PART 3 - The Cartesian cogito and Kant's Copernican revolution - At the origins of modernism

Part Three (3/5)

Let's read this other thesis:

"When using its freedom, the spirit presumes that anything whose existence can be doubted even slightly does not exist. It firmly recognizes the absolute impossibility that, in the interim, it does not exist itself as a spirit." [1]

We observe that freedom has nothing to do with the search for the foundation of truth. Instead, the utmost attention of the intellect to reality and the willingness to surrender to evidence are required. It is not about creating artificial doubts. It is not about questioning the unquestionable, but verifying if what seems certain is truly certain is necessary.

The Path to Truth: Methodical Doubt Is Not Intentional, But Hypothetical

The philosopher's task is not to break this tradition, nor to doubt everything that humanity, including Jesus Christ, has thought before him. It is not about questioning the unquestionable to conclude that the first principle of certainty, knowledge, and truth is the certainty of doubt.

Let us not forget that Cartesian cogito means I doubt, I am certain of doubting everything. Cartesian doubt differs from the methodical doubt of Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas, which ultimately reveals its absurdity and is thus dismissed in favor of truth. Instead, Cartesian doubt is a systematic, principled skepticism, where even what is considered certain remains constantly subject to doubt.

Contrary to what Descartes believes, universal doubt is not justified by the existence of error, which is an incidental occurrence and not inherent to the cognitive faculty; instead, it is an accidental fact, not constitutive of the cognitive faculty. Conversely, the mental capacity naturally knows the truth, otherwise, the subject could not even realize that he is wrong. Natural power cannot err because it is the standard for recognizing one's error, that is, to acknowledge the mistake. We know we are wrong precisely because we know the truth to which we compare the error. But if the senses or the intellect err by nature, in that case, one cannot even know being wrong.

As explained by St. Thomas, drawing from Aristotle in his defense of the principle of identity and non-contradiction in the IV book of Metaphysics, the philosopher who wants to justify the principle of knowledge, certainty, and truth must certainly face universalis dubitatio de veritate [2] (the universal doubt about truth), by asking if it is possible, but immediately concluding that such doubt can only be signified but not exercised because it would entail the suppression or self-destruction of thought, since if we maintain a thesis, we assume it to be true, otherwise, we would not maintain it at all. Doubting is not true thinking, but only the inconclusive oscillation of thought, just as ventricular fibrillation is not the normal heartbeat but can be a sign of death. Cartesian cogito destroys itself because it is thinking without an object.

One can reasonably doubt something in particular, something unproven or deduced; but one cannot question everything or the evidence, including the act by which we doubt it. Thus, there is certainly a reality in front of our mind, the object of our knowledge.

The certainties that Descartes assures us of recovering with his doubt and his cogito did not need to be recovered at all, because they are certainties in themselves and the foundation of all others, so doubting them is not wisdom, but madness and foolishness, it is deception and duplicity.

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire: The Cartesian Solution to Doubt

Descartes appeals to common sense, conscience, and reason. But these are precisely the principles that he lacks. Common sense is the ability to grasp the truth through the senses, and he doubts the senses. Conscience is indeed reflecting on our ideas, but we possess them because we have previously known them through the senses [3]. The reason is indeed deducing a conclusion from a principle, however, we retain this fundamental tenet, the core doctrine of the identity of being, not through self-awareness, but because we have deduced it from experience.

Now, to establish knowledge, it is clear that common sense is needed. So it is imprudent to believe, with Descartes, that the senses deceive us because knowledge begins from here, even though its pinnacle is in what the intellect understands, namely the metaphysical and analogous being.

To establish knowledge, there is no need for reasoning but for seeing, as Plato already knew. Once the intellect has seen the being, as soon as it distinguishes the cause from the effect, then from there, reason begins its ascent from effects to causes, elucidating effects through their underlying causes, thereby constructing knowledge.

To find and recognize the principle of knowledge and certainty, it was enough for Descartes to reflect on the fact that the object of intellect is the being. At present, however, in his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes excludes mentions of both intellect and being, the two essential elements for establishing the principle of truth and certainty. But what kind of metaphysics ignores the notion of being? One that does not ask with Aristotle: what is being? (ti to on?).

The first and most certain principle of all our knowledge, the one that establishes every science and demonstration, evident in itself, is not self-awareness, which is only a particular application in the case of one's self, but the principle of non-contradiction [4], the principle of logic, founded on that of identity [5], the principle of being, which Aristotle expounds in his Metaphysics, and which it is appropriate to read in the commentary provided by St. Thomas. Even here Descartes did not understand, because he mistook it for a tautology.

Ideas are the object of logic, not metaphysics. But hadn't Descartes learned the distinction from the teachings received at La Flèche? Or did he not understand it? If one conflates existence with the concept of existence, they're already treading towards idealism, hinting at pantheism. The fusion of thought and existence is a trait reserved for divine cognition, not human thought.

The title of Descartes' work is already significant: Meditations, which refers to the reflective act characteristic of meditation. But metaphysics is not primarily a reflection; it is not an act of consciousness or self-awareness, although it does not exclude it; rather, it is a looking (theorein) at what is given to us and what stands before us, an investigation into the reality that is not a product of my thought but is created by God without me.

In metaphysics, before becoming aware of what I already know or of the concepts inside me, it is a matter of observing afterward, inductively, intuitively, and immediately, that there are facts, empirical data, entities, things, and myself. It is about knowing how to justify what exists and that, not founded on itself, is not reason in itself, by applying inductive abstraction to the principle of causality to our “self” and the things around us that we see and feel.

Doubt in certain cases is demanded by reason and is just and obligatory. Grounded suspicion that what appears true may not be true may serve as evidence of discerning judgment, intellectual circumspection, and a propensity for caution, thereby suggesting a demanding reason, scientific seriousness, and a sincere love for truth.

But to unreasonably suspect as false what is commonly accepted and appears evident to all should be done with caution (cum grano salis) and not out of prejudice or for the pleasure of doubting without reason or to destabilize others. Instead, it is naive and gullible not to notice an error hidden beneath an apparent truth. It is not always the case that what appears as such is true.

Recognizing as doubtful and not taking for granted what is affirmed by hypothesis or mere opinion, not confusing dialectical argumentation with science, and avoiding sophistical arguments, is a sign and proof of wisdom, modesty, and honesty. Taking it for granted is to boast and deceive, it is presumption and exhibitionism, it is a pretext to evade the moral obligations imposed by truth and to do as one pleases.

To doubt what is certain, as Descartes does, may give the impression of extraordinary keen insight, however, it is foolish exhibitionism, a trap for the unwary, and an excuse for one's libertinism. And the same blame must be given to those who, for the same reasons, create problems that do not exist. Unfortunately, Descartes must be counted among them.

Descartes tells us that we can be certain of doubting. Alright, I can have this certainty; but what use is such certainty to me? I am not so interested in the certainty of thinking or doubting as much as in being able to think about the truth of things, what is objectively certain, and not what I decide or want to be certain.

True certainty is when the intellect stops oscillating and halts because it is necessitated either by evidence or by the demonstration of the thing, in such a way as to exclude the opposite alternative, and not because I choose one of the two alternatives at my discretion without reason.

In other words, while it is true that the truth of my knowledge depends on my goodwill to conform to reality as it is, the truth of things does not depend on my choice or decision; I do not resolve a doubt about them in this way because they possess their truth already by themselves; they are presupposed to my thinking about them, they do not depend on what I think of them. They remain the same regardless of what I think of them because their truth does not depend on my deciding if they exist or what they are, but on the fact that they are the effect of God's will who created them. They do not care what I think of them; their attentiveness is directed toward being as God wants them to be.

If resolving a real and distressing doubt is highly commendable and a sign of high philosophy, resolving an artificial doubt that scares and confounds, crafted specifically to masquerade as a genius at the moment of resolving it, is not dignified but a sign of cruelty and narcissism. This is not the undertaking of a philosopher, but rather a circus spectacle, a magician's trick, or a parlor joke. Those who engage in such antics cannot deserve the lofty title of founder of modern philosophy.

Descartes, before the eyes of humanity and posterity, aspired to appear as the solver of the most serious doubt that had ever been conceived up to that point, concerning the existence of truth and the principle of knowledge. And he convinced himself that thanks to his ingenious and unprecedented discovery, to which no one before him had ever thought of [6], the famous cogito, humanity from then on would be able to proceed confidently on the path of truth.

His followers are convinced that they are now living in a humanity that has finally matured, reaching the heights of reason and science, having definitively surpassed and left behind the archaic times, namely the dualistic and objectivist mentality preceding Descartes. For this reason, they feel a tolerant pity for all those men still living today, such as Catholics in particular, remnants of the past, still stuck in the Greekness of Aristotle, in the naive and mythological realism of Jesus Christ, and Thomistic scholasticism, still unaware of the incomparable value of modern philosophy.

Existence and Identity: The Conundrum of 'I Am'

It is true that when Descartes speaks of the self, he is far from thinking of Kant's transcendental self or the Absolute Self of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Husserl, or Gentile. He thinks of his empirical individual human self as René Descartes, although it is true that he intends to speak of the human self as such. However, he conceives it in such a hyperbolic and exaggerated way that it leaves room for pantheistic developments, which I do not think were Descartes' intentions. However, that can be logically inferred from what Descartes says about this self.

Indeed, a self that apprehends itself as thinking – but then thinking what? – regardless of previous sensible contact with things, a contact that is excluded because it is deemed unreliable, a pure spirit self, understood as thinking by essence (res cogitans) and not by the actualization of power or faculty as it happens in us, thus a subsistent reason and not a mere faculty of a subject, the existence of a self that thinks and that is identically its being and its thinking (cogito-sum), what self is it? What reason is it? What subject is it? What man is it? What being is it? What thinking is it? Is it just a human self or something more?

Furthermore, how is the translation of this sum? I am? But only God can say of himself I Am (Exodus 3:14). Of myself, I can only say I exist. There is a difference between being in act, existing, the actualization of the possible, and the act of being or being as the act of a potency, being that I possess not as a subsistent act, but as the act of my potency to be Giovanni, an act created by God and participated in the subsistent being that is God. If I confuse existence with being here, I make myself God. Did Descartes realize this risk? The simple sum is ambiguous because it can mean both I am and I exist.

Furthermore, we observe that metaphysics is a knowledge open to the universality of being. It certainly concerns the foundation of all sciences and all certainties. But metaphysics opens up to being not because it deduces it from the self-consciousness of the being of a human individual, but by abstracting from every being what every being possesses, which is precisely being.

That I can derive the concept of universal being from my being is certainly possible. But I come to the consciousness of my being not simply through an act of reflection on myself, but based on a previous knowledge of the being of things. This being, the object of physical knowledge, constitutes the starting point for arriving at my being and my thinking being. Without this presupposition, my consciousness would be empty, and I would still have to begin to think like a three-week-old newborn.

On the other hand, indeed, the cogito is closely linked to the sum. But what is the exact meaning of the ergo? Is it a deduction, a consequence, or a logical conclusion? It would seem so, but, as Descartes explained [7], that is not the case, is it? Hegel explained it well when calling Descartes the "founder of modern philosophy," [8] he stated that the cogito ergo sum is "the proposition around which all modern philosophy revolves."

Kant's Repetition of Descartes' Quest

Kant's way of addressing the problem of metaphysics is not different from Descartes'. They are both convinced that until their time, humanity had not reached a solid principle of knowledge. Kant shares Descartes' conviction in this regard, just as Descartes believed that it was up to him to refound metaphysics. However, Kant does not claim to correct Descartes. On the contrary, he also takes up the principle of cogito, which Kant calls "I think" or "transcendental apperception."

Like Descartes, Kant believes that until his time, following the Aristotelian method, namely realism, based on external things to find metaphysics, has always been wrong. From how he frames his argument, it is evident that he subscribes to the notion that Descartes had discovered the correct trajectory. Hence, as elucidated throughout the Critique of Pure Reason, it becomes manifest that he commences his exploration from Descartes.

Indeed, in the argument in the Preface to the second edition and in the Introduction to the work, Kant never mentions Descartes. He seems not to take into account Descartes' foundation of metaphysics. But in reality, he imitates the presumptuous attitude of one who believes he has finally found the truth after an infinite past of illusions.

And Kant arrives at the same results: instead of intellect investigating being, the task of metaphysics becomes collecting data of consciousness, as if all reality were exhausted in the contents of consciousness and there was no reality outside of it, broader, deeper, and superior to what is contained in our consciousness.

Kant's approach is thus similar to Descartes': just as Descartes changes the orientation of thought from realism to idealism, Kant does the same with his Copernican revolution. Just as in Descartes it is not the idea that is functional to the real, but the real that is relative to the notion, so in Kant, it is no longer the subject revolving around the object, but the object revolving around the subject. It is what Rahner refers to as the "turn to the subject" and Maritain "the advent of the ego." In simple terms, focusing on the object serves no purpose. We must turn to the subject. With what result? Let's see.

Unlike Descartes, who, claiming to found metaphysics with a completely personal work that does not need to engage with anyone, never cites any philosopher, except then to feel the influence of the Suarezian essentialism learned at La Flèche [9], Kant has the good sense and modesty to start by engaging with the empiricism of Locke and Hume on one hand and the rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff on the other, in an attempt to establish an agreement between experience and reason, always based on the Cartesian cogito ("I think").

To undertake this foundational work, Kant advocates for considering reason and engaging it in a self-examination to verify its limits and capacity and see what in metaphysics can be said with certainty and what cannot. Kant recognizes that we in general, to arrive at rational knowledge, need to start from experience. Thus emerge the synthetic a priori judgments, uniting a priori concepts with the a posteriori data of experience.

But this is the science of physical phenomena. Now, what is instead the object of metaphysics? Kant simply suggests that it would be a reality that transcends experience but does not specify what reality. Strangely, he does not recall that the object of metaphysics is being as being and the properties of being. The object of metaphysics is also the thing-in-itself as external reality or one's self, realities that can be material or spiritual.

But Kant limits the thing-in-itself to material reality alone. However, he is well aware of the world of spirit, of science, the noumenon, the unconditional, of the absolute, of the transcendent, of the metaphysical, of thought, of consciousness, and reason.

For Kant, metaphysics is the science of "pure reason," reason that deals with itself and its inner world, which contains a system of "pure concepts" or "ideas" (Descartes spoke of "innate" ideas), not derived from experience, before experience, "a priori," conditions of the possibility of experience. Pure reason means not mixed with experience, as physical reason is, or with imagination, as mathematics is.

Here we can see the influence of Cartesian cogito with its inner world of innate ideas, before the sensory experience of the external world. The difference with Descartes is that Kant does not doubt the existence of sensible things. However, unlike Descartes, who, once assured by divine truth, has no skepticism towards believing he knows the essence of things, Kant here has an agnostic attitude, although he merits the formation of the concept of "phenomenon," as objects of experimental physics.

However, lacking an Aristotelian philosophical basis, Kant's work is impacted by the aforementioned dual currents of thought, empiricists, and rationalists, both unaware of the true nature and importance of the analogical category of substance and in particular of substantial form, already repudiated by Descartes. On the other hand, appreciating the analogical value of substance might have enabled Kant to genuinely reconcile sense and intellect, matter and spirit, consciousness and knowledge, being and essence, thought and being.

Indeed, while empiricism hides from Kant the entity of substance, reduced to a heap of sensations, rationalism similarly ignores this entity, depriving it of being and subsistence and reducing it to mathematical extension and individual essence.

Kant's concept of thing suffers, losing its material and spiritual substantiality, as well as the doctrine of the human soul as the substantial form of the body. Kant also speaks of spirit but does not explain its nature and separates it from the reality of the thing, which becomes entirely unintelligible, an existent without essence, although Kant insists on calling it noumenon, it will be eliminated by Fichte, to transfer all being into thought and the ego.

Furthermore, Kant simultaneously is challenged by both the empiricist, and Humean view of reason, and and the aprioristic, rationalistic, Cartesian conception, thinking to reconcile them with each other, but actually without realizing their incompatibility, since both are false conceptions of reason. While Kant takes from Hume the concept of speculative reason, which, starting from experience, fails to demonstrate the existence of God and the absoluteness of moral duty: he takes from Descartes the concept of practical reason, which postulates the existence of God as the ideal of practical reason, which wants to fulfill moral duty towards oneself and others.

