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CHAPTER 3

WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (2)

DESCARTES

Let us remember once more that it is not my intention to make a synopsis of the philosophies we are encountering as we proceed, simply because this is of no interest, and would contribute nothing that is new. The purpose is only to appeal to some philosophers, truly representatives of the history of western thought, and fall in step with them, their historical parade, as a kind of revealer that may put before our eyes the texture and internal problematic of what we have called the transcendental order.

The previous chapter was dedicated to St. Thomas, above all —beyond the intrinsic value the ideas deserve— in order to place before our eyes a few concepts that are fundamental for everything we are going to be covering. At the end of that chapter I had recalled that St. Thomas was giving, in the first place, an entifying interpretation of creationality in the transcendental order. The order of ens qua ens is the order of ens creationally considered, taking this ens as creator God or created reality. In the second place, we had discussed the intrinsic necessity of this order. In the third place, we had dealt with the antecedent necessity of that order. And I had quoted the paragraph where St. Thomas told us that creation precisely consists in participating —ut ita dixerim—, so to {124} speak, of the nature of “that which is”, naturam essendi. Precisely because of this, it is evident that this order is intrinsically necessary with the same necessity of the esse divinum, and in addition necessarily antecedent. In other words, that in a certain way, putting it anthropomorphically, if God proceeds to create, the first thing He has to do is to think that what He has to create would be an entity, and therefore, something that fits into the transcendental structure. In the fourth place, this transcendental order has a transcendent principle, which is God, considered as ens, the Summum Ens, Ens a se. In the fifth place, in created things this order is concluded and fixated, because it precisely concerns the nature of what is ab-alio, i.e., the ab-alio-ness (Sp. abaliedad) of created entity as such.

In addition, I was saying that in all of this there is an internal inflexion of the Aristotelian thought at the hands of St. Thomas. It is an inflexion that, as we shall see, is enormously decisive for the history of metaphysics. Out of this inflexion, which proceeds from the metaphysics of Aristotle, modern philosophy is born within the medieval philosophy of the end of the XV century and beginning of the XVI, and congeneric with it, modern science. This science concerns the world and man. And, naturally, the problem can be suggested —that is what concerns Descartes, and we shall now deal with him— of how to provide a solid base for this knowledge with an indubitable and certain foundation.

To accomplish this, Descartes places himself on the horizon of the previous philosophy, God and Creation. Therefore, it is the horizon of nothingness.

Nevertheless, on this horizon of nothingness Descartes is going to put in the first level something quite different from what on that level St. Thomas had emphasized. The horizon of nothingness moves St. Thomas to place on first level the intrinsic finitude of being; however, for Descartes it is the case of something {125} completely different at first sight, the radical uncertainty of intelligence. On the horizon of nothingness human intelligence shows itself intrinsically and constitutively uncertain.

It is an inflexion, as we can see, enormously important, but always from the horizon of nothingness. In it we are going to be present at the unfolding of the thought of Descartes in two parts.

In the first place, What is the problem Descartes posits?
In the second place, What are some of the steps of the march of this problem concerning the question we are interested in?


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§ 1

THE HORIZON OF NOTHINGNESS: UNCERTAINTY

Putting it simply, In what does the problem of Descartes consist?

Descartes tells us in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, that all human sciences constitute only one thing, wisdom, sophía¹. Precisely remembering that Aristotle had said he created Prima Philosophia, this sophía becomes in Descartes the primary and radical subject of his reflection. Consequently, such reflection is a meditation or a series of Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. Since this sophía covers everything we wish to know, and partially know, about the world and things —everything we call science—, this meditation has to fall first and above all on the character of this science.

Descartes will tell us that here it is not the case of taking this science and therefore, the creation of things by God, as a datum of faith, as an object of revelation. His problem is to investigate the intrinsic condition of science and its object —of its objects— starting, not from other reasons, but from reasons taken from our own {127} mind (rationibus non aliunde petitis, quam ab ipsa et nostra mente)².

Now, what Descartes needs to do is to tell us what he understands by science. But he never tells us he merely presupposes it. And he presupposes it because he receives from the previous philosophy a fairly precise idea of what science is, understood, not as a scientific “body of truths”, but as a “way of knowing”, as a way of knowing them.

Likewise, for example, Ockham told us, “Science is a true knowledge, but dubitable, made by its own nature to be evidenced by a reasoning” (Scientia est cognitio vera sed dubitabilis, nata fieri evidens per discursum). In the first place, it is a case of a cognitio vera. Here, truth refers to the fact that things may be as the intellect affirms they are. In the second place, we are told that it is something dubitabilis. Indeed, the great majority of the truths we call scientific, and form the body of science, are truths that at least in principle, are dubitable until a reason for them is given. There is, therefore, a moment of internal dubitability, which is the fringe that accompanies every knowledge, the body of which constitutes science. And, in third place, Ockham tells us, this truth is true, but dubitable, that is to say, it is not enough that it may be true in order to have science, but it has to be certain in some way. And it is made through its nature to be evidenced by a discourse, with which its doubt is changed into certainty.

Here we have the three essential moments, which are going to constitute the problem for Descartes: the truth, the doubt, and the certainty {128} through evidence. While for the previous philosophy the point of departure for all speculation was a meditation about entity, for Descartes the beginning of philosophy —really more than “beginning”, as we shall soon see— is a meditation upon intelligence. Upon this intelligence that from the point of view of the previous philosophy would be a reality difficult to apprehend, Descartes now tells us is the easiest to know. Understanding that by “easy” he actually means “immediate”. The immediacy of intelligence to itself is just what confers its preeminent rank to intelligence in the very structure of philosophy.

Consequently, that ultimateness philosophy searches for is now the ultimateness of a certainty that may be unmovable. To find just this order of fundament in true certainties that may be unmovable, that is the problem of Descartes.


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§ 2

THE STEPPING MARCH OF THE PROBLEM

In this second part we are going to distinguish three different steps.

In the first place, doubt and certainty.
In the second place, certainty and evidence.
In the third place, evidence and truth.


I. Doubt and certainty

Under Ockham’s conception, as in any other with more or less affinity to what was being said since the time of the Greek, the uncertainty, the insecurity is an almost universal fringe to knowledge in the sense that there are few truths that are evident by themselves. That is the fringe of insecurity that accompanies knowledge.

But for Descartes that dubiousness, that uncertainty is something deeper and more profound. It is deeper and more profound because for him it is converted into something different, it is “method”. Method does not mean here a logical operation, but a little more or less what it meant for Parmenides when he referred to the hodós tes aletheías, to the way that leads to truth. For Descartes, that way is strictly the doubt, not only because everything may be dubitable, but for something different. It is not the case that we may have to place all things in doubt, but of something more. Descartes appeals to doubt, not to remain in it, {130} but to see if there is something that may be able to resist it. And precisely in that intention is based the characteristic of method that the doubt has.

“Methodical doubt” does not mean that at the start we should arrange matters to put everything in doubt, but rather that we place a doubt about everything to see if there is actually something that may resist the doubt itself. That way, employing this method, Descartes, with his intelligence and his thought, ends up closed within himself and his thoughts. Descartes used to say, “I separate myself and remain in solitude” (solus
secedo)³. A solitude intrinsically defined by the action we have just described, because to say that man remains alone with his thoughts is something as old as mankind. I remember, for example, that Aeschylus in line 757 (Gk text) of the Agamemnon placed this phrase in the mouth of the chorus, “Away from all, alone, I find myself thinking on my own”. He was referring to the oracles, to the various contradicting oracles concerning the subject being debated. Centuries later St. Augustine would say, “Do not desire to step outside, truth resides in the interior man” (Noli foras ire, in interiori homine habitat veritas). But St. Augustine adds in another paragraph, “I would more easily doubt that I am alive, than doubt that truth exists” (faciliusque dubitare me vivere quam non esse veritatem).

Now Descartes is going to perform a more serious operation. It not only consists in this solitude where man in his interior wishes to have, for whatever reasons (the reasons of St. Augustine are different than those of Descartes), to find the truth that resides in him; it is something more. It is the strict and rigorous way to find something formally irresistible and resistant {131} to doubting something that may not be doubtful, but immovably certain.

Hence, it is well known that for Descartes the unquestionable fact, the fact where that unquestionable certainty is found is the very fact of doubt, “I think, therefore, I exist”. I am actually doubting everything, but I cannot doubt the fact that I exist; consequently, cogito, ergo sum⁴. The philosophy of Descartes, from this moment on, is going to be an egology⁵.

However, Descartes is not satisfied with what he has just said, which is quite serious. Descartes has to take another step.


II. Certainty and evidence

Why is this incontrovertible fact undoubtedly true?

Descartes will tell us, because I perceive with clarity and distinctly that if I think, it is because I exist.

However, throughout all of his Meditations he never tires of repeating that there could be an evil genie that despite his most clear evidences might be able to deceive him.

Nevertheless, Descartes makes a radical exception to this possible deception on the ego cogito. Because that ego cogito is not a reasoning similar to one that would say, everything that thinks exists; the fact is that I think, therefore I exist. No, that is not the sense of Descartes. The sense Descartes gives to the cogito, ergo sum is that this ergo forms part of the cogitatio as such. {132} I have the intuitus⁶ that actually I think, and therefore —Descartes says more precisely—, when I say cogito, ergo sum what I am saying is cogito me cogitare, I think that I am thinking. Here is precisely where the point of view of Descartes is going to anchor itself. The presumed truth of the premise “everything that thinks, exists” is founded on this intuitus (and not the other way around), which is immovably resistant to any attempt to doubt it.

In the phrase, cogito me cogitare —I think that I think—, the I intervenes twice and this is a serious problem. On this serious problem Descartes has not meditated at length, because for him the cogito me cogitare is evident —I think that I think.

If we call what is said in the subordinate proposition (“that I think”) a thought that is thought (Sp. “pensamiento pensado”), then the “I think” with which the phrase begins is what we might call a thought that is thinking (Sp. “pensamiento pensante”). This is the “thought-that-is-thinking” that thinks precisely its own thought insofar as being thought. And of this, of this “thought-that-is-thinking”, Descartes says he has an immovable certainty.

The “I think” might be completely false, which constitutes the predication of relative, from the point of view of the thought-that-is-thought; however, from the point of view of the thought-that-is-thinking it would be an incontrovertible truth, because that falsehood and error is what is seen and thought. For Descartes, not even divine omnipotence could make that intuitus fail. The incontrovertible reality Descartes talks about with respect to thought is not the incontrovertible reality of the thought-that-is-thought, but precisely of the thought-that-is-thinking. That is the issue.

{133} Of this thinking Descartes tells us that it is an intuitus, that in which I “see” with all clarity (we shall soon see what this “clarity” is about for Descartes) that this thought is a thought that involves existence in itself. Because of this, Descartes will tell us that the ego cogito is not only a fact and also an incontrovertible fact, but that precisely its incontrovertibility reveals to us that it is at least, at the exordium of philosophy, the very essence of man. Not only cogito, ergo sum, but ego sum res cogitans, “I am precisely something that thinks, a thinking essence”⁷.

Several reflections immediately appear with respect to this Cartesian point of view. Descartes says ad nauseam that he is only moving in the order of truths that are certain, of true certainties. That is what he says, but is this what is happening in Descartes? That is the question. Let us call certainty, a potiori, the point of departure of the doubt, and then, Descartes would tell us that he is moving in the order of certain truth, that is to say, of an egology whose formal characteristic is the incontrovertible certainty of its own ego. Here is where some reflections appear. I am not asking if what Descartes says is true in a particular philosophy (we are not interested in that here), but I am asking, Is it true that Descartes is really doing that?

Indeed, let us take the thought-that-is-thought, I think that I think. In this “that I think”, What is the thought Descartes deals with? It is not the whole of thinking in general or the intellect in general, like the Medieval. Descartes understands that his attempt to doubt aims at the “I think”, that I am actually thinking. In that actuality is where the characteristic of “that I think” resides. Hence, that actuality is what {134} we say in Spanish “I am now thinking” (estoy pensando). To say “I think that I think” is, in the hands of Descartes —regardless of what he says—, “I think that I am now (Sp. estoy) thinking”. Then, who cannot but see that all the strength of the ergo resides, not precisely in the fact that I am thinking, but in the very characteristic of the “I am now” (Sp. estoy), in the very actuality? The thinking characteristic drops to a second level and what remains in the first level is that “I am now”, I think that I am now thinking. Precisely in the “I am now” is where the actuality of thinking resides, and therefore, its very characteristic of reality. The reality of thinking, and not just its dimension of truth, is what constitutes the initial and radical strength of the cogito.

Against what Descartes pretends the thought with which he operates is not precisely thought insofar as certain or doubtful, but thought insofar as actual, that is to say, insofar as reality.

If we now take the thought-that-is-thinking (Sp. pensamiento pensante) (“I-think-I-am-now-thinking”, Sp. pienso que estoy pensando), from where does the intuitus acquire its incontrovertible characteristic, that radical 'I think', this cogito me cogitare, the first cogito? Certainly, Descartes insists that it is an intuition, intueri, I see that actually it is so. But that vision is not proper, for example, to the evidence of a mathematical theorem. In order to simplify I will render it this way; the fact is I am seeing that I am now thinking. It is in the I am now, i.e., in the characteristic that in a certain way corresponds to that intention with respect to its object, where the strength of the cogito resides; precisely not in its presumed characteristic of certainty. Just the opposite, its presumed characteristic of certainty is not founded on anything but that radical characteristic of reality the intuitive act has, not in what it has of intuitive, but in what it has of real. The cogito me cogitare is not, therefore, “I think that I thought”, but rather that I am seeing that I am now thinking.

{135} We now ask, what is the relationship between these two moments of the phrase, “I am seeing that I am now thinking”? One might think that it is the logical identity of the subject “I” what Descartes features. But that is not true because, as logical subject of the phrase, both ego are different, one is the ego that forms part of the thought-that-is-thought, the other is the ego that-is-thinking, and we could continue this way to the infinite. It is not the case of a logical identity; it is the case precisely of the identity of the to-be-there-now (Sp. estar). Really and effectively it is the case of being now (Sp. estando) as “I am now” (Sp. “estoy”) thinking, and how “I am now” seeing that “I am now” thinking. The access of man to himself is not a question of intuition. It is the condition of a reality —of anyone at all, we are not going to enter into this problem—, of a being there now (Sp. estar), that cannot be there now —in this case thinking— except intuiting and seeing that actually he is there now thinking. This is precisely the subject of reflectivity; but then, reflectivity is not simply a matter of judgment, but the real condition of the very human intelligence insofar as reality. Because, how does intuition reach its object? Certainly not through chance, but reaches it by itself, by its own and intrinsic condition; contrariwise, it would be doubtable to the infinite. The identity, that is to say, my being there now in reality reaches its object because it is the case of one selfsame and unique reality, which we express in Spanish with the verb estar (Tr. to be there now)⁸.

Descartes, with his idea of being has carried the matter to a merely logical dimension. And if in the metaphysics of St. Thomas we have been present to the entification of reality, here we are present to something different, but equally serious, to the “verification of entity”.

Entity enters into truth, at least for us men. The first thing Descartes has discovered in {136} the intelligence is precisely that it may be verum and has skidded over the moment of reality of the very intelligence and of the very thinking act.

Nevertheless, in this “verification” of reality (“verification” not in the sense of testing, but that he subsumes entity and reality under the verum) there are two directions. There is one that faces the ego, which is the only reality, whose reality incontrovertibly involves truth; this is what for Descartes is the first principle of philosophy.

But there is a second case in which truth incontrovertibly involves the reality of its object, which is God. The idea of the infinite entity —Descartes tells us— cannot come from myself; I know I am finite and limited precisely because I have the idea of infinite entity⁹. This idea has to come to me from a reality. This is the Cartesian version of the famous ontological argument.

Nevertheless, we find ourselves between a truth that emerges incontrovertibly from the reality of the I, and a reality that emerges incontrovertibly from the truth of the idea of God. Descartes finds himself in a tension, from which he is going to inscribe what he has to tell us about truth.

“Verification” of reality and entity, but it is indispensable that we be told What does Descartes understand by truth?


III. Evidence and truth

Descartes mixes four different concepts of truth, each however, is {137} founded on the previous. It is necessary that we carefully try to see which are these four different strata of the problem of truth in Descartes.


1. Truth as firmness

In the first place, what we have just said, Descartes searches for a truth with an immovable certainty. Here truth means “firmness”, an intellective firmness facing every doubt or facing any uncertainty. It is not something alien to Philosophy from its beginnings. When Parmenides tells us at the beginning of his Poem (1:29) what truth is, he tells us precisely of the “immovable heart of the well-rounded truth” (eukukléos aletheíes atremés hétor). That moment of the atremés, of the immovable, belongs in one form or another to truth since the beginnings of philosophy. When Aristotle, more logically, wishes to find out what may be the first principle of the logos —the principle of contradiction—, he tells us he is going to search for a principle that may be bebaiotáte, the most secure, the most inflexible. The idea, therefore, that truth is the immovable belongs in one way or another to a primary and primordial concept of truth. Certainly, here is not the case of a truth founded on evidences, but of a truth that may be immovable in itself, by its inner structure insofar as truth. Truth in this sense is firmness; truth is firmness by itself.


2. Truth as manifestation

In the second place, we have to point out a different concept of truth in Descartes. Truth, Descartes tells us, {138} is an attribute of a perceptio clara ac distincta¹⁰, of a clear and distinct perception. Here it is no longer a question of immovable certainties; it is the case of a manifestation. Here truth is manifestation, not simply firmness. In other words, truth is only that, which is firmly known, “firmly manifest”, and just this perceptio clara ac distincta is the evidence for Descartes. It is also clear for Descartes that this belongs to the realm of truth; after all, evidence is the incorporation of the true to the certain. It is a second concept of truth.

_________________
¹ No doubt, Zubiri refers here to an important passage of the First Rule, “Indeed, all sciences are nothing but human wisdom, which remains one and identical with itself regardless of the different objects it deals with without receiving from them any other diversity than the one the light of the sun receives from the variety of the things it illumines”, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, in R. Descartes, Oeuvres (Ed. Adam-Tannery), X, p. 360.
² “rationibus non aliunde petitis quam ab ipsa et nostra mente posse ostendi” (A-T, VII, 2).
³ A-T, VII, 18.
⁴ A-T, VIII-1, 8.
⁵ [Tr. note: Zubiri neologism]
⁶ “simplici mentis intuitu” (A-T, VII, 140).
⁷ A-T, VII, 34.
⁸ [Tr. note: actualizing “to be“]
⁹ “Nec putare debeo me non percipere infinitum”... (A-T, VII, 45-46).
¹⁰ “clara quaedam et distincta perceptio” (A-T, VII, 35 and 62).