advancing human health and happiness (quoted above). He seems not to accept the proposition that just because we can do something, we should do it. Descartes does not endorse a mechanical worldview simply to gain more control over nature, but to gain more control over nature for a purpose. In short, Descartes is motivated by practical concerns. As Collins explains, it is Descartes’ hope that “[b]y developing a detailed conception of nature in conformity with the universal metaphor of mechanism, men can fulfill their active vocation in the world.”17 By employing a Cartesian scientific schema, we can effect the situation we find ourselves in to a great degree. Thus, we become responsible for how the situation turns out, as well as for reaching our potential. b) What is the True Human Being? Another response would be to deny that Descartes’ split between mind and body is actually “real” or that it applies to ethical considerations. Descartes does say explicitly in many places (almost as many as he affirms the division) that mind and body are unified. For example, “the conclusion that there is a particular body that is more closely conjoined with our mind than any other body follows from our clear awareness that pain and other sensations come to us quite unexpectedly” (Principles: CSM I, 224 / AT VIIIa, 41). If we accept this as a true opinion of Descartes’, then any Cartesian ethical system will have to provide governances for both body and mind. In this way, it will correspond much more closely with our intuitions about what a meaningful ethical system is like. This seems to be Cottingham’s tack. In Philosophy and the Good Life, he makes much of Descartes’ use of the adjective “real” (or “genuine”) to describe human beings when they are talked about as embodied and acting in the world.18 Cottingham believes that Descartes’ use of this word indicates that he realizes that a dualistic conception of humanity is insufficient to account for our instinctive

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sense of the essentially composite nature of a human being. It is through the sensations that Cottingham believes he finds room to escape the dilemma of the dualistic division of human beings into thought and extension, allowing for what he calls a “trialistic” understanding that describes human beings. “When a thinking thing is ‘really and substantially’ joined with a body so as to form a true unit, there arises a distinct kind of phenomenon, sensory experience, which belongs not to the mind simplicter, nor to the body, but which belongs to a third kind of being, a human.”19 This is so since a body would not have any (conscious) awareness of an experience, while a disembodied thinking thing (such as an angel) would only be able to think, but not able to perceive.20 Cottingham recognizes that this would mean that ethics “would have its own special subject matter,” namely, the “affective dimension of which we are vividly and immediately aware in our daily experience as creatures of flesh and blood.”21 Cottingham certainly has described a major problem with Descartes’ proposal: the traditional dualistic interpretation of Descartes’ “anthropology” is rather difficult to reconcile with “our daily experiences,” and Cottingham has offered an interesting and welldocumented solution. While his interpretation has the immediate advantage of making ethics possible, it may suffer from conceptual problems. First and foremost, if we follow Cottingham, we fall back into the problems outlined above with thinking of the mind and body of a human being as a conceptual distinction, namely, that it will not spring us from the prison of mechanical determinism. Second, this position can only be effective by removing ethics from the area governed by the normative prescriptions of philosophy into the area of description of phenomena. While epistemology and ethics do not need to meet the same standard of certainty, here ethics seems to be ungrounded and thrown back into the fuzzy (Aristotelian) humanism that Descartes rejects. While it is fine to claim that human beings occupy a special place in the world, as the Scholastics certainly did, they provided reasons for their belief, namely, that God had ordained it so. Once Descartes puts forward his mechanical theory of efficient causality, this justification is no longer available to him. Third, while it is true that there are many places where Descartes claims a certain type of unity for the soul and body, there are many more where he distinguishes between the two along dualistic lines. And it is these dualistic moments that seem to do the major work in his system. Even in those places where he claims a unity for mind and body, his language is hedged and cautious; in the example from the first paragraph of this section, we find that mind is “more closely conjoined [to my own body] than any other body.” We should note that he

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does not say that they are a single substance, just that they are more closely conjoined. c) A Version of Stoicism The strongest ethical system consistent with the account Descartes lays out explicitly in the Passions is something very much like Stoicism. Having not discovered a satisfactory account of the re-union of mind and body, we have to take him as either not offering a philosophical ethics or as offering an account exclusive to the substance that is the mind. The first option is not interesting, since it will not extend much beyond common sense. Further, I take it that someone as otherwise systematic as Descartes would seek a unified account (a universal mathematics) under which ethics, geometry, and thinking in general can be subsumed. If this assumption is correct, then Descartes’ account of what is possible in ethical relations, what is to be hoped for, and the effort needed to achieve it are all rather minimal and pessimistic. The criterion on which ethics is based is our inward orientation. Descartes makes this inward orientation explicit in several places, especially in the Passions §§147-48. It is not so much what happens in the external world that concerns him, but our psychological reaction to those events. “It is that our well-being depends principally on internal emotions which are produced in the soul only by the soul itself” (Passions: CSM I, 381 / AT XIa, 440). Above all, our conscience must be at ease if we are to enjoy the “tranquility” of a well-ordered and moderate soul. The passions, while essential to humanity and a force for good if used properly, are seen as mostly disruptive to the possibility of this tranquility (as well as being out of our control), and thus, the priority shifts from our passions simplicter to our reactions to our passions, as something that we can effect. This inward tranquility is made possible by distinguishing between those things that depend on us and those things that depend on others. It is by distinguishing between these two that “we easily acquire the habit of governing our desires so that their fulfillment depends only on us, making it possible for them to always give us complete satisfaction” (Passions: CSM I, 381 / AT XIa, 440). While there is no longer a natural order of objects to which we ought to submit ourselves, we are still subject to being buffeted about by forces beyond our control. We have no choice but to suffer our passions. A powerful sensation, such as fear or anger, will enthrall us, and the most that we can do is “not to yield to its effects and to inhibit the movements to which it disposes the body” (Passions: CSM I, 345 /

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AT XIa, 364). Just to the extent that we conquer or are conquered, Descartes claims, is the strength of our soul revealed. The intellect is vital to this process since it is important not to be deceived by the various “lures” to which our passions naturally incline us. It is through our ability to make “firm and determinate judgments bearing on the knowledge of good and evil” and then to carry them through that our soul is judged as ethical or not (Passions: CSM I, 347 / AT XIa, 367). This state of control over our passions is due to a habitual effort on our part to bring our willing in line with the correct propositions that our intellect puts forward. Descartes summarizes his teachings and his hopes in the concluding sentence of the passions. “But the chief use of wisdom lies in its teaching us to be masters of our passions and to control them with such skill that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and even become a source of joy” (Passions: CSM I, 404 / AT XIa, 488). Descartes is, in this area, rather optimistic about our chances for moderating our passions with enough effort. “Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them” (Passions: CSM I, 348 / AT XIa, 370). If we practice aligning our desires with what reason determines is actually the case, then we will not allow ourselves to hope for what we should not hope for, and we will avoid disappointment. With the introduction of habit, the responsibility for our ethical state is placed squarely on our nonmaterially determined shoulders. 6. Conclusion Descartes has attempted to escape from the ethical netherland of mechanical determinism and efficient causality by locating the freedom necessary for ethical responsibility in the soul. By failing to advance an account of the union of soul and body, however, he has consigned ethics to an intensely and necessarily inward state. There seems little chance of advancing from the self-certainty of our inward awareness to the external world of other and embodied selves. With no chance of an interpersonal ethics, the emphasis is laid on controlling what we can: our own reactions. While mastery and control of our selves would seem to be a necessary part of any purported ethical system, it seems strange and unsatisfying if it should comprise the whole of ethics.

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1 See Principles, CSM I, 202 / AT VIIIa, 15-16: “When dealing with natural things we will, then, never derive any explanations from the purposes which God or nature may have had in view when creating them . For we should not be so arrogant as to suppose that we can share in God’s plans. We should, instead, consider him as the efficient cause of all things.” 2 See Passions, CSM I, 342 / AT IXa, 357: “For merely by entering into these pores, they [animal spirits] produce in the gland a particular movement which is ordained by nature to make the soul feel this passion.” See also Passions, CSM I, 345 / AT XIa, 363-4. 3 “Il est vray qu’on peut avoir de la difficulte a croire, que la seule disposition des organes soit suffisante pour produire en nous tous les movuemens qui ne se determinent point par nostre pensee; c’est pourquoy ie tascheray ici de le prouuer, and d’expliquer tellement toute la machine de nostre corps, que nous n’aurons pas plus de sujet de penser que c’est nostre ame qui excite en luy les movuemens que nous n’experimentons point estre conduits par nostre volonte, que nous en avons de iuger qu’il y a une ame dans une horloge, qui fait qu’elle monstre les heures.” 4 See Passions, CSM I, 329 / AT XIa, 330-31. 5 Discourse on Method, CSM I, 139-41 / AT VI, 55-60. 6 See Passions, CSM I, 335 / AT XIa, 341-42: “Thus every movement we make without any contribution from our will—as often happens when we breathe, walk, eat and, indeed when we perform any action which is common to us and the beasts—depends solely on the arrangement of our limbs and on the route which the [animal] spirits . . . follow naturally in the brain, nerves, and muscles.” 7 Meditations VI, CSM II, 54 / AT VII 78. 8 John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 60. 9 See Meditation VI, CSM II, 59 / AT VII, 86: “As for the faculties of willing, of understanding, of sensory perception and so on, these cannot be termed parts of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, and understands, and has sensory perceptions.” See also Passions, CSM I, 346 / AT XIa, 364. 10 Principles, CSM I, 204 / AT VIIIa, 18. 11 Richard Davies, Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue. (London: Routledge, 2001): 85. 12 For Descartes’ discussion of the importance of habit formation, see Passions, CSM I, 347-48 / AT XIa, 368-70. 13 Principles, CSM I, 205 / AT VIIIa, 18-19. 14 Descartes takes the freedom of the will as self-evident. “Nonetheless, we have such close awareness of the freedom and indifference which is in us, that there is nothing we can grasp more evidently or more perfectly” (Principles: CSM I, 206 / AT VIIIa, 20). 15 John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life, 71-72.

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See Plato, Phaedo, 80e1-81a2 in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 71: “if it [the soul] is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, as it had no willing association with the body in life, but avoided it and gathered itself together by itself and always practiced this, which is no other than practicing philosophy in the right way, in fact, training to die easily.” 17 James Collins, Descartes’ Philosophy of Nature, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series, 5 (New York: Blackwell, 1971): 31. 18 Cottingham, John, Philosophy and the Good Life, 82. 19 Cottingham, John, Philosophy and the Good Life, 84. 20 See Meditation VI, CSM II, 56 / AT VII, 81. 21 Cottingham, John, Philosophy and the Good Life, 86.

Chapter 6 Moral Knowledge in Descartes' Passions Gwendolyn Bradford By ‘morals’ I understand the highest and most perfect moral system, which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom. Now just as it is not the roots or the trunk of a tree from which one gathers the fruit, but only the ends of the branches, so the principal benefit of philosophy depends on those parts of it which can only be learnt last of all. (CSM I, 186 / AT IXb, 14-15)1

In this surprising passage from the preface to Principles of Philosophy, Descartes reveals his high regard for moral philosophy. There has been a recent growth in interest in Descartes’ Passions of the Soul, but the area of Descartes’ inchoate moral philosophy that is suggested in this text still remains relatively unexplored. Here I hope to make a few footholds for exploration in this area. In Discourse on the Method, Descartes presents a “provisional morality,” the purpose and intent of which has baffled readers ever since. But here, since my aim is to get a sense of Cartesian morality in its most complete form, I will focus mainly on The Passions of the Soul, his last and most summative text with regard to this topic, and disregard his initial and provisional attempt. Ultimately, I will argue that Descartes implicitly assumes that we have a non-emotivist ability to formulate epistemically successful moral judgments and perceptions of value.2 En route to this conclusion, I will first explore Descartes’ explicit definition of the use of the passions, and show that this definition differs from Descartes’ implicit definition, and that this implicit definition entails that the passions have a function in the moral realm. I will argue that, contrary to some recent scholarship, Descartes does not have an emotivist theory of morality; rather, he tacitly assumes an epistemically successful, nonemotivist ability to make moral judgments.3 Although Descartes does not provide an explicit metaphysical ground for values, his account is still not emotivist, though it might appear so at first glance. Finally, I will briefly take the non-emotivist conclusion and build upon it by arguing that Descartes at the very least may have a foundation for moral knowledge to be based on clear and distinct ideas.

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Descartes’ explicit discussion of the use of the passions portrays them as “system regulators” or members of the body’s “maintenance system.”4 He gives his explicit definition of the use of the passions as follows: “[t]he function of all the passions consists solely in this, that they dispose our soul to want the things which nature deems useful for us, and to persist in this volition” (CSM I, 349 / AT XI, 372). The importance of the use of the passions regarding the body, in particular the use of the “primitive passions,” is given special emphasis in §137: “their natural function is to move the soul to consent and contribute to actions which may serve to preserve the body or render it in some way more perfect” (CSM I, 376 / AT XI, 430). The passions have the purpose of informing us regarding things that may potentially harm or benefit the body in some way, and encourage the soul to engage in acts that will maintain or perfect the body. Descartes’ explicit account of the function of the passions describes them as a biological “maintenance system,” which communicates the bodily condition to the soul and incites it to act in such a way as to improve its state of affairs. Descartes also offers this explanation of the use of the passions, including sense perception,5 in the sixth Meditation, and it is traditionally taken that it is the passions (including the senses) that unite the body and mind.6 Most current literature on the Passions emphasizes that the bodily role of the passions is their true and important use. For instance, Amélie Rorty argues that the primary role of the passions is to “express or signal heightened or lowered bodily functioning,”7 participating in the “maintenance system” of the body. Rorty argues that the role of the passions in the condition of the body serves the greater purpose of aiding in the guarantee of perceptual success: the healthier the body, the more accurate the perceiving, thus the more accurate the thinking. Daisie Radner interprets Descartes’ definition in the contemporary terms of evolutionary biology by focusing closely on Descartes’ explicit definition of use. Radner argues that Descartes’ definition of the use of the passions complies with the current evolutionary biological understanding of functions: “[t]he functions of a [biological] trait are those consequences of the trait that contribute to the inclusive fitness of the organism.”8 Radner summarizes Descartes’ definition for the use of the passions as to “dispose the body to engage and persist in behaviors that have fitness-enhancing consequences.”9 According to this interpretation, the use of the passions is to promote biological fitness. John Cottingham also sees Descartes’ definition of the use of the passions in a similar light: “in the case of the passions . . . we are deal-

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ing with a psycho-physical system whose operation has a single utility for our life and health as human beings; thus, ‘the principal effect of all the human passions is that they move and dispose the soul to want the things for which they prepare the body—for example the feeling of fear moves the soul to want to flee.’”10 These interpretations present Descartes’ surprisingly unified picture of the mind and body, and convey the strong significance he confers on the passions. However, I argue that Descartes, in addition to these contemporary interpretations, is underestimating his own account in his explicit definition of the use of the passions. Descartes’ definition as it is revealed in his enumeration of the passions involves much more: the use of the passions is accurately defined as a maintenance system for the proper functioning of the body and the preservation of the mind-body composite; but in addition, the passions play an important role in morality, by drawing our attention to our character and our condition. Here I will go beyond Descartes’ explicit statement to investigate the implications of his implicit definition. Although I am not prepared here to make a fully-articulated positive claim about the use of the passions according to Descartes, I will at least show that the passions do more than he explicitly says and more than they have been traditionally taken to do, and that their enriched role takes us into the realm of Descartes’ moral philosophy. In certain respects, Descartes’ explicit definition for the use of the passions appears adequate in terms of the six Primitive Passions— wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness (CSM I, 353 / AT XI 380)—of which all other passions are composites. Descartes describes the use of five of these passions in §137: [I]t is only through a feeling of pain that the soul is immediately advised about things that harm the body: this feeling produces in the soul first the passion of sadness, then hatred of what causes the pain, and finally the desire to get rid of it. Similarly the soul is immediately advised about things useful to the body only through some sort of titillation, which first produces joy within it, then gives rise to love of what we believe to be its cause, and finally brings about the desire to acquire something that can enable us to continue in this joy. (CSM I, 376 / AT XI, 430)11 In these respects, the primitive passions appear to fit Descartes’ explicit definition. The explicit definition also appears adequate with respect to certain passions that pertain directly to bodily safety, such as cowardice, desire and abhorrence.12

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However, there are certain passions whose use does not conform to the body-maintenance role of the explicit definition, namely, the passions that I would like to suggest can be categorized as “otheroriented,” such as gratitude, approval, envy, pity, and derision. I wish to characterize these passions as “other-oriented” because their causes are judgments about states of affairs having to do with other people. Rather than primarily serving a body-regulating function, the otheroriented passions involve a complex causal process, relying on a series of perceptions or judgments of value (more on these topics is to come later). In general, they are caused by judgments about others concerning their worth or level of desert, and a judgment of whether or not these others possess goods that match their level of desert. What is puzzling about these other-oriented passions is that they do not conform to Descartes’ explicit definition of use, and yet he insists that, as all passions given to us by nature, they do have an important use. In fact, Descartes wishes to adhere so closely to his explicit definition of use that he claims it is not the case “that nature has given to mankind any passion which is always vicious and has no good or praiseworthy function” (CSM I, 392 / AT XI, 462).13 Passions that Descartes sees as not useful under his definition are consequently struck from the list. With respect to fear or terror, Descartes says, “I do not see that it can ever be praiseworthy or useful. [And thus it] . . . is not a specific passion” (CSM I, 392 / AT XI, 463). Rather, fear is just excess of the useful and moderate sense of cowardice, which helps prevent us from rashness. Consequently, all the passions in some way must have an appropriate use. However, there appears to be no use under Descartes’ explicit definition for these other-oriented passions, and yet they are not removed from the list. So we must gather that the use of these passions is richer than what Descartes explicitly acknowledges. My point about the other-oriented passions is two-fold. We will see with these other-oriented passions not only that their functions extend beyond Descartes’ explicit definition, but also that their causes presuppose the formation of moral judgments. Descartes presupposes that we are able to make successful moral judgments pertaining to (at the very least) ideas about justice, desert, and merit. I will generally refer to these ideas as “moral judgments,” although it may not be possible to distinguish whether these ideas are in fact judgments or perceptions on the basis of what Descartes reveals explicitly.14 By “moral” I mean merely to indicate in a very general way that these are judgments that relate to issues in morality concerning justice, desert, merit, worth, value, and so on.

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Now Descartes clearly separates the other-oriented passions from the remaining passions, insofar as the “self-oriented” passions, as it were, are incited when something pertains directly to ourselves. For instance, joy and sadness are prompted “when the good or evil is one that we regard as belonging to us” (CSM I, 351 / AT XI, 376; emphasis added), and love and hatred arise when something is perceived as being either suitable or harmful “with regard to us” (CSM I, 350 / AT XI, 374; emphasis added). As a result, one does not experience sadness on behalf of another, for example, but only when a state of affairs relates directly to our own well-being. Other-oriented passions, in contrast, are passions that pertain to good or ill experienced by others, and they always pertain to others in this respect, insofar as they are accompanied by a judgment regarding the desert of the other: “when we think of the good or evil as belonging to other people, we may judge them worthy or unworthy of it” (CSM I, 351 / AT XI, 376-77). In this respect, the passions that are experienced with regard to the good or ill being experienced by another person involve a judgment regarding their desert, and the remaining regular passions are experienced only with regard to what is suitable to our own well-being. First, derision (la moquerie) is an example of one such otheroriented passion. Derision “is a kind of joy mixed with hatred, which results from our perceiving some small evil in a person whom we consider to deserve it. . . . When this comes upon us unexpectedly, the surprise of wonder causes us to burst into laughter” (CSM I, 393 / AT XI, 464). What should we suppose is the so-called use of derision as a body-system regulator? Perhaps it could be said that derision is meant to warn us of misfortune, and instruct us how to avoid it. And yet, if we look closely at the description, our judgment of the misfortune and desert are prior to our feeling of derision. That is, derision arises from judging a misfortune to have occurred, in a person we have already deemed deserving of it. As a result, Descartes’ account of the experience of derision assumes that certain moral judgments have been made, specifically, judgments regarding the nature of desert and misfortune. Pity, moreover, is “a kind of sadness mingled with love or with good will towards those whom we see suffering some evil which we think they do not deserve” (CSM I, 395 / AT XI, 469). Here, an interpretation of pity in terms of bodily maintenance is a stretch. And once again, we see a judgment concerning the level of desert of another person, and this judgment causes in us the feeling of pity. Presupposed are the same elements we saw above in derision: judgments concerning desert and misfortune.

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Descartes describes envy as “a kind of sadness mingled with hatred, which results from our seeing good coming to those we think unworthy of it” (CSM I, 394 / AT XI, 466). Once again, judgments concerning worth, desert, and “goods due to fortune” (CSM I, 394 / AT XI, 467) must all be in place (whether or not they are rationally or consciously considered) in order for the animal spirits to trigger the feeling of envy, according to Descartes’ definition. Generosité provides us with a further example of an even more complex emotion. Its function is clearly much more than a bodysystem regulator, and, like envy and pity, it relies on moral judgments as well. Generosité is not to be confused with the English word “generosity”; rather, Descartes appropriates the term to describe what could be translated as “nobility of the mind,” which he takes to mean an appropriate esteem that one feels as a result of understanding one’s own merit based on an understanding of responsibility that extends only so far as the power of one’s volitions. The generous person has the following two components: first, “knowing that nothing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose his volitions, and that he ought to be praised or blamed for no other reason than his using this freedom well or badly”; and second, “feeling within himself a firm and constant resolution to use it [viz. volition] well . . . that is to pursue virtue” (CSM I, 384 / AT XI, 44546). Unless we imagine that the use of good will is defined only in terms of doing good things for the body, generosité clearly goes beyond what Descartes explicitly has in mind for the use of the passions. Rather, the understanding of generosité tells us that we should only be held accountable, praised, or blamed for those actions that fall under the scope of our own volition. Moreover, this analysis extends also to the other-oriented aspect of generosité. Descartes advocates that we use the same principles of generosité toward others, and hence the generous person will consider the merit of others based on the same principles of the true extent of volition. So although generous people, “often see that others do wrong in ways that show up their weakness, they are nevertheless more inclined to excuse than to blame them” (CSM I, 384 / AT XI, 446). That is to say, the generous person has a correct understanding of the scope and proper applications of his own will and that of others. He holds himself as well as others in the appropriate regard, based on what merit they truly deserve, judging from the limitations of their volition. Thus both the other- and self- oriented aspects of generosité are founded on an understanding of the will and its scope. Generosité has a complex causal chain, founded on an understanding of the scope of

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the will wherein only those actions that fall within one’s personal zone of control or responsibility are those that constitute sound basis for evaluations of desert. These are complex moral judgments, and according to Descartes these must be in place prior to any feelings of generosité, let alone the formation of the virtue of generosité.15 Overall, in the other-oriented passions, Descartes presupposes that we are able to make successful moral judgments pertaining to, at the very least, ideas about justice, desert, and merit, as we have seen in the other-oriented passions generosité, pity, envy, and derision. Further examination of the remaining other-oriented passions (such as approval, indignation, and so on) reveals similar moral ideas at the base of their causal chain. Consequently, in his discussions of the other-oriented passions, Descartes is presupposing that we are capable of making moral judgments. These passions clearly extend beyond the simple “bodily maintenance” role that Descartes explicitly defines as their true function. Rather, these passions seem to play a role in morality, one might almost say as bodily expressions or reactions to our moral judgments. In Descartes’ discussion of envy there is a clue we can use to expand on Descartes’ explicit definition of use. “[E]nvy stirs in us only because, having a natural love of justice, we are vexed that it is not upheld in the distribution of . . . goods” (CSM I, 394 / AT XI, 467). This is the good or proportionate envy which is useful (as opposed to a vicious envy). And it appears to be useful because of our “natural love for justice.” In this respect, the use here extends beyond the maintenance of proper bodily functioning to be involved with our moral functioning as well. Does envy serve as an indicator of justice? Does this suggest Descartes is an emotivist? Quite the contrary, or so I will argue. There is a temptation, however, to think that Descartes intends the passions to be moral indicators, and that his theory of value is determined by that toward which our passions guide us. This might appear to follow, since Descartes wants the passions to have a natural use, and I have already suggested that part of the extended definition of use is to maintain us as moral beings. So it might look as though Descartes intends the other “use” of the emotions to be as moral indicators, and hence that Descartes is in fact proposing an emotivist stance. Amélie Rorty, for instance, suggests that this is Descartes’ position. She claims that, since Descartes has no metaphysical ground for value, “it is the emotions that give us our sense of what is important . . . [and] the will has nothing like clear and distinct ideas to ratify—or even to support—its inclinations.”16 Rather, Rorty suggests that the

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passions, and in particular generosité, as well as fear, are the only “guide” to value for Descartes, and since there is no explicit metaphysical explanation for value, what is good must be determined by our calling it so, which we do, on this view, because we are guided by the passions. In other words, if there is no value “out there” in the world to be judged or perceived, then the only indicators of value we can have come from within ourselves, from our desires and aversions. On this view, only the passions point us to what is good and useful, and what is good is what is useful to the body. However, it is clear that Descartes is not an emotivist. First, in his accounts of love and hatred, he presents these passions as being caused by good and bad. Second, although undeveloped, Descartes does provide a metaphysical basis for value in his argument for voluntarism of both necessary and moral truths. First, in Descartes’ discussion of love and hatred, it is clear from the process he describes, which incites these passions, that his account does not entail emotivism. In the article on love and hatred, Descartes states that “when we think of something as good with regard to us, i.e., as beneficial to us, this makes us have love for it; and when we think of it as evil or harmful, this arouses hatred in us” (CSM I, 350 / AT XI, 374). Descartes is explicitly saying that something perceived as good prompts us to love it, and vice versa for hatred. An emotivist account would claim the opposite, namely that a love or desire for something leads us to call it good, as we see in accounts such as that of Hobbes. Moreover, I have demonstrated here that Descartes does not propose that the emotions give us our sense of what is important, but rather that the ability to make moral judgments incites the passions. From the causal chains described by Descartes, it is clear that he bases his account on an implicit assumption of an ability to formulate moral judgments. As a result, Descartes is not a closet emotivist, as might be gathered. Contrary to appearances, Descartes does not see the passions as moral indicators, but rather he assumes that judgments about morality have already been formed, and it is these moral judgments that in turn cause the passions. In the example of generosité, Descartes assumes that we make moral judgments regarding our own level of desert and that our feelings of proper self-esteem that constitute the passion of generosité are incited by these judgments. It is not the case that the judgment of merit is determined by the feeling of esteem. Consequently, Descartes does not use the passions as indicators of value or worth; rather, his implicit claim is that certain types of passions are in fact caused by judgments of worth. In generosité, Descartes is assuming the success