Kant does not admit, therefore, a divine, creating reason, transcendent and superior to human reason, which gives law to the latter ordering what actions it must perform to achieve virtue and moral perfection. Kant takes from Descartes the concept of human reason descending from the idea of res cogitans: reason is not a faculty, an accident of human substance, but is man himself, it is a subsisting reason like divine reason. Therefore, reason possesses inherent divinity. This is Kant's concept of autonomy of reason.

Kant, misled by Hume's skepticism, accuses realism of dogmatism for its conviction of being able to find metaphysical certainty and therefore demonstrate the existence of God starting from experience, and does not realize that he falls into dogmatism believing he can solve the problem of truth not with intellect like the realist, but with will, as Descartes did with his cogito.

So it happens that Kantian practical reason does not put into practice what speculative reason sees and has demonstrated.It is not that I fulfill my duty because I know God exists and has imposed certain duties upon me. No; I already know on my own, based on my reason, what these duties are. I decide them, and I am compelled by them. With the idea of God as the supreme idea of reason and the supreme being, creator, and legislator of mankind, even though I can't prove with speculative reason that this God truly exists, I choose or assume this fictional existence because it helps affirm my will.

Thus in Kant, intellectual speculation remains for the science of phenomena, as in Hume. Conversely, metaphysics, morality, and theology, as in Descartes, have a voluntaristic foundation, just as the Cartesian cogito does not depend on the intellect necessitated by objective evidence, but on the decision of the will that affirms as certain what is doubted. In fact, "I think" means "I doubt."

It must be said, therefore, that the operation carried out by Descartes and Kant to found idealistic metaphysics is similar to that of Protagoras who sees in man and not in God the rule of truth - and Plato reproaches him for this [10] -, both Descartes and Kant shift the reference of the true from the object to the subject, from being to thought.

End of Part Three (3/5)

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, April 8, 2024

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/il-cogito-di-cartesio-e-la-rivoluzione_6.html

[1] Metaphysical Meditations, Laterza Editions, Bari 1968, p.59.

[2] Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Marietti Editions, Turin-Rome, 1964, Book III, c.1, Lect. I, n.343, p.97.

[3] The reflexive act of the intellect is highly significant in metaphysics regarding the transition from knowing from the natural, spontaneous, and naive attitude of direct knowledge to the critical one, in which the intellect is aware of knowing the truth. Here the entity appears as true, as thought. We have the truth of being.If Descartes had studied the teachings of Saint Thomas here, he wouldn't have made such bold claims. Cf F.-X. Putallaz, The Meaning of Reflection in Thomas Aquinas, Vrin, Paris 1991; BenoÎt Garceau, Judicium. Vocabulary, sources, the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vrin, Paris 1968; P. Hoenen, The theory of judgment according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, Romae 1953; Consciousness. History and paths of a concept, edited by Luca Gabbi and Vittor Ugo Petruio, Donzelli Publisher, Rome 2000.

[4] Non est affirmare et negare simul idem de eodem sub eodem. (It is not possible to affirm and deny at the same time the same thing under the same respect.)

[5] Quidquid est, est id quod est et non aliud a see. (Whatever is, is what it is and not another thing from itself.)

[6] The Cartesian principle, as Heidegger pointed out well, is nothing but a revival of the Protagorean principle: "Descartes' thesis is continually associated with Protagoras' saying and in the latter, the anticipation of Descartes' modern metaphysics is seen:, in both cases, the primacy of man is almost tangibly expressed" (From Nietzsche, Adelphi Editions, Milan 1994, p.646). But we could ask: how did Heidegger remedy this mistake?

[7] Descartes was reminded that even Saint Augustine had uttered "si fallor, sum" (if I am mistaken, I am), but Descartes countered that his cogito was distinct because Augustine conceded that knowledge stems from external sources, whereas for Descartes, knowledge of things also arises from cogito. Gilson mistakes Descartes for an Augustinian and Augustine for an idealist. Unfortunately, the great and learned Thomistic historian of medieval philosophy He makes a significant error of interpretation in this instance, see Introduction to the Study of Saint Augustine, Vrin, Paris 1969, p.321.

[9] See E. Gilson, Studies on the Role of Medieval Thought in the Formation of the Cartesian System, Vrin, Paris, 1975.

[10] "For us, God is the greatest measure of all things, much more than a man can be, as the followers of Protagoras now say," Laws, 716c.