ERGO
SUM
DESCARTES IN AN OBLIQUE LIGHT
“Je suis comme
un milieu entre Dieu et le néant”
(I am like
a midpoint between God and nothingness.)
René Descartes,
Meditations
Descarte’s celebrated dictum, ‘Je-pense, donc je suis/Cogito,
ergo sum, (I think, therefore I am) (depending on whether one cites
from the 1637 French edition or the 1644 Latin edition of his Discourse
on Method) is normally abbreviated to Cogito ‘I think’.
This is just what one would expect given its positioning as an important
step in its author’s quest for a minimalist philosophy of cognition.
But the dictum has an equally interesting positioning in the
Christian European quest for a minimalist philosophy of man as a being. In that context the emphasis would correctly fall on the second
half, namely, ‘therefore I am’.
Man as a being. The
European noun being (French être, German Sein, Dasein,
Wesen) has two senses, ‘for anything to be’ and ‘anything that
is’ and these correspond to the Sanskrit nouns sattā, bhāva,
astitva (all in sense 1) and sat, sattva, bhūta, vastu
(all in sense 2). (Incidentally, these are all traceable to the same
three Indo-European roots.) Looking at sense 2, which concerns us
here, one notices the interesting difference between the European
anthropocentric tendency to understand ‘anything that is’ more narrowly
as ‘anyone that is’ and the Indian cosmocentric tendency to retain
the more inclusive feel of ‘what there is’ as against ‘what I am’.
‘A being’ in European parlance is typically a person, whether demonic,
human, or angelic, even a member of the Holy Trinity. ‘A being’ in
Indian parlance need not be a person; that is perhaps why sat, asti
has to be joined to cit, bhāti to make it possible for
a person to be.
For a Christian European, the question ‘who am I’ has a ring
of anxiety. In the Indian tradition, ko’ ham? has only
a ring of jijñāsā (desire to know-not idle curiosity).
The Cartesian answer points to a peculiar rephrasing of the question,
‘what allows me to be certain that I am?’ This rephrasing is of course
as old as Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430).
In saying dubito, ergo cogito; cogito, erog sum
(I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am), Descartes was
only echoing Saint Augustine, who said; “si enim fallor, sum” (For,
if I err, I am) (Civitas dei 11:26) and, again, “Dubito,
ergo sum” (I doubt, therefore I am) (De Trinitate 20:21). (I
am indebted to Father J.de Marneffe of De Nobili Ciollege, Pune for
kindly tracking down the Augustine references.) Descartes in his turn
has been echoed by a modern Algerian-Grench intellectual, Albert Camus
(1913-1960). (Augustine was Algerian-Roman.) In his humanist rejection
of Christianity and Communism in the same breath, Camus declares,
“Je me revolte, donc nous sommes” (I am in revolt, therefore we are)
(L’Homme revolté 1951, translated as The Rebel, 1953).
Christian Europe has asked itself the same anxious question, there,
at three important junctures in its history, namely –
(i)
the assimilation of the Greco-Roman classical tradition and the Semitic
Christian tradition to each other
(ii)
the progressive resolution of this complex tradition into the Modern
temper
(iii)
the exhaustion of the Modern temper
and
arrived at three mutually echoing and yet quite distinct answers.
It will be worthwhile to examine the nature of this three-step
transition, especially since it may give us a clue to the complex
fate of the Catholic scientist on the brink of the Jasenist heresy
that Descartes unhappily is. The three historical junctures occasion three
related yet distinct philosophical gestures.
1.
‘I err, therefore I am.’ Man’s fallibility is his one claim to being
a person. Animals don’t err, for animals have no freedom to err. A very Christian sentiment. (Doubt is only
an aspect of human fallibility. Descartes thus “clearly saw that it
was a greater perfection to know that to doubt”, Discourse,
part IV.) The error may be an error in understanding the world or
an error in choosing the right course of action in dealing with the
world.
2.
‘I think, therefore I am.’ Man’s capacity to think yields his one
certain cognition, that is, his only infallible cognition. A very un-Christian sentiment, possibly a case
of Modern hubris. But then a man’s capacity to think also yields guarantee
to his free will, ensuring his freedom to err and his freedom to disobey. A very un-Modern sentiment, possibly a rather
Christian sentiment.
3.
‘I revolt, therefore we are.’ Man’s capacity to disobey, that is to
choose what has been laid down as the wrong course of action, is his
one claim to social being. (A Robinson Crusoe’s freedom to disobey
is vacuous, as is a bee’s or ant’s freedom to obey.) Sheep don’t revolt;
they follow rather than strike out on their own.
A very Modern sentiment, possibly an un-Christian sentiment. (Calling Adam’s disobedience felix culpa is at best
a left-handed compliment.)
So much for the Christian European quest,
with Descartes positioned in the middle between the complex tradition
and Modernity.
Now how does this account (assuming that
it is a correct one) further the philosophical quest in any way? Apart,
that is, from any intrinsic historical interest it may possess?
1.
The three-step historical account places Descartes’s vacillations
in a proper perspective. (His
vacillation, for example, between supporting Galileo and cowering
before the church: “a certain doctrine in physics, published by a
certain individual, to which I will not say that I adhered, but only
that, previously to their censure, I had observed in it nothing which
I could imagine to be prejudicial either to religion or to the state.”