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of such moral judgments of merit and worth, and that these in turn cause feelings of self esteem: the judgment concerning worth or merit comes prior to and plays a causal role in the feelings of esteem. Reviewing the remaining examples of other-oriented passions, we see that this process is the same: the passions are the result of moral judgments on Descartes’ account, and not the other way around. So Cartesian morality is not emotivist, and the passions are not constitutive of moral truths. Yet the use of the passions extends into the moral realm. Where should we look to begin forming a positive claim about the use of the passions? A possible suggestion is to appeal to the primitive passions. Since each of the other-oriented passions is a composite of primitive passions, and the primitive passions can be understood to conform to the explicit definition of use, could we not, then, understand the use of pity, for example, in terms of sadness and love? But such an account would remain unsatisfactory: there is still the unexplained moral element. The love and sadness are incited by the judgment which deems another person undeserving of his suffering, and Descartes has uniquely classified those passions that involve such a judgment of desert. Consider what good it would do our body to experience love and sadness as the result of such a judgment. Perhaps it would warn us that no matter how deserving of good we may be, ills may befall us; hence, we ought to exercise foresight regarding possible evils. This foresight, however, falls outside the scope of general bodily welfare, on Descartes’ account, and instead is associated with Descartes’ approach to virtue and its goal, tranquility (CSM I, 396 / AT XI, 471; CSM I, 404 / AT XI, 488). I will suggest that the goal of Cartesian virtue can enrich the definition of the use of the passions. Descartes’ discussion of the use of mockery (la raillerie) points us in the right direction.17 Mockery “shows up vices in their proper light by making them appear ridiculous,” and yet it “is not a passion, but rather the trait of a good man. It bears witness to the cheerfulness of his temper and the tranquility of his soul, which are signs of virtue” (CSM I, 393 / AT XI, 465-66). Although mockery is not a passion proper, perhaps the other-oriented passions are similar to mockery with respect to their use. Descartes suggests that the aim of virtue is tranquility of the soul (CSM I, 396 / AT XI 471; CSM I, 404 / AT XI, 488), which is achieved, at least in part, when one’s passions are appropriate and not excessive or too spare. Since the causes of the other-oriented passions are moral judgments, perhaps we can say that we will experience the passions in the right proportion when we have made appropriate judgments. So the other-oriented passions are expressions of our reac-

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tions to moral judgments. In this way, the other-oriented passions are useful insofar as they are expressions of our status with respect to Cartesian virtuous tranquility. These passions alert us to our state with respect to our character and our progress toward virtue and tranquility. Hence, the extended version of the use of the passions is that the other-oriented passions have a use as part of the “maintentance system,” not simply for the well-being of the physical organism of the body, but also for our moral well-being, as it were. The passions are system regulators with regard to our whole selves as humans, alerting us not only about our biological status, but also our status with regard to moral progress toward Cartesian virtuous tranquility. In this respect, we have not overturned Descartes’ explicit definition of the use of the passions, but instead enriched it, drawing out from his discussion a more complete picture of the Cartesian human being, a more complete thinking thing. In sum, the other-oriented passions indicate that the use of the passions extends beyond Descartes’ explicit definition and into the moral realm. However, their use in the moral realm is not to provide the basis for moral judgments; instead, they are caused by moral judgments, and not constitutive of them. The second point against the interpretation for Cartesian morality as emotivist is that Descartes does provide a metaphysical basis for value. Although he does not present a fully-developed account of this doctrine, in correspondence as well as various instances in the Objections and Replies, Descartes strongly touts a voluntarist doctrine regarding necessary truths.18 The voluntarist doctrine holds that the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics are necessarily true because God created them to be necessarily true. Salient to our discussion, Descartes also holds that moral truths are similarly created by God, linking the moral and the modal in a single yoke.19 According to the voluntarist position, since all things depend on God for their existence, and moral laws and necessary truths are themselves things of a sort, they too depend on God for their existence. For instance, Descartes outlines his position in the following section from the Sixth Set of Replies: If anyone attends to the immeasurable greatness of God he will find it manifestly clear that there can be nothing whatsoever which does not depend on him. This applies not just to everything that subsists, but to all order, every law, and every reason for anything’s being true or good. (CSM II, 293 / AT VII, 435-36)20

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It is a further step, however, to suppose that there is the same kind of epistemological access to moral truths as there is for modal truths. The same tests that justify modal truths do not apply with the same force to moral truths: conceiving of the opposite does not lead to such obvious contradiction in the case of moral truths. What would be of service here is some indication that there are clear and distinct ideas of goodness. Although the criterion for clarity and distinctness is itself far from clear, there are passages where, albeit in passing, Descartes suggests that there are clear and distinct perceptions of goodness, and these are often linked with truth. For example, in the fourth Meditation, Descartes says, “the more I incline in one direction—either because I clearly understand that reasons of truth and goodness point that way, or because of a divinely produced disposition of my inmost thoughts—the freer is my choice” (CSM II, 40 / AT VII, 57-58). Also in a letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, Descartes says: “if we see very clearly (tres-clairement) that a thing is good for us, it is very difficult—and on my view, impossible, as long as one continues in the same thought—to stop the course of our desire” (CSMK, 233 / AT IV, 116). Since we have by divine benevolence the same source for both modal and moral truths, it is possible that we might have the same epistemological access to the moral truths as we do the modal. This I present as an interpretation of what is in the text; whether or not this voluntarist doctrine of the modal and the moral holds with any cogency, will remain a topic for further investigation. Overall then, with respect to the status of moral knowledge for Descartes, it is firmly established that, although the passions have a use that puts them in the realm of morality, Descartes' position is not emotivist. Moreover, there is at least room for development of the possibility of clear and distinct ideas of goodness.

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1

“[J]’entens la plus haute & la plus parfaite morale, qui présupposant une entière connoissance des autres sciences, est le dernier degré de la sagesse. Or comme ce n’est pas des racines, ny du tronc des arbres, qu’on cueille les fruits, mais seulement des extrémitéz de leurs branches, ainsi la principale utilité de la philosophie depend de celles de ses parties qu’on ne peut apprendre que les dernières.” 2 The distinction between judgments and perceptions of value is taken up later. 3 I take emotivism to be the stance that emotional responses are constitutive of moral claims. That is, “I think X is good” is the same as saying “I like X.” 4 For example, Amélie Rorty, “Descartes on Thinking with the Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 378. 5 Passions as a whole for Descartes are defined in contrast to the actions of the soul. Actions of the soul are volitions, whereas all passive experience, including sense perception as well as emotions, are passions (CSM I, 335 / AT XI, 342). In this essay, it is the emotions-passions that are of interest, and I will refer to them simply as the passions. 6 “I perceived by my senses that I had a head, hands, feet and other limgs making up the body which I regarded as part of myself, or perhaps even my whole self . . . I also had sensations within me of hunger, thirst, and other such appetites, and also of physical propensities toward cheerfulness, sadness, anger and similar emotions. (Primo itaque sensi me habere caput, manus, pedes, & membra caetera ex quibus constat illud corpus, quod tanquam mei partem. . . . Atque, praeter dolorem & voluptatem, sentiebam etiam in me famem, fitim, aliosque ejusmodi appetitus; itemque coporeas quasdam propensiones ad hilaritatem, ad tristitiam, ad iram, similisque alios affectus)” (CSM II, 51-52 / AT VII, 74). 7 Amélie Rorty, “Descartes on Thinking with the Body,” 378. See also Rorty, “Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body,” in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. A. O. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986): 513-34. 8 Daisie Radner,”The Function of the Passions,” in Passion and Virtue in Descartes, ed. Byron Williston and André Gombay (New York: Humanity Books, 2003): 176. 9 Radner, “The Function of the Passions,” 185. 10 John Cottingham, “Cartesian Ethics: Reason and the Passions,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 1 (1996): 214, citing Passions, CSM I, 343 / AT IXb, 359. 11 “Car l’ame n’est immediatement acertie des choses qui nuisent au corps, que par le sentiment qu’ell a de la douleur, lequel produit en ell premierement la passion de la Tristesse, puis en suite la Haine de ce qui cause cette douleur, & en troisiesme lieu le Desir de s’en delivrer. Comme aussi l’ame n’est immediatement avertie des choses utiles au corps, que par quelque forte ce chatouillement, qui excitant en elle de la Joye, fai ensuite naistre l’amour de ce

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qu’on croit en ester la cause, & en fin le desir d’acquirir ce qui peut faire qu’on continue en cette Joye.” 12 Yet even these passions for which the explicit-use definition appears adequate can also be induced as a result of something other than bodily distress: fear of public speaking, for instance, or abhorrence as a result of hearing discordant music. These passions are variations on those described by Descartes, and yet do not relate expressly to the body. One could argue that his definition of the passions is a little oversimplified, and does not seem to capture any of the important aspects we generally think of as involved with these passions. 13 As Stephen H. Voss points out in to his translation of Passions of the Soul (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 28n20: “Descartes gives two grounds for concluding that something is not a passion: it has no good use (as in this article [viz. §175]), and it is not caused by any particular movement of the animal spirits [e.g., irresolution, ingratitude].” 14 The distinction between judgments and perceptions of value is elucidated by Paul Hoffman, “The Passions and Freedom of the Will,” in Passion and Virtue in Descartes, ed. Byron Williston and André Gombay (New York: Humanity Books, 2003): 261-63. Since perceptions of clear and distinct ideas are always true, and judgments, being a free act of the will, are susceptible to falsity, “that” clauses must be reserved for judgments of value. Hoffman says that “[i]n the case of goodness, instead of saying that I clearly and distinctly perceive that z is good, we should say that I have a clear and distinct perception of z as being good or that I clearly and distinctly perceive z as good” (263). Thus a clear and distinct idea of something as being good (or evil) is the basis for a judgment that the thing is good (or evil). Whether the otheroriented passions are based on judgments or perceptions of value does not have a bearing on the conclusions of this paper. Since it seems that one need not have a true clear and distinct idea of value in order to experience an otheroriented passion, I will assume that the moral apprehension that is at work in these instances is judgment. 15 Here, however, I am focusing my discussion on the passion of generosité as opposed to the virtue. 16 Amélie Rorty, “Descartes on Thinking with the Body,” 387-88. Amélie Rorty makes the following suggestion for an interpretation of Descartes’ position: “The body provides some central and strong inclinations (e.g., fear); and the emotion-habitudes of self-respect and generosité provide others. Because divine benevolence underwrites the reliability of ‘what nature teaches us,’ these inclinations can reliably guide the determination of the will. . . . Divine benevolence goes very far indeed; but it does not go so far as to provide a metaphysical ground for ethical principles, let alone a rational ground for their relative priority in situations where they might conflict.” Although I do not think this point is crucial to Amélie Rorty’s argument, here I am arguing against her suggestion for this interpretation. 17 Voss translates la raillerie as “bantering”, reserving the term “mockery” for Descartes’ la moquerie. For consistency, I will adhere to CSM, which gives “mockery” for la raillerie, and “derision” for la moquerie.

114 18 For a thorough treatment of voluntarism and modality in Descartes, see Jonathan Bennett, “Descartes’ Theory of Modality,” The Philosophical Review 103 (1994): 639-67. 19 Bennett, “Descartes’ Theory of Modality, 643. 20 “Attendenti ad Dei immensitatem, manifestum est nihil omnio esse posse, quod ab ipso non pendeat: non modo nihil subsistens, sed etiam nullum ordinem, nullam legem nullamve rationem veri & boni.”

Chapter 7 Geometry and Imagination: A Study in Ambiguity Matthew S. Linck In his objections to Descartes’ Meditations, Hobbes makes pointed criticism of Descartes’ use of the terms “image” and “idea” (CSM II, 126-27 / AT VII, 179-80). Reading Hobbes’ remarks and Descartes’ reply, one cannot make a definitive judgment about which philosopher carries the day—the comments are too cursory for that. Nevertheless, Hobbes’ comments are persuasive enough to encourage a closer look at Descartes’ use of these terms and the work they are meant to do in his thinking. It becomes clear that Hobbes is right to note a certain equivocation in the use of “image” and “idea.” Sometimes the terms seem synonymous, sometimes they are meant to be in opposition. In a preliminary effort to investigate the nature of this equivocation, I turn toward a study of geometry and imagination. In the nexus of these items, one finds a concentrated encounter of the imaginal and the ideal. The analysis of this nexus results not in a clear-cut procedure for separating the ideal and the imaginal, but rather in the suggestion that there is a fundamental overlapping of the two domains, a necessary meeting point where the effort to distinguish them encounters an unavoidable ambiguity. In what follows, this ambiguity is traced in three sections. First, I will reflect on the nature of geometric entities as being both ideal and imagistic. These reflections will outline the basic structure of the ambiguity mentioned above. Second, I will look briefly at this ambiguity as it surfaces in Plato and Proclus. This historical sketch will give some more determination to the nature of the ambiguity I am attempting to delineate. Lastly, I will turn to Descartes’ writings to analyze his attempts to negotiate this ambiguity. While I am critical of Descartes’ efforts in this regard, the goal of this study is not simply to criticize Descartes, but rather to comprehend why any strategy of strict separation will inevitably fail. Descartes distinguishes between two finite substances, mind and body. These substances are distinguished by means of their primary attributes, thought and extension. These attributes allow the determi-

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nation of a “real distinction,” which is simply this very distinction between two substances. Famously, the connection between these two substances becomes a problem. Once the distinction between mind and body is made into a difference between two substances, the problem arises: how are they related, or how can they be brought into relation with each other? The “solution” to this problem is not to efface the distinction. The notions of mind and body are primitive and experientially intuitive in a way that makes it impossible to eliminate or equate them. Nevertheless, the relation between these terms may be such that there is a common root from which they spring, requiring us to think their difference not as absolute but rather as a certain kind of accomplishment.1 A consideration of geometry is illuminating for this problem. Geometry seems on its face to include the attributes that would distinguish two substances for Descartes: thought and extension. Geometry, on its own terms, and from its own definitions, deals with extension.2 Its objects are described with a language of extension: length, breadth, surface, figure. Yet, those things which can be known about such figures are not extended, rather they are thoughts, or of thought. For instance, that the three angles of any triangle equal two right angles is something which is known of triangles, but it is not itself either a triangle or an extended part of a triangle. It is an intelligible property of all triangles. Thus, in this very basic way, geometry seems to be both of extension and thought, and of them in a way that does not allow extension and thought to be easily separated. For the properties that are known of geometrical figures are known only by reference to extended figures. The sense of intelligible geometric properties would not make sense if they were radically separated from extension altogether.3 The intertwinement of extension and ideality runs deeper, however, and in a way that discloses a profound ambiguity at the heart of geometry itself, for there is a way in which geometrical figures themselves, in their very extendedness, are only something known or thought. The most elementary geometrical entity is (or seems to be) the point. Euclid defines a point as “that which has no part (semeion estin, ou meros outhen).”4 Hence, Euclidean geometry begins with notions of magnitude qua divisibility. However, magnitude is included here only negatively. As Proclus points out,5 extended magnitude is presupposed in this definition, for there are other things which have no parts: the now in terms of time and the monad in terms of arithmetic multitudes. What this entails is that the point, though of extension, is

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not itself extended. Rather, the notion of a point is dialectically constituted in relation to extended entities. This can be shown in terms of the relationship between points and lines. Let us consider lines in terms of line segments. Euclid defines a line as “length without breadth (gramme mekos aplates)”6 and states that “the extremities [limits] of a line are points (grammes perata semeia).”7 The question then arises for us whether points can constitute a line or whether points can only be understood as the limits of a line. In the first instance, it is crucial to recognize that points cannot constitute a line such that a line would be made up of points. Since a point is absolutely unextended it cannot be a part of a line. This is the converse of a point having no parts. But if a line cannot be made up of points, in what sense might a point be construed as the constitutive principle of a line? Only through notions of motion or growth can this be the case. A line would be the path defined by a moving point8 or one order of magnitude that grows from a point.9 Such notions attempt to save a certain self-standing priority for the point over that which would be derivative of points. However, the need to resort to positings of motion and growth calls into question this priority. Conversely, points can be taken as essentially derivative of lines. Given a finite line segment, the points that determine a line are its endpoints. But these are not in themselves something spatial. Rather they are that where the segment comes to an end. In this sense the points are nothing, if to be something is to be extended. But they are not nothing if to be a limit is to be something.10 And, indeed, without limits the line segment would not come to an end. In this way, neither the (end)points nor the line would be self-standing entities. They are rather dialectically co-constitutive. We can see, then, that points are not something given separately, either to intelligence or sensibility. While they have their sense in relation to spatiality, a geometrical point could never be encountered as an object of experience. Also, the points we might imagine pictorially are extended inasmuch as we “see” them in imagination and do not simply think them. A point is thus both something which has no sense without reference to extension, spatiality or exteriority and is only something that can be thought. This begins to illuminate the second and deeper way in which geometry contains a fundamental overlap of extension and thought. Yet it runs even deeper. As a limit-concept, the point is exemplary among geometrical notions. It is of spatiality without having any spatiality. But what of lines and plane figures? Are these any less ideal for having extension? And are they not ideal in their notions, but pre-

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cisely in their extendedness? A line cannot be encountered in experience any more than a point. It could never be given as a onedimensional object of sense.11 Also, plane figures, without any depth, are inaccessible to sensibility. It is here that questions of imagination come to the fore. It might seem intuitively correct to many to say that imagined geometrical figures or entities are thoughts and thus unextended. Yet as we have just seen, points, lines and planes are radically invisible such that mental pictures import a visibility that corrupts their ideal-extension. Again, the claim here is that it is not in something like actual or mental picturing that geometrical figures become extended, but that they are (paradoxically) extended and ideal in themselves. Furthermore, the imagination seems to possess a complementary nature: it seems to produce entities that are embodied and yet only something thought. The problem presented by geometrical figures and imagination is already formulated in Plato’s Republic. It is found in the discussion of the divided line. After presenting the analogy of the sun and the good, Socrates asks Glaucon to make a distinction between the visible (horaton) and the intelligible (noeton). Glaucon obliges. Socrates continues, Then, take a line cut in two unequal segments, one for the class that is seen, the other for the class that is intellected—and go on and cut each segment in the same ratio. Now, in terms of relative clarity and obscurity, you’ll have one segment in the visible part for images. I mean by images first shadows, then appearances produced in water and in all close-grained, smooth, bright things, and everything of the sort, if you understand. (509 d–e)12

The line is cut into four segments. The ratio of the two main sections equals the ratio between each smaller pair of segments.13 The first segment that is explicated is that of images. The important point to grasp here is the derivative character of images. They are images of things and are ontologically bound up in a certain economy of relation. At the end of Book VI, Socrates assigns a distinct power of the soul to each division of the line. To images (eikones) he assigns imagination (eikasia). Imagination refers here not to a power of producing mental pictures, but rather to a power to see images as images. It is a power to navigate the relational economy in which an image is constituted. This means that the field of images is bound up with the objects of the corresponding segment.14

119 Then in the other segment put that of which this first is the likeness— the animals around us, and everything that grows, and the whole class of artifacts. (510 a)

These are the things of which there are images, and it is only by reference to such things that images can be known as images. So far these considerations are rather mundane. Experience of physical objects and their shadows and reflections is commonplace. But it is this very commonness that makes Socrates’ next remarks potentially elusive. For he goes on to explain how to divide the other main section of the line. He says it should be cut “like this”: in one part of it [the dianoetic division] a soul, using as images the things that were previously imitated, is compelled to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and makes its way not to a beginning but to an end. (510 b)

We will only be concerned here with this first subdivision. What is noteworthy is that the relation between the first two subdivisions (images and things) is repeated across the main division. Those things that “were previously imitated” are now taken to be images themselves. Firstly, this is no longer a commonplace notion. Secondly, if imagination is the power to see images as images, it will be in play in traversing the divide between the visible and the intelligible, for what are treated as originals (i.e., real things) in the sensible domain will be treated as images in the intelligible domain. And only the power of imagination is capable of treating them as such. When Glaucon confesses that he does not understand Socrates’ remarks, Socrates tries to clarify. I suppose you know that the men who work in geometry, calculation, and the like treat as known the odd and the even, the figures, three forms of angles, and other things akin to these in each kind of inquiry. . . . Don’t you also know that they use visible forms besides and make their arguments about them, not thinking about them but about those others that they are like? They make the arguments for the sake of the square itself and the diagonal itself, not for the sake of the diagonal they draw, and likewise with the rest. These things themselves that they mold and draw, of which there are shadows and images in water, they now use as images, seeking to see those things themselves, that one can see in no other way than with thought (dianoia). (510 c–e)

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Thus pictures and drawings of geometrical objects are taken here as images of a different kind of thing, things that can only be “seen” with thought. The ambiguity we have been tracing throughout is bound up here in the togetherness of seeing and thinking. Allegedly invisible things are “seen” by thought. Things that we can properly see are taken as images of things that cannot be seen in the ordinary sense. Socrates does not explicitly speak here of something like mental pictures, but this kind of imaging of geometrical objects would seem consistent with the language used. I can see a circle in my mind which is nowhere among the physical objects we hold in common. But is that what Socrates means here by seeing in thought? Certainly not entirely, if at all. For the things themselves in this case cannot be mental pictures. Is not such a picture of a thing just as particular and evanescent as that very physical thing? In fact, is it not undetermined whether mental pictures are not themselves a kind of physical thing? Likewise, can my mental picture of a square be taken as a universal, as a square itself? We see again that the real question is not one of distinguishing between geometrical entities that are drawn physically and ones that are drawn mentally, but between geometrical entities as images and as things knowable. That is, the locus of the images cannot determine whether they are or can be known. This means that the positing of mental pictures does not clarify anything, but simply deepens the problem—there is nowhere secure on the divided line to place the square I see as a picture in my imagination. Let me note as well that the divided line itself has a rather ambiguous status. It is, certainly, an image; yet it is an image that is supposed to represent, or help us think, the structure of the modes of manifestation of both sensibility and intelligibility. In this regard, the divided line exhibits a radically self-referential character, for its teaching is needed to fully understand its status as an aid to understanding. Proclus, in his Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, tries very hard to outline a resolution to this problem by positing something that Socrates does not, namely, an intermediary position between what I can see with my eyes and what I can think. He writes in the first sentence of his treatise, Mathematical being (mathematike ousian) . . . occupies the middle ground (mesen choran) between the partless realities . . . and divisible things.15

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There is a sense in which mathematical being is this middle ground. However, rather than having its own essential characteristics, this middle ground is constituted by having characteristics of each of its neighboring grounds. On the one hand, mathematical being is like the highest things in terms of what can be said about it. We can know mathematical being as “unchangeable, stable and incontrovertible.” On the other hand, both the procedure and objects used to approach mathematical being are “divisible, multiform and extended.” It seems, then, that it is unclear precisely what would be proper to mathematical being as such. Perhaps it is only its status as something between. Our question here is whether this “between” is really a distinct and stable region, or whether it is only a vanishing mediator between incommensurable regions. The latter would seem to be suggested by the contorted formulations that Proclus is obliged to present. Before we proceed, however, we must note what seems to be a certain shift in emphasis from Plato to Proclus. With respect to the structure of the divided line, Proclus is going to make the third division itself the intermediary between the properly visible and the properly knowable. In this way, he will speak explicitly of the multiform and divisible status of dianoetic objects and thinking, in contrast to the “partless” status of the properly noetic. This, however, seems to be a device of convenience, for it opens a space between the visible and the intelligible that does not seem warranted. One could say that Proclus is Platonically accurate in a technical sense, but also say that he distorts the overall picture. The passages concerning the divided line in the Republic do highlight a certain intermediary status of the dianoetic. Nevertheless, it is the main division that remains dominant. We must remember that the dianoetic and the noetic are both together the whole of the intelligible segment, which means that the dianoetic cannot be used to explain the passage from sensation to intellection. In other words, while the dianoetic may in certain respects act as a “between,” it cannot simply be a space between the visible and the intelligible. Proclus writes, Mathematical objects, and in general all the objects of the understanding (dianoia), have an intermediate position. They go beyond the objects of the intellect (nous) in being divisible, but they surpass sensible things in being devoid of matter. They are inferior to the former in simplicity yet superior to the latter in precision, reflecting intelligible reality more clearly than do perceptible things. Nevertheless they are only images, imitating in their divided fashion the indivisible and in their multiform fashion the uniform patterns of being.16

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Socrates says that certain properly visible things can be employed as images of dianoetic things. Proclus here makes dianoetic objects images of noetic ones. But in order to do this, he has to explicitly import visibility into the realm of the intelligible. He also requires the positing of a unique substrate for geometrical entities—intelligible matter. In fact, the attempt to stabilize the intermediary status of geometrical objects requires other bifurcations as well. If we assume two classes of things that participate in the universal, namely, sense objects and objects that have existence in the imagination (for matter likewise is twofold, as Aristotle somewhere says [viz. Metaphysics 1036a9-12]: the matter of things tied to sensation and the matter of imagined objects), we shall admit that the corresponding universals are of two kinds: one perceptible, since it is participated in by sense objects, and the other imaginary, as existing in the plurality of pictures in the imagination.17

What Proclus has explicitly laid out here are two different kinds of extended, divisible geometrical entities, those that are physically real in the ordinary sense, made of sensible matter, and those that are imaginary, made of intelligible matter.18 Those that are sensible are imperfect and deviate from their ideal exemplars. Those that are imaginary differ from each other only in size and are otherwise identical. Proclus does not justify the claim that imagined geometrical figures can have this kind of perfection. But more importantly, Proclus has redoubled the problematic transition we noted in the Republic between the visible and the intelligible within the intelligible itself. For now Proclus must distinguish the imagined circle from another uniform circle in the dianoetic realm. What was to be the solution to a problem simply displaces the problem. For this reason the circle in the understanding (dianoia) is one and simple and unextended, and magnitude itself is without magnitude there, and figure without shape; for such objects in the understanding are ideas devoid of matter. But the circle in the imagination is divisible, formed, extended—not one only, but one and many, and not a form only, but a form in instances—whereas the circle in sensible things is inferior in precision, infected with straightness, and falls short of the purity of immaterial circles.19

The inherent problem of passing from extension to thought, from the sensible to the intelligible, has come to infect the space which was to mediate that passage. The mathematical itself has split into something which is both “one and simple and unextended” and “divisible,

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formed, [and] extended.”20 The imagination comes to name that ‘seeing’ that is in the mind. This consideration of Plato and Proclus has shown that the problematic nature of geometrical objects seems to be inescapable. Proclus represents a school of thought that has tried to overcome the problem through the introduction of a discrete third between sensibility and intelligibility. It turns out that such an approach only displaces the problem into the heart of that which would resolve it. Turning to Descartes, we see that he takes the opposite approach. Rather than trying to mediate the problem, he attempts to avoid it by discretely substantializing the opposing terms. In order to understand Descartes’ thinking concerning geometry and imagination, it is helpful to begin with his understanding of a “real distinction.” In the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes writes that “[s]trictly speaking, a real distinction exists only between two or more substances; and we can perceive that two substances are really distinct simply from the fact that we can clearly and distinctly understand one apart from the other” (CSM I, 213 / AT VIIIa, 28). This manner of distinguishing substance is crucial for Descartes’ metaphysics and is underpinned by the relation between such distinctions and God’s power. For what is really distinguished is capable (1) of being created by God and (2) existing separately. This leaves open the question of whether we exist separately or compoundly, but seems to entail that if we do not exist separately we exist as conjoined. In the same section of the Principles Descartes writes, And even if we suppose God has joined some corporeal substance to such a thinking substance so closely that they cannot be more closely conjoined, thus compounding them into a unity, they nonetheless remain really distinct. For no matter how closely God may have united them, the power which he previously had of separating them, or keeping one in being without the other, is something he could not lay aside; and things which God has the power to separate, or to keep in being separately, are really distinct. (CSM I, 213 / AT VIIIa, 29)

Again, it seems to follow from this reasoning that to be something is to be of some one substance, and only that substance. According to the logic of God’s power, it would be inconsistent to say that there is some one thing that is essentially compound, for if that were the case, God would not be able to separate its parts without destroying its nature.

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In the Principles, Descartes uses the notion of a real distinction to clarify what he means by the substances of mind and body. He writes, Thought and extension can be regarded as constituting the natures of intelligent substance and corporeal substance; they must then be considered as nothing else but thinking substance itself and extended substance itself—that is, as mind and body. (CSM I, 215 / AT VIIIa, 3031)

Thus thought, intelligent substance, thinking substance and mind all mean the same thing. Likewise, extension, corporeal substance, extended substance and body are all equivalent. Understanding this is important when considering Descartes’ comments concerning geometry, for extension on his terms is such that anything that is extended in the true sense is necessarily a body. Descartes continues this line of reasoning concerning extended substance in the second part of the Principles. There he writes, The nature of body consists not in weight, hardness, colour, or the like, but simply in extension.—If we do this, we shall perceive that the nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but is simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth. (CSM I, 224 / AT VIIIa, 42)

Given these remarks, we are brought back to the issues I outlined at the beginning. True extension for Descartes is going to be threedimensional extension, since there are no one- or two-dimensional bodies. What then of something like a triangle? It cannot be a body in the full sense, but neither can it be a mere thought. It would simply be inconsistent to say that a triangle, as a triangle, is not extended. This ambiguity is now becoming rather familiar. So, with these things in mind, let us now turn to some passages where Descartes speaks directly of geometry and imagination. First, let us consider Rule XII from the Regulae ad directionem ingenii. The rule itself states that “we must make use of all the aids which intellect, imagination, sense-perception, and memory afford” (CSM I, 39 / AT X, 410). The descriptions of these various faculties that then follow are in the service of the overall prescriptive intention of the Regulae. At one point, Descartes then describes a faculty that is not listed in the opening sentences of Rule XII, the “common sense.” Descartes writes,

125 when an external sense organ is stimulated by an object, the figure which it receives is conveyed at one and the same moment to another part of the body known as the ‘common’ sense, without any entity really passing from the one to the other. (CSM I, 41 / AT X, 413-14)

The common sense turns out to be the intermediary between senseperception and corporeal imagination. Imagination here is understood not as a mental, that is, spiritual, faculty, but rather as a “genuine part of the body” (CSM I, 42 / AT X, 414). It is, quite simply, a part of the body that receives figures from the common sense and is able to retain them for some time. In this way, corporeal imagination can be identified with memory. What we must remember here is that, as a bodily phenomenon, imagination and its ‘ideas’ must be understood as extended and therefore as physical, material things. The figure in the imagination may not be the thing itself that I see before me, but it is no less a real, physical thing because of that. Finally, we learn that the intellect, the sole purely spiritual faculty, “can either be stimulated by the imagination or act upon it” (CSM I, 43 / AT X, 416). Given what we know about the real distinction between mind and body, the nature of this stimulation is rather obscure. Phenomenologically, it is clear that Descartes needs some such notion to account for the nature of human experience since our mental life is intimately connected to our senses and to imagination and memory. In his geometrical exposition of the Meditations in the Second Set of Replies, Descartes explicates again the notion of substance: Substance. The term applies to every thing in which whatever we perceive immediately resides, as in a subject, or to every thing by means of which whatever we perceive exists. By ‘whatever we perceive’ is meant any property, quality or attribute of which we have a real idea. The only idea we have of a substance itself, in the strict sense, is that it is the thing in which whatever we perceive (or whatever has objective being in one of our ideas) exists, either formally or eminently. For we know by the natural light that a real attribute cannot belong to nothing. . . . The substance in which thought immediately resides is called mind. . . . The substance which is the immediate subject of local extension and of the accidents which presuppose extension, such as shape, position, local motion and so on, is called body. Whether what we call mind and body are one and the same substance, or two different substances, is a question which will have to be dealt with later on. (CSM II, 114 / AT VII, 161-62)

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Given this notion of substance, it is now unclear whether mind and body have to be two substances. The account above is predicated on what we perceive, and it is possible that what we perceive as distinct (thought and extension) adhere in the same substance. And looking to the end of this geometrical exposition, we seem to come full circle. Here we read again that “there is a real distinction between the mind and the body” (CSM II, 119 / AT VII, 169). It now becomes evident that whether or not mind and body are one or two substances turns on the meaning of “real.” Descartes writes, God can bring about whatever we clearly perceive in a way exactly corresponding to our perception of it. . . . But we clearly perceive the mind, that is, a thinking substance, apart from the body, that is, apart from extended substance. . . . And conversely we can clearly perceive the body apart from mind (as everyone readily admits). Therefore the mind can, at least through the power of God, exist without the body; and similarly the body can exist apart from the mind. (CSM II, 119 / AT VII, 170; emphasis added)

At this point, however, what we want to know is not whether mind and body can exist separately, but whether they in fact do exist separately. That is, are mind and body one substance that could be separated, or are they two substances that are conjoined into a unity? This latter formulation, the one suggested earlier by passages from the Principles, raises very difficult questions concerning the nature of the one and the many. For to say that the human being, for instance, is a unity of a conjunction of mind and body requires one to say precisely what this unit is.21 My contention is that Descartes has no choice but to waver between these two positions. His official stance will be that mind and body are two substances, while also maintaining their unity. Yet, he does not seem to explore the nature of this unity. For instance, in the “Conversation with Burman,” Descartes says explicitly that mind and body are two substances. This is followed by reference to the passage in the Meditations where Descartes states, “I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with” (CSM II, 56 / AT VII, 81). Burman rightly asks how this is possible, or even intelligible, in light of the incommensurable natures of the substances. Descartes’ response is a typical one for him concerning such matters. He says, “This is very difficult to explain; but here our experience is sufficient, since it is so clear on this point that it just cannot be gainsaid” (CSMK, 346 / AT V, 163).

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This all goes to show that while the vocabulary is different, Descartes is mired in the same ambiguities that we saw surface with Plato and Proclus. The oscillations between the unity and distinction of mind and body is akin to the problem of traversing the middle division of the divided line. That is, mind and body call for a clear distinguishing while at the same time present an ambiguous overlapping. I am going to end by examining a section of the Meditations that deals with geometry. The purpose of this analysis will be to attempt to circumscribe a certain philosophical problem as it surfaces in Descartes’ work. The preceding sections were intended to demonstrate the inherent difficulty in trying to clearly distinguish between intellection and imagination, especially in the case of geometrical entities. Given what we have seen above of Descartes’ thinking, we should not be surprised that, at the beginning of Meditation VI, he tells the reader that he will “examine the difference between imagination and pure understanding” (CSM II, 50 / AT VII, 72). One can suspect that Descartes will not entertain any ambiguity between the two. Descartes turns to geometry to illustrate his point. When I imagine a triangle, for example, I do not merely understand that it is a figure bounded by three lines, but at the same time I also see the three lines with my mind’s eye as if they were present before me; and this is what I call imagining. But if I want to think of a chiliagon, although I understand that it is a figure consisting of a thousand sides just as well as I understand the triangle to be a three-sided figure, I do not in the same way imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present before me. It is true that since I am in the habit of imagining something whenever I think of a corporeal thing, I may construct in my mind a confused representation of some figure; but it is clear that this is not a chiliagon. For it differs in no way from the representation I should form if I were thinking of a myriagon, or any figure with very many sides. Moreover, such a representation is useless for recognizing the properties which distinguish a chiliagon from other polygons. But suppose I am dealing with a pentagon: I can of course understand the figure of a pentagon, just as I can the figure of a chiliagon, without the help of the imagination; but I can also imagine a pentagon, by applying my mind’s eye to its five sides and the area contained within them. And in doing this I notice quite clearly that imagination requires a peculiar effort of mind which is not required for understanding; this additional effort of mind clearly

128 shows the difference between imagination and pure understanding. (CSM II, 50-51 / AT VII, 72-73)

In order to contextualize the comments I will make below, we must pause to consider the difference between the imagination as it is discussed here and as it is discussed in the Regulae. Firstly, the term is different. In the Regulae, Descartes principally refers to the imagination with the word phantasia. This seems to be the word he uses when he wants to delimit the imagination as itself a corporeal entity.22 Here in the Meditations, Descartes uses the term imaginatio. This term is used to delimit the imagination as a mental faculty. It must be noted, however, that this use of two distinct terms is somewhat illicit. For in the Regulae Descartes begins Rule XII by stating that he is going to discuss various faculties that contribute to our ability to know. Thus phantasia is from the first bound up with a certain intellective economy. Likewise, as we shall see soon, imaginatio, initially introduced here as a mental faculty, will draw us back to the body. The question I would like to pursue here concerns what it means to “construct a figure in [the] mind” on the one hand, and what it means to “understand [a] figure . . . without the aid of the imagination” on the other. It seems that Descartes wants to make a distinction along the following lines: through an act of pure intellection I can understand a figure such as a triangle, pentagon, or chiliagon. In doing so, however, I would not have present to my mind any pictorial image of the figure. I would be concerned only with what can be known of the figure: for example, that it is bounded by three line segments, that its interior angles are equal to two right angles, that its greatest side subtends the greatest angle. This would be the case of pure intellection.23 The other case would be the case where I both understand and construct a picture of the figure. Descartes interprets this as an act or “effort” of the mind that is in addition to pure understanding. Given what we saw earlier in the Regulae it would seem that there is a third possibility as well, namely, having the figure in the (corporeal) imagination without understanding it. What, then, is the ontological status of this figure that is produced through this special effort of the mind? As we saw above, a body is distinguished by having extenstion. Yet to be truly a body, it must have three-dimensions of extension. By definition, plane figures are two-dimensional. What we are confronted with here is in some sense a problem of physics: how is a two-dimesional figure to be “embodied” in the corporeal imagination, itself a real part of the body. The

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more one thinks it through, the more one comes to see that any pictorial representation is impossible. No matter how precise the drawing, no matter how refined the lines, a pentagon we can see is too “thick” to be a pentagon. But neither, again, is it something simply thought. To be a pentagon is to be of extension, thus not of thought. But to be perfectly a pentagon is something that, it seems, can only be thought. It would seem, then, that we cannot coherently posit a pure understanding of geometrical figures without reference to extension. And is there any way to understand extension without being in and of extension? Is it even possible to simply say that we “understand” extension? Doesn’t our understanding always presume a prior givenness? These questions do not in principle deny the possibility of pure intellection, but they do call into question the separability of the intellection of geometrical figures from an acquaintance with an actually extended world. Thus, as was noted above, it seems right to say that the general properties of geometrical figures are known through understanding something other than the mere extendedness of the figures. Indeed, intelligence is required to grasp the properties of geometric figures. However, it does not make sense to say that those properties mean anything when separated from the horizon of extension. And, I want to argue, that horizon is a horizon of phenomena. It is here that it would be fruitful to circle back and begin reading the Meditations again from the beginning. Surely Descartes is right to place emphasis on our thinking nature, and to regard thinking as irreducible. But we might want to read Descartes here against the grain, holding onto the discreteness of thought while at the same time resisting the effort to separate it from extension and phenomena. One might find that the Cartesian text, despite its overt claims, shows exceedingly well the untruth of such radical separation.

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1

Kant speaks of such a common root in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason. All through the Analytic, Kant is both guided by and haunted by this commonness. Kant recognizes the need to posit sensibility and understanding as distinct. But he also understands that their togetherness cannot be a simple joining together. Their togetherness is obliquely spoken of as more primordial than their separation. Thus the role of imagination in Kant becomes decisive for understanding the very coming-into-being of intelligible phenomena. Cf. Heidegger’s discussion of this question in Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 2 Thus Proclus argues that Euclid’s definition of a point as that without parts is adequate inasmuch as one knows under what object of study the definition falls, namely extension. In this way, everything that is comprehended in geometry is always understood from within the horizon of extension. See Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, trans. Glenn R. Morrow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970): 76. 3 The advent of analytic geometry with Descartes himself would seem to contradict this since geometrical problems can be formulated in symbolic expressions. However, as long as one understands such expressions as geometrical one has not left the horizon of extension. 4 Greek Mathematical Works: Thales to Euclid, trans. Ivor Thomas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939): 437. 5 See n2 above. 6 Greek Mathematical Works, 437. 7 Greek Mathematical Works, 437. 8 Sir Thomas L. Heath, Euclid: The Thirteen Books of The Elements, vol. I (New York: Dover, 1956): , seems to attribute this opinion to Aristotle, citing De Anima 409a4. What we read there is, “they say a moving line generates a surface and a moving point a line.” However, the preceding lines show quite clearly that Aristotle himself finds such a notion incoherent. See The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984): “Of all the positions we have enumerated, by far the most unreasonable is that which declares the soul to be a self-moving number; it involves in the first place all the impossibilities which follow from regarding the soul as moved, and in the second special absurdities which follow from calling it a number. How are we to imagine a unit being moved? By what agency? What sort of movement can be attributed to what is without parts or internal differences? If the unit is both originative of movement and itself capable of being moved, it must contain difference” (408b31-09a4). 9 Heath cites the following, attributed to Simplicius: “a point is the beginning of magnitudes and that from which they grow” (Euclid, 157). 10 It is interesting to note in this regard the Latin translation of Euclid’s definition of a point by Martianus Capella (cited in Heath, Euclid, 155): “A point is that a part of which is nothing (Punctum est cuius pars nihil est).”

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11

Proclus suggests that we can have a visual perception of a line by looking at the border between a lighted and shaded area. But this would not be a selfstanding line, only a line as a limit separating two planar regions. The plane in turn would be the actual reflective surface of a real body. Thus the line ‘in itself’ would not be available for sensibility. 12 All citations are from The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968). Stephanus pagination will be provided in parentheses in the main text. 13 This procedure for constructing the divided line always results in a figure where the middle two subdivisions, those corresponding to the physical world and dianoetic objects, are equal in magnitude. 14 Cf. the discussion of eikasia in Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965): 112-25. 15 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 3. 16 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 4. 17 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 41. 18 Even the nomenclature of sensible and intelligible matter simply repeats the problem it would resolve. Intelligible matter is the matter of a different kind of sensibility. 19 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 43. 20 Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 43. 21 It is just these kinds of questions that Descartes would dismiss as overly “subtle.” The pragmatic telos of Descartes’ metaphysical writings becomes clear when he encounters such questions. For to entertain them in any serious way would likely involve a lengthy detour away from the business of science, Descartes’ primary pursuit. 22 See CSM I, 41 / AT VII, 414; and CSM I, 41n2. 23 It is unclear how Descartes understands the purity of this intellection. If it does include the intellection of such properties, then this intellection contains a discursive, thus successive, element. If this pure intellection is only supposed to entail the intellection of a triangle as a three-sided figure, then the autonomy of pure intellection seems rather suspect. Once again, the phrase “three-sided figure” is entirely empty if it is without any relationship to its figuration (from fingere, to fashion).

Chapter 8 The Limits of Silence: Descartes, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Ordinary Language Narve Strand De quo consultus, an esset tempora maturae visurus longa senectae, fatidicus vates “si se non noverit” inquit. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, iii, 344-46)

1. Introduction∗ To affirm the decisive impact of the linguistic turn has, it seems, become a commonplace these days. Certainly, a broad consensus prevails among both Analytic and Continental philosophers: the turn initiated at the beginning of the last century by Heidegger and Wittgenstein is simply irreversible, comparable, perhaps, to the impact the Copernican Revolution had on modern philosophy. Individual thinkers may disagree on what consequences this will have for the status of philosophy and its relationship to the everyday. There can be no doubt, however, that traditional conceptions of rationality are greatly affected once the turn to language is made.1 Before the linguistic turn, philosophy usually dealt with language by either making it ancillary to philosophical analysis proper or by completely ignoring it. Descartes is a pivotal representative of this line of thought. It was thought that the matter at hand always took precedence over considerations of language. After all, language is merely a means to an end. It is merely a passive expressive medium of consciousness, thought or mind, barred from playing a constitutive role, and not at all of decisive importance in settling questions of meaning, reference or truth. If the matter could not be pursued in complete isolation from language, then one could at least use language as a vehicle to express and communicate one’s findings––let us call this expressive use of language “communicative intent.” On all interpretations it was somehow thought possible to argue the case for legitimation (quaestio juris) prior to all communication. As a result,

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the tradition ultimately sought a grounding of rationality outside the public, discursive domain. No wonder traditional philosophy had such a low view of communicative praxis!2 With the linguistic turn, a concerted effort was made to overcome the traditional, and specifically Cartesian, disparagement of the ordinary. Towards this end both Heidegger and Wittgenstein take their departure from everyday language. Insofar as philosophy not only makes its appearance within our common language, but also aims to share its dispositions therein, it cannot avoid getting caught up in it. How, then, can it altogether refuse to discuss the strictures of communicative language? It may still be possible, of course, to mount a reasoned defense of extraordinary discourse. However, merely appealing to the primacy of mind is bound to be a question-begging exercise. We might just as well undercut this primacy altogether by denying the instrumentalist view of language outright. Barring a reduction to total silence, therefore, philosophy needs more than communicative intent. Needless to say, this will have far-reaching consequences for the status of philosophy itself. If meaning and truth can now no longer be gauged prior to ordinary language, then traditional philosophy has effectively lost its unquestioned preeminence. The real question is whether this spells the end of philosophy itself. If philosophy can never leave ordinary language entirely behind, then is philosophical discourse not simply dissolved into it (Wittgenstein)? Or is there a way, perhaps, to integrate ordinary language into a more comprehensive account (Heidegger)? Notwithstanding the recent disagreement over the specifics of this new rapprochement between philosophical discourse and ordinary language, the issue of legitimation must still be faced in the end. Specifically, can ordinary language be genuinely affirmed without sacrificing, in the process, the justificatory force of one’s own claims? If this cannot be done, then are Wittgenstein and Heidegger not at bottom involved in a similar evasion? And if so, then exactly how much progress has really been made vis-à-vis Cartesian philosophy? This paper aims to problematize the relationship between philosophical discourse and ordinary language with a view to the issue of legitimation. (A sidelong glance at the political implications is always implied.) Heidegger and Wittgenstein do, I submit, constitute an advance insofar as they, unlike Descartes, are willing to explicitly discuss the strictures of communicative language. However, neither a simple dissolution of philosophical discourse (Wittgenstein) nor its intensified aggrandizement (Heidegger) seems warranted if taken as a comprehensive position. Both lines of attack, in fact, are rather un-

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concerned with providing a discursive justification for their respective radicality. The issue of legitimation is either deemed incommunicative (Heidegger) or it is simply dismissed out of hand, being turned back on the interlocutor herself (Wittgenstein). Discursive justification, by contrast, arguably requires (a) communicative intent, and in addition (b) a willingness to settle the issue interlocutorily in language itself. The procedure of this paper will be to show, by a kind of philosophical reenactment, what follows from Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical positions––on their own terms. In both cases, the outcome is inconclusive, suggesting that the question of legitimation has not been adequately resolved by either philosopher in question. It is in this sense, I think, that the question of the Cartesian legacy remains an open one. 2. Thinking Silently The imaginary scenario conjured up for the benefit of the reader at the beginning of the first Meditation is characterized by maturity, solitude, and the absence of speech. The one who addresses us, we are told, has left his childhood behind. He is alone in his study, silently meditating, engaged, presumably over a period of several days, in the task of progressively rethinking his own thoughts with a view to scientific truth (Meditation I: CSM II, 12 / AT VII, 17-18; Meditation II: CSM II, 15 / AT VII, 22-23; Meditation III: CSM II, 22-23 / AT VII, 34-35; Meditation IV: CSM II, 37 / AT VII, 52-53; Meditation V: CSM II, 44 / AT VII, 63-64; Meditation VI: CSM II, 50 / AT VII, 7172). At first blush, nothing essentially new or out of the ordinary is taking place here. Plato, too, conjures up various imaginary dialogical scenarios, the second best thing in his opinion to oral communication. And Augustine, well ahead of Descartes, not only depicts his life as an inward narrative, but also dramatizes with great acumen reason’s interior monologue with itself.3 Still, there is a sense in which Cartesian discourse is predicated on a more radical incommunicability. First of all, no interlocutors are ever found conversing with each other. In fact, nothing is ever spoken out loud by anyone. Secondly, the interior soliloquy of the thinker is from the very outset aimed at systematically suspending any veridical or semantic force that communicative language may possess––including, one may assume, written communication. The reason for this unprecedented insulation on the part of the author is, as is well known, that Descartes wanted to provide an abso-

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lutely infallible source for scientific knowledge (scientia), something which he thinks must be established by conceptual thought in the privacy of the individual, thinking mind. This is not to say that the language of the community is intrinsically incapable of meaning or truth, of course, nor that imaginative discourse cannot have a role to play in the search for it. The narrative form and the use of the imaginary scenarios alone suggest this. Then again, since ordinary language so easily misleads us, it must nevertheless be regarded as necessarily meaningless or false, at least for theoretical purposes. I am thinking about these matters within myself, silently and without speaking (apud me tacitus et sine voce considerem), nonetheless the actual words bring me up short, and I am almost tricked by ordinary ways of talking (ab ipso usu loquendi). We say that we see the wax itself, if it is there before us, not that we judge it to be there from its color or shape; and this might lead me to conclude without more ado that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eyes see, and not from the scrutiny (inspectione) of the mind alone. But then if I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge (judico) that they are men. And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment (judicandi facaltate) which is in my mind (in mente). However, one who wants to achieve knowledge above the ordinary level (supra vulgus) should feel ashamed of having taken ordinary ways of talking as a basis for doubt (ex formis loquendi quas vulgus invenit dubitationem quaesavisse). (Meditation II: CSM II, 21 / AT VII, 31-32)4

It would therefore be both facetious and rather effete to claim that the logical coherence or argumentative force of Cartesian discourse is wholly negated by the fact that it is communicated in the form of writing (whatever that could mean), as it would to merely point out that Descartes uses with a view to truth what he regards as necessarily false. For if charged with either taking poetic license or committing a communicative fallacy, Descartes could always fall back on a mentalist or essentialist defense in the strict sense. According to Descartes, we all have to reflect inwardly and independently on what we read. The matter at hand may be translated into the form of communication, to be sure, but it is never reducible to it. In fact, if confronted with dissenting views the individual can always dispense with communication altogether.5 If I thereby reduce myself to silence, so much the worse for communicative language!

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What can be imagined to be otherwise must be doubted. Whatever is inseparable from the sensible can be imagined to be otherwise. Therefore, it must be doubted. That is why neither the senses nor the imagination can ever serve as infallible sources of theoretical knowledge. This is perhaps the main imaginary posture deployed by Descartes in the first two Meditations. And he does this in order to bracket not only the unreliable veridical (or semantic) force of the senses but also that of the imagination. It is abundantly clear that the vagaries of the imagination are even more inherently deceptive than are the testimony of the senses. For not only does imagination point back to the senses, but also, unlike sensation, it is produced manifestly at will. The imagination must be made to transpose itself, as it were, if infallible truth is to be countenanced. What remains, strictly speaking, is a class of residual ideas altogether beyond the pale of communication, viz. the clear and distinct ones (CSM II, 11, 18, 37, and 50ff. / AT VII, 15, 27, 53, 72ff). For Descartes, there is always more to be seen than merely meets the eye. We need the intellective act of the mind (mens) or reason (ratio) in order to perceive the sensible, in the first place (as shown in the wax scenario of Meditation II). Only when the mind has wholly transposed or overcome the plasticity of both the sensible and the imaginary will truth be seen with complete certainty. Therefore, we should not let ourselves be overly misdirected by a seeming alignment with communication. First of all, the external, public or communal is presumed to be wholly expendable. After all, it cannot possibly be either a necessary or a sufficient condition of truth for Descartes. Secondly, the sensible and the imaginary are inessential modes of reason. So the Cartesian really remains where he begins: in silence.6 3. The Meaning of Silence It could be said that Descartes is the father of modern philosophy; that philosophy, in fact, really only came of age with him; that subsequent philosophy has been merely a variation of a theme; that Heidegger, along with Wittgenstein, finally overcame this whole tradition by turning to language; that Heidegger, nevertheless, in the end merely wanted to provide this tradition with a deeper grounding. Whatever the relative legitimacy of these claims, the fact remains that Heidegger did project a recontextualization (Destruktion) of the philosophical tradition as early as in Sein und Zeit (1927). The modern ideal of philosophy as science is retained in this work (SZ §7), as

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is the claim that neither representation (Vorstellung) nor communication (Mitteilung) is sufficient for truth in its essential sense (SZ §34, 162-63). It cannot be denied, either, that human existence (Dasein) still retains its age-old privilege of being the point of reference. Even so, fundamental ontology aims to subvert the Cartesian claim that ordinary language is methodologically and materially expendable. First off, communicative language is obviously not reducible to theoretical or assertoric speech (apophansis). Just think of the great variety of ways in which we discourse with others: assenting, refusing, demanding, warning, pronouncing, consulting, interceding to name a few (SZ §34, 161-62). Now, it could be objected this claim is hardly controversial or, for that matter, new. As far back as Aristotle, language was being submitted to a similar taxonomy. Granted, this exercise may be useful in setting off the theoretical or the epistemological from the everyday. The latter may still be expendable—at least for philosophical purposes. Heidegger would not necessarily disagree, but he would want to point out that this objection already presupposes as self-evident the basic coincidence of philosophy and theoretic (or noetic) discourse. But is this identification necessary? If we choose to make it so, are we not then forced to abandon every pretension of providing a comprehensive, philosophical account of language? (SZ §34, 162-63) What if we want to pursue this line of inquiry? Are we not then forced to relinquish the fundamental status of the theoretical and mental? It is interesting to note that Heidegger is trying to turn the tables on the Cartesian here by phrasing his account in the interrogative mode. For Heidegger, an interrogative circularity is a fait accompli. The salient point is whether or not we go on to clarify the limits of language from the right presuppositions (SZ §34, 162-63). Can the Cartesian himself ever avoid making presuppositions? If it is now objected that this move commits us to the fallacy of the red herring? So much the worse for the Cartesian? Regardless, the problem with the tradition is that both human existence and discourse (Rede) have always been made co-extensive with entities being merely present-at-hand (Zuhandensein). Consequently, the many senses of Being have always been reduced to one only, viz., presence (ousia). This interpretation of logos underlies all traditional logic—the primacy of assertion and/or intuition (noein) in fact both presuppose it (SZ §27, 129; §29, 138; §31, 147; §33, 159; §44b, 225; and §69b, 363). In order to question this “logical” or “theoretical” interpretation of language, then, we need to avail ourselves of a new starting point. Heidegger proposes that we take as our point of depar-

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ture the way we discourse factically, i.e., proximally and for the most part in our average everydayness (Alltäglichkeit). A complementary hermeneutic of language or discourse (logos/Rede) will take care of the methodological issue (SZ, §§6, 7b, 10). If this is attempted we will soon come to realize that ordinary discourse in the sense of being ready to hand as with equipment and tools (Vorhandensein) and being-with as in communication (Mitsein) are genuinely closer to us than noetic discourse ever was. Do we not first have to “view” something as something, as something practically understandable and communicable, before we can go on to regard it with a “blank stare” (i.e. view it as something merely present at hand)? If so, should theoretical discourse not be relocated to the realm of hermeneutic discourse? Although the theoretical is always inextricably bound up with the hermeneutical, the hermeneutical is certainly not reducible to the theoretical (cf. SZ §31, 148-49). It would seem, then, that it is really only an unnecessary accretion of the hermeneutical. The Cartesian, in fact, is living in a world turned upside down. Take a piece of equipment, for instance. Do we ordinarily comport ourselves toward it indicatively, restricting the artifact to a mere object about which we go on to make theoretical assertions? No, in an everyday context, it is not really present at hand at all. In this mode, it simply is not articulated as a thing consisting of properties that we gauge in either a symbolic or intuitive fashion. Rather, we regard it “practically” as something that can be produced and/or used with a specific purpose in view. It is, then, discursively organized as something ready to hand. This basically entails that a thing shows itself to us only as something, i.e., in relation to something else. And this occurs within the essentially non-objectified context of our involvement with tools or artifacts in general. For rather than relating to a piece of equipment in an isolated, presentational way, its being ready to hand implies that the artifact is intrinsically relational, fitted within a larger practical context of our circumspective concern—we use the hammer to drive in the nail into the board in order to make a house, for instance (SZ §15, 68; §69a, 353ff.). The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for our deportment toward other human beings. For rather than relating to other human beings as objects, my everyday discursive comportment toward them, and their comportment toward me, is mutually implicated––genuinely characterized by solicitation (SZ §34, 161-62). This is not to say, of course, that it is impossible to objectify human beings, reducing them, say, to automata in the way Descartes does.

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Ontologically speaking, we discourse in more ways than one (ready to hand, present at hand, and being-with). And Heidegger calls the structural totality of this hermeneutic involvement the “world” (Welt). Ordinary language, in fact, is inseparable from being in the world (in-der-Welt-Sein). This implies that the world is shared rather than being merely private or subjective; relational rather than objectival; historical or progressive rather than static or formal––in essence more comprehensive than either “consciousness” or “logic.” The human being, ever beyond herself in relating to other beings, is always already discursively in the world. In fact, discourse is a native possession of human existence, as being-in-the-world. Assertion or intuition are just contingent accretions (SZ, §§31-32, 148-50 and §§41-43a, 195-203). This line of attack seems to carry with it a certain necessity for dialogue between philosophy and communicative language. Once ordinary language is deemed indispensable to philosophical discourse, the question of how best to negotiate between them becomes a rather pressing matter, especially since private (noetic) discourse has been shown to be inseparable from the public or communal. Will Heidegger’s account not have to countenance the burden of discursive legitimation—on its own terms, no less? This, of course, assumes that the limits of language coincide with communicative discourse, which was never the case for Heidegger. When stretched to its limits, we find that hermeneutic discourse is suggestive of something altogether transcending ordinary discourse. The realm in question precedes not only the theoretical, but also the worldly as a whole (including, one assumes, the “productive,” “technical,” “practical,” or “artistic”). On no occasion is this more evident, for Heidegger, than when one is anxiously disposed. For when we are in the throes of anxiety, communication recedes wholly into the background and a soliloquy of the human being with herself takes center stage. Anxiety isolates the human being from the world of things or other men. Not that this world completely drops out of view, but it certainly pales in comparison to the depths of anxiety. If she now listens in silence to the voice of her own conscience, she will realize that being human in the real, authentic or proper sense (eigentlich) means being-towards-death (Zumtodsein)––one’s own death. Death is the limit, which throws into ultimate relief the temporal finitude of the human being, and thus of language itself. Upon sounding the depths of communicative language, we will come to see that logos is at bottom extraordinary (SZ, §§34, 40, 57, 65, 68).

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So even if Heidegger turns the tables on the Cartesian by turning the relationship between the theoretical and the practical on its head, an unresolved tension between philosophical soliloquy and communicative language still remains in force. Heidegger could never fall back on the Cartesian’s resolute appeal to noetic silence. After all, ordinary language is a necessary condition of ontological discourse. What is more, whatever sense can be made of the latter will always have to stand in an internal, inseparable relationship to the former.7 Nevertheless, by insisting on the ultimate priority of soliloquy over communicative exchange, Heidegger makes sure that meaning or truth remains silent. Although existential phenomenology may be committed to open inquiry, it is at bottom closed to public scrutiny. This, I hold, follows from the primacy given to the pre-communicative. Existential phenomenology tries to get at the essence of things, which is argued to be non-reducible to communicative discourse. In fact, it is thought to precede communication altogether. How, then, can phenomenology be accountable––correspond—to the ordinary? Surely, this would require the relationship between the extraordinary and the everyday to be reciprocal and bi-directional rather than unilateral as it is in Sein und Zeit. Notwithstanding the advance made on Descartes, Heidegger’s early work still comes across as its echo. Interestingly, the methodological issue is among those least developed in the whole work. With the exception of §7, it is hardly discussed at all. One wonders whether existential phenomenology is at best an act of solicitation. It has been noted that there is an element of “decisionism” in Sein und Zeit—a Promethean tone. There is some force to this claim. Anxiety is an ontological disposition, opening the door to the essential dimension of language (the silent call of conscience). This finitude, we are told, is to be appropriated resolutely (SZ §62, 305ff.). Every human being seems to enjoy equal access to this primordial dimension of language. Despite the ultimate forfeiture of communicative legitimacy on Heidegger’s part, is there nevertheless a sense in which shared legitimacy is recaptured on a deeper level? The earlier “decisionism” is palliative. As noted by the same commentator, however, the later Heidegger was strongly committed to overcoming it.8 Heidegger, it seems, later comes to think that the problematic of his earlier work had not been deep or broad enough. To resist the reduction of language to a presentational thing is not enough. In order to pursue language to its very roots, we need to do more. The basic obstacle to completely rethinking the problematic of language is the fact

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that it has been conceived in strongly anthropocentric terms ever since Plato and Aristotle. The many interpretative permutations notwithstanding, language has always been interpreted as something basically possessed by, and therefore subject to, the human being (psyche, anima, mens, Bewusstsein, etc.). The tradition has always been “mentalistic.” No wonder language has always been seen as merely a means to an end!9 As early as 1934, in fact, there is talk about an overcoming (Überwindung) of the whole Western tradition through a historical mindfulness (Besinnung) on language (logos), in alignment with poesy (Dichtung).10 Needless to say, an explicit treatment of art (Kunst) now becomes inevitable. What is art? The representational achievement of subjective consciousness or artistic genius? The sensible object of sensuous experience? Something subject to the public realm, to art-business and connoisseurship? An artwork? A thing?11 But this merely begs the question: what is a thing? Formed matter? If so, something intrinsically related to making (poiêsis)? Is the thing natural or equipmental, something created, produced or crafted? Is it something that can be simply looked at or shaped skillfully at will? Something technological (technê)?12 Apparently, this is what the thing has become. But is this what art truly is—or ever was––in the beginning? It’s all connected: truth, art, philosophy—language. Change your take on one of these terms and your view on the others will be affected too. Plato only had to give a specific interpretation of the last term along noetic and eidetic lines to effect a lasting transformation of the former three. Somewhat simplistically put, priority is for the first time given to the relationship between statement and thing.13 Language can now only bespeak meaningfully or truthfully of things. Language is rooted in the human being; that of which it speaks is basically made out to be an idea (idea, eidos) that somehow can only be seen in the privacy of the individual soul (psychê) or mind (nous). Differently put, language is turned into an expressive instrument of the mind, something used by it to indicate something else. Plato, then, is credited with introducing a decisively anthropocentric and theoretical bias in the articulation and taxonomy of all four terms—no wonder Heidegger thinks he had such a low view of art! If we add to this Aristotle’s more “poietic,” “technicized” view of the thing as formed material then we will get a rough sense of the plausibility of the subsequent tradition’s view of ordinary language, including Descartes’ view of discourse.14 This is basically what our whole common language has been turned into: Poesy.

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From this time to the end of his productive career, Heidegger will always return to Parmenides and Heraclitus for inspiration in his attempts to overcome everyday discourse. His hope was that going all the way back to the beginning would facilitate a leap to a “second beginning,” thus reversing the decisive turn initiated by Plato. If poesy is to be rethought, then the early Greek thinkers eminently qualify. Thinking and poesy are found there in dialogical alignment, evident in its purest form, i.e., without the noetic, productive or technicized strictures later introduced by Plato and Aristotle. Hegel once said that the time of great art is past.15 Presumably, this is related to the fact that art was for him still a mimetic affair. Consequently, it is made to conform to representation (Vorstellung) and as such to subjective consciousness. This indicates that the prepresentational had been wholly superseded by speculative philosophy, the hierophant of the Concept (Begriff). For Heidegger, whether or not great art is a thing of the past remains an open question. First, he finds Hegel guilty of reiterating the basic Platonic-Aristotelian-Cartesian posture on art: they all remain entangled in what they sought to displace. Intuitive or conceptual consciousness is still poesy.16 Secondly, even if traditional art and philosophy may be a thing of the past, this does not mean that great philosophy and art might not have a future–– ‘poesy’ may very well be capable of an extraordinary sense.17 It would be rather futile, therefore, to impugn Heideggerian discourse with merely repeating a shop-worn and self-conflicted gesture. The very attempt to transpose the ordinary was arguably initiated by Heraclitus and Parmenides. Just think of the way they sharply contrasted the merely ordinary or “mortal” from the heroic or deeply insightful when speaking of “seeing” (noein), “speaking” (legein), “hearing” (akouein), and “disclosing” (alêtheuein).18 Moreover, a good case could in fact be made for Heideggerian discourse eventually beginning to show telltale signs of attrition on the issue of the decisiveness of the Platonic turn.19 Still, if charged with a communicative fallacy Heidegger could always fall back on a “provisionalist” or “sigetic” defense in the strict sense. The matter at hand (Sache) is never separable from the communicative, to be sure, but neither is it to be co-ordinated with it in a genuinely reciprocal way: In the immediate circle of beings we believe ourselves to be at home. The being is familiar, reliable, ordinary (gehauer). Nonetheless, . . . [f]undamentally. the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary, uncanny (un-gehauer). (OWA, 31)

144 Truth will never be gathered from what is present and ordinary (Gewöhnlichen). . . . [E]verything ordinary and hitherto existing becomes an unbeing (Unseienden). This unbeing has lost the capacity to give and to preserve being as measure (Mäss). (OWA, 44-45).

Only when the matter has given itself to be preserved in the ongoing sigetic dialogue between great poets and thinkers does ordinary discourse become possible: According to the usual account, language is a kind of communication (Mitteilung). It serves as a means of discussion (Unterredung) and agreement (Verabredung). . . . But language is neither merely nor primarily (nicht nur nicht erstlich) the aural and written expression of what needs to be communicated. The conveying of overt and covert meanings is not what language, in the first instance, does. Rather, it brings beings as beings, for the first time, into the open. . . . Language, by naming beings for the first time, first brings beings to word and to appearance. . . . Such saying is a projection of the clearing . . . the releasing of a throw by which unconcealment sends itself into beings as such. . . . Projective saying is poetry: the saying of world and earth. . . . The prevailing language (jeweilige Sprache) is the happening of that saying in which its world rises up historically for a people. . . . Language itself is poetry in the essential sense . . . poesy happens in language. (OWA, 45-46) The setting-into-work of truth thrusts up the extra-ordinary (Ungeheure) while thrusting down the ordinary. (OWA, 47)

Language speaks silently: truth sets itself into work. The few and the rare quietly respond. This is the primordial sense of poesy: community—communication. And only when the Great Ones have had their say can the many begin their chatter. Should we not question ever more penetratingly in the direction of the deepest silence––is that not how it has always been?20 4. Silence, Sense, Nonsense There are certainly marked convergences between Heidegger and Wittgenstein on the issue of the limits of language. First, both continued to sue out a delimitation and transposition of representational discourse from within. Second, both of them became convinced that this could only be achieved if ordinary discourse was shown to be indispensable to, as well as inseparable from, philosophical discourse itself. (Heidegger in fact anticipated the later Wittgenstein on this

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score.) Finally, they both came to think that a transfiguration of the traditional paradigm of philosophy is the eventual outcome of this process. (Wittgenstein, as we shall see presently, anticipated Heidegger here.) I do submit, however, that they always disagreed on whether, or to what extent, this can sensibly be done. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1919), Wittgenstein is at pains to draw limits to the discourse of sense (Sinn). Sense is basically made coextensive with the representational language of the natural sciences. A proposition with sense is a—nonmental—thought saying something definite about objective reality according to the strictures of bivalence (true or false). This all by itself sounds very traditional. We could be forgiven for thinking that Wittgenstein is slipping back into a traditional cast of mind here. Moreover, the next two steps in his argument are truly revolutionary. Logical propositions cannot be representational. This is because logical form constitutes the universal condition of the possibility of both language and world. Logical propositions will as a matter of fact always fall short of saying something specific. Logic is tautologous; logical propositions, senseless (Sinnlos) (TL 1.13; 2.013; 2.033; 2.15; 2.161; 2.172-74; 2.18; 4.12). And then there is philosophy. What is left to say when symbolic logic and natural science have had their say—is there a mean between saying something and saying nothing at all? Philosophical propositions are metaphysical, nonsensical (Unsinn)––Wittgenstein’s own included. All metaphysical propositions must ultimately be overcome (Überwindet) (TL 4.0031; 6.53-4). Philosophical conceptualization always lead to pseudo-propositions. After all, philosophical propositions are comprised of general words (“concept”, “object”, “thing”, “fact”, etc.) that defy both truth-conditionality as well as logical symbolism. So why shouldn’t they be passed over in silence (TL 7)? Several responses could be made at this point: 1) We could, for instance, take Wittgenstein at his word. The Tractatus, it could be said, favors an “austere,” nonsensical view of silence.21 Any effort to effect the discursive delimitation of sense is bound to be nonsensical since a transgression is implied in the very attempt. It would, therefore, be patently quixotic to imagine one could make sense of what has none. 2) We could object to this reductio ad absurdum of philosophical discourse, claiming that it is parasitic on the prior acceptance of Wittgenstein’s specific understanding of the relationship between the sensical and the senseless. The question, though, is whether that is the

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way we discourse proximally and for the most part. Perhaps it can be shown that representational language is only a special case of practical, everyday discourse. If this is so, then we can go on to ground the everyday discourse through a description of its essential structures, thus retaining the foundational role for thinking. All by itself, therefore, this austere approach is question-begging—nonsensical silence can still be meaningful!22 3) We could simply invoke Augustine and say that any mention of silence has a self-canceling effect since we are thereby bound to speak of that which we claim cannot be spoken. Rather than being said, therefore, noetic or mystical silence can only be coherently safeguarded in––complete––silence.23 And the same could be said of nonsense. Either way, we’re bound to be taking leave of the ordinary. Whatever the relative legitimacy of these claims, the fact remains that Wittgenstein did later turn to ordinary language. Even so, he continued to evade the question of legitimation. If anything, the refusal grew even more austere. Let us say we want to delimit the term “language” (Sprache). First of all, it is not at all self-evident that the concept is rigidly closed off by a limit. We can use (gebrauchen) the word more or less rigidly, of course—but only with a view to a specific purpose. But can it be designated as such? For we may equally deploy it more loosely as we in fact more often do. Consider the word “game” (Spiel). This concept is not sharply delineated, either. If it happens to be, must it for that reason have sharp limits? (PU §68) Do all the games we play with language have one thing in common which makes us use the word in the same way in all of them? Not very likely. Are all games essentially “amusing”? Is there always winning or losing? Must they everywhere be limited by rules? Do they always, or even primarily, imply reference to things, or to something underlying—something “deep”? What does or does not count as a game? Can a principle limit ever be fixed here (PU §§ 65-68)? Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations––For someone might object against me: You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common (gemeinsam) to all these activities . . . And this is true.––Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,––but that they are

147 related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of these relationships, that we call them all “language.” (PU §65)

It is interesting to note how Wittgenstein is trying to turn the tables on the sigetic or the essentialist philosopher here (his own earlier views included), viz., by a dogged insistence on the irreducible variety of possible quotidian uses of words. Of course, there is a sense in which his descriptions beg the question. His questions are certainly rhetorical––hectoring even.24 For Wittgenstein, though, quotidian discourse is a fait accompli. The salient point is whether or not we go on to clarify these uses without transposing or sublimating them in the process (PU §§ 65-109). The absence of rigid limits never troubles us when we ordinarily apply words. Why, then, create ceaseless questioning by the insistence on depth, inwardness, fixidity? If words are always used in more ways than one, and use is always open-ended, then the only thing gained by the essentialist’s insistence on the reducibility of ordinary language to something “extraordinary” is what he explicitly doesn’t want, viz., a loss of breadth and clarity (PU §§ 10-14 and 107). We are under the illusion that what is peculiar (Besondere), profound (Tiefe), essential (Wesentliche), in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth (Wahrheit), experience, and so on. This order is a super-order between––so to speak––super-concepts. Whereas, of course, if the words “language,” “experience,” “world,” have a use, it must be as humble (niedrige) a one as that of the words “table”, “lamp”, “door.” (PU § 97)

It is true that the later Wittgenstein retains the purely delimiting function of philosophy (PU §§5, 90, 92, 126, and 133). What has changed is the way he conceives of it. Philosophy is now purely “descriptive,” a piece-meal, multiform investigation of how the humble uses of words get exploited for metaphysical ends. (The discourse of great art, one suspects, is guilty of the same misguided exploitation of commonplaces.) By holding on tenaciously to everyday language and seeking to bring some measure of perspicuity to it, a reduction of words from their metaphysical to their everyday use is projected, in each case giving philosophy peace (Ruhe) (PU §§90, 97, 106, 116, 122, 124, 125, 132, and 133). Clearly, the later Wittgenstein’s scruples about the language of essence, as well as that of limit, allow him to more radically subvert the

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viability of grandiose efforts at grounding language (cf. PU §124). In fact, the very sublimating gesture now appears self-defeating in a deeper sense than the merely logical or semantic, arising as it does out of a misunderstanding of the way our common language really works (§§ 90-93). That does not mean, however, that it can be ruled out by fiat. He has reached the conviction that philosophical problems are rooted in deep disquietudes germinated in the first place by language itself. His account has simply gained too much in terms of intricacy to allow for a comprehensive reductio ad absurdum of philosophy itself. For if sense (or meaning) is no longer uniformly conceived then how much, exactly, is gained by roundly rejecting it as “nonsense”? A mere appeal to the formal identity of meaning with use is therefore bound to be an exercise in futility (PU §43). The nonsense epithet may ultimately be applicable to philosophy (PU §§40, 119, 134, and 464). All the same, Wittgenstein is obliged to apply it in a much more attentive, nuanced fashion. So it would simply be too metaphysical to appeal to the mere fact that Wittgensteinian discourse is philosophically phrased as being sufficient in refuting the possibility of its performative legitimacy (whatever that means).25 A similar response would presumably be elicited if we merely point out that his quotidian view of the ordinary smacks of linguistic “Rousseauism.”26 Certainly, it is “possible” to claim that the problem of discusive legitimation is relevant when two people, art-forms, ideologies or cultures are in conflict; when their uses of words are not only different but also directly opposed; or when this disagreement disrupts peaceful co-existence. The same holds if we object that philosophy is only an extension of everyday discourse and that it may have something of its own to contribute. If ever accused of staring blissfully at the curtains in a room crowded with stampeding elephants, Wittgenstein could always fall back on the therapeutic defense in the strict sense. On Wittgensteinian “principles” everyday discourse is all we have. Language may seduce us into thinking we can do more, of course—but have we ever? If we in fact accomplish less that way, we would be far better off simply dissolving these delusions of grandeur. Denying the disease only affirms the necessity of the cure. If “the few and the rare” silently resist, so much better for the physician!27 5. The Limits of Silence One possible response to the preceding is perplexity, perplexity at the unresolved tension between philosophy and ordinary language

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and the persistent evasion on the part of philosophy of the question of discursive legitimacy. Or perhaps it is assuming too much to speak on behalf of anything or anyone but oneself. If so, then all one can do is to think for oneself, which basically means that all that communicative discourse can ever hope to be is a mere echo of thought. Or one may impugn this first approach with an inveterate blindness to the ordinary, and claim that the ordinary is indispensable to philosophy, inseparable from it. If so, then the problem of discursive legitimation is bound to insinuate itself even more forcefully––as long, that is, as we do not aim straight away for a silence even deeper than the noetic one. Or one could go even further, adopting a “no-nonsense” attitude and charge both with deaf condescension toward the ordinary, with a “narcissistic” unwillingness to face anything but their own extraordinary reflection,28 with vainly entertaining delusions of grandeur. Then again, if evasion is a telltale sign of implication, who is to heal the physician?

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∗ In addition to the standard edition and translations for Descartes used in this volume, I have used the following (with their corresponding abbreviations): For Heidegger, I have consulted the Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann) editions (GA). I have cited the following editions and translations of Heidegger’s works: GA 2, Sein und Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1977) (SZ); Der Ursprung des Kuntswerkes in GA 5, Holzwege (1935-1946), translated as “Origin of the Work of Art” (OWA) in Off the Beaten Track, eds. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 1-56; Platons Lehre von der Warheit in GA 9, Wegmarken (1919-1961), translated as “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” (PDT) in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 155-82; Zur Sache des Denkens in GA 16, translated as “End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (SD) in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1993): 427-49; GA 38, Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (1934); GA 65, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938); GA 89, Zollikoner Seminare, translated as Zollikon Seminars, ed. Medard Boss, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001) (ZS). For Wittgenstein, I have cited the Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus, trans. B. F. McGuiness and D. F. Pears, with an introduction by Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge, 1993) (TL); Philosophical Investigations, bilingual ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) (PU). This paper is the product of a course on the later Heidegger given by William Richardson, S.J. (Boston College, Fall 2001) and owes much of its impetus to his remarks on Wittgenstein’s status as a “post-metaphysical” thinker. 1 The literature on the linguistic turn is vast. For an excellent anthology, containing contributions from all the major players in both the Analytic and Continental traditions working in the aftermath of the turn, see After Philosophy: End or Transformation?, eds. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohmann, and Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). See also The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, ed. Richard M. Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). There are major disagreements both among philosophers within each of these traditions as well as between the traditions themselves. The relative differences notwithstanding, there is, I submit, a near universal agreement (a) that the linguistic turn has shown the primacy of consciousness, mind, or intuition to be, if not wholly untenable, then at least not self-evident or intrinsically binding (Descartes is certainly a favorite target of criticism here); (b) that the advocacy of mentalism in fact presupposes an unquestioned commitment to an instrumentalist view of language, a view that, despite its de facto reliance on language (speech, writing, etc.) for communication, necessarily denies it any constitutive or decisive role. From the point of view of the linguistic turn, therefore, mentalism involves a petitio principii at the very least. Therefore, Rorty (After Philosophy, 21-66; The Linguistic Turn, 1-39 and 361-70) or Apel (After Philosophy, 245-

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90) may greatly disagree about how the quaestio juris is to be dealt with in the wake of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. However, they both agree that Cartesian mentalism is a dead end. A more substantive treatment of the linguistic turn is to be found in the first chapter of my unpublished dissertation dealing with language, praxis, and legitimation. The following treatment constitutes a condensed statement of that chapter. 2 This is, of course, a very broad characterization of Western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle via Descartes, Hobbes and Kant to Hegel and Marx. Notwithstanding the individual differences amongst them, insofar as temperament and the relative scope for a deliberative justification of rationality are concerned, they all share, I submit, a rather low view of everyday language–– praxis. This is ultimately related to the consistent subsumption of everyday language under philosophical rationality; for it was thought that philosophical discourse somehow preceded and could be gauged in isolation from ordinary language. 3 For the relationship of orality and writing in Plato, see the Phaedrus 274dff. Raoul Mortley, in From Word to Silence, 2 vols. (Bonn: Hanstein, 1986), I, 95, thinks that the Socratic affirmation of the communicative power of oral exchange is opposed to “the drive towards silence, and the suspicion of language.” Plato, on the other hand, presumably lacked the same conviction. For by arguing for a matter which is treated appropriately neither in writing nor in verbal exchange—the primacy of mind (nous), I think, is crucial in this regard––, he is bound to entertain doubts on the power of communicative discourse. These doubts are also implied in The Seventh Letter 341c-d and the Symposium 201ff. This doubt notwithstanding, the Classical period is ultimately characterized, Mortley argues, by a basic confidence in logos. The drive towards silence and the suspicion of language became effective only in late Antiquity (with Skepticism, Gnosticism, etc.) (Mortley, From Word to Silence, I, 59-62). In Augustine’s Soliloquia, an early work, the device of reason’s interior monologue with itself is already deployed. Augustine was also, as far as I know, the first thinker to explore human life as an inward narrative. Crucial in this regard is the way individuality, time, historicity, and language are seamlessly interwoven in a later work, the Confessions. So even if Augustine was greatly impacted by these above currents of late Antiquity, he did not share their radical appeal to silence and the concomitant dissatisfaction with logos. (See also Mortley, From Word to Silence, II, 192-220 and 242-54). 4 Descartes, of course, never subjected language—least of all his own—to methodological doubt. In fact, with the exception of the passage just referred to the Meditations altogether bypasses linguistic or semantic considerations. This is related to his advocacy of the separability of the mind from language (see n5 below). 5 This seems to be implied in Descartes’ Letter to Mersenne, 20 November 1649, and a fortiori in the polemic against Hobbes in the Third Set of Replies. Descartes’ rejection of a universal grammar or language in favor of a rational

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taxonomy of ideas in the letter to Mersenne merely assumes as evident the primacy and separability of reason and its ideas, viewed as essential and common to all men. Actual historical languages, by contrast, are not only deemed coincidental, and thus instrumental, to philosophical inquiry, but they are also presumed to be endemically prone to semantic confusion (Letter to Mersenne: CSMK 10-13 / AT I, 76-82). An even stronger indication of Descartes’ unwillingness––hostility even––when it comes to dealing with the strictures of communicative discourse is to be found in his replies to Hobbes’ objections. Confronted with Hobbes’ doubts about the cohesiveness of the implicit “a priori” demarcation between language, imagination, and ideas assumed in the Mediations (CSM II, 120-22, 124-27, 128-29, and 135-36 / AT VII, 172-73, 177-80, 182-83, and 193-94), Descartes, it seems, merely falls back on an appeal to self-evidence, to something evident “to all,” to all those who use reason rightly, viz., to those who use it the way he uses words (CSM II, 123, 125-26, 127-28, 128-30, 132-33, 134-35, and 136 / AT VII, 174, 177-79, 181, 183-85, 189, 191-92, and 194). This, of course, only begs the question on a communicative level. This is not to say, of course, that Descartes falls short of communicative intent. The Meditations are obviously written for a reading audience (as evidenced by the Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne, the Preface to the reader, and the Synopsis of the whole work). However, language, it seems, is for Descartes wholly reducible to the material (sounds and images), and as such to the bodily organism (cf. Passions of the Soul, §50: CSM I, 348 / AT XI, 369). Ideas, by contrast, are thought to be a uniquely spiritual possession, something wholly prior to and separable from the material—the linguistic. It would seem that meaning and truth were wholly disparate for Descartes. Communicative language, we conclude, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of truth. 6 There is a sense in which Cartesian discourse can be viewed as an offshoot of Platonic discourse. For it can be argued that both advocate the primacy of nous over logos (in the communicative sense). Cartesian discourse, however, is bound to entertain more radical doubts about the power of communication. (This doubt is never really thematized, of course.) In this it shows a close affinity with movements like Neo-Platonism, Skepticism, and Gnosticism. 7 The authentic and the inauthentic, the ontological and the ontic, and the existential and the existentiell, even if “distinct,” are for Heidegger always “inseparable.” Still, the first term holds priority over the second (cf. SZ §§2-3 8-15; §45, 231-35). 8 See Jacques Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: the Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology (New York: SUNY Press, 1993), especially ch. 9, 153-69. Taminiaux argues that The Origin of the Work of Art is crucial in charting the so-called turn in Heidegger’s philosophy. This position was also urged in a seminar on this work given at Boston College (Fall 2002). The turn is an abstruse matter. Briefly, Taminiaux’s position can be spelled out in the following way: although Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, dealt with art (technê) as zuhandenheit, it remained identified with fallen

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everydayness (FE). As such it is defined in very narrow terms, and human existence is addressed in highly Promethean terms, i.e. in a voluntarist, or decisionist, language (PD). With Rektoratsrede of 1933 (GA 16, 107-17), however, technê is finally raised from its confinement in fallen everydayness to the heights of authenticity. Philosophy is now reconceived as a higher form of technê and poiêsis. Although this is a step in the right direction, Taminiaux claims that the voluntarist, decisionist strain was still maintained in this work. Moreover, it is arguable that PD is even more emphasized in this period than it ever was in Sein und Zeit (a period, by the way, coinciding with his involvement with National Socialism). Only in Origin of the Work of Art (the third version) does the higher technê finally break loose from the shackles of Promethean language. Heidegger’s whole approach becomes more meditative after he resigned the Rectorship, effectively ending his active involvement with National Socialism. Only when Heidegger’s position on PD changes, therefore, can one say that the turn has been really made. Taminiaux, it seems, derives much of the inspiration for this interpretation from Hannah Arendt’s “Heidegger at Eighty” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. Michael Murray (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978): 302-03. William Richardson, on the other hand, seems to emphasize FE to the exclusion of PD in his Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, 3rd edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974): especially 211-54. To specify: the turn is related to the change of emphasis and consequently the primacy given later to Being (and/or Truth) over Dasein. As far as I can see, though, Richardson argues that this is a gradual process that can be traced back to, and/or is embodied in, Vom Wesen der Warheit of 1929 (GA 9, 73-97). On this reading, then, the turn can be traced as far back as 1929. Regardless of the issue of dating, I think they’re both right, albeit for different reasons. What follows I think will bring this out. Suffice it to say, my exegesis is heavily indebted to both accounts. Whereas I mainly agree with Taminiaux as far as the technical issues and mood are concerned, the general principles have been borrowed from Richardson. From this vantage point the “quietist” attitude of the later Heidegger (Taminiaux) is perfectly compatible with the change of emphasis from Dasein to Being (Richardson). 9 See esp. Logik als der Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (GA 38, I §5c). I submit that this is one of the most important insights of this work. For although it could be said that even Sein und Zeit is somewhat tainted by the subsumption of “language” under logos, from this work onward they are made co-extensive. (Heidegger himself acknowledges this work as a turning point in his reflections on language in his Aus einen Gesprach von der Sprache (Zwischen einen Japoner unde einen Fragenden) (GA 12, 93-94). It has often been remarked how underdeveloped logos is vis-à-vis the other two fundamental existentials in Sein und Zeit. Cf. Richardson, Through Phenomenology to Thought, 66-70 and Jan Aler, “Heidegger’s Conception of Language in Being and Time,” in Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments, III, ed. Christopher MacAnn (London: Routledge, 1992): 13-38. Although language

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is gradually upgraded to the center of attention from a means to an end (Logik als der Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache is only the first step in that direction), and even if language/logos is later allowed to hold primacy over the human being itself, as in “Brief über den Humanismus” (GA 9, 145-94), that does not have to mean that Heidegger changed his mind on the issue of the problematic centrality of logos. If anything, my preceding exposition has shown that there is ample support for the view that it was there from the beginning. 10 In Logik als der Frage of 1934, the necessity of overcoming logic is explicitly announced. However, only with the Beiträge zur Philosophie: Vom Ereignis of 1936-38 (GA 65) and Nietzsche I-II of 1936-45 (GA 6.1-2) is the appeal to the needfulness of a second beginning explicitly dealt with. Neither Taminiaux nor Richardson, I think, has drawn sufficient attention to the importance of the 1934 lecture for the so-called turn. The importance for this turn, of the change from talking about a destruction to advocating the need for an overcoming, has been emphasized by Dominique Janicaud in Heidegger: From Metaphysics to Thought (New York: SUNY Press, 1995), especially chs. 1 and 2. 11 OWA, 1-3. 12 OWA, 3, 8-11, et passim. 13 Plato discusses language explicitly in the Cratylus. It is true that more than one position is discussed therein and that the outcome of the discussion is inconclusive. No position, however, is dealt with in this work (or any other work that I am aware of) that does not hold language as relating essentially to things. Despite the variety of positions and possible aporetic outcomes, therefore, the unspoken assumption always remains the connectedness of word and thing. For Heidegger this “reified” (ontic) view of language is ultimately related to the ascendancy of truth as correctness between noetic representation and (by derivation) assertion, and thing. This is, Heidegger argues, decisively exemplified in the Republic, especially in the so-called allegory of the Cave (514a-17a) (see especially PDT, 168, 173-74, and 176-78). Plato, therefore, is credited with articulating the basic structure underlying the Cartesian paradigm. 14 In my opinion, Taminiaux offers a reliable technical discussion of the impact of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, VI, on Heidegger’s own philosophical project, both early and late. For instance, he points out the affinities between the Heideggerian view of Vorhandenheit, Zuhandenheit, and Mitsein in Sein und Zeit, and Aristotle’s reflections on technê, poiêsis, phronêsis, and praxis. Technê is on this account a mode of truth-disclosure adjusted to the activity of producing (poiêsis) artifacts or effects (as with Zuhandenheit); phronêsis is a mode of disclosing adjusted to the conduct of human life (praxis) (as with Mitsein); theoria, in relating to the disclosure of the being of beings (epistêmê and sophia), is an activity higher than either poiêsis or praxis (Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation and Judgment, 154-57). To extrapolate: Heidegger always denied the primacy of theoria in the sense of a seeing

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of eternal structures or essences (see Heidegger’s Vorhandenheit). Still, insofar as he in Sein und Zeit, mainly equates Vorhandenheit, Zuhandenheit, and Mitsein with ordinary, inauthentic logos and the ontological disposition of anxiety with extraordinary, authentic logos, must not Heidegger, in the end, agree with Aristotle in “despising everydayness” (Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, Judgment, 168)? For art (technê)––“fine” or “vulgar”––is never an originary mode of disclosure in either philosopher (Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculations, Judgment, 157). Taminiuax, however, would argue that this earlier disdain all but vanishes once Heidegger changed his position on FE, and a fortiori on PD (see n8 below). This makes a lot of sense. Aristotle had also argued that poiêsis is the setting-into-work (energein) what technê reveals (Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, Judgment, 155). To anticipate: the later Heidegger retains this view while modifying FE and PD, the result being that art, or poesy, now assumes a primordial function. The question remains, however, whether this later turn to poesy is, in itself, sufficient in overcoming the earlier tendency toward an ultimate subordination of everyday discourse. Also, whereas Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, viewed Plato and Aristotle as being fairly close to his own notion of phenomenon (SZ § 7), his later meditative approach dictates that Aristotle’s poietic account of the thing be impugned with assault on the thing-being of the thing (OWA, 11), an account that through its Christian-Medieval and Modern permutations is viewed as ultimately leading up to the “technologization” of both nature, language, and art (cf. Die Zeit des Weltbildes, GA 5, 75-113). However, Heidegger was never quite consistent on this point. Later on in the Zollikoner Seminare of 1959-69 (GA 89), he would retain this stance on technology while reverting back to his earlier “romanticizing” of Aristotle. For although Cartesian discourse, in this work, is characterized as utterly destroying everyday, poietic discourse in its mathematized and/or technicized account of things, he “forgets” to mention the active contribution made by Aristotle’s productive account of nature. Instead he simply reverts back to enlisting Aristotle as an ally of phenomenology’s attempt to delimit the bounds of science (ZS, 9, 17, 59, and 101-12). Cf. Die Frage nach dem Ding of 1936 (GA 41, 50-83). 15 Heidegger responds to Hegel’s famous comments in the Lectures on Aesthetics in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. X, I (Hamburg: F. Miner) in the “Afterword” of Origin of the Work of Art (OWA, 51-52): “Art no longer counts as the highest way in which truth finds existence for itself”; “One may well hope that art will continue to advance and perfect itself, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of spirit”; and “In all these connections art is, and remains, with regard to its highest vocation, a thing of the past.” 16 I do not mean to oversimplify Plato’s view of art (or Hegel’s, for that matter). However, for Heidegger, the reduction of art to the mimetic and/or representational is bound to obstruct our view of great art. The latter is, as already alluded to above, co-extensive with truth setting itself into work. Heidegger’s description of van Gogh’s painting of shoes (OWA, 13-16 and 20) is an attempt to provide an illustration of art that explodes the confines of the Pla-

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tonic-Aristotelian tradition, as well as expands on the rather narrow focus on Zuhandenheit in Sein und Zeit. For a comprehensive treatment of Plato’s theory of art, see Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963). 17 The higher sense of art and production, as well as the talk about “the rare and the few” (“creators,” “poets,” “thinkers,” “statesmen,” etc., etc., etc.), is evident not only in Ursprung des Artswerke, but also in the Rektoratsrede of 1933, the Einführung der Metaphysiks of 1935 (GA 40), and in the Beiträge. 18 There are numerous examples of the Parmenidean and Heraclitean polemic against Homer and Hesiod, as well as their “disdain” for the “many,” the “political”, “mortals”, etc. Their “neo-aristocratic” appeal is always to a unity that is somehow deeper (Heraclitus) or higher (Parmenides) than the merely political or ordinary, while still somehow “grounding” it, a unity that only— alas—the few can reach. Classical Greek political philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) is clearly anticipated here. This is the “tradition” that Heidegger draws on in his attempt to overcome metaphysics. However, as shown by recent Greek scholarship, this is only one strain of the Greek tradition. Furthermore, the “elitist” strain can even be represented as constituting a reaction against the emergence of a new way of life increasingly subversive of the old elitism with an increasing emphasis on trade and drive toward equality. While I am referring broadly to the formative period of the Greek polis, from the 8th-5th centuries BC, Athens remains prominent in this regard. Cf. The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, eds. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): Preface and Chapter 1; George Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy: The Character of Greek Politics, 800-400 BC (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966); Moses Finley, Democracy, Ancient and Modern (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973); Eric Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven: J. Cape, 1957); “The Linguistic Task of the Presocratics”, in Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. Kevin Robb (La Salle: Hegeler Institute, 1983): 7-82; Karl Popper, Open Society and its Enemies, vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966): especially chs. 2, 3, 6, and 10. Popper has gone so far as to accuse these thinkers of being the first theoreticians of totalitarian discourse. I find Popper’s references to Democritus, Pericles, and Socrates to be, in part, a healthy reminder of the fact that “the Greeks” can denote more than merely a handful of individuals of the anti-democratic persuasion. In the end, though, I am not entirely convinced by his arguments on the issue of the precursivity of the Greeks to Modern totalitarianism. Then again, one could very well argue that a slide from a paternalistic, and a fortiori authoritarian, communitarianism to something vaguely resembling totalitarianism is not entirely far-fetched. The drive toward unity, I suspect, is crucial in this regard, as is the concomitant dissatisfaction with plurality and equality. In the case of Plato and Aristotle this is further deepened by their advocacy of the primacy of nous and the corresponding general hierarchization of human affairs. Nevertheless, totalitarianism in the modern

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sense is really only possible once technological organization has reached a certain level. We see, therefore, that the “disdain” for the ordinary in Heidegger has a long, venerable history and that what can be said of the problematic relationship between thinking and politics in Heidegger can be said, mutatis mutandis, of these other thinkers as well. It is in this sense, I suggest, that one should understand Otto Pöggeler’s claim in Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, trans. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1987), 272: “Was it not through a definite orientation of his thought that Heidegger fell––and not merely accidentally––into the proximity of National Socialism, without ever truly emerging from this proximity?”; see also Richard Wolin’s “Introduction” to The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991): 1-22. The fact that Heidegger “opposed” technicity, therefore, begs the question, at least, partially. Granted, there is a close affinity between Modern, liberal democratic discourse and technicity. Could one not equally well argue on the basis of the preceding, though, that it is the “neoaristocratic” drive towards unity, towards truth beyond the pale of either the ordinary or the communicative, that is the ultimate “condition of possibility” of what Heidegger aims to overcome? See also Ernest Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,” in The Heidegger Controversy, 245-64. In other words, can Heidegger have it both ways? 19 The Heidegger of 1964, it is true, did acknowledge that both logos and alêtheia had been understood apophantically ever since Homer. This is especially evident in Zur Sache des Denken (GA 14), a work completed after Friedländer’s and Tugendhat’s criticisms (both of which Heidegger was aware). See Friedländer in Plato, vol. I, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 223-34 and 229. He does not deny, of course, that the notion of truth also had a non-indicative function early on (Homer)––the late Greek testimony of Parmenides is especially instructive here. So it is still possible for Heidegger to claim the primacy of thought (in its relation to aletheia, nous and/or logos) over the ordinary even if he is forced to retract his earlier claim that Plato initiated a radical turn away from early Greek thinking (as he does in “Platons Lehre von der Warheit”). What is more, he’s also free to argue that a turn was in fact initiated by Plato in the following sense: by giving primacy to nous over logos the latter is demoted into second place, becoming only a means to an end (cf. Mortley’s From Word to Silence, I, chapters 1, 3, and 5-7). This is also roughly speaking Heidegger’s own argument in Logik als der Frage. Finally, it is to be admitted that of all of Heidegger’s works Der Sache des Denken, holds the most promise in reducing the impression of Heidegger as a foundationalist thinker. For in this work he not only recognizes the basic validity of these criticisms (SD, 445-47), but he more than ever—for what it’s worth—highlights the fact that the kind of unassuming thinking he is now in favor of no longer seriously entertains foundationalist hopes (SD, 436). In terms of legitimacy, therefore,

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Heidegger seems to be acknowledging that what he calls thought is not better off than either philosophy and/or ordinary language (cf. SD, 447) 20 If I am right, this exposition has shown that there is indeed a continuity between the earlier and later Heidegger, insofar, that is, as he in both phases of his authorship conceives the relationship between silence and communication in a hierarchical, asymmetrical or unilateral fashion. If anything wasn’t the appeal to silence bound to become even more emphatic–– incommunicative––when the turn was made from Dasein to Truth/Being/Ereignis? There is even a sense in which Heidegger’s “sigetic” approach is fundamentally “un-Greek.” Neither the Presocratics nor Classical philosophy seems ever to have explicitly accentuated silence as the ground of language. As shown by Mortley, silence does play some role in Greek tragedy––the figure of Tiresias is crucial here in bespeaking of its telling nature (From Word to Silence, I, 112). Not until the late phase of Antiquity, however, with the rise of Gnosticism did silence become fundamental or was the attempt made to transcend both nous and logos (in the communicative sense). When Heidegger appeals to a “place of stillness” (SD, 445), therefore, he (like Descartes before him) can be represented as a progeny of, say, Gnosticism rather than of either the Classical or the Archaic age. 21 This position is favored by Cora Diamond in her book, The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995): 3-4, 18, and 35. 22 It is true that Wittgenstein did talk about the aesthetical, as well as about the ethico-religious, as somehow showing (Zeigen) itself in the world rather than being sayable (TL, 6.42-6.522). No doubt. Does this mean that art was for him a communicative impossibility? Perhaps it is more to the point if we say that, like philosophy, art can no longer have a genuinely veridical or semantic force. For what it is worth, Wittgenstein often seemed to have preferred reading the poetry of a Rabindranath Tagore to explaining the Tractatus to his logical positivist admirers. Cf. Ray Monk, The Duty of Genius (London: Random House, 1991): 242-43. It is also quite telling that Wittgenstein, in conversations with them, clearly acknowledges that Heidegger’s thoughts on anxiety are indeed suggestive of the limits of language. Cf. “On Heidegger on Being and Dread”, in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, 80-83. For a general background, see Alan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1973) and Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). The problem is that by reducing the sayable to science and logic, philosophy, religion, and art emerge either as altogether unworthy of speech or as sublimely ineffable. Or are they both perhaps? None? 23 Cf. De Doctrina Christiana I.6.6. See also Mortley, From Word to Silence, II, 217-20. 24 This point has been made by Warren Goldfarb in “Wittgenstein on Fixidity of Meaning,” in Early Analytic Philosophy, ed. William Tait (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997): 75-89. See also “Metaphysics and Non-

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sense: On Cora Diamond’s The Realistic Spirit”, in Journal of Philosophical Research 22 (1997): 57-73. 25 This is the position of K. O. Apel in “Wittgenstein and Heidegger: Language Games and Life Forms,” in Heidegger: Critical Assessments, vol. IV, ed. Christopher MacAnn (London: Routledge, 1993): 342-74. 26 This is basically the view advanced by Erich Heller in The Artist’s Journey into the Interior, and other Essays (New York: Random House, 1965): 223. 27 On the whole, Wittgenstein’s political engagement seems much less problematic than that of Heidegger. The man may have been as politically naïve as Heidegger was (cf. Monk, The Duty of Genius, 385-400). Then again, his credentials were surely much less ambiguous than those of the latter. More, his heteronomical take on language implies an attempt to undercut altogether the drive toward unity. Wittgenstein himself, however, never critically addressed the problem of discursive legitimation. How, for instance, does one avoid falling back on a complacent communitarianism in the particularistic vein once unity has been subverted? Or, even worse, an expansionist version of it? Is there in the end only “persuasion” (gentle or otherwise)? 28 This is pretty much the accusation leveled against Heidegger by Stanley Cavell throughout his book The Quest for the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Chapter 9 Divine Incomprehensibility in Descartes and Marion Adam Konopka There is a tension in Descartes’ theory concerning knowledge of God. On the one hand, the attempt to establish a mathesis universalis is made possible and insured by knowledge of the divine. There is “the sense in which knowledge of all other things depends on the knowledge of God” (Principles: CSM I, 197 / AT IXb, 9). God gives coherence to Descartes’ new science by grounding the metaphysical roots and eternal laws. Descartes is seeking to elucidate the laws of nature “without basing my arguments on any principle other than the infinite perfections of God” (CSM I, 131 / AT VI, 43). Descartes believes that if his attempt to develop a theory of knowledge methodologically based on analytic geometry is to be successful, then knowledge of God must not only be possible, but necessary. On the other hand, Descartes holds that God is incomprehensible. “[s]ince God is a cause whose power surpasses the bounds of human understanding, and since the necessity of these truths does not exceed our knowledge,” we can claim that they are “something less, and subject to, the incomprehensible power of God” (Letter to Mersenne 6 May 1630: CSMK, 25 / AT I, 150). The divine exceeds the limits of the human mind, while the excess itself is knowable. This is particularly stressed in reference to the infinity of God, “for the idea of the infinite, if it is to be a true idea, cannot be grasped at all, since the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite” (CSM II, 253 / AT VII, 368). The rub is this: if Descartes system is going to be founded on a certain (clear and distinct) knowledge of God and the entire effort rests on this, then why does he maintain that God is incomprehensible? “Is there no inconsistency between these two assertions, namely, that the idea of God is incomprehensible and that it is the clearest and most distinct of all ideas?”1 In order deal with this question, some scholars have analyzed Descartes’ theory of ideas which occurs in Meditation III. Some have even tried to reconstruct this theory using contemporary philosophical methodology. These efforts are important and ultimately necessary in understanding Cartesian knowledge of God, but if this tension in Descartes’ position is to be eased, then an understanding of his doctrine of incomprehensibility is necessary.

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One such commentator who confronts this multifaceted issue is Jean-Luc Marion. In Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes, Marion gives a close textual study of the anti-Aristotelian epistemology of Descartes’ Regulae.2 He claims that behind this new, revolutionary approach to knowledge and the sciences lies a latent, unacknowledged ontology. This ontology is dramatically reorganized so that the mind disqualifies the substance of beings in order that they can be reduced to the level of objects. Therefore, behind the stage of a doctrine of certain and evident science lies a “gray ontology” that shadows it in ambiguity and dimness. This ontological ambiguity influences the theology that Descartes proposes. In Sur la theologie blanche, Marion attempts to locate the place of Descartes’ first principle (God) in the context of his new epistemology. What Marion discovers is a further ambiguity in the highest being, one that results from the preceding ontological ambiguity. In short, “the theology is white [blank] because the ontology remains gray.”3 The following is an example of the epistemological bifurcation of ontology. Descartes makes no final statement in favor either of ontic precedence or of the primacy of thought; the result is that the one and the other are put into practice alternatively, indeed conjointly, via two competing cases. As always, this paradox is nowhere more obvious than in the causa sui: God appears as an infinite essence, so much so that it is completely summed up in an exuperans potestas. Thus God appears as the absolute creator of beings—the ontic foundation of the res cogitans as well as of other beings. But at this very same point in the theory, God, in order to exist, or rather in order that his existence might become intelligible to the cogitatio, must satisfy a rational demand of the finite ego (causa sive ration cur existant). The ego becomes the epistemological foundation of the cogitatio of God as well as of other beings. Thus the foundation is divided in two, between cogitatio and creation, a finite and created rationality and an incomprehensible and infinite power.4

In this scheme God becomes causa sui to satisfy the demand of the cogitatio, to justify its own ontological ground. In order to fully appreciate what Marion is highlighting in these works, it is necessary to understand the Heideggarian influence on his analysis.5 Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics as onto-theology arises out of the belief that metaphysics treats “being” in a two fold sense. On the one hand, being refers to the general power that all things share in order to exist. This being-qua-being has come to be known as ontology. On the other hand, being is incorporated into a hierarchy of

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beings, the pinnacle of which is the power and ground of all beings. Beings are beings inasmuch as they participate in the being of the highest being. This highest being has been interpreted in the Western tradition as God. Heidegger believes the oscillation of this dual function of being has given rise to confusion of the “groundedness of being.” Because there is a vacillation between ontology and theology, there is an indecision with regard to the ultimate foundation of metaphysics. This is the sense in which onto-theology is the hidden scaffolding of Western metaphysics. In Marion’s latest book, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought, he poses the question of whether or not the ontological and theological ambiguity in Descartes qualifies as onto-theology. “The gray ontology cannot be articulated with the white theology except in the crucible of a metaphysics, which, older than they are, has been governing them well before it might appear in the daylight of a concept.”6 This is a complicated endeavor because Descartes never develops a fully articulated metaphysics. Using the onto-theological interpretive lens which functions like a prism, Marion filters Cartesian thought in order to see its metaphysical spectrum. “Through the prism of onto-theo-logical constitution, even the apparently nonmetaphysical texts of the Cartesian corpus display, like so many primary colors, the constituted and constitutive elements of metaphysics.”7 Our task in this essay is to highlight one of the colors of the spectrum that Marion reveals, specifically the incomprehensibility of God. This will help us with the initial ambiguity that we posed earlier concerning Descartes’ paradoxical position on the knowledge of God: that all knowledge depends on our knowledge of God, but that God is incomprehensible. Descartes maintains the incomprehensibility of God according to three attributes: omnipotence, infinity, and perfection. We will explore these three attributes in an attempt to solidify the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God, using Marion as our primary guide. When we do, we will discover something of interest. In addition to being one of the premiere scholars on Descartes, Marion has emerged as an original philosopher in his own right. He has articulated how it may be helpful to use the methodology of phenomenology in thinking about God. The God of the phenomenology of Marion is a God of incomprehensibility. The question that will guide us in this paper will be to what extent Descartes’ incomprehensible God is the same as Marion’s. What will serve to answer this question will be the presence of the three incomprehensible attributes (omnipotence, infinity, and perfection) in both thinkers. In short, what we are proposing is that the

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“phenomenology of the unapparent” that Marion proposes gives us a God in a color similar to Descartes’ incomprehensible God. 1. The Incomprehensible as Omnipotence We made the suggestion that Descartes’ doctrine of incomprehensibility consists primarily in three focal attributes of God. This claim needs to be justified. To begin with, the idea of God appears in Meditation I initially as omnipotence. In the process of making hyperbolic doubt as radical as possible, Descartes deems it necessary to go beyond the dream hypothesis to cast suspicion even on mathematical and eternal truths. To do so, he employs the hypothetical and indeterminate concept of an evil deceiver. The first thing to note in regards to the idea of the hypothetical God in Meditation I is that it contains two attributes: omnipotence and creativity. For Descartes to extend doubt hyperbolically, this hypothetical God must be both omnipotent and creative. Indeed, these are the criteria that qualify something to be God at this point.8 Secondly, it is important to realize how positing an omnipotent deceiver extends the methodological doubt beyond the dream hypothesis. Frankfurt reminds us that the dream analysis by itself does not cast suspicion on the belief of the material world nor the truth of mathematical truths. The possibility that we are dreaming does not affect the belief in a material world whose most general and simple characteristics can be known; nor does it affect the truth of mathematical propositions. The first of these beliefs is undermined by the hypothesis that an omnipotent deity may have stocked our imaginations with ideas to which nothing corresponds. The possibility that the deity leads us to make mistakes whenever we think about mathematics undermines the second.9

Omnipotence plays a vital role in the methodological doubt of the Meditations. However, it needs to be conceded that the hypothesis of the omnipotent deceiver is not ultimately a feature of Descartes’ theology. It is precisely its provisional and indeterminate nature that gives it the ability to carry out the ordo rationum as prescribed in the Principles.10 Regardless, in Meditation III after the discovery of the determinate God, omnipotence is included in the lists of attributes. “By the name God I understand a substance infinite, <eternal, immutable,> independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else (if anything else there be) that exists” (CSM II, 31 / AT VII, 45).

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We have noted the presence of omnipotence in the Meditations. The question that remains to be answered is how Descartes contends that omnipotence is incomprehensible. In the early 1630 letters to Mersenne, Descartes maintains that we are made aware of God’s power when we recognize its incomprehensibility: “The greatness of God, on the other hand, is something which we cannot grasp even though we know it. But the very fact that we judge it beyond our grasp makes us esteem it the more greatly” (Letter to Mersenne 15 April 1630: CSMK, 23 / AT I, 45). In addition, the Replies to Objections are full of references to the incomprehensible omnipotence of God. “[S]ince God is a cause whose power surpasses the bounds of human understanding, and since the necessity of these truths does not exceed our knowledge, these truths are therefore something less than, and subject to, the incomprehensible power of God” (Letter to Mersenne 6 May 1630: CSMK, 25 / AT I, 150). To summarize, from the hypothetical evil deceiver to the discovery of the concept of God in Meditation III, omnipotence figures as a decisive attribute of God. “This [omnipotence] is the preferred concept, which Descartes uses from 1630 to the very end, in order to define the essence of God.”11 In addition, he maintained that God’s omnipotence is incomprehensible. 2. Incomprehensibility as the Infinite If there is another notion that competes with omnipotence as Descartes primary definition of God, it would be the infinite. And if we are keeping score, the infinite will certainly prevail as the key concept for incomprehensibility, over and above omnipotence. As we will see, however, omnipotence will emerge as incomprehensible because it is infinite. As early as 1630, in the context of a discussion about God’s power to create the truths of mathematics, Descartes maintained that God is infinite against “the common and almost universal way of imagining him as a finite being” (Letter to Mersenne 15 April 1630: CSMK, 23 / AT I, 146). Further, he claimed that “most people do not regard God as a being who is infinite and beyond our grasp” (Letter to Mersenne 6 May 1630: CSMK, 24-25 / AT I, 150). In Meditation III the idea of the infinite that is used to determine the existence of God has caused many problems for scholars and precipitated important discussions about Descartes’ theory of ideas.12 “It is true that I have the idea of substance in me in virtue of the fact that I am a substance; but this would not account for my having the idea of an infinite substance, when I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some substance

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which really was infinite” (CSM II, 31 / AT VII, 45). This familiar passage demonstrates how Descartes uses the notion of the infinite in relation to other divine attributes, in this case substance. In order for substance to be predicated of God, it must first be “hypostasized” through the formal concept of infinity. Substance must be qualified with infinity in order for it to be adequately referred to God. “God could never be called substance if Descartes had not first understood substance (with respect to God) as infinite through and through.”13 Regardless, the first argument for the existence of God in the Meditations is an argument from the formal concept of the infinite. However, the infinite should be thought as a negation of the finite, even though it seems as though we have constructed it accordingly. Paradoxically, the infinite precedes the finite in that it allows the finite, as an object of experience, to be knowable. “Therefore, the infinite imposes itself as the first proper name of God; first because it alone is able to render substantiality attributable to God without univocity; then because it makes God conceivable as the a priori condition of experience, and of the finite objects of experience.”14 The tension in Descartes’ theology becomes more and more strained. To understand that the intellect possesses the idea of the infinite, while, at the same time, preserving its foreignness to the intellect, is to understand the role of the incomprehensibility of infinite. From the perspective of finite, the infinite is infinite by means of its incomprehensibility. This is not a devaluation of the infinite in service of rational knowledge, but the condition of any knowledge of it. “The truth of my idea is ensured thanks to this lack of comprehension, this intellectual understanding of the incomprehensibility, and not in spite of it.”15 In Meditation III Descartes comes upon the infinite as that idea that could not have originated from his own mind. He is not able to comprehend the content of this idea, but he knows what it is in its formal character. This is the role of incomprehensibility. He can know the formal status of the infinite as incomprehensible without exhausting its transcendence to knowledge. Incomprehensibility is the clue that he has found the idea of the infinite. This is the sense in which he says, “It does not matter that I do not grasp the infinite, or that there are countless additional attributes of God which I cannot in any way grasp and perhaps cannot reach in my thought; for it is in the nature of the infinite not to be grasped by a finite being like myself” (CSM II, 32 / AT, 46). The inability to comprehend the concept of infinity is precisely what gives it clarity and distinctness. “Incomprehensibility will henceforth become the most certain indication that it is really God that is known by the cogitatio: in accordance with the rule that nothing

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divine can be known except as incomprehensible, and that nothing incomprehensible can be offered to the cogitatio that does not, in the end, concern God.”16 Let us test this interpretation of the incomprehensibility of the infinite with other Cartesian texts outside Meditation III. The early letters of 1630 to Mersenne point out how incomprehensibility is the means by which we “touch” the infinity of God without comprehending it. “[I]t is possible to know that God is infinite and all powerful although our soul, being finite, cannot grasp or conceive him. In the same way we can touch a mountain with our hands but we cannot put our arms around it. . . . To grasp something is to embrace it in one’s thought; to know something it is sufficient to touch it with one’s thought” (27 May 1630: CSMK, 25 / AT I, 152). In addition, the Fifth Set of Replies offer support for our thesis that the incomprehensible is the identifier of the infinity of God: “if I can grasp something, it would be a total contradiction for that which I grasp to be infinite. For the idea of the infinite, if it is to be a true idea, cannot be grasped at all, since the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite” (CSM II, 253 / AT VII, 368). The infinite is infinite because it is incomprehensible. An infinite that can be grasped would not be infinite. When we come upon an idea of God, in this case infinity, we recognize it as being properly applied to God on the basis of its incomprehensibility. 3. The Incomprehensible as Perfection We have been following how omnipotence and infinity have been Descartes’ preferred attributes of God by way of their incomprehensibility. In Meditation V, the existence of God is demonstrated by a new concept. The idea of God as perfection becomes for Descartes, from this point forward (especially in Descartes’ Conversation with Burman), is the primary reference for God. Although Descartes does not refer to God’s perfection as incomprehensible as often and directly as the two preceding concepts, perfection does qualify as incomprehensible, or at least “quasi-incomprehensible.” The difference lies in the fact that the incomprehensibility of perfection often is mediated by the incomprehensibility of infinity. The incomprehensibility of God’s perfection is alluded to at the close of Meditation III and foreshadows the argument to come in Meditation V. As such it marks a shift in the primary characteristic attributed to God. “By ‘God’ I mean the very being the idea of whom is within me, that is, the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp, but can somehow reach in my thought” (CSM II, 35 / AT

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VII, 52). The argument for God’s existence is made on the basis of already possessing the idea of the supremely perfect. If God’s essence is his perfection, and existence is a perfection, then it would follow that his essence is to exist. “Hence it is just as much of a contradiction to think of God (that is, a supremely perfect being) lacking existence (that is, lacking a perfection), as it is to think of a mountain without a valley” (Meditation V: CSM II, 46 / AT VII, 66). Here, God’s essential feature is his existence. This allows Descartes the efficiency of arguing for God’s existence without having to rely on the complexities of the theory of ideas in Meditations III.17 Regardless, even though God’s supreme perfection can be identified, it is still maintained as incomprehensible. “Whenever I do choose to think of the first and supreme being, and bring forth the idea of God from the treasure house of my mind as it were, it is necessary that I attribute all perfections to him, even if I do not at that time enumerate them or attend to them individually” (CSM II, 46 / AT VII, 67). Here we have a contradiction in the essential perfection of God. Descartes is claiming that he brings forth the idea of the supreme being, and subsequently adds perfections to that idea. In this case, perfections are something that are attributable to other attributes. This notion of perfection can be contrasted with the passage above where perfection is the identifiable trait of God, and not what is added to it. For instance, “The substance which we understand to be supremely perfect, and in which we conceive absolutely nothing that implies a defect or limitation in that perfection, is called God” (CSM II, 114 / AT VII, 162). It seems clear that Descartes is using perfection in at least two senses. First, God, as the supremely perfect being, is identifiable by his perfection. In this case, perfection is an essential attribute—it is what makes God be God. “‘God’ means something such that absolutely all perfections are comprised in it” (CB, 24 / AT V, 161). Second, perfection is a quality of the various attributes: when predicated to God, they are raised to the eminence of God by being qualified as perfect. In either case, evidence can be given that perfection is considered as incomprehensible, albeit indirectly. Consider the following text in the Fifth Set of Replies: “It is also false that the idea representing all the perfections which we attribute to God ‘does not contain more objective reality than do the finite things’ . . . So do you think that the perfections which are amplified in this way are not, as a result, greater than they would be if they were not amplified?” (CSM II, 252 / AT VII, 365). Here the issue is the perfection of the attributes attributable to God. In order for these attributes to be worthy of God, they must be amplified by the intellect to perfection, such that they are greater than that which the finite intellect is capable of producing. How does the

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intellect amplify these perfections without comprehending them? In the Conversation with Burman, Descartes clarifies this by making distinctions between the understanding, conception, and imagination. The perfections of God cannot be imagined or conceived, but they can be understood. “Thus, we understand the perfections and attributes of God, but we do not conceive of them—or, rather, in order to conceive of them, we conceive of them as indefinite” (CB, 14 / AT V, 154). In order to conceive of God’s perfections we must conceive of them as indefinite. This we can take for what Descartes means by “amplification.” When amplified, or conceived of indefinitely, they become infinite. “Now when indefinites are multiplied in this way they become infinite: or rather they become the infinite, since the infinite is the same as the indefinite multiplied in this way” (CB, 14-15 / AT V, 154). To summarize, the way in which we conceive of God’s perfections is by amplifying them according to the idea of the infinite. Through the notion of infinity, the idea of the perfections of God is able to be qualified as originating outside the human intellect. This amplification through infinity, therefore, qualifies the notion of the perfection of God as incomprehensible and allows Descartes to claim that God is “the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp” (CSM II, 35 / AT VII, 52). 4. Marion and Incomprehensibility We have explored Descartes’ doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God through the features of omnipotence, infinity, and perfection. At different stages in the Cartesian corpus, each of these attributes have emerged as the essential definition of God. Our exposition has clarified that divine infinite ultimately emerges as the primary notion of incomprehensibility for several reasons. First, the early notion of omnipotence in the Meditations, which plays such a decisive role in allowing the ordo rationum to occur through hyperbolic doubt, functions as an indeterminate and hypothetical attribute of God. We have not discovered an attempt by Descartes to articulate the incomprehensibility of God’s “incomprehensible power.” Second, this justification is made in relation to God’s infinity. Here, the strongest case for incomprehensibility is made as the clearest and most distinct of all ideas. The infinite is by definition incomprehensible because “the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite” (CSM II, 253 / AT VII, 368). Lastly, we highlighted how perfection is considered as quasi-incomprehensible through the mediation of infinity. When we amplify our idea of perfection through the indefinite, and therefore infinite, it is qualified as an incomprehensible

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attribute of God. In conclusion, infinity is the attribute par excellence that comprises incomprehensibility for Descartes. Marion’s analysis of Descartes’ divine attributes has been instrumental for our study. However, there are a couple divergences that we have made. First, Marion does not devote a study isolated to the doctrine of incomprehensibility. His concern is with the idea of God broadly construed, which includes such attributes as causa sui. His question is the onto-theological constitution of Descartes’ God, only one aspect of which is incomprehensibility. Second, whereas Marion recognizes the quasi-incomprehensibility of God’s perfection, he ultimately concludes that the attribute of supreme perfection is not incomprehensible for Descartes.18 We have judged that perfection, qualified by infinity, is properly incomprehensible for Descartes. Ultimately, however, we agree with Marion that infinity emerges as the ultimate denomination for divine attributes. “I would suggest the idea of infinity as the first of the divine names in Cartesian metaphysics.”19 In examining the doctrine of incomprehensibility in Descartes and tracking Marion as one of the principal commentators of Descartes’ theology, we note with interest how much Marion borrows from his study of Descartes for his own project. As we have already mentioned, Marion has emerged as “one of the most talked about Christian theologians of our times.”20 Moreover, Marion maintains that the incomprehensibility of God is the fundamental mode in which we approach the divine. Certainly, the notion of incomprehensibility extends beyond the Cartesian texts all the way back to the Capadocian fathers, so the mere presence of the doctrine of the incomprehensible is not enough to draw a direct lineage to Descartes. However, if the process in which Marion construes divine incomprehensibility follows a similar path as Descartes’, we will be able to detect the Cartesian pedigree.21 Because Marion claims that the infinite is the ultimate name that emerges in Descartes’ theology, we will begin our analysis with it. Marion believes that the “practice of the Infinite” informs all rational inquiry. “For us really to succeed in thinking, in one way or another, in any field of knowledge, depends on our picturing the Infinite, on our thinking the Infinite.”22 All science must deal with the Infinite in one way or another for two reasons: first, it establishes a proper method in which new types of subjects are available to it, and second, it allows for a scope of progress without assignable boundaries. In short, it delimits the range in which reason can be employed and in which it can extend its possibilities. Marion is aware that this is a departure from the Greek relation where infinity was located outside the boundaries of rationality. Modern thought, on the contrary, inscribes

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infinity by reversing the priority of the infinite over the finite. “More profoundly, however, this reversal means that the Infinite precedes the finite—human thought, that which organizes and deploys its science—like a horizon which is always already open to welcome its progress and its desires as an advance.”23 Marion explicitly acknowledges the Cartesian influence over this formula and casts it the Kantian transcendental language. But this transcendental priority, which determines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge (including scientific knowledge first and foremost), has a price: if the Infinite precedes the finite and makes the latter possible, the finite cannot, by definition, include the Infinite within its comprehension, since it is precisely the Infinite which makes the finite possible; that which is governed cannot comprise the unconditional which governs it.24

Paradoxically, the incomprehensible does not imply any sort of ignorance or irrationality, but marks the infinite as the ultimate horizon which inscribes finite rationality. As such, the incomprehensible is unveiled in its Cartesian formula as the title of his essay, “the formal reason for the infinite.” We understand that we cannot comprehend the infinite, and that it is not necessary to comprehend it in order to recognize it. Rather, the incomprehensible is the sign that we have approached the infinite. Marion then situates himself comfortably in the Judeo-Christian tradition by extending the theological implications of this principle. Whether or not we affirm it, there is a “robust” and “uninterrupted” tradition that claims that the infinite “became flesh” and “pitched its tent among us.” It is not that the Christ event makes the infinite comprehensible to us, but that the incomprehensible becomes enfleshed in our flesh. It is on this basis that Marion claims that “Christology is a matter of epistemology”.25 How does Marion honor this principle in his phenomenological discoveries? Following Husserl, Marion asserts that the phenomenon is always defined by the “inescapable duality of appearing and what appears.”26 This duality can be referred to in terms of signification/fulfillment, intention/intuition, and noesis/noema. According to phenomenology, there can be three possible relations between these pairs: 1) the intention can be confirmed by the intuition and therefore result in adequation and truth, 2) the intention can exceed the intuitive fulfillment on the basis of a lack and therefore fail to qualify for objective knowledge, and 3) “the intention can never reach adequation with the intuition, not because the latter is lacking but because it exceeds what the concept can receive, expose, and comprehend. This is

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what we have elsewhere called the saturated phenomenon.”27 When in the act of intentionality the phenomenon in question overwhelms the intention and ruptures the conceptual apparatus, the phenomenon is saturated and overflows into a surplus of signification and meaning. In this sense, the impossibility of attaining knowledge of the object in question does not result from a deficiency of intuition, but from an excess which is uncontainable, unforeseeable, and transcendent. For Marion, the phenomenon of God is one instance of the third relation where God remains incomprehensible, not because there is a lack of intuition or evidence (negative theology), but because the divine phenomenon saturates and exceeds the possibility of intention. This confirms the Cartesian pedigree of infinity that, rather than coming from a negative relation with finitude, is established prior, through the encounter with incomprehensibility. Thus, incomprehensibility is the formal reason for the infinite for Marion through the notion of saturated phenomenon. “Incomprehensibility, which in every other case attests either to the weakness of my knowledge or to the insufficiency of what is to be known, ranks, here and here only, as an epistemological requirement imposed by that which must be thought—the infinite, the unconditioned, and therefore the inconceivable.”28 One of the recent terms in continental philosophy of religion that might describe the incomprehensible is the impossible. This comes from the phenomenological emphasis placed on the possibility of phenomenon. In short, phenomenology is about possibilities. Marion understands the methodological problem this poses for a phenomenon that has the impossibility of being intuited. “The problem is not to guess how the unprescriptibility of the question is experienced, but to explain how the impossible endures as a possibility—in other words, to conceive how the thought of the impossible remains, in end, possible.”29 The first step in understanding how the impossible is possible is to recognize the privileged place that God has as the impossible. Only in the case of God, can the impossible be made possible. It is this terminological shift, made in part to accommodate deconstruction, which raises the issue of omnipotence. The language of possible/impossible gets confused due to the duality of perspectives. For the finite mind, God is impossible and beyond all possibility. But from God’s perspective “nothing is impossible” (Genesis 18:14), rather “all things are possible to thee” (Mark 14:36). Marion tries to adjudicate between perspectives when dealing with the possible/impossible, “the threshold between possibility and impossibility for us is strictly what unfolds impossibility as what is possible for God.”30 As soon as we have established the lack of impossibility from the

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perspective of God, we have entered into the issue of omnipotence. The problem consists in referring to God as the impossible phenomenon (a term not unlike the saturated phenomenon). If God is the impossible, this raises the question whether or not God is impossible to himself. “Indeed we cannot do so [have access to God’s own proper region] effectively speaking, yet we cross it by mentally considering what remains incomprehensible for us, namely by conceiving that what is irreducibly impossible for us can or could become possible in its own right if we were to pass over to God’s standpoint.”31 In this sense, the impossibility of impossibility for God refers to what philosophers call omnipotence, in the sense of an unlimited efficient power. Marion claims that even this is a violation of incomprehensibility in that it requires God’s possibility to himself to be conceptualized according to categories such as efficient causality. On the contrary, he wants to maintain omnipotence from the standpoint of God. “The point is not to acknowledge simple omnipotence but to have faith in God’s good faith. To have recourse to God’s omnipotence is useless, since it still remains immanent to our own finite point of view.”32 From the vantage point of the impossible, God’s fidelity to his own will transcends and replaces omnipotence, not because God is not all powerful—he is—but because the higher category that honors incomprehensibility is love. “In contrast to the sort of omnipotence that we human beings dream of today, the impossibility of the impossibility that God exercises does not bring about just anything—by his power he makes all that it wants, but he wants only by loving.”33 We have noticed that Marion carries over certain elements of the doctrine of incomprehensibility from Descartes. In the case of the infinite, Marion maintains, word for word, that the incomprehensible is the formal reason for the infinite. This does not occur as a negation of the finite, but as determining and allowing the finite to exist. This is a confirmation of our hypothesis in the Cartesian pedigree of Marion’s theology. The case of omnipotence is more complicated. The language of the impossibility of God is carried over with a debate with deconstruction. God is the impossible phenomenon. In a twist of phrase, Marion brings up the issue of omnipotence out the impossibility/possibility language. God is impossible for us, but that does not mean that he cannot do the impossible. Therefore, he is omnipotent. 5. Conclusion One of our tasks has been to highlight the presence of the incomprehensibility of God is Descartes’ writings. Descartes asserts the in-

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comprehensibility of God through three attributes: omnipotence, infinity, and perfection. With particular reference to the Meditations and the correspondence, we have discovered how Descartes maintains a paradoxical position on the knowledge of God: that all knowledge depends on knowledge of God, but that God is incomprehensible. At different stages in the Cartesian corpus each of the three attributes have emerged as the essential definition of God. Our exposition has clarified that the divine infinite ultimately emerges as the primary notion of incomprehensibility for several reasons. First, the early notion of omnipotence in the Meditations, which plays such a decisive role in allowing the ordo rationum to occur through hyperbolic doubt, functions as an indeterminate and hypothetical attribute of God. We have not discovered an attempt by Descartes to articulate the incomprehensibility of God’s “incomprehensible power.” Second, this justification is made in relation to God’s infinity. Here, the strongest case for incomprehensibility is made in relation to God’s infinity as the clearest and most distinct of all ideas. The infinite is by definition incomprehensible because “the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite.” Lastly, we highlighted how perfection is considered as quasi-incomprehensible through the mediation of infinity. When we amplify our idea of perfection through the indefinite, and therefore infinite, it is qualified as an incomprehensible attribute of God. In conclusion, infinity is the attribute par excellence that comprises incomprehensibility for Descartes. We then briefly looked at the presence of this doctrine of incomprehensibility in Marion. With the exception of divine perfection, Marion appears to have adopted Descartes’ position. Especially in the case of infinity, Marion seems to have borrowed much from his studies on Descartes, agreeing with the formula that the incomprehensible is the formal reason for the infinite.

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1

Beyssade, Jean-Marie “On the Idea of God: Incomprehesibility or Incompatibilities?” in Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes, ed. Steven Voss (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993): 87. I would also like to acknowledge Beyssade’s direction to the above citations. 2 Jean-Luc Marion, Sûr L’Ontologie grise de Déscartes: Science Cartesienne et savior Aristotélicien das les Regulae (Paris: Vrin, 1975). 3 Jean-Luc Marion, Sûr la théologie blanche de Descartes: Ananlogie, création des verités éternelles et fondement, 2nd ed. (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 1991): 451. Quoted in Paul Dehart’s “The Ambiguous Infinite: Jungel, Marion, and the God of Descartes”, Journal of Religion, 82 (2002): 81. 4 Marion, Théologie blanc, 451. 5 See Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969). 6 Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought , trans. Jeffery L. Kosky (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5. Orignally published as Sûr le prisme métaphysique de Déscartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986). 7 Marion, Metaphysical Prism, 6. 8 Jean-Luc Marion, “The Essential Incoherence of Descartes’ Definition of Divinity”, trans. Frederick P. Van de Pitte, in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. Amelié Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986): 302. 9 Frankfurt, Harry G. Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’ Meditations (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970): 73. 10 But it is worth noting in passing that the hypothesis itself is outside of this ordo rationum, since it enters the scene as an “old opinion” “fixed in my mind”. See Marion, “Essential Incoherence,” 302. 11 Marion, “Essential Incoherence,” 313. 12 See, for instance, Robert Dulahunty’s “Descartes’ Cosmological Argument,” and Frederick O’Toole’s “Descartes’ Problematic Causal Principle of Ideas,” both in Descartes’ Meditations: Critical Essays, ed. Vere Chappell, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997): 87-102 and 103-28. 13 Marion, “Essential Incoherence,” 307. There is evidence that infinity functions the same way in relation to other attributes, but we will not deal with them here. 14 Marion, “Essential Incoherence,” 309. 15 Beyssade, “Idea of God,” 89. 16 Marion, “Essential Incoherence,” 310. 17 It is questionable whether or not Descartes relies on his earlier theory of ideas developed in Meditation III for the argument from God’s perfection. However, he does not explicitly refer to the discussion of objective and formal reality of ideas at this point. 18 “Essential Incoherence,” 329. 19 “Essential Incoherence,” 330.

176 20 Graham Ward, Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Graham Ward (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001): 399. 21 Due to the difference in methodology between Descartes’ project and the phenomenology of Marion, a certain disclaimer is in order. It is important to recognize that Marion is working within a tradition that has concerns that are beyond the scope of the present concerns. Furthermore, the influence of other thinkers in the phenomenological and Cartesian tradition have obvious relevance for understanding Marion, most notably Emmanuel Levinas. With this in mind, we will inflict a degree of interpretive violence in our exposition of Marion’s theology. 22 Jean-Luc Marion, “The Formal Reason for the Infinite” in Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Graham Ward (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001): 400. 23 Marion, “Formal Reason for the Infinite,” 402. 24 Marion, “Formal Reason for the Infinite,” 402. 25 Marion, “Formal Reason for the Infinite,” 407. It is at this point that the resonance with Descartes’ confrontation between the atheist and theist geometer comes to the fore. 26 Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomenon, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002): 159. 27 Marion, In Excess, 159. 28 This is taken from Marion’s recent paper entitled “The Impossible for Man—God” given at the Villanova conference on Postmodernism and Religion, September, 2003. It will be published in a forthcoming volume edited by John Caputo. 29 Marion, “The Impossible for Man—God.” 30 Marion, “The Impossible for Man—God.” 31 Marion, “The Impossible for Man—God.” 32 Marion, “The Impossible for Man—God.” 33 Marion, “The Impossible for Man—God.”

Chapter 10 Sensory States, Consciousness, and the Cartesian Assumption Gregg Caruso One of the central assumptions made in much of contemporary philosophy of mind is that there is no appearance-reality distinction when it comes to sensory states. On this assumption, sensory states simply are as they seem: it is the view that consciousness is an intrinsic property of sensory states—that is, all sensory states are conscious—and the consciousness of one’s own sensory states is never inaccurate. For a sensation to be felt as pain, for example, is for it to be pain. That is, whatever seems to be pain simply is pain. This assumption, which I call the Cartesian assumption, can be seen everywhere from the standard arguments against physicalism—such as those advanced by Kripke, Nagel, and Levine1—to current theorizing about consciousness. In this paper I will argue that this assumption is false and that it goes wrong in two ways.2 First I will argue that sensory states can occur without being conscious; we can have unconscious pains for example. If this is correct, being in pain will not be equivalent to seeming to be in pain, since pains that are not conscious are pains that one is in, absent any seeming. Many will find this claim counter-intuitive, but I will argue that this intuition is due to a commitment many still have to a poorly motivated and misguided Cartesian model of consciousness and its relation to mental states. As it turns out, both commonsense and science often contradict the Cartesian assumption; appeals to this assumption as an innocent, pre-theoretical intuition that needs no argument simply beg the question against the alternative. Second, I will argue that the Cartesian assumption goes wrong in a further way. In addition to there being unconscious sensory states that lack a “what it’s like” for one to be in those states, there can also be cases where there is a “what it’s like” without the appropriate sensory state. So, for example, we can sometimes seem to be in pain even when we are not. There is, I will argue, no reason to think that one could not on occasion misrepresent or even confabulate being in certain sensory states, unless one already had assumed that consciousness is intrinsic to sensory states and that such consciousness is infallible. I will argue, instead, that consciousness is best viewed as extrinsic to

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sensory states (and all other mental states for that matter), and that what makes a sensory state conscious is one’s being conscious of that state in some suitable way. As an alternative to a Cartesian concept of mind, I will argue for a theory of consciousness which claims that the “phenomenal character” of a sensation or perception—the “what it’s like” to have that sensation—is determined by the content of a higherorder thought one has of that sensory state. The model of consciousness I will defend is a higher-order thought model like that developed by David Rosenthal.3 Such an extrinsic account of consciousness will leave open the possibility of there being unconscious sensory states. It will also leave open the possibility of us misrepresenting or even on occasion confabulating the sensory states we are conscious of. I suggest that we not beg the question against these possibilities. If we do not, we may actually arrive at a more informative and theoretically motivated account of the relationship between sensory states and consciousness. 1. The Cartesian Assumption 1.1 What is the Cartesian Assumption? Despite a recent retreat from the metaphysics of substance dualism, the core of the Cartesian concept of mind remains largely intact when it comes to theorizing about sensory states. One can find at the heart of Descartes’ philosophy of mind the following two theses: (1) There is nothing in our mind of which we are not conscious; i.e., all mental states are conscious states. (2) Our knowledge of our own mental states is certain and infallible; our judgments about them cannot be erroneous.

With regard to sensory states, the Cartesian concept claims that all sensory states are conscious and that such consciousness is infallible. This Cartesian tenet, what I am calling the Cartesian assumption, has become so widespread and influential that it often defines the subject matter of consciousness. I will argue that it is largely unfounded. Let us begin with the claim that all mental states are conscious states. Descartes writes that: [T]here can be nothing in the mind, in so far as it is a thinking thing, of which it is not aware, this seems to me to be self-evident. For there is nothing that we can understand to be in the mind, regarded in this way, that is not a thought or dependent on a thought. If it were not a

179 thought or dependent on a thought it would not belong to the mind qua thinking thing; and we cannot have any thought of which we are not aware at the very moment when it is in us (CSM II, 171 / AT VII, 246).

And in the Second Set of Replies, Descartes defines “thought” as follows: “I use this term to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it” (CSM II, 113 / AT VII, 160).4 Since the reference here to thoughts was meant to cover all mental states of whatever kind, including intentional states and sensory states,5 these remarks are representative of the Cartesian assumption that all mental states must be conscious states. This conception of mentality and consciousness has influenced many philosophers. Not only does it claim that consciousness is an essential property of mental states, but also that consciousness is the mark of the mental. For on the Cartesian concept of mind, what makes a state a mental state is its being a conscious state. States that are not conscious are also not mental. This, however, has significant theoretical drawbacks. If consciousness is what makes a state a mental state, consciousness would not only be an intrinsic, non-relational property of all mental states, but also it could not be, as some have argued, analyzed. Rosenthal has argued that: [I]f being mental means being conscious, we can invoke no mental phenomenon whatever to explain what it is for a state to be a conscious state. Since no nonmental phenomenon can help, it seems plain that, on the Cartesian concept of mentality, no informative explanation is possible of what it is for a mental state to be conscious.6

The Cartesian concept of mind tacitly conflates mentality and consciousness, thereby making consciousness essential to all mental states. In making consciousness an intrinsic property of all mental states, the Cartesian concept prevents us from providing an informative explanation of such consciousness.7 So although there may be good reason to hold that consciousness is an intrinsic, non-relational property of all mental states, doing so comes with significant explanatory drawbacks. In addition, one should be skeptical of this claim at the outset. There is good reason to think that not all mental states are conscious states. Many types of mental states, such as thoughts, desires, beliefs, and intentions, often occur without our being conscious of them. Both commonsense and cognitive science posit mental states that are not conscious in order to explain certain behaviors or cognitive capacities. The most widely accepted of these unconscious mental states are in-

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tentional states. There are not only clinical and experimental results which provide good reason to hold that beliefs and desires exist that are not conscious, but also everyday folk psychology makes much use of intentional states that are not conscious to explain the actions of others. For these and other reasons, I think it is theoretically warranted to posit intentional states that are not conscious.8 Although, it is now almost universally accepted that there are intentional states which are not conscious,9 many philosophers still maintain the Cartesian intuition when it comes to sensory states. The belief that all sensory states are conscious states and that consciousness is an intrinsic property of sensory states still seems to be the prevailing view. In addition, many also hold the related view that our consciousness of our own sensory states is never inaccurate. It is only natural that if one views consciousness as an intrinsic and nonrelational property of sensory states, one would also be tempted to hold that it was infallible. It is often held that one could not be mistaken about being in pain because whatever seems to be pain simply is pain. This claim of infallibility is another part of the Cartesian concept of mind.10 It is the belief that, when it comes to sensory states, things appear in consciousness as they really are. This precludes not only being mistaken about the precise nature of our conscious sensory states, but also the possibility of having a conscious sensation, say of pain, without actually being in pain. For to be in pain, according to the Cartesian concept of mind, simply is to be conscious of being in pain. There is nothing more to it! There is no distinction between how sensations appear to us in consciousness and the phenomenon itself. One place where the Cartesian assumption plays a major role is in the argument against physicalism put forth by Kripke and later taken up by Levine. In both the metaphysical version11 and the epistemological version,12 the Cartesian assumption is explicitly stated as one of the premises. Kripke’s argument, for example, relies heavily upon the assumption that whatever seems to be pain is pain. Kripke needs this assumption to create a disanalogy between a mind-brain identity statement like “pain = the firing of C-fibers,” and an accepted identity such as “heat = mean molecular kinetic energy.” Kripke tries to create the disanalogy by arguing that in the case of pain, unlike heat, there is no difference between the state itself and how the state is felt. This is so, argues Kripke, for the simple reason that the experience of pain is the only thing that counts as pain.13 Kripke writes, “For a sensation to be felt as pain is for it to be pain.”14 And, “for [something] to exist without being felt as pain is for it to exist without there being any pain.”15

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But what if Kripke is wrong? What if there can be unconscious sensory states like pains? If it turns out that pains that are not conscious can exist (and this is what I will argue for in section 2), Kripke’s argument loses all its force. For if the relationship between pains and our being aware of them turns out to be contingent after all, just as the relationship between physical heat and our sensation of heat is, then the intuition that pain is connected only contingently with brain states would be disarmed.16 Kripke clearly needs to argue for the claim that pains necessarily have to be felt as pains. Otherwise, he is simply begging the question. Similar appeals to the Cartesian assumption can be found throughout the literature on sensory states. Arguments for this claim, however, rarely go beyond the initial intuition.17 I think one major reason why this is so has to do with issues regarding qualitative character. 1.2 Qualitative Character and the Cartesian Assumption. If holders of the intuition were pushed to defend the view that pains are necessarily felt as pains, they would most likely appeal to the qualitative character of those states. How could one have a throbbing pain that does not feel like a throbbing pain, one might ask? Or how could there be an itch, or a tickle, or a sensation of red, that does not feel like an itch, or a tickle, or a sensation of red? In the literature on consciousness, the qualitative character of sensory states is often assumed always to be conscious. Nagel, for example, has famously argued that for a mental state to be a conscious state there needs to be something it’s like for the subject to be in that state. He writes: “fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.”18 There would be nothing it’s like, then, to have an unconscious sensation according Nagel. So far I can agree with this, but Nagel and others often go one step further to claim that what it’s like to have sensations is essential to their nature. This last move, I maintain, is unwarranted. It, in effect, makes consciousness intrinsic to sensory states. If you take seriously the idea that what it’s like to have sensations is essential to their nature, and believe that sensations that are not conscious lack something it’s like to have them, then you would think that sensations cannot occur without being conscious. I think the main reason why people find this line of argument so persuasive is that they fail to distinguish between two things: the qualitative properties of sensory states and the consciousness of those properties. Sensory states, as I define them, are states like visual experiences, or experiences of pain, which have sensory qualities or

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qualitative properties. And by qualitative properties I mean those properties by means of which we distinguish among the various kinds of sensations when they are conscious. But the fact that we distinguish between the qualitative properties of sensory states in the first instance by means of the conscious cases does not mean that the properties have to be conscious. A sensation’s being conscious makes no difference to what its distinguishing properties are. Rosenthal has very forcefully argued this point in a number of papers,19 and Sydney Shoemaker has made similar arguments.20 But despite these attempts, the distinction still goes largely unobserved. There are a number of reasons why I think this is so. First and foremost, I think the Cartesian intuition has become so deeply entrenched that people find it hard to talk about the qualitative character of sensory states independently of consciousness. And as useful as the “what it’s like” locution is, I think it often makes things more difficult. When people talk about what it’s like to have a sensation, they often conflate the qualitative character of sensations with the conscious phenomenal character of sensations. Of course, when a sensation is conscious, there is going to be something it’s like for the subject to have that sensation, but this does not exclude prima facie the possibility of there being unconscious sensory states. Only if you were to think that what it’s like to have sensations was essential to the nature of sensations would you think sensations could not have a qualitative character independent of consciousness. But to assume that, would already be to beg the question because this is exactly what we are trying to determine. One reason why one might think that the phenomenal—or “what it’s like”—aspect of sensations is essential to their nature has to do with reference fixing. On a Kripkean model of reference fixing, essences cannot diverge from extension-fixing properties.21 In terms of qualitative states, this means that such states have no hidden natures. The argument is that since we fix reference to qualitative states in the conscious cases, how, except by appeal to those very conscious properties, could one determine that some other state was of the same kind? Kripke argues that “[i]f any phenomenon is picked out in exactly the same way that we pick out pain, then that phenomenon is pain.”22 But if we pick out pains and aches by means of the conscious cases, and Kripke is right that reference-fixing properties must coincide with what is essential to those phenomena, then it turns out that consciousness must be essential to pains and aches. According to this model of reference-fixing, the very properties by reference to which we classify and discriminate among sensory states could occur only when those states are conscious.

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But why should we think that the properties by which we discriminate among sensory states need always be conscious? Rosenthal considers this argument and writes: The premise of this argument is correct; we do classify and discriminate among sensory states by appeal to the conscious cases. But this hardly shows that the properties by reference to which we classify sensory states cannot occur nonconsciously.23

Rosenthal correctly argues that we have access to these properties in the first instance by way of the conscious cases, but that by itself does not show that there is anything problematic about the properties occurring nonconsciously. Sensory states have sensory qualities, and these qualities are simply those properties in virtue of which we distinguish among our sensations. It would be question begging, however, to assume that these properties need always be conscious. Offering a Kripkean analysis of reference-fixing does not help because it simply restates the Cartesian assumption.24 In this next section I will argue that this assumption is unfounded since there can be sensory states that are not conscious. 2. Sensory States and Consciousness 2.1 Are All Sensory States Conscious? It is now time to ask the central question: are all sensory states conscious? I believe there is good reason to think that the answer is no. For one, common sense allows for unconscious sensory states. Pains that are not felt at all because of some distraction or other obstruction are sometimes examples. It is not unusual for people to speak of having a headache all day long but of being aware of it only intermittently. And it is a common experience with many that when they first put on a new pair of tight shoes, they experience a mild pain that presumably persists throughout the day, but, because they are writing a paper on consciousness or are enjoying a recording of Miles Davis, they are distracted from the pain from time to time. These examples, I believe, are best explained as cases in which the pains remain even though they are not felt—not conscious for the individual—at certain times. Of course someone wedded to the Cartesian assumption could stick to her guns and insist that whenever there is no felt pain there is no pain, period. But I think there is reason to reject this as a correct interpretation of the situation. For one, in most cases the onset of pain

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feels different from the bringing to consciousness of a pain that has been unconscious.25 And commonsense can help provide rough criteria for cases in which a pain remains the same, even when intermittently consciousness, and in which it is a new pain. In both the headache case and the shoe case, commonsense comes down strongly on the side of individuating these as the same pains even though we are only intermittently aware of them.26 In addition, other criteria for determining in which a pain remains the same and in which it is a new pain may result from further empirical discovery, and it would be premature of a proponent of the Cartesian assumption to prima facie exclude such a possibility. I do not mean to suggest that these commonsense examples are definitive. I do believe they show, however, that our intuitions regarding nonconscious sensory states are ambiguous at best. A defender of the Cartesian assumption does not win automatically simply because she finds the notion of an unconscious pain unlikely. When our intuitions are split, as they are in this case, I believe one needs to move to the level of theory to decide what to say. This being the case, I do not think one could be dogmatic about the Cartesian assumption. As a theory, the Cartesian concept of mind has already proven insufficient with regard to intentional states.27 A defender of the Cartesian assumption needs to show why we should accept a bifurcated theoretical account, one that allows for nonconscious intentional states but not for nonconscious sensory states. In addition, the Cartesian theory doesn’t allow for an informative explanation of consciousness itself.28 As we shall see shortly, the alternative theory I will be proposing suffers from neither of these difficulties. Besides these commonsense examples, there is also good scientific evidence for thinking that unconscious sensations occur in subliminal perception, peripheral vision, and blindsight. Take blindsight for example. Blindsight is the loss of phenomenal seeing in the contralateral half of the visual field caused by damage to V1 (part of the visual cortex), but with residual capacity still present. Weiskrantz et al. and Sanders et al.29 introduced the term to denote a patient’s ability to detect, localize, or discriminate visual stimuli (1) that are presented in an area that was blind according to methods “that depend on asking the subject whether or not he ‘sees’ something”30 and (2) of which the patient has no awareness. Weiskrantz discovered that patients with blindsight can discriminate visual stimuli without “seeing” or being “aware” of the stimuli; that is, they have preserved perceptual capacities of which they remain unaware. The patient may claim not “to see” the very visual stimuli that he or she can be shown to be able to discriminate by “guessing,” and this happens without the patient’s having

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knowledge of such success.31 The range of stimuli that the blindsight patient can be shown to discriminate is rather impressive.32 It is widely agreed that in cases of blindsight there is no phenomenal consciousness present since the patients report they are unaware of seeing anything. Yet on forced-choice tasks they perform well above chance. How should we account for this? Given the blindsighter’s ability to make successful discriminations, good theorizing would suggest that the patients must be in states with certain qualitative properties. For without positing such states it would be impossible to account for their ability to make all the discriminations that they are capable of making. What appears to be lacking in cases of blindsight is not states with qualitative properties, but conscious awareness or phenomenal consciousness.33 How should we account for this lack of phenomenal awareness? I think the most promising approach is to adopt a higher-order theory of phenomenal conscious, one which allows us to distinguish between mental states that are conscious (states for which there is something it’s like to be in them) and states that are not conscious. The basic idea behind the various higher-order theories is that consciousness is a matter of awareness of some sort. So to be in a conscious state is essentially to be aware, in some suitable way, of the state one is in. This seems like a promising approach for the very intuitive reason that if one were totally unaware of some mental state then she would most likely think that that state was not a conscious state. Prominent advocates of higher-order theory include Armstrong, Lycan, and Rosenthal.34 There are basically two versions of higher-order theory, the inner-perception model35 and the higher-order thought model.36 I believe the higher-order thought model has distinct advantages over the inner-perception model so I will consider only it here.37 But for the overall effect of my argument either model would work.38 In section 2, I discuss in detail Rosenthal’s account of the higherorder-thought (HOT) model, but for now the following will suffice. According to the HOT model, for a state to be conscious is for there to be another state, a thought, whose content is that one is in the original state. Since we are talking about blindsight, we will stick with visual states. What makes my visual state a conscious state is its being the representational object of some other state, not something about its intrinsic character. The HOT model, then, can help account for the lack of awareness in cases of blindsight. What the blindsighter is unable to do is represent to himself the states he is in. Weiskrantz himself seems to favor just such a higher-order-thought analysis of what is going on in cases of blindsight.39 It makes perfect sense to think that if someone lacked the ability to represent to herself the states she was in,

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that those states would remain unconscious. Blindsight is just an extreme case in which there is a disconnection or blockage, because of some neurological disorder, between certain sensory states and the ability to have higher-order thoughts which allows us to be aware of those states.40 There are some distinct advantages of this HOT model, not the least of which is that it helps undermine the Cartesian assumption. As I have already pointed out, one of the factors that contributes to confusion when discussing conscious experience is that there are many different phenomena being assimilated. The most egregious example of this is the assimilation of states with qualitative character and conscious phenomenal states. But on the HOT model, states with qualitative character are what we are conscious of, so a theory of what it is to be conscious of the qualitative character of a state ought to be distinguished from a theory of what qualitative character is. This is why I think it makes perfect sense to talk of unconscious states that have qualitative character. Although blindsight may be an extreme example of the separation between states with qualitative character and our awareness of such states, I think this sort of thing happens more often than we suspect. For instance, qualitative states can occur without one’s being in any way conscious of them in subliminal perception and peripheral vision.41 2.2 The Higher-Order-Thought Theory It is now time to look at the higher-order-thought theory in more detail. David Rosenthal has made the clearest and best case for the higher-order-thought (HOT) hypothesis in a series of cogent and convincing papers.42 Accordingly, I will concentrate on Rosenthal’s version of the hypothesis, focusing specifically on how it deals with sensory states. I will argue that the HOT model of consciousness is particularly well suited to account for how there can be unconscious sensory states, as well as to accommodate disparities between the character of our actual sensory states and the states we subjectively seem to ourselves to be in. The leading principle behind the HOT theory is that a mental state is conscious only if one is, in some suitable way, conscious of that state. This is what we can call the transitivity principle. According to this principle, to be conscious of something, or transitively conscious of something, is to be “in a mental state whose content pertains to that thing,”43 for example, to have a thought about, or to perceive that thing.44 Conscious states themselves, according to Rosenthal, are always intransitively conscious. This is what he calls state conscious-

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ness and it is what we seek to explain.45 What we want, Rosenthal argues, is “an account of what it is for mental states to be intransitively conscious on which that property is relational and not all mental states are conscious.”46 The natural suggestion is to explain intransitive or state consciousness in terms of transitive consciousness. And putting aside higher-order perceptual models, the best way of doing this is to give a higher-order-thought theory of transitive consciousness. A higher-order thought, or HOT, is a thought about some mental state. The core idea of the HOT model is that “a mental state is a conscious state when, and only when, it is accompanied by a suitable HOT.”47 And a thought, according to Rosenthal, is “any episodic intentional state with an assertoric mental attitude.”48 Roughly, then, the HOT hypothesis states, a mental state is conscious “just in case one has a roughly contemporaneous thought to the effect that one is in that very mental state.”49 This statement of the hypothesis, however, still needs some further restrictions. Rosenthal adds, “we must specify that our transitive consciousness of our mental state[s] relies on neither inference nor observation . . . of which we are transitively conscious.”50 This restriction is needed to exclude cases in which one has a thought that one is in a mental state because of the testimony of others, or because one has observed one’s own behavior. One’s HOT, then, must be noninferential. We can now better state the core idea behind the HOT model. We can say that the HOT must be an assertoric, noninferential, occurrent propositional state. And we can state the main thesis as follows: a mental state is a conscious state when, and only when, we have an assertoric, noninferential, occurrent thought to the effect that one is in that very mental state.51 On Rosenthal’s account, state consciousness turns out to be nonintrinsic and relational. Since a mental state is a conscious state if and only if it is accompanied by a suitable HOT, no mental state is essentially conscious. In fact, one of the merits of the HOT model is that it requires that no mental state is essentially conscious. Rosenthal’s theory requires that consciousness is a contingent property of mental states, for any mental state that is the object of a HOT presumably need not have been. A mental state is a conscious state only when it is accompanied by a HOT, and is unconscious otherwise. This account fits in very nicely with my attack on the Cartesian assumption. In particular, the HOT model recognizes the existence of unconscious mental states that have sensory qualities—unconscious headaches, visual experiences, and so forth. A sensory state’s being conscious consists in its having two properties: sensory qualities and

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the property of being conscious. Neither property poses any special problem. There is nothing problematic about a sensory state’s being conscious since that is just the property of one’s being conscious of that state in the way specified. Nor is there any special difficulty about sensory qualities. As I argued earlier in this section, this is evident from cases in which there are states that have sensory qualities but which fail to be conscious. One may wonder how we can know anything about these sensory qualities when they are not conscious, specifically whether they exist at all. But as Sydney Shoemaker points out, our knowledge of these sensory qualities is knowledge by description, not knowledge by acquaintance.52 And as I have argued, there is good reason to posit these sensory qualities for a whole host of unconscious states.53 Still, one may object that in order to identify these sensations, if they are not to be identified according to their phenomenal properties, we would need some other way to uniquely refer to those states. Although I take this concern seriously, I think we can refer to the existence of nonconscious sensory states in the same way we refer to nonconscious intentional states—in terms of their functional role, how they affect behavior. When we refer to unconscious desires or beliefs, we usually do so based on the need to explain certain behaviors. We may, for example, refer to an unconscious desire not to get wet to explain why someone grabs an umbrella on the way out the door. The same is true for sensory states. As we saw in the blindsight case, we may refer to a blindsighter’s perception of a striped round object in the blind part of her visual field (despite her lack of conscious awareness) based on her ability to guess correctly, or based on her ability to make other discriminations. The same is true in less severe cases. In cases of subliminal perception, for example, we may refer to a particular perceptual state based on certain behavioral effects despite the fact that the individual claims to lack all awareness of such perception. Reference to nonconscious sensory states can be made, then, based on the causal role those states play with regard to behavior, shifts in attention, interaction with other mental states, verbal reports, and the like. Hence, there is no difficulty, I believe, in talking of sensory states that are not conscious.54 2.3 Misrepresentation and Confabulation. We have now seen one way in which the appearance-reality distinction can come apart with regard to sensory states, namely, we can have a reality without an appearance. Unconscious sensory states are just such a case. But I also think the appearance-reality distinction can

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come apart in the other direction: we can have an appearance without a reality. That is, sensory states can appear to us in consciousness to be one way but in reality be another. From a first-person point of view, sensory states can seem different from their actual mental character. Two ways in which this can occur are when consciousness misrepresents the sensory state we are in and when consciousness confabulates the sensory state we are in. I think cases of misrepresentation occur rather frequently and cases of confabulation occur much less frequently, but I will not argue this point here. What is important here is the claim that consciousness is not infallible with regard to the nature of our own sensory states. We can be mistaken about which sensory states we are actually in. The HOT theory provides a nice way of seeing how this could be. Rosenthal argues that whatever the actual character of a mental state, that state, if conscious, is conscious in respect of whatever mental properties one’s HOT represents the state as having. So if our HOT represented us as being in a sensory state with such-and-such a sensory quality, then we would be conscious of that state as having that quality. But, he adds, it is easy to imagine cases in which our HOTs misrepresent the states we are actually in. This is perhaps easiest to see in cases where the qualitative character of a sensation outstrips the way we are aware of it. One may be aware of a throbbing pain only as painful, and not also in respect to its throbbing qualities. Or one may be aware of a sensation of red not in respect of its particular shade, say magenta, but simply as red. These then would be cases of our HOTs misrepresenting the sensory states they are about, since what we are subjectively conscious of does not capture the full nature of those states. This becomes particularly vivid in Rosenthal’s examples of wine tasting and musical experience. On the HOT model, how I represent to myself a sensation I am having determines what it’s like for me to have that sensation. So variations in my HOTs actually result in variations in what it’s like for me to have those sensations. This being the case, “conceptual sophistication seems to generate experiences with more finely differentiated sensory qualities.”55 In the case of wine tasting, learning new concepts for our experiences of the gustatory and olfactory properties of wines typically leads to our being conscious of more fine-grained differences among the qualities of our sensory states. And the same is true for other sensory modalities. Acquiring new concepts for specific musical and artistic experiences, for example, enables us to have conscious experiences with more finely differentiated sensory qualities.56

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In these examples, new concepts somehow appear to generate new conscious sensory qualities; this can happen, not by generating those properties, but by making us conscious of properties that were already there.57 The relevant sensory states may well have been conscious before one acquired the more fine-grained concepts, “but only in virtue of less subtle qualities.”58 One might initially be conscious of a particular type of olfactory sensation solely as being wine-like, and subsequently become conscious of it in terms of more fine-grained sensory qualities. The possession of certain concepts, on the HOT model, allows us to form intentional states that have a certain range of contents. The contents of our intentional states make a difference for the sensory qualities that can occur consciously.59 The wine-tasting example vividly brings out two important components of the HOT model. First, it is the HOTs that determine what it’s like for us to have various conscious sensations. And second, HOTs can, and in fact sometimes actually do, misrepresent the sensory states we are in. But if our HOTs can misrepresent the sensations they are about, in extreme cases, a HOT should be able to occur in the absence of the relevant sensation altogether. If we allow the misrepresentation of sensory states, then I think we need to allow for the possibility of confabulation. For it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to distinguish between a case in which one drastically misrepresents the sensory state she is having, and a case in which one confabulates the state. How much misrepresentation, for example, should we allow before we say it is a different state? From a first-person point of view, it would be indistinguishable whether we are having a HOT together with a target state or having a HOT without a target.60 This aspect of the HOT theory allows us to explain how cases of confabulation could occur, while at the same time preserving the phenomenological appearance. If such cases exist, they would be cases in which we confabulate being in a certain state we are not actually in. There is reason to believe that this actually happens. Children, for example, dislike going to the dentist because it hurts. But there are two components to children’s dental pain, painful sensations and anxiety.61 And researchers have found that anxiety is often confounded with pain62 and accounts for about a third of the variance in assessment of pain.63 In fact, this has led researchers to try to devise treatments for dental pain by treating anxiety. These treatments work by changing the patient’s attention and imagery64 and by heightening the patient’s perceptions of self-control.65 Giving patients instructions, for example, to focus on sensory (vs. emotional) stimuli during a root canal procedure was found to significantly reduce self-reported pain

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among patients who were classified as having strong desire for control and low felt control in dental situations.66 These findings support the HOT model’s claim that one’s expectations and interests can help determine what HOTs one will have. We can hypothesize that these patients experience anxiety or fear, along with the lack of control, and consciously react as though in pain, even when local anesthetic makes it unlikely that such pain could be occurring. In these cases, the patient can be said to be misidentifying one state, anxiety or fear, for another, pain. And as it turns out, giving the patients back some sense of control (e.g., providing information, and stress inoculation training) actually reduces self-reported pain in many of the patients.67 Similar findings have been found in areas other than dental pain.68 And further examples can be found in everyday experience. Take Sydney Shoemaker’s fraternity-initiation example.69 In this example, someone is blindfolded and told that a razor is going to be applied to his neck. When a piece of ice is applied to his neck he screams in pain. Here again we have a case in which it makes theoretical sense to describe the person as mistakenly believing he is in pain when in fact there is no pain present. Like in the case of dental pain, the person’s fear leads him to misidentify the sensation as one of pain. Of course, one could fall back on the Cartesian assumption here,70 but as I have been arguing, that would be unfounded without a positive defense of the assumption. And none has been given. 3. Conclusion One might reject the possibility of misrepresentation or confabulation because one holds that, for consciousness, there is no difference between appearance and reality, but I hope I have by now shaken the faith in that assumption. Many philosophers take the denial of the appearance-reality distinction as in effect defining the subject matter of consciousness. But if what I have argued here is correct, without independent support for what is now only an assumption, the claim is plainly question begging. I have shown that at best our intuitions regarding the Cartesian assumption are confused, and at worst they are false. At the same time, I have offered an alternative theory of consciousness, one which does not make the Cartesian assumption, and one that has the theoretical advantage of being able to explain consciousness in more basic and less problematic terms. This alternative should be given equal consideration, and one should not judge against it simply because of the Cartesian assumption.

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1

See Saul Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” in Identity and Individuation, ed. Milton K. Munitz (New York: NYU Press, 1971): 135-64; Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980); Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October, 1974): 435-50, reprinted in his Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979): 165-79; Joseph Levine, “Materialism and Qualia: the explanatory gap,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly LXIV, 4 (October, 1983): 354-61; Joseph Levine, “On leaving out what it’s like,” in Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays, eds. Martin Davies and Glyn W. Humphreys (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 121-36; Joseph Levine, “Conceivability and the metaphysics of mind,” Nous 32, 4 (December, 1998): 449-80. 2 I am here calling “Cartesian” the denial of the appearance-reality distinction with regard to consciousness and sensory states. Some may find this odd since it was Descartes who perhaps most rigorously employed the appearancereality distinction in the Meditations and elsewhere. In the following section, I will explain how this assumption follows from two key Cartesian tenets. Although Descartes famously entertains the possibility that the content of my mental states may not match reality, he never entertained the possibility that my own mental states may diverge from my conscious awareness of them. When talking about the Cartesian assumption as a denial of the appearancereality distinction, I wish to make clear that I am talking about it in terms of this more limited scope. 3 David M. Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” Philosophical Studies 49, 3 (May, 1986): 329-59, reprinted in The Nature of Mind, ed. David Rosenthal (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1991): 462-77; David M. Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” in The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, eds. Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997): 729-54. 4 In the Principles I, §9, Descartes also defines “thought” in terms of consciousness or immediate consciousness (CSM I, 195 / AT VIII, 7-8). And in the First Set of Replies Descartes says he can “affirm with certainty that there can be nothing within me of which I am not in some way aware” (CSM II, 77 / AT VII, 107). He’s even more forceful in a letter to Mersenne where he writes: “What I say later, ‘nothing can be in me, that is to say, in my mind, of which I am not aware’, is something which I proved in my Meditations” (31 December 1640: CSMK, 165 / AT III, 273). 5 For Descartes, sensations, as far as they are mental states, are just a special kind of thought. He believes that sensations are either a special kind of thought and therefore conscious, or bodily states and hence never conscious. So for something to be considered a mental state, for Descartes, it has to be a thought. And since all thoughts are conscious, all mental states must be as well. 6 Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” 468.

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We cannot say, that is, how sensory states turn out to be conscious. If all mental states are conscious, no informative, non-trivial explanation of such consciousness seems possible. One could not, for example, explain consciousness in simpler or more reductive terms. Since all mental states are here taken to be conscious, one could not appeal to non-conscious mental states to help reductively explain consciousness. And since Descartes is uniquely saddled with his metaphysical thesis of substance dualism, no non-mental bodily state would be helpful either. Therefore, it appears that on the Cartesian concept of mind, “no theoretical understanding of what it is to be a conscious state would be possible at all” (Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 729). For further theoretical drawbacks of this position see Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness.” 8 When talking about nonconscious intentional states, and later when I talk about non-conscious sensory states, I do not mean simply dispositional states: states that are disposed to be occurrent conscious states. I am making the stronger claim that these are occurrent nonconscious states—states that influence and interact with other mental states, both conscious and nonconscious. 9 The majority of philosophers, pace Searle, now agree that there are nonconscious intentional states. In fact, the majority of our intentional states are probably nonconscious. John Searle is perhaps one of the only people who still maintains the Cartesian assumption with regard to intentional states. See John Searle, “Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and Cognitive Science,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 4 (1990): 585-642; and John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). 10 Descartes claims in numerous places that one cannot be mistaken about how things seem to him to be in consciousness. In the second Meditation, for example, Descartes writes: “Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘having a sensory perception’ is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking” (CSM II, 19 / AT VII, 29). It is clear from these comments and others that Descartes believes that sense data judgments, judgments about what is being experienced, are certain and infallible. Remember that the power of the hypothetical deceiver, as powerful as it is, cannot and does not extend, according to Descartes, to these judgments. 11 Kripke, Naming and Necessity. 12 Levine, “Materialism and Qualia: the explanatory gap,” and “On leaving out what it’s like.” 13 This claim of Kripke’s, that for a state to be pain is necessarily for it to be felt as pain, plays an important role in his argument. Without it he would be unable to create the disanalogy he needs between the pain case and the heat case. But like many other proponents of the Cartesian intuition, Kripke nowhere argues that pains necessarily have to be felt as pain; he simply assumes it. Once the assumption is made, Kripke goes on to conclude that since we cannot explain away the appearance of contingency in the pain case, it is contingent. And from this he concludes that it isn’t necessary and therefore is not true.

