Private thought
Reading Descartes' 'The Search for Truth by means of the Natural Light'. Part I: Introduction.
I. Introduction: Descartes’ problem
If you want to understand a philosopher, it is of the greatest importance to seek out his intentions. Often, these intentions are barely present in the works we attribute to an author, but are to be found in notes, letters, and the biography of the philosopher in question.
Of course, one needs to read his philosophy, the theoretical works that he has written. But one will only understand the philosopher to a certain degree, if one doesn’t ask oneself why this philosopher thought this philosophy necessary, what the context was in which it emerged, what the problems were to which he sought to give an answer. In short, what the life was from which this philosophy emerged. For this end, not only the main philosophical works of an author are important. For this end, biographical information, letters, introductions, all the things we usually deem secondary in nature, are of primary importance.
I want to understand Descartes with you. Is there any philosopher which more people think they know, without in fact knowing anything? We all know Descartes, as the father of modern science, the thinker of dualism, the philosopher who caused man to say goodbye to nature, and the man who thought animals were only machines. It is this philosopher of who I would like to find out the intentions. Why this strange philosophy, centred around this indubitable I: ‘Cogito’, why this separation of mind from body? Why did he create a philosophy of nature, but called it ‘a fable’?
And to give answer to these questions, we need to seek out the problems which occupied Descartes, and to which he sought to give an answer. It is all too easy to critique Descartes, as shown by the fact that every first years philosophy student does it. It is easy to say that I am not because I think, but because I am. And it is easy to say that the mind is not separated from the body. But by saying these things, no one has understood why Descartes deemed it necessary to separate mind from body, and why he thought it necessary to prove our existence by way of the fact that we think. And we will never understand these things, if we do not look past the philosophy of Descartes, and into the life from which it was born, the problems this life — Descartes’ — struggled with. And if we do this, perhaps Descartes will appear to us in an entirely new light.
Is it not so, that when we interpret a philosopher, we usually do so on the basis of our own problems? This is only natural, for in reading, we seek answers to the life that we are living. But could it not be, that in reading Descartes through the lens of our own problems, we run the risk of failing to understand him entirely. It is indeed the case, that man has become separated from nature, with all the familiar consequences. Pollution of the natural world, widespread disease, unseen levels of toxicity, and so on. This is our problem today, and searching for how this could all come to happen, it is easy to point back to that philosopher who spoke of the separation of mind from nature. We are confronted with a failing practice of medicine, which looks at man as a mere machine. This is our problem, and confronted with it, it is all too easy to point back to that philosopher who first dared to look at man as a machine. But what does Descartes have to do with these problems? Descartes wasn’t exposed to xeno-estrogens in the water he drank, he didn’t swim in oceans filled with plastic, he didn’t have a Twitter account, and he wasn’t fed a diet of SSRI’s and beyond-meat burgers. He didn’t live in a world already ravaged by industry and techno-science, and in no way could he say either yes or no to this direction that modernity would take.
Could it not be, that by looking at the problems Descartes himself was faced with, our philosopher will appear more as a friend than as an enemy? It is this question that I would like to entertain.
For this end, I invite you to forget everything that you have ever heard about Descartes. And I would like to take you to what I deem to be the most vital problem for Descartes, which is the problem of ‘confidence’. You will see what I mean by this later. Descartes is the philosopher of thought, and most of all, the philosopher that wanted to think what thought meant, and how we could begin to think. Descartes saw, that many things prevent us from thinking, and from seeing what the ends of thought really are. And these things, they are not so much of the order of thought, but of ways of thought, and of ways of life. Certain ways of life, from which ways of thought are born that stifle thought. Ways of life, that stifle our natural confidence to truly think.
As we will see, Descartes saw that the way thought was evolving, it would soon turn against itself. Thought would end up consuming itself, and in doing so, it would end up destroying the life that was doing the thinking. In this sense, Descartes’ philosophy forms a reaction. A reaction against a thought unhinged, a thought with no direction, a thought without ‘method’, which would end up bringing us further away from the natural ends of thought.
‘La Recherche de la Vérité par la Lumière Naturelle’, or ‘The Search for Truth by means of the Natural Light.’ This is the full title of the text by Descartes that I want to read with you. More than any other text, The Search for Truth lays out the intentions of Descartes’ philosophical project. And as such, it lays out the problems that would determine the entire course of modern philosophy.
II. Private thought, public opinion
The Search for Truth is written in the form of a dialogue between three characters. The first is Poliander, a layman who has spent his life working, but has had little education, and read no books. The second is Epistemon, a learned philosopher, having spent his life at various academies, Epistemon has read everything there is to read concerning philosophy. He is the learned thinker. The third character is Eudoxus, which represents Descartes himself. Eudoxus too is well-read in philosophy, but at some point in his life, he decided that studying the writings of others was barely useful at all if one seeks to find the truth. So he decided to read no more, and to try and find the truth by way of his own reason. He has spent his life traveling, engaging in combat, visiting many different cultures and learning from them. He is the private thinker. Eudoxus is “a man of moderate intellect but possessing a judgement which is not corrupted by any false beliefs and a reason which retains all the purity of its nature.”(The Search for Truth, 401)
Philosophy is plagued by the question of beginning. How do we begin to do philosophy? And is it even possible to ‘begin’, for have not others before us already begun, and are we not merely continuing their work? How can one truly begin thinking, when one always makes use of the thoughts of someone else? And if this is so, why would we even want to make a fresh start, when we can rely on those great thinkers who came before? It is only when a distrust vis-à-vis tradition is present, that the desire arises to begin. In all other circumstances, one is content with merely continuing. And so Descartes, the philosopher who truly wanted to start over with a new method, had grown distrustful of the thoughts that came before. It is not that he disliked the philosophers that came before him. For to the contrary, Descartes showed great respect for Plato and Aristotle, and he even intended to write a text praising Socrates. A text which was, sadly, never finished. But Descartes knew, that when one relies solely on the truths found in books, and in commentaries on books, the truths that are to be found there are necessarily presented together with perhaps even more falsities.
“I do not wish to consider what others have known or not known. I am content to observe that even if all the knowledge that can be desired were contained in books, the good things in them would be mingled with so many useless things, and scattered haphazardly through such a pile of massive tomes, that we should need more time for reading them than our present life allows, and more intelligence for picking out the useful material than would be required for discovering it on our own.” (The Search for Truth, 401)
Even if the truth is to be found in what was already said, we would be thinking too highly of ourselves if we’d think that we would have the intelligence required to actually extract it. A much easier and much more realistic route is offered by Descartes’ new method. Do not read what has already been said, but think for yourself, start over, by way of your own natural light. And this, Descartes believed, is a much easier route to finding those truths of which others have already spoken. It is not that Plato or Aristotle are necessarily wrong, but that to find those universal truths of which they spoke, it is perhaps better to think for ourselves. To truly honour philosophy, do as all great philosophers did; think, by way of your own natural light.
Nature has endowed us with the means to think, with the ability to know everything worth knowing. This is what Descartes wants you to believe. Stop thinking yourself unworthy, pointing to others who have already done the work of philosophy. God wants you to know, and nature has given you the means to do so. So, dare to know. And most of all, believe that you can know. Before anything else, this is Descartes’ message to us.
Can we truly think by our own natural light? Are we not always already influenced by the thoughts of others? Descartes surely believed so, and his entire method is based on this possibility. You can renounce everything you previously thought or were taught to think, and you can truly begin from a clean start. The Search for Truth shows us how this is possible.
III. The Search for Truth
For the longest time, we didn’t know when the Search for Truth was written. Was it an early text by Descartes, or written just before he died? Does this explain why it is unfinished? Or was it unfinished because he was occupied with some other text? In recent times, it has become quite agreed upon that the Search for Truth was indeed an early text, probably written between 1628 and 1631.1 Which situates it before all the more well-known texts of Descartes such as the ‘Rules For the Direction of the Mind’, ‘The Discourse on Method’, ‘The Meditations’, and ‘The Principles of Philosophy’. In all likelihood, Descartes never finished the text because he became more occupied with writing the Rules For the Direction of the Mind. This is interesting, as we will see that the Search for Truth contains some of the most well known ideas of Descartes, such as the ‘I think, I am’, the method of doubt, and the critique of tradition. Suggesting that quite early on in his life, Descartes already had some vision of where he wanted to go. The Search for Truth lays out the framework and the direction of Descartes’ thought. And most notably, because of the format of the dialogue between fictionalized characters, the Search for Truth shows us the life from which Descartes’ philosophy emerges. As, through the character of Eudoxus which is meant to represent Descartes, we can see how our philosopher thought about himself. And we can see the context in which his philosophy will emerge; this conflict between the learned man and the private thinker. It would be a mistake to take these extra-philosophical circumstances of the dialogue — Eudoxus being a private thinker, Epistemon being the learned thinker— , as being irrelevant for Descartes’ own philosophy. Rather, it is the case that through this fictionalized dialogue, Descartes tries to express the context from which his actual philosophy emerged. You cannot understand Descartes if you do not understand the problems with which he struggled. And perhaps the problem of Descartes, was this tension between ‘thinking for oneself’ and ‘following tradition’. This distrust that had grown inside Descartes; he saw that academic philosophy was becoming increasingly complex, yet the more complex it became, the more truth was lost. He tried to find his way to the truth by going through this maze of books, he really did. Until he realized it was a road with no end. He thought; ‘these philosophers, they know so much, yet they don’t even know for certain if they exist!’ And so, Descartes chose the life of the solitary thinker. After being occupied with philosophy for so long, he decided to begin doing philosophy.
There is much to learn from the fictions with which philosophers surround themselves. And these fictional dialogues, they give us so much more insight into a philosopher than any amount of biographical information could. For more than anything else, this dialogue shows us how Descartes himself saw his philosophy, what type of man he himself thought that it belonged to. This man is Eudoxus, the private thinker, who has stopped reading all the books, and has decided to think for himself. He is the free-thinker, not thinking by way of tradition, but by way of his own nature. Not thinking by way of the knowledge that is given to him, but seeking to construct all the necessary knowledge by way of his own ‘natural light’.
Because of the medium of the dialogue, the philosopher can also focus a bit less on the mere power of arguments, and more on a clashing of modes of life. Besides the arguments of Eudoxus and Epistemon clashing with each other, we also see a confrontation between their different ways of life. And Poliander is offered a choice, which way of life and thought do I follow? The road of the free-thinker, or the road of the learned academic?
The format of the dialogue also gives Descartes an extra means of persuasion. He asks of us, ‘who do you want to believe?’ The courageous free-thinker, the traveller who has fought wars, with superior instincts, and a naturally clear thought? Or the man of books, who has to rely on the arguments of dead people, barely being able to think for himself?
Another interesting example of these characteristics of the philosophical dialogue is offered by the idealist philosopher George Berkeley, in his dialogue Alciphron(1732). In this dialogue, Berkeley’s philosophical idealism is voiced by the character Euphranor.
Euphranor is a farmer, living outside of the city on his own piece of land. He is strong in body and common sense. Every now and then he reads a book when he feels like it, mostly for leisure. But Euphranor is totally not up to date with what is discussed in the city, in learned circles and academies. Yet it is Euphranor that gives voice to Berkeley’s philosophy of idealism. As if, through Euphranor, Berkeley wants to say; ‘you might think that my philosophical idealism is entirely detached from the real world, akin to the thoughts of a madman who has lost touch with reality. But this is not true, you see, it is precisely the man who is closest to nature, who has the most common sense, this is the man who believes in idealism.’
IV. Beginning in thought
The problem of making a beginning in philosophy, is related to the problem of pre-suppositions. Can we really begin thinking, without pre-supposing anything? And can we posit an absolutely certain foundation for our philosophy, that doesn’t pre-suppose something else? Is there a beginning that is truly a beginning? A foundation that is its own foundation?
In Gilles Deleuze’s Différence et Répétition, a distinction is made between objective and subjective pre-suppositions.(DR, 169) If I say that ‘man is a reasonable animal’, I cannot say this with certainty without pre-supposing that I know what ‘reasonable’ is, and what ‘animal’ is. This is what Deleuze calls objective pre-suppositions. The reason pre-supposes other reasons, and so on, until infinity perhaps. In this way, we can never find a truly sure foundation for thought. And it is precisely this way of going about certainty, that is also at the core of Descartes’ critique of traditional conceptions of the subject. This is why Descartes will posit the Cogito as being the first certainty of philosophy. What is the Cogito? It is merely the fact the ‘I think, I am’. You cannot doubt the fact that you are thinking, and thus, you cannot doubt that you are a thinking thing, that you are. Such a conception of the subject does not pre-suppose anything in the way that the concept of ‘rational animal’ does. Yet, Deleuze says, Descartes does not escape from an entirely different type of pre-supposition: ‘subjective pre-suppositions’. A definition working by way of subjective pre-suppositions does not presuppose prior knowledge of concepts such as ‘rational’ or ‘animal’ or anything else. But it does pre-suppose that everyone knows in the same way what it means to think and to be. ‘I think, I am’. The Cogito does not pre-suppose prior knowledge of concepts, but it does pre-suppose that you intuitively ‘know’ what thinking and being is. It pre-supposes no concepts, but does pre-suppose something else that is not of the order of concepts; this immediate and intuitive recognition of what thought is, and what being is.
But what thinking is, or what being is, how can you know what this is? It is precisely this objection that Epistemon will bring in against Eudoxus when they are speaking about subjectivity. And Eudoxus will reply that he has never met someone that stupid that he had to know what being is first, before he could know that he himself exists. For Descartes, there is a certain wall of certainty, of things evident in and by themselves (such as what thought or being is), and you cannot question these things. Why not? Because you know intuitively what it is to think, because you yourself are thinking, and you could not do otherwise. And you yourself are, and you could not be otherwise. To question these things, this would mean that you have employed thought to destroy yourself. You are thinking, and you have chosen to think against yourself.
Deleuze, following Epistemon, will critique this way of thinking vehemently. They say, it is not because you think you feel intuitively what it means to think that you know what thinking is. But Descartes objects; there are some things which can not be questioned, and it is the worst form of stupidity to try and question those things which are not a question. Deleuze describes Eudoxus as an ‘idiot’. He is the character who says that he doesn’t know anything, who doesn’t presuppose anything. ‘I know nothing, I am only an idiot, and precisely because of this I am telling the truth.’ But perhaps there is more idiocy in thinking one can question whether one even exists or not. Who knows, perhaps we will gain more clarity once we have read The Search for Truth.
In the coming week I will publish a text dealing with the introduction Descartes wrote to The Search for Truth, and perhaps we will already deal with the actual dialogue. Often we like to skip the introductions philosophers write to their books, thinking there is only value in the actual text itself. But it is my belief that introductions are often of as much value, or of even more value, than the texts themselves. It is in the introductions that we see the intentions of the author, what they wanted the text to be, what they wanted to achieve with their text. And as we are seeking for the intentions of Descartes’ philosophy, we cannot gloss over the introduction to The Search for Truth. For it is this Cartesian intentio, perhaps first established in The Search for Truth, that is of prime importance for understanding the world we live in today, and for understanding the intentions we want to establish, to create the world of tomorrow.
Sources:
Descartes. Œuvres philosophiques II 1638-1642. Edition de F. Alquié. Paris: Garnier, 1967.
Descartes. The Philosophical Writings: Volume II. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Descartes. Étude du bon sens, La recherce de la vérité, et autres écrits de jeunnesse. (1616 - 1631). Paris: PUF, 2013.
Deleuze. Différence et Répétition. Paris: PUF, 1968.
To learn more about the history of The Search for Truth, see: Descartes. Étude du bon sens, La recherce de la vérité, et autres écrits de jeunnesse. (1616 - 1631). Paris: PUF, 2013, 5-9; 231-239.