Descartes, Meditations

A few notes on Descartes, Meditations 1-2, with lots of help from Jean-Luc Marion.

Descartes's ego cogito, ergo sum is not, Marion points out, original, at least in its form. It has origins in Augustine, who offered this response to the skeptics: "I have no fear of the arguments of the Academics. They say, ‘Suppose you are mistaken?' I reply, ‘If I am mistaken, I exist [si fallor, sum].' A non-existent being cannot be mistaken; therefore I must exist, if I am mistaken. . . . Then, since my being mistaken proves that I exist, how can I be mistaken in thinking that I exist, seeing that my mistaken establishes my existence [quando certum me esse, si fallor]?"

But Descartes recognized that his use of this form of argument is quite different from Augustine's: "I do indeed find that [Augustine] does use it to prove the certainty of our existence. He goes on to show that there is a certain likeness of the Trinity in us, in that we exist, we know that we exist, and we love the existence and the knowledge we have. I, on the other hand, use the argument to show that this I that is thinking is an immaterial substance with no bodily element. These are two very different things."

Indeed they are: In fact, Augustine and Descartes are further apart than this statement from Descartes indicates. As Marion summarizes, Augustine's purpose in the larger context is to establish the continuing goodness of the world following the fall (against the Manichees). To this end, Augustine argues that "we recognize in ourselves. . . . an image of God, that is of the Supreme trinity. It is not an adequate image, but a very distant parallel." And this premise leads to the conclusion that "we are human beings, created in our Creator's image." Thus, for Augustine, "Self-certainty thus leads self-consciousness back to the inner consciousness of God, which is found to be more essential to consciousness than itself. For the si fallor, sum does not aim at the ego, nor does it come to a half in the res cogitans, seeing as the interior intimo meo transports it, as a derived image, toward the original exemplar. The si fallor, sum remains the simply, though first, moment of a path that, in two other more rich moments (knowing one's Being and loving it), disappropriates the mind from itself by the movement of reappropriating it to its original, God. The si fallor, sum does not assure the mind of having its principle in itself, since it does not grant it Being in itself nor saying itself by itself (like substance). On the contrary, si fallor sum forbids the mind to remain in itself, exiled from its truth, in order to send it back to the infinite original. The mind is retrieved only insofar as it is exceeded."

By contrast, Descartes wants to show that "by means of the certainty of Being that thought secures for what from now on becomes an ego" that the I is an immaterial substance: "What is at stake, then, is not found simply in the connection of thought and existence, however certain this connection might be. That the mind thinks, therefore that it is insofar as it thinks – this belongs to an inference that is if not banal . . . at least quite commonplace. What is peculiar to Descartes consists, as he so lucidly indicates, in interpreting the certain and necessary connection of the cogitatio and existence as establishing a substance, and moreover a substance that plays the role of first principle."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, April 06, 2006 at 10:56 AM

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