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14

Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” 163n18. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 151. 16 For an argument against Kripke of this kind see David M. Rosenthal, “The Identity Theory,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed. Samuel Guttenplan (Basil Blackwell, 1994): 348-55. 17 Kripke is not the only one who denies the appearance-reality distinction for certain mental states. Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” 174, for example, also claims that “[t]he idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to make no sense” in the case of conscious experiences. Similar remarks can be found throughout the literature, especially when dealing with sensory states. 18 Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” 166. 19 See David M. Rosenthal, “The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality,” in Consciousness: Philosophical Issues 1, ed. Enrique Villanueva (Atascadero, Calf.: Ridgeview Pub. Co. 1991), 15-36; and Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness.” 20 Sydney Shoemaker, “Qualia and Consciousness,” Mind 100, 4 (October, 1991): 507-24, reprinted in his The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 121-40. 21 Cf. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 149-54. 22 Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 153. 23 Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 733. See also Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” section IV. 24 Kripke offers no independent support for the insistence that, what fixes the extensions of mental terms cannot diverge from the essences of mental states, except to restate the Cartesian intuition that “for [something] to exist without being felt as pain is for it to exist without there being any pain” (Naming and Necessity, 151). 25 Tyler Burge first brought this point to my attention while also arguing that there can be unconscious sensory states. See Tyler Burge, “Two Kinds of Consciousness,” in The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, eds. Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere, 427-34. 26 One may object that we should not rely so heavily on commonsense here, but it is important to point out that when philosophers appeal to the Cartesian assumption they often do so as if it were the commonsense position. This, however, is clearly not the case. 27 I have not presented an argument for this here, but as pointed out earlier it is now commonplace to acknowledge the existence of nonconscious intentional states. Without positing such states, the majority of our scientific and folk psychological theories of human behavior would cease to function. Given the pragmatic success of such theories, and the overwhelming theoretical justification for positing such states, all but a few philosophers have already abandoned the Cartesian concept of mind with regard to intentional states. 28 I have argued this in Section 1.1. The main problem is that it cannot explain what makes a mental state a conscious state since it conflates mentality and consciousness. 15

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29

L. Weiskrantz, E.K. Warrington, M.D. Sanders, and J. Marshall, “Visual Capacity in the Hemianopic Field Following a Restricted Occipital Ablation,” Brain 97 (1974): 709-28; M.D. Sanders, E.K. Warrington, J. Marshall, and L.Weiskrantz, “‘Blindsight’: vision is a field defect,” Lancet (April 20, 1974): 707-8. 30 Weiskrantz et al., “Visual Capacity,” 720. 31 See L. Weiskrantz, Blindsight: A Case Study and Implications, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 32 All told, subjects with V1 damage have been reported who are able, in their blind hemifields, to detect the presence of stimuli, to locate them in space, to discriminate direction of movement, to discriminate the orientation of lines, to be able to judge whether stimuli in the blind hemifield match or mismatch those in the intact hemifield, and to tell colors apart. Cf. Weiskrantz, Blindsight: A Case Study and Implications; L. Weiskrantz, “Blindsight: not an island unto itself,” Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci., 4 (1995): 146-51; L. Weiskrantz, “Blindsight Revisited,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 6 (1996): 215-20; A. Cowey and P. Stoerig, “The Neurobiology of Blindsight.” Trends in Neuroscience 29 (1991): 65-80; I.M. Blythe, C. Kennard, and K.H. Ruddock, “Residual Vision in Patients with Retrogeniculate Lesions of the Visual Pathways,” Brain 110 (1987): 887-905. 33 As Weiskrantz in Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 35, points out, “[w]hat is surprising . . . is that in all these cases the patients are unaware in precisely the situation in which we would normally expect someone to be very much aware!” 34 See D. M. Armstrong, The Nature of Mind (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); W.G. Lycan, Consciousness and Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books/The MIT press, 1996); and Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” and “A Theory of Consciousness.” 35 Cf. Lycan, Consciousness and Experience, and Armstrong, The Nature of Mind. 36 Cf. Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” and “A Theory of Consciousness.” 37 I will not argue this point here, but for reasons why the higher-orderthought model is desirable over the inner-perception model, see Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness.” And for further difficulties with the innerperception model, see Alex Byrne, “Some Like It HOT: consciousness and higher-order thoughts,” Philosophical Studies 86 (1997): 103-29. 38 As long as consciousness is viewed as a relational property, and as long as the way we represent to ourselves the states we are in makes a difference to how those states appear to us in consciousness, I believe the Cartesian assumption can be undermined. Both the inner-perception model and the higherorder-thought model allow for such an argument. 39 Weiskrantz, Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration, 71, writes: “The main point is that unless you can have a thought about an input, it remains unconscious. This is precisely what the patients cannot do:

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think about their inputs in relation to other inputs or contexts . . . to represent the contents of their inputs to themselves.” 40 Weiskrantz, Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration, 73, writes: “Rosenthal’s position . . . tempts us to analyse the neurological disorders in terms of specific disconnexions or blockages between a first-order process and a second order or higher-order stage that thereby lead to alterations in the states of awareness. It is a temptation to which I will succumb; that is, to link higher-order thoughts to the operation of the commentary system, specially with reference to blindsight but also of wider application to other unconscious residual processes.” 41 Armstrong’s long-distance driver may be a good example. Armstrong, The Nature of Mind, 58, points out that: “After driving for long periods of time, particularly at night, it is possible to ‘come to’ and realize that for some time past one has been driving without being aware of what one has been doing.” The driver is unaware, in a very important way, of certain aspects of his own mental states. It is clear that certain occurrent perceptual states are present while driving. Driving a car along a road is a complex activity. The fact that the driver stops at red lights, goes at green lights, makes the appropriate turns in the road, etc., indicates that certain perceptual information is being processed. The fact that the driver is unaware of much or all of this mental activity is indication that complete transparency is lacking. (I say “much or all” because one can interpret this case in different ways. Armstrong hypothesizes that in such cases there is minimal consciousness and perceptual consciousness present but not introspective consciousness. One could alternatively argue that no consciousness is present and that the complex behavior of driving a car is being controlled completely by unconscious mental activity. In terms of the HOT theory, one could maintain that sensory states with sensory qualities are present but that these states remain unconscious—i.e., there are no HOTs about these sensory states. On the other hand, one could argue that we do have HOTs of these sensory states but that our HOTs only make us conscious of certain coarse-grained aspects of the states. Whether one maintains no consciousness is present or that minimal consciousness is present one thing is clear, there is a lack of complete transparency here. These sensory states have sensory qualities of which the driver is unaware.) 42 Rosenthal, “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” “The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Qualities,” and “A Theory of Consciousness.” 43 Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 737. 44 For more on transitive consciousness see David M. Rosenthal, “State Consciousness and Transitive Consciousness,” Consciousness and Cognition 2, 4 (December, 1993): 355-63; and Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” sec. IV. 45 State consciousness is a property only of mental states. It is the property of being conscious that some mental states have and others lack. Rosenthal distinguishes state consciousness from both transitive consciousness and creature consciousness. For more on these distinctions see Rosenthal, “State Consciousness and Transitive Consciousness.”

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46

Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 737. Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 741. 48 David M. Rosenthal, “Thinking That One Thinks,” in Consciousness, eds. Martin Davies and Glyn W. Humphreys (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993): 913n2. 49 Rosenthal, “Thinking That One Thinks,” 199. 50 Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 738. 51 The fact that when we are in conscious states we are typically unaware of having any such HOTs is no objection, for the theory actually predicts that we would not be aware. Since a mental state is conscious only if it is accompanied by an assertoric, noninferential, occurrent HOT, “that HOT will not itself be a conscious thought unless one has a third-order thought about the secondorder thought” (Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 172); Rosenthal points out that this rarely happens. We are conscious of our HOTs only when those thoughts themselves are conscious, and it is rare that they are. In the rare cases in which this does happen, we would be introspectively conscious of being conscious of our mental states. “Introspective consciousness is the special case of conscious states in which the accompanying HOT is itself a conscious thought” (Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 745-46). 52 Sydney Shoemaker, “Introspection and Phenomenal States” (unpublished). 53 One may still wonder in virtue of what do we taxonomize these sensory qualities when they are not conscious? One common suggestion is that we can taxonomize sensory qualities by reference to their similarities and differences to other members of their family. And, I believe, there is no reason to hold that these similarities and differences cannot obtain except when the sensation in question is conscious, unless one already has made the Cartesian assumption. We therefore have no basis to deny that sensory qualities can occur nonconsciously. Rosenthal argues that “[t]he distinctive sensory properties of nonconscious sensations resemble and differ in just the ways that those of conscious sensations resemble and differ” (“A Theory of Consciousness,” 733). They diverge only in that one group is conscious and the other not. 54 Of course this suggestion needs to be developed more, but before a full theory could be given, the grip of the Cartesian assumption would need to be loosened. Once we begin to take seriously the possibility of nonconscious sensory states, further research can be done on identifying such states. Novel ways, no doubt, will need to be developed for determining the functional and causal roles of such states, but I am confident this can be done. 55 Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness,” 742. 56 Rosenthal advances this argument based on wine tasting and musical experience in, among other places, Rosenthal, “The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality,” and “A Theory of Consciousness.” 57 An advocate of the Cartesian assumption may still question, why should we assume that these mental states have properties that pre-date our conscious awareness of them? Why not just say that the objects themselves have these properties? Why not say, for example, that the wine itself has the properties of “high-acidity” and “woodiness”? Why must we also assume that our sensa47

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tions possess qualitative properties we are unaware of (either because we lack the required conceptual resources or because we fail to represent them for other reasons)? I think there are two good reasons for thinking such properties exist. For one, I believe that if someone has the appropriate sensory faculties, and if sufficient time, focus, and attention are paid to the experience, it is reasonable to believe that the appropriate sensory qualities will be present. Secondly, I think there are ways to tease out knowledge of such properties. For example, when looking at a picture of a landscape one may be aware of only a tree- filled scene, and not aware that there are, say, twelve trees present. In a case like this, we may be able to tease out evidence that all twelve trees are sensed even if one is only aware of the scene in a more coarse-grained way. If so, this would be a situation where the qualitative character of a sensation outstrips the way we are aware of it. We may, for example, generate a second image minus one tree and see if the individual notices a change. If she does— even if she cannot articulate what it is—then I believe there would be good reason to hold that the sensation had qualitative properties that the HOT under-represented. 58 Rosenthal, “The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality,” 34. 59 Also, it is not the sensory state alone that determines what HOT one will have. That will also depend on additional factors, such as the range of one’s concepts, one’s current interests, one’s expectations, how attentive one is, and how experienced one is in making the relevant sensory discriminations. 60 Rosenthal, in “A Theory of Consciousness,” 744, points out that, “a case in which one has a HOT along with the mental state it is about might well be subjectively indistinguishable from a case in which the HOT occurs but not the mental state.” 61 Cf. C. R. Chapman, “The Role of Anxiety in Acute Pain,” in Pain Overview, ed. J. Bonica (New York: Harper, 1980): 6-13. 62 S. Shacham, and R. Daut, “Anxiety or Pain: what does the scale measure?” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 49 (1981): 468-69. 63 Cf. R. Melzack, and W. S. Torgerson, “On the Language of Pain,” Anesthesiology 34 (1971): 50-59. 64 Cf. D. H. Shapiro, “Overview: clinical and physiological comparison of meditation with other self-control strategies,” American Journal of Psychiatry 139 (1982): 367-74. 65 Cf. Chapman, “The Role of Anxiety in Acute Pain;” Robert S. Baron, H. Logan, and S. Hoppe, “Emotional and Sensory Focus as Mediators of Dental Pain Among Patients Differing in Desired and Felt Dental Control,” Health and Psychology 12, 5 (September, 1993): 381-89; Robert S. Baron, and H. Logan, “Desired Control, Felt control, and Dental Pain: recent findings and remaining issues,” Motivation and Emotion 17, 3 (September, 1993): 181-204. 66 Baron et al., “Emotional and Sensory Focus as Mediators of Dental Pain Among Patients Differing in Desired and Felt Dental Control.” 67 Baron and Logan, “Desired Control, Felt Control, and Dental Pain: recent findings and remaining issues.”

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68

Peter Staats, for example, reports findings in which rehearsed positive and negative thoughts—whose content is independent of pain—modify the effects of painful stimuli, both as subjectively reported and by standard physiological measures. He found that self-suggestion and the placebo effect, in which genuine assertoric HOTs presumably occur, significantly altered participants’ pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain endurance. See Peter Staats, H. Hekmat, and A. Staats, “Suggestion/Placebo Effects on Pain: negative as well as positive,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 15, 4 (April, 1998): 235-43. 69 See Sydney Shoemaker, “Introspection and Phenomenal States” (unpublished). 70 A Cartesian could reply that what is sensed in these cases is in fact pain, but account for error on the basis that something went wrong in the chain of physical causes that led to the sensation of pain. In fact, Descartes himself seems to suggest something along these lines (CSM II, 60-61 / AT VII, 8688). My reply would be that it seems counterintuitive to say that these people truly experienced pain. For one, in the case of dental pain, local anesthetic makes it unlikely that pain is present. Plus, in situations like this, it is not uncommon for individuals to retract their claim of experiencing pain once they learn the true cause of their experience. In addition, this Cartesian reply does not seem sufficiently capable of explaining all so-called cases of misrepresentation and confabulation. There presumably are cases of misrepresentation/confabulation that take place with intentional states, and this sort of physiological response would be incapable of explaining such cases. The HOT theory is capable of providing a unified account for both situations.

Table of Citations from Descartes’ Works Early Writings xii Regulae ad directionem ingenii Rule I xiii, 2, 60 Rule II 3, 5, 6, 19n31 and 39 Rule III xii, xiii-v, 7, 9, 19n39 Rule IV xv, xvi, 6, 37n10, 45, 53n10, 56, 74n10 Rule V 4, 5, 8, 22 Rule VI 22-23, 24, 28, 37n6 Rule VII 9, 19n31, 23 Rule VIII 22 Rule X 3, 9, 19n31 Rule XI 9-10 Rule XII 10, 11, 19n31, 22, 2425, 32, 124-25 Rule XIII 19n31 Rule XVII 19n31 Discourse on the Method Part I xii, xxin6, xxin7, 56, 60 Part II xii, xiii, 59, 76n31 Part IV 53n4, 56, 77n40, 99n5 Part V 84n109, 161 Part VI xvi, 14, 94 Meditations on First Philosophy Letter to the Sorbonne 18n26, 47, 152n5 Preface to the Reader 4, 42, 45, 152n5 Synopsis 26, 137, 152n5 Meditation I 43, 47, 54n15, 59, 61, 78n57, 85n131, 135 Meditation II 30, 41-42, 43, 5052, 54n15, 58, 61, 76n28, 77n45, 91, 135, 136, 137, 193n10 Meditation III 26, 28-29, 38n11, 40n34, 54n10, 70,

78n55, 80n76, 83n105, 135, 164, 165-66, 167-68, 169 Meditation IV 18n26, 63, 64, 85n128, 85n128-29, 110, 131n22, 135, 137 Meditation V 64-70, 80n77 and 79, 81n80, 83n106, 135, 168 Meditation VI 27, 39n19, 41, 75n16, 99n7 and 9, 112n6, 126, 127-28, 135, 137, 199n70 First Set of Replies 81n81, 83n99, 192n4 Second Set of Objections 42 Second Set of Replies 25, 27, 42, 43, 45, 46-49, 54n14 and 15, 62, 69, 82n94, 83n102, 84n110, 85n128, 110, 125-26, 168, 179 Third Set of Objections with Replies 31, 29n20, 39n24 and 26, 42, 53n4, 115, 15152n5 Fourth Set of Replies 28, 38n14, 39n20 and 21, 53n8, 178-79 Fifth Set of Objections 31, 42, 79n63, 81n83 Fifth Set of Replies 28, 31, 38n13, 42, 79n63, 161, 167, 168, 169 Sixth Set of Objections 71-72, 85n120 Sixth Set of Replies 39n25, 56, 84n118 Letter to Voetius 71, 80n72 Principles of Philosophy Dedication letter to Elizabeth 76n27

201 Preface to French Edition 4, 18n26, 74n11, 101 Part I § 6: 77n43 § 7: 53n4 § 9: 91, 192n4 § 13: 54n12, 161 § 28: 99n1 § 32: 62, 75n19 § 35: 92 § 37: 93, 99n13 § 38: 93 § 39: 63 § 41: 99n14 § 42: 98 § 48: 38n11 § 51: 26 § 52: 26, 33-34 § 53: 30 § 60: 26, 90, 123 § 62: 31, 90 § 63: 91, 124 Part II § 2: 95 § 4: 88, 124 § 16: 80n70 Part IV § 200: 16n11 Passions of the Soul Part I § 1: 39n23 § 6: 99n4 § 16: 99n6 § 17: 75n18, 112n5 § 18: 57-58 § 19: 62, 77-78n52 § 36: 99n2 § 46: 97-98 § 48: 98 § 49: 99n12 § 50: 98, 99n12, 152n5 Part II § 52: 102 § 56: 105, 108

§ 61: 105 § 62: 105 § 69: 103 § 137: 102, 103 § 146: 97 § 147: 97 Part III § 153-54: 106 § 171: 59, 76n35 § 173: 76n33 § 174: 59 § 175: 104 § 176: 104 § 178: 105 § 180: 109 § 182-83: 106, 107 § 185: 105 § 190: 109 § 212: 98, 109 Description of a Human Body 89 Comments on a Certain Broadsheet 32, 39n22, 53n8 Conversation with Burman 14, 18n10 and 26, 29, 31, 38n16, 79n63, 81n84, 126, 168, 169 The Search for Truth 21 Letters: to Beekman 23 April 1619 xvin2 to Mersenne 15 April 1630 165 to Mersenne 6 May 1630 69, 83n107, 161, 165 to Mersenne 27 May 1630 167 to Mersenne 10 May 1632 10-11

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202 to Mersenne 27 April 1637 77n46 to Mersenne 27 July 1638 19n31, 80n70 to Mersenne 16 October 1639 60 to Regius 24 May 1640 78n61 to Mersenne 31 December 1640 192n4 to Mersenne 28 January 1641 18n26, 77n47 to Mersenne July 1641 19n31 to Elizabeth 21 May 1643 31-32 to Elizabeth 28 June 1643 14, 32 to Mesland 2 May 1644 75n18, 76n27, 82n91, 111 to Mesland 9 February 1645 62, 75n23

202

to Charlet 9 February 1645 72, 85n126 to Elizabeth 4 August 1645 56 to Elizabeth 15 September 1645 63, 85n121 to Elizabeth 6 October 1645 63, 72, 79n67 to Newcastle 23 November 1646 75n21 to Chanut 1 February 1647 56, 71, 76n34 to Newcastle March or April 1648 85n130 to More 5 February 1649 40n31 to Mersenne 20 November 1649 151-52n5

Index Aler, Jan 153n9 Anselm, St. 69 Apel, Karl O. 150n1, 159n25 Aquinas, Thomas 17n24, 38n12, 79n64, 83n99, 87, 89 Arendt, Hannah 153n8 Aristotle, Aristotelianism 23, 35, 37n6 and 7, 69, 74n11, 79n63, 87, 88, 96, 130n8, 138, 142-43, 154-55n14, 156n18; antiAristotelian epistemology 162; Bacon’s critique of 2 Armstrong, D.M. 185, 196n41 Augustine, St. 80n74, 135, 145

Capella, Martianus 130n10 Chapman, C.R. 198n61 and 65 Chisholm, R.M. 78n59 Chomsky, Noam 84n117 Christ, Jesus 171 Clarke, Desmond 17n12, 30, 18n17, 40n28 cogito 41, 44, 49-50, 52, 53n3, 6162, 70, 71 see also res cogitans Collingwood, R.J. 19n32, 20n41 Collins, James 95 Cottingham, John xxin1, 87-88, 91, 93, 95-96, 102-03 Curley, E.M. 16n6

Baillet 3, 76n37 Bacon, Francis 1ff.; on antiquity 3; certainty 4; on experiment 7, 10-12; on wisdom as the goal of science 13 Baron, Robert 198n65-67 Beck, L.J. 18n30, 37n3 and 5 Beekman, Isaac xii Bellarmino, Robert 84n114 Bennett, Jonathan 114n18-19 Bernays, Paul 81n82 Beyssade, Jean-Marie 175n1 and 15 Blake, Ralph 16n12 Blondel, Maurice 55, 61, 63, 72-73, 78n55 Bonaventure, St. 82n92 Brouwer, L.E. 81n82 Brown, Gregory 80n79, 81n86 Buchdahl, Gerd 16-17n12 Burge, Tyler 194n25 Byrne, Alex 195n37

Daut, R. 198n62 Davies, Richard 99n11 deduction xiv, 2, 7-10, 11, 13, 1819n31, 44; as opposed to intuition 45; standard definition of 53n7 Diamond, Cora 158n21, 159n24 Dulahunty, Robert 175n12

Caton, Hiram 12, 17n24, 18n26, 19n38 Cavell, Stanley 159n28

Einstein, Albert 79n68 and 69 Euclid 116-18, 130n2 Ewbank, M. 38n12 experiment (experientia), and observation 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16-17n12; thought-experiment 42, 46-52, 53n3, 54n11, 13, and 14, 61 Fine, G. 37n7 Finley, Moses 156n18 Forrest, George 156n13 Frankfurt, Harry 78n58, 164 freedom 55, 56-57, 61, 63, 65, 67, 71, 72-73, 88, 90, 92-93, 99n14, 106, 111; infinity of 59-64; free will 55, 58 Frege, Gottlob 67, 82n94, 83n98

204 Friedländer, Paul 157n19 Garber, Daniel 5, 8, 12, 13, 16n1 and 12, 19n36 and 37, 80n70 Gassendi, P. 8, 27 Gaukroger, Stephen xxin3, xxin4, 1, 5 Gewirth, Alan 16n12 Ghent, Henry of 85n126 God 26, 38n16, 38-39n17, 55, 56, 58-59, 63, 64, 67, 68-70, 7072, 72-73, 92, 96, 161-76; concurrence of 33-36, 99n1; and real distinction 26-27, 90, 123, 126; and eternal truths 68-69, 70, 110; as infinite substance 26-27, 28-29, 63, 162, 165-67, 169-70, 174; scientific knowledge dependent on existence of 64, 67, 70-72, 161, 163, 173-74; omnipotence of 90, 123, 126, 161, 164-65, 169, 174; perfection of 29, 167-69, 174; proof for existence of 28, 69-70, 16162, see also idea of God Gödel, Kurt 81n88 Goldfarb, Warren 158n24 Gnosticism 151n3, 152n6, 158n20 Havlock, Eric 156n18 Heidegger, Martin 130n1, 133-35, 137-44, 145, 159n27, 162-63 Hegel, G.W.F. 143 Heller, Erich 159n26 Heraclitus 143, 156n18 Hesiod 156n18 Hobbes, T. 108, 115 Hoffman, Paul 113n14 Homer 156n18 Hoppe, S. 198n65 Horace 84n112 Husserl, Edmund 171 idea 28, 29, 59, 67; clear and distinct 31, 69, 113n14, 161-

62; idea of God 28-29, 67, 69, 83n99, 161-76; image and 59, 63, 115-131, see also geometry and mathematics; innate 63, 64, 66-67, 69, 167-68, see also mathematics; objective reality of 28, 168 Ignatius, St., Ignatian spirituality 61, 73, 76-77n39, 77n41 induction 7-10, 11, 13, 18-19n31 intuition xiii, xxin5, 2, 8, 9-10, 12, 42, 49, 53-54n10; contemporary sense of 53n10; easy vs. tough intuitions 48, 50; intuiting point of view 46, 47-48; mathematical 81n88; method of analysis and 44-50; phenomenological meaning of 171-72 Janicaud, Dominique 154n10 Janik, Alan 158n22 Janowski, Z. 78n61 Jardine, Lisa 8 Jones, Matthew 75n13 Kant, Immanuel 67, 130n1, 171 Kenny, Anthony 43, 81n86 Klein, Jacob 131n14 Kors, Alan 82n95, 83n96 and 99 Kripke, Saul 177, 180-81, 182-83 Kulstad, Mark 40n28 Lachterman, David 4, 16n10, 18n26 Lamy, Bernard 79-80n69, 83n96 Leibniz, G.W. 21, 32-36 Levinas, Emmanuel 176n21 Levine, Joseph 177, 180 Logan, H. 198n65 and 67 Lycan, W.G. 185 Mach, Ernst 54n11 Malebranche, N. 82n94 Marion, Jean-Luc xxin4, xxin5, 1819n31, 28, 37n1, 2, 4, 8 and 9,

205 38n15, 71, 82n93, 84n111, 161-64, 169-74, 175n10, 11, 13-16, and 18-19 Marke, Peter 77n49 mathematics xii, 13, 14, 64-70, 72, 78n60, 120-23, 164, 165; ancient mathematicians 56, 120-23; geometry and 116-31, 67-69 mathesis universalis xiii, xv, 161 Meissner, W. 77n41 Melzak, R. 198n63 Mersenne, M. 8, 27, 83n97 and 107 method xi-xii, xv, 1-2, 6-7, 9, 13, 22, 46, 48, 56; method of doubt 47, 50 Miles, Murray 17n19, 19n31 Miner, Robert 18n25 and 26 Monk, Ray 158n22, 159n27 Montaigne, M. 16n6, 17n15 Mortley, Rauol 151n3, 157n19, 158n20, 158n23 Nagel, Thomas 177, 181 Neoplatonism 80n74, 94, 152n6 Newton, Isaac 14 Normore, Calvin 80n79, 81n83 Olson, Mark 79n63 Oratorians 69, see also Poisson, H. and Lamy, B. O’Toole, Fredrick 175n12 Ovid 133 Parmenides 143, 156n18, 157n19 Parsons, Charles 79n66 Paul, St. 71 Peirce, C.S. 67 Perez-Ramos, Antonio 19n33 Plato, Platonism 80n72, 94, 100n16, 115, 127, 135, 142-43, 143, 152n6, 154n13, 155n14; mathematical Platonism 81n82; divided line 118-20 Pöggler, Otto 157n18 Poincaré, Henri 67

Poisson, Nicolas Joseph 83n96 Popper, Karl 156n18 Proclus 115, 116, 120-23, 127, 130n2, 131n11 Quinton, Anthony 20n41 Radner, Daisie 012 res cogitans 41, 51, 56, 64-65, 71, 91, 162 see also cogito Richardson, William 153n8 and 9, 154n10 Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève 64, 84n113 Rorty, Amélie 102, 107, 112n4 Rorty, Richard 43-44, 150 Rosenthal, David 178, 179, 182-83, 185, 186-88, 189-90, 193n7 Rossi, Paolo 1, 16n8, 18n27 Rousseau 148 Russell, Bertrand 67, 78n60, 82n90 and 92 Sales, Francis of, Salesians 73, 79n64, 84n108, 112 and 115 Sanders, M.D. 184 Schoemaker, Sydney 182, 188, 191 Searle, John 57-58, 75n17 and 22, 76n24 and 29, 193n9 scientia (science, knowledge) xiiixiv, xv, 8, 13, 56, 64, 69, 70, 71. 95, 101, 136, 161, 170-71, 174 see also knowledge dependent on existence of God; practical component of xvi, 13-15, 56, 60, 71, 87; as distinguished from persuasion 57, 64, 78n61, 159n27; philosophy as 137; scientific truth 135 Shacham, S. 198n62 Shapiro, D.H. 198n64 simple natures 11-12, 22, 23, 2425, 29, 37n3 Simplicius 130n9 skepticism 5, 59, 151n3, 152n6

206 Solère, Jean-Luc 75n14 Socrates 80n72 Solomon 72 Sorabji, Richard 80n74 Spinoza, B. 34, 40n30 Staats, Peter 199n68 Stoics, Stoicism 56, 97-98 Suarez, F. 25, 27, 28, 33, 38n16 substance 21ff., 60, 90, 91, 97, 12326, 165-66, 168; substance dualism 89-91, 93, 94, 115-16, 178; infinite substance 165 syllogism 2, 7, 9, 45, 49 Taminiaux, Jacques 152-53n8, 154n10, 154-55n14 Taylor, Richard 76n24 Thomism see Aquinas, Thomas tranquility 97, 109-10 Torgerson, W.S. 198n63

Toulmin, Stephen 14, 17n15, 158n22 Tugendhat, Ernst 157n18 and 19 Urbach, Peter 12 Vickers, Brian 1, 17n18 Vico, Giambattista xi, xvi Voss, Stephen 16n12, 17n19, 113n 13and 17 Ward, Graham 176n20 Weiskrantz, L. 184-86 Wilson, Margaret 44 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 76n29, 13335, 137, 144-48 Wolin, Richard 157n18 Yates, Frances 17n18