Discourse part VI.) The vacillations are not merely a person
frailty or oddity but an essential ambivalence at the midpoint. The
account should help us to understand Descartes’s thought better.
Descartes’s
dictum Cogito ergo sum launches a minimalist philosophy not
only of human cognition but also of human existence, in the Christian
European tradition. What allows
me to be certain that I am ? Descartes’s answer is : man’s capacity
to think guarantees his freedom to think and so to doubt, err, and
disobey. It is historically midway between St. Augustine’s answer and Albert
Camus’s answer. Like his epistemology,
it is at once bold and timid, ambitious and modest, reason – loving
and faith – adhering, Protestant and Catholic in spirit.
- There is an essential link between the minimalist programme
in the philosophy of cognition (no presuppositions please, either
verify or reject) and the minimalist programme in the philosophy
of man as a being (no presumptions about changing the world, either
understand-and-adjust or stand rejected). Both of these are counsels
of ambitious modesty. They
do leave the Mediaeval summa behind only to hasten slowly to Modernity. (Incidentally, there is an interesting
resemblance between the cognitive transition from the Scholastic
motto, falsify or accept, to the Renaissance motto, verify or reject,
and the cognitive transition within the Indian tradition from the
svatah* -prāma¸ya-vāda to the paratah*-pramān*ya- vāda.)
- The account
also lets us see how the mutual assimilation of the Classical and
the Christian traditions was effected. Plato’s white horse of reason
and dark horse of passion were reunderstood as spiritual strength
(logos as spirit, as reason, as speech) and carnal frailty. Reason was no mere workhorse to Descartes,
but a faithful guide if properly subordinated to the Church.
Here he was following Saint Augustine’s admonition; ‘Si non
potes intellegere, crede ut intelligas.
{raecidit fides, sequitur intellectus.” (If you cannot understand,
believe and you’ll understand.
Faith precedes; Intellect follows.) (Sermones 118:1)
(Incidentally, it will be interesting to see how the assimilation
of falsafah or arastūn to theology fared in Semitic
Islam in comparison to European Christianity.)
- Where, then, did the boldness in Descartes (strong enough
to sweep away all received opinion) come from? The Augustinian point
of departure led to two alternate paths - the Church-approved Thomist path and the Jansenist path. (The
Dutch Catholic Carnelis Jansen’s Augustinus was published but in
1640, condemned by papal bulls in 1643, 1653.
1)
Descarte’s Dutch connection is well-known.) Jansenism influenced Descartes
inspite of his early jesuit upbringing. The Catholic heresy resembles in one important
respect the more openly Protestant Calvinism.
2)
In the acceptance of predestination.
3)
Both heresies prepared the ground as Max Weber points out, for the
Protestant ethic and the spirit of Capitalism. The ethic that treated
all men in an individualistic and impersonal manner is of a piece
with the epistemic that treated knowledge in an atomistic manner in
terms of ‘clear and distinct ideas’ and declared that doubt and error
are nothing to be ashamed of in that they paved the way to truth.
The respective strengths and limits of the two are, by hindsight,
well-understood by now. They paved the way to the modern revolt.
Descartes expressed the right bourgeois sentiments in constructing
a four-point provisional moral code pending the replacement of the
demolished intellectual house (Discourse, part III) and readily
“perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful
in life; and....to... render ourselves the lords and possessors of
nature” (Discourse, part VI).
One appropriate
way for an Indian to celebrate the fourth birth centenary of the father
of ‘modern’ philosophy will no doubt be to position him against the
backdrop of centuries and continents.
Possibly, also against the backdrop of disciplines.
NOTES
- Jesuits were active in securing Papal condemnation in
the face of support to Jansenism from
Plaise Pascal and monks of the Port Royal.
- Calvinism additionally (to the doctrine of predestination
that the Holy Bible is the only basis of Christian faith and that
the only sacraments are baptism and communion. Catholic doctrine
of ‘transubstantiation’ and Lutheran one of ‘consubstantiation’
are both rejected.
- Original sin has destroyed man’s freedom to choose,
now God’s predestined grace alone matters for man’s redemption. Royal or papal absolution is of no avail.
All that is left for man is to follow rigid and austere virtue
without entertaining any hope of reward.
This is what the acceptance of this doctrine of predestination
involves.
COLOPHON
Published in Indian
Philosophical Quarterly 33:1-2:165-8, January and April
number for the 400th birth anniversary of René Descartes
1596-1650 1996 being a special For efficiency reasons, large objects should usually be passed to
or returned from a function by reference or by their address (using
a pointer). There are, however, a few circumstances in which the best
choice is to return an object by value. A good example is an overloaded
operator +. It has to return a result-object, yet it may not modify
any of its operands. The seemingly natural choice is to allocate the
result-object on the heap (using operator new) and return its address.
But this is not such a good idea - dynamic memory allocation is significantly
slower than local storage. Also it may fail and throw an exception
which has to be caught and handled; worse it can lead to memory leaks
since it is unclear who's responsible for deleting this object - the
creator or the user? Another solution is to use a static object and
return it by reference. This is also problematic, since on each invocation
of the overloaded operator, the same instance of the static object
is being modified and returned to the caller, resulting in aliasing.
Consequently, the safest, less error prone and most efficient solution
is to return the result-object by value:
