Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Part II

The deferential servant disappears immediately in the Preface to the Reader, and in its place are warnings against the hasty judgments of weaker intellects from a harried, misunderstood master. Descartes addresses two objections against his earlier work:

1. The human mind, when examining itself, does not find itself to be anything other than a thinking thing. But this does not necessitate that it is only a thinking thing
2. If a man conceives of an idea of a thing more perfect than himself, it does not follow either that the idea is more perfect than himself, or that the thing exists

Neither of these objections are resolved here. Descartes argues that objection 1 refers to the phenomenon of examining the mind, not an exhaustive definition; however, he will prove below that from this examination, it does in fact follow that the mind is only a thinking thing, and that nothing else belongs to the essence of the mind. Regarding objection 2, Descartes grants that ideas, taken as operations of the mind, cannot be greater than the mind, for an operation of the intellect, a part, is lesser than its cause, the whole. But taken as that which is represented by that operation, he will prove below how it follows that the more perfect thing really exists. 

He further cautions against hasty, careless study that does not bother to grasp the proper order of his arguments and the connections between them, and further, that readers should not pass judgment on the Meditations without reading his replies to the objections, a request I may or may not honor - since Descartes has already proven himself a liar, I don't really believe him that "it will be hard for anyone to think of any point of importance which these critics have not mentioned." It could certainly be true, but this sort of deference to a thinker isn't very reasonable, in any case. 

Curiously, after the Preface, Descartes writes a synopsis of the following six meditations. It will be useful to examine these synopses and compare them with the actual meditations - is his synopsis accurate? Does it add/omit anything important? 

1. The grounds for radical doubt, doubt carried to its extremes, so that it can form the basis of knowledge which we cannot doubt, i.e. that which is always and necessarily true - scientia or episteme. 
2. In doubting all things the mind becomes unaware that it cannot doubt its own existence, because doubt is a conscious activity. You cannot doubt that you are doubting, and a thing must exist in order to act.
3. The third meditation allegedly demonstrates the existence of God. Descartes acknowledges that while he thinks it's quite fully explained, "many obscurities may remain," a statement which is more than a little at odds with itself. 
4. The nature of knowledge as "that which we clearly and distinctly perceive." Isn't it a bit strange that the definition of knowledge comes after a demonstration for the existence of God? Further is discussed the nature of truth and falsity (but explicitly not sin, good, evil, nor anything regarding faith).
5. An account of corporeal nature and a new argument for the existence of God. All knowledge depends on the existence of God. Why would he prove again what he had already proved? 
6. Distinguishing the intellect from the imagination, the way in which the mind and the body make up a "kind of unit", and a presentation of arguments which enable the inference of material reality's being, while acknowledging material being is less certain than non-material being. 

Conspicuously absent is a meditation on the immortality of the soul, despite a) Descartes' claim that it, along with the existence of God, is the chief aim of this work, and b) God's existence being dealt with in not one but two meditations. In its place is a long digression in meditation 2's synopsis of what that argument requires:

1. Descartes' method is to lay out all the premises upon which a desired proposition depends, and this cannot be done in Meditation 2. 
2. A concept of the soul which is as clear as possible and quite distinct from every concept of body is the most important prerequisite for demonstrating immortality. This is done in Meditation 2.
3. The second prerequisite is knowing that "everything we clearly and distinctly understand is true in a way that exactly corresponds to our understanding of it". This is done in Meditation 4. 
4. The third prerequisite is a distinct concept of corporeal nature. This is partly done in Meditation 2, and partly in Meditations 5-6. 
5. All the things which we clearly and distinctly conceive as different substances are in fact truly distinct one from another. This is done in Meditation 6. 
6. Body being cannot be understood except as divisible; mind cannot be understood except as indivisible. 
7. The nature of mind and body are not only different but in some way opposite. 
8. This is enough to prove that the decay of the body does not imply the destruction of the mind

Descartes does not pursue this topic any further in Meditation 6. He asserts in the synopsis that concluding the soul is immortal depends on an account of the whole of physics, because we must understand that:

1. All substances are incorruptible and cannot cease to exist unless God withdraws his power from them.
2. Body, taken in the general sense, is a substance.
3. The human body, qua distinct from other bodies, is made up of accidents. 
4. The mind is not made up of accidents but is pure substance.
5. Even if the accidents of the mind change - different memories, desires, sensations - it is the same mind, whereas the body loses its identity if some of its parts change shape. 
6. Therefore, while the body can very easily perish, the mind is immortal by its very nature. 

This account has at least two problems: it is not clear and distinct, particularly premise 1 and how substance is "incorruptible." Therefore it does not have the quality of knowledge Descartes sets as the standard.  Second, premise 5 is false; for if my finger is amputated my body does not thereby lose its identity. Therefore the conclusion has not been demonstrated. The soul has not been proven immortal by its very nature. 

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Part I

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy was written in Latin, whereas his earlier Rules for the Direction of the Mind was written in French. It has two introductory sections: an address to the theological faculty of Sorbonne University, and a preface to the reader. The two sections make for some interesting contrasts, bearing in mind Maimonides' rules for understanding esoteric books. In his dedicatory letter, Descartes makes a number of notable points:

1. Unbelievers will not accept any religion and practically no moral virtue unless the the existence of God and the immortality of the soul can be proved
2. We must believe in God because it is a doctrine of Holy Scripture, and we believe Holy Scripture because it comes from God
3. The knowledge of God is easier to acquire than the knowledge we have of created things
4. Everything known of God can be demonstrated by natural reason alone
5. The arguments Descartes has set forth shall leave no room for the possibility that the human mind will ever discover better ones
6. Only a few people are able to follow and understand Descartes' arguments 
7. If the Sorbonne faculty promotes his work, everyone will agree with it too because they are regarded as authoritative, and this will clarify the mind and purify the morals of man on a mass scale

A flattering, fawning tone permeates the entire letter, depicting an obsequious vassal loudly entreating an exalted lord. The one passage of self-praise (the fifth point) is cloaked in religious piety, "to the greater glory of God", which would allow him to plausibly deny arrogance. It is difficult to interpret this tone as anything but performative insincerity. 

More interestingly, almost all of these points are absurd, contradict one another, or both. 

1. It is not true that non-Christians will only accept religion and moral virtue if God and immortality can be proved, for three reasons: a) most people, whether Christian or not, aren't interested in those sorts of arguments at all; b) Descartes was well aware of accounts of moral virtue relying neither on the existence of God nor the immortality of the soul, e.g. the Stoic writers and the Nicomachean Ethics; and c) using reason to demonstrate God's existence and attributes has no relation to practicing moral virtue, because reason cannot determine if God will reward virtue and punish wickedness. 
2. By framing Christian belief in circular terms, he renders it absurd, and protects himself with a two-fold mask; first by identifying himself explicitly as a believer, and second by acknowledging that "unbelievers would judge it to be circular." A genuinely Christian attitude, by contrast, would be choosing to believe in the divine revelation made known in the person of Jesus Christ. 
3. God, particularly as Christians conceive of him, is the least evident to us because he is the most unlike us - not limited, not composed of parts, not confined in time and place, not having beginning or end. It takes more effort to acquire knowledge that is less-evident to us, not less. 
4. This is either a meaningless tautology, if Descartes is referring to natural theology (e.g. Aquinas' Treatise on God, QQ. 1-27), or it is heretical, because the knowledge that comes through faith in Jesus Christ cannot be proven, and it isn't knowledge in the same way as a philosopher would understand knowledge.
5. This is so absurdly hyperbolic that to accept it would require something like an act of faith.
6. Perhaps the only true statement Descartes writes in the entire dedicatory letter, and one which the reader must seriously take to heart. 
7. Even if it were true that the Sorbonne endorsement would be as authoritative on a mass scale as Descartes claims, claiming it would trigger a Catholic revival in not just France but the whole world is absurd for the same reasons as the first point. 

With all these things being false, what is the purpose behind Descartes' seeking the endorsement of the Sorbonne? It's not because he expects a religious or philosophic revival to sweep across France and the world if he gets it (and in fact, he did not), but it would shield him against charges of impiety and atheism from other Catholic academics, who would be the most aware of this newly-published book. 

Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Part I

 Hegel is hard to understand, so I'm working through an introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit before going through the Phenomenology itself, and the Science of Logic, if I get that far. Alexandre Kojeve has high praise in Straussian circles, so I'm starting with him. I may go through Peter Kalkavage's introduction too, but the goal is to grapple with Hegel myself, unmediated. So I hope to use Kojeve as a good first teacher, and his preparation, if the forward to my edition of Introduction is correct, was spending more than six years reading nothing but Phenomenology of Spirit, which is exactly the sort of zeal that inclines me to view a man as a reliable guide. 

Most of my writing on Kojeve's book will be paraphrasing the concepts I encounter so that I can at least explain them to myself. Only after I understand the logic of his/Hegel's arguments and their content can I begin to determine if they're true. I'll start with a few pages (5-10) each day, and the book is a brief 266 pages. A first pass will take at least a month, probably two. It will be very slow going in the beginning, I expect. 

Man is Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is his identity. But his rational activity, reasoning, contemplating, etc. do not reveal this identity because the subject (the thinking, reasoning being) tends to lose himself in what is being thought/reasoned about to the degree that he more purely and powerfully reasons and thinks. 

Desire does this. The conscious desire of a being is what constitutes that being as an "I" and reveals it as such. It is in and as desire that man is formed and revealed to himself as an individual, an "I". The very existence of man therefore, presumes and implies desire. But animals have desire too, and lack self-consciousness. Therefore the specifically human desire that reveals the individual must be different. 

The action that satisfies desire does so by the negation (i.e. the destruction or transformation) of the desired object, e.g. food when you are hungry. The "I" of desire is an emptiness that receives a real positive content only by the negating action that satisfies desire by destroying, transforming, and assimilating the desired non-I. The positive content of that "I" is determined by the positive content of the negated non-I, in this case food. The end of desire determines the nature of the "I", so that a purely natural desire results only in a purely natural "I", the animal Sentiment of Self, not Self-Consciousness. 

Rules for the Guide

Until the modern era, when freedom of religion became dominant in the West, and atheism became increasingly associated with privilege and the ruling class, philosophers often hid their more subversive teachings in their books, and only patient, thorough study could piece them together. Philosophers did not make this explicit, for a variety of obvious reasons. 

An exception is Maimonides. In his Guide of the Perplexed, he identifies seven causes for contradictions in books:

1. A book compiles remarks from multiple sources, and sources often contradict each other 
2. The author has changed his mind about something in the course of writing the book, and left both statements intact 
3. Not every statement is to be interpreted literally. Metaphors, illustrations, analogies, etc. may appear contradictory but are not interpreted strictly 
4. Of two contradictory statements, one has not been explained properly; when it has, the contradiction disappears 
5. In teaching a student, something difficult to understand is mentioned or used as a premise in explaining something easier to understand. Later, in the appropriate place, that obscure matter is stated exactly, with precision 
6. The contradiction is concealed and manifests only after many premises and arguments expose it. It may escape the attention of the author, and escapes the attention of scholars who write books. 
7. In very difficult subjects, it is necessary to conceal some parts and disclose others. Sometimes this means the discussion proceeds on the basis of a certain premise, whereas in another place sometimes the discussion proceeds on the basis of a different, contradictory premise. In such cases the vulgar must remain unaware of the contradiction, and the author uses some device to conceal it.

Causes 1-2 are found in the biblical commentary Maimonides used and taught - the Mishnah, the Talmud, etc. Causes 3-4 are found in the Old Testament, in what Maimonides refers to as the books of the prophets. He raises the possibility that Cause 7 is found in the Bible, but "this is a matter for investigation" later. Cause 5 is found in the books of "those who know the truth," i.e. the wisest of philosophers. Cause 6 is found "in most of the books of authors and commentators other than those we have mentioned"; that is, not the works of those who know the truth, though sometimes Cause 7 is present there, too. More biblical commentary (Midrash) and Jewish liturgical ritual are given as examples. Cause 7 is found in his book, and by extension (note the clever wording), in the books of the wise philosophers as well. Of the seven causes, three of them reduce to inchoate noise, and two of them are used in Sacred Scripture. Maimonides himself only cares about the fifth and seventh causes. "Know this, grasp its true meaning, and remember it very well so as not to become perplexed by some of its chapters." 

"If you wish to grasp the totality of what this treatise contains, so that nothing of it will escape you, then you must connect its chapters one with another: and when reading a given chapter, your intention must be not only to understand the totality of the subject of  that chapter, but also to grasp each word that occurs in it in the course of the speech, even if that word does not belong to the intention of the chapter. For the diction of this treatise has not been chosen at haphazard, but with great exactness and exceeding precision, and with care to avoid failing any obscure point. And nothing has been mentioned out place, save with a view to explaining some matter in its proper place." 

The philosophers, when communicating their thoughts to others, are very careful to write exactly what and how they want to, and their works are crafted wholes, like a sculpture or a painting, with everything in its intended place. Using this principle of interpretation, and being alert to the fifth and seventh causes of contradiction, is how I will approach these old, so-called esoteric books. 

The Nicomachean Ethics, Prolegomena

I have begun a study of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. It will be the first time I have really turned to it since my college years, and maybe since spring of freshman year. My friend D, whom I speak with most of all about things like this, likened studying Aristotle to cutting through a jungle of falsehoods, but said that at least with Aristotle we get arguments, rather than cryptograms which lead to arguments (i.e. Plato). Having suffered through the Philebus (a book which bore the tantalizing subject of the relationship between the good and the pleasant, but which was so difficult I understood nothing), I am strongly inclined to agree. Right where you want clarity, Plato is needlessly, horribly obscure, and the obscurity is entirely artificial; purely a function of his manner of writing. Aristotle's difficulty is the interweaving of true and false arguments and a thoroughly dialectical structure; which means he's an entire level closer to speaking his mind with you than is Plato.

So I'm going through the first book of the Ethics slower and more thoroughly than I've ever gone through a book in my life, and I can't say it's unpleasant. Whether the good is pleasure, honor, or contemplation (or as is more likely, something else Aristotle does not explicitly mention), what happiness is, and what the causes for happiness are - these are difficult and urgent questions for me. And when I take the trouble to read and reread, as Daniel did the Talmud and Freud, some measure of understanding does arise, and the pleasure that accompanies such understanding must be perceived in order to be understood.

The trouble, of course, is the same trouble that accompanies the study of most philosophers, and particularly ancient philosophers: the contradictions, the terrible arguments, the unhelpful rhetoric, and almost total lack of good teaching. It makes discovering the philosopher's genuine teaching and distinguishing it from their opinions exceedingly difficult, to say nothing of the difficulty of deciding if these teachings are actually true.

And Book One is a labyrinth. A labyrinthine jungle. Circular, organic structure, hidden false arguments, open contradictions, subtle contradictions, pandering to the prejudices of his day, and I could go on. Every chapter must be read on its own and then compared with every other chapter in that book. The amount of work required is daunting, even discouraging. For one with little confidence in his own powers, the temptation to give up and rely upon the opinions of others is strong, very strong.

I am resolved not to do that. Granted, D has helped me very much, but I have to do my own work as well. My foray into Book One has revealed some of the main thrusts of the argument: the importance of the good, what the good is, the definition of happiness, how the arguments for happiness contrast with those of the good, and how the three ways of life (pleasure-seeking, honor/power loving, contemplative) stack up against human desire. The ranking of goods and virtues is also critical, so naturally Aristotle does almost none of that.

The most important sections in Book One are probably chapters six and seven. Six is hard, so I basically skipped it as a freshman - I read its pages, but I read them with zero understanding. They will form the crux of a paper I want to have written by Advent on the good and happiness in Book One. They will also be read with the following questions in mind (as will, to a similar extent, mutatis mutandi, all of Book One): What is the good? What is happiness? Are Aristotle's arguments for them sufficient or not? He rejects a universal idea of the good - can the same objection be leveled against the universal idea of happiness? Why is the artistic/poetic life absent in his schema? What is the role of pleasure in happiness and the human good (the question for me right now)? Goods and virtues ought to be explicitly compared and contrasted: are they?  If they are, are they compared satisfactorily? Is Aristotle a mathematician, a rhetorician, a geometer, or a carpenter?

I have a sinking feeling that I will be spilling a lot of digital ink on Book One. But if I want to genuinely understand, it's probably the quickest way. This means yet another commentary. And the trouble with commentaries on esoteric writings of philosophy is that they get exponentially more complicated the further they get. The advantage is that I will be able to see the contours of the work's structure much more easily having gone through work like that, so the largely mediocre writing I'm about to produce won't be entirely without fruit. I will begin with Book One of course, but I will try and follow the dialectical contours of the argument and pause at each major change or development as I see them. I will try to keep my writing simple, direct, and strive to always speak from my own experience. I will place as few barriers as possible in the way of understanding. So in a way, I will be the anti-Plato, the anti-Aristotle.

Let us begin. 

Interlude: The High and Low in Liberal Education

Liberal education is the study of how to flourish as a human being; how man flourishes as man. For me it has primarily become cultivating a desire for what is beautiful, good, and life-affirming. And, I even dare to hope - for what is true. And for educating me in hungering for that desire, of seeking to stretch myself out towards knowledge, I am grateful first of all to Plato and the wise teacher I once had who awoke in me the awareness of my own ignorance. Ever since, I have been guided by those books often considered 'great' by Western Civilization. Homer to Heidegger, as it were.

Part and parcel of that education was the refining of my taste. I used to abhor the very sound of operatic singing. Now it is one of my fondest pleasures. I could not stand languid, leisurely storytelling in film. Now one of my favorite works onscreen is one in which almost nothing happens. Similarly, I used to hate mushrooms and beans. All of which is to say: taste changes.

So far, that says almost nothing. But for awhile, I looked askance at pop music, television, movies, video games, etc - really, anything popular - as being a waste of time at best and intellectually corrupt at worst. If it weren't established in the canon of the greats, I didn't want it.

An early sign of change from this established opinion was reading The Catcher in the Rye, and loathing it. It was reputed to be among the best American novels, and I absolutely despised it. Tastes change, however, and Shinji drove me absolutely wild the first few times I saw Eva too. After thinking about it more I've decided to at least give Salinger another chance.

A stronger sign was discovering that an alleged low form - anime serials - was rising to great art, and what was allegedly great art - McCarthy's Blood Meridian, for example - was really not that great. I don't mean unartfully crafted, because it was very carefully written, but the delight in rubbing readers in despairing violence for its own sake, for no purpose, seemed absolutely suspect. Genesis has the shocking, horrific violence as well, but its understanding of humanity is much, much greater.

Anime was the tipping point. Shinsekai Yori is one of the finest stories ever told, better than most Shakespeare or the vast majority of good novels; easily the equal of Austen or Dostoevsky, and much better than Tolstoy. The education of a leader, a hero, has never been treated finer - at least, I rack my brains trying to think of a better hero than Saki, but I can't. Compassion, courage, and understanding cultivate themselves within her so organically, so naturally, it was like watching the growth of a magnificent cedar. Seldom has a story in any medium - novel, film, television - explain better or show more beautifully what makes for a good leader of a people. Watership Down comes close, and the growth of Jon Snow is a close third, but neither of them remotely equal Saki. Honestly, the closest runner-up comes from another suspect medium, science fiction: Colonel Jack O'Neill of Stargate SG1.

In the same way, Oregairu is better - much better, I'd argue - than Catcher in the Rye. Just to make sure I'll read it again, but I bet my opinion won't change. It's not anime's Catcher in the Rye, it's better at every turn in showing alienation, isolated youth, and the difficulty in reaching out for genuine human connection in a world almost entirely lacking in role models, i.e. authentic teachers. It is more socially astute in showing the ways we lie to ourselves and other people and defensively retreat or look away from the less pleasant parts of our souls. I could go on.

Both of these examples demonstrated an astonishing clarity of insight into humanity and turned my expectations upside down and inside out. Anime is considered juvenile at best, unworthy of serious reflection or consideration. Blood Meridian is alleged to be the exact opposite. But honestly, my time would have been better spent thinking about Oregairu and Shinsekai Yori than spending hours poring over a novel I didn't enjoy at all, one that didn't help me understand myself or humanity any better, and all the while trying to convince myself that I was enjoying it because reputable authorities told me it was more than well worth my time. What a waste.

What is beautiful and illuminating, what reveals the nature of things, can be found outside my expectations. What a stupidly obvious, mundane conclusion. I wish something more eloquent came to mind. The upshot is that I've discovered anime that rivals, if not surpasses, Shakespeare. And honestly? That still might be underselling Shinsekai Yori. 

The Sound and the Fury II

It took me a long time to gain any semblance of meaning behind Faulkner. It's one of the best novels I've read in a long, long time, and undoubtedly the most difficult. Benjy does not experience the world the same way we do, and understanding that proved a challenge.

I was sad for days when I finished the book enough times to understand most of it. I've never met anyone who can rip a family apart the way Faulkner can, and reveal the vice, the cruelty, and the isolation you only find within a family. There's no way out of it, either, no solution; just incest, murder, and suicide. Benjy is no answer; his image as a Christ figure is simply to show that Christianity is impotent (and to emphasize that, Faulkner castrates Benjy); the only people who cling to that primitive faith are old slave-servants (the younger generation, even the black generation, has no interest in Christianity at all). Whatever plagues the family, Christ has nothing to offer. All Benjy can do is cry.

There's more aspects in Sound and Fury than just Jesus and the family, naturally, but to my mind those are the most important. It's a deeply despairing book, a haunting one. Faulkner has now joined Nietzsche and (probably, assuming I ever get around to understanding him) Heidegger as the finest of the antichrists, mostly because (in Nietzsche's case, at least) they can't suffer refutation, only contradiction. At his best, Nietzsche is excoriating a corruption of Christianity - one that uses feigned humility and weakness as weapons, since otherwise the strong can't be overcome. It can't be denied that this form of Christianity has been prevalent, especially in our decadent age. It isn't the Gospel, it's not the Fathers, it's not Christian Tradition, but the roots of Christendom haven't been watered in centuries. Instead, there's been a woodening, hardening, ossifying process, reducing that beautiful tradition to a dead, recorded letter, in which case it is no longer life affirming.

Hence a Christian's response to the brutal challenge of Faulkner and those like him is simply to live beautifully according to the Truth Himself, to rediscover again and again the purifying fire of divine, merciful love, to look again at the very heart of what the Way of Life truly is. Only from that perspective, with that preparation, can a convincing counterargument - and even better, a counter-enfleshment in life and literature - be achieved.