Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on Cogito - Jurnal teologicjurnalteologic.ro/sites/all/files/volumes/14b/1 Sorin Sabou... · Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on Cogito Conf. Dr. Sorin

Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on CogitoConf. Dr. Sorin SABOU

Director, Research Center for Baptist Historical and Theological Studies

Baptist Theological Institute of Bucharest

Instructor of Biblical Studies, Liberty University

[email protected]

AbstractCogito ergo sum is a new beginning in the history of human

thought. The cartesian foundation for human thought serves as the basis

for the way the whole world is understood. All major thinkers are refer-

ring to it and interact with it. Husserl and Derrida build their under-

standing of metaphysics in debate with this new beginning and argue

for the need of phenomenology, and use it to evaluate the history of

madness.

Keywords: method, Descartes, Husserl, Derrida, metaphysics, truth,

phenomenology, transcendental subjectivity, madness, language

Descartes and CogitoThe overall method of Descartes is a method of doubt. He dis-

misses knowledge derived from authority, senses, and reason.1 His

demonstration is one of clarity and absolute certainty.2 He is determined

to bring any belief based on sensation into doubt because they might be

a dream; mathematics included, because of the existence of an evil de-

mon with supreme power of cunning about everything.

Doubting for TruthFor the sake of his method, Descartes called into doubt all his

previous beliefs. He recognizes that his doubt is merely hyperbolic.3 In

this way he is clearing the mind of preconceived opinions that might ob-

scure the truth.

This is an original system of methodical doubt through which

Descartes erects new foundations for knowledge based on the intuition

that, when he is thinking, he exists.4

1. Richard A. Watson, “Descartes, Rene,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica.Ultimate Reference Suite, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004).2. Justin Skirry, www.iep.utm.edu/descarte/.3. Skirry, 4. Watson, “Descartes, Rene,”

SABOU, Sorin / Jurnal teologic Vol 14, Nr 2 (2015): 5-18.

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Descartes method of doubting exposed in the Mediations5 worked

in the following way. His intention was to doubt every proposition he

was able to. For that he used two conjectures: the conjecture of the

dream, and the conjecture of the evil demon. All his knowledge can be

just a dream or all his knowledge can be a big lie because some evil de-

mon is devoted to deceive him. Descartes’s point with these two conjec-

tures was to show their bizarreness. He needed a measure of certainty

that goes beyond everything, even reaching the incredible and the

bizarre.

Going on these two bizarre conjectures he concludes that he is

able to doubt absolutely everything, with just one exception: Cogito, ergo

sum (I think, therefore I am). He can doubt everything but he is not able

to doubt that he thinks. To doubt is to think and to exist.

He sees himself as a thing that thinks, that is a thing that doubts,

understands, affirms, denies, etc. When someone doubts its own exis-

tence he must exist in the first place to be able to doubt.

He goes further and searches for certainty of a truth. The general

rule he establishes is that all things he is able to perceive clearly and dis-

tinctly are true. These elements of clarity and distinctness are taken from

5. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Co;ingham,(Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2004).


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his single and indubitable truth; they guaranteed its certainty. The cer-

tainty of his existence is an essential characteristic of certain truth.

This criterion of clarity and distinction helps Descartes to bring

back much of what he was doubting at the beginning. This is like geome-

try: you have a theorem and you can demonstrate it by deducing it from

axioms by using rules logic. I think, therefore I am (is his axiom) and

everything that I perceive clearly and distinctly is certain (is his rule of

logic). Based on these he discovers that God exists, and that God would

not deceive his thinking mind in believing that the external world with

the objects in it is false if this world would not exist. For Descartes there

are, beyond God, two separate and distinct substances (the material sub-

stance that occupy space, and the mind that thinks). These two are inde-

pendent of each other.

Husserl and Cogito6

Husserl admires Descartes and follows him up to a point, but

from there on he goes on a different path. Husserl goes that far that he is

willing to speak about phenomenology as a new twentieth century

Cartesianism.7 According to Husserl the themes in Meditations are time-

6. A version of this section was published in Sorin Sabou, “Snippets ofModern Wisdom,” Jurnal teologic Vol 13, Nr 2, (2014). 14-18.7. Edmund Husserl, Paris Lectures, trans. Peter Koestenbaum, (Hague: M.


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less and can give birth to what is characteristic of phenomenological

method.8

Continuity with DescartesHusserl follows the train of thought in Meditations and at one

point he will go his own way, but still making references to Descartes’

greatness. The subjectively oriented philosophy of Meditations is carried

out in steps. The philosopher withdraws into himself and then, from

within, a;empts to destroy and rebuilt all previous learning.9 He first

has to discover an absolutely secure starting point and the rules of pro-

cedure.10 The ego is engaged in philosophizing that is seriously solipsis-

tic;11 he infers the existence and veracitas of God, and then he deduces

objective reality as a dualism of substances. In this way he reaches the

objective ground of knowledge.12 Through this return to the ego cogito

Nijhoff, 1973). 3.8. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 3.9. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 4.10. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 4.11. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 4.12. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 4.


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Descartes inaugurates a completely new type of philosophy, it is move-

ment from naive objectivism to transcendental subjectivism.13

Discontinuity from DescartesHusserl sees in this radical turn to the ego cogito the path that led

to transcendental phenomenology.14 So, we begin, everyone for himself

and in himself, with the decision to disregard all our present knowl-

edge.15 But, can we find evidence that is both immediate and apodictic?

From this point forward Husserl begins to depart from Descartes, even if

his shadow will continue to be present. The evidence he finds is the evi-

dence given by the existence of the world;16 to be in the world precedes

everything.17 This experiential evidence is a hypothesis that needs

verification.18

Husserl makes a great shift that leads to transcendental subjectiv-

ity, it is the shift to the ego cogito, as the apodictically certain and last

basis for judgment upon which all radical philosophy must be ground-

13. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 5.







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ed.19 There is no knowledge that is valid for me nor a world that exists

for me, the entire concrete world ceases to have reality for me and be-

comes instead mere appearance.20 This radical detachment from any

point of view regarding the objective world is termed by Husserl the

phenomenological epoch.21 This is a methodology through which

Husserl comes to understand himself as an ego and life of consciousness

in which and through which the entire objective world exists for him,

and is for him precisely as it is.22 For him the world is nothing other than

what he is aware of and what appears valid in such cogitationes.23 He

sees himself as the ego in whose stream of consciousness the world itself

first acquires meaning and reality.24

Husserl tries to leave aside any vestige of Scholasticism found in

Descartes; that is why, he does not see ego cogito as referring to an apo-

dictic and primitive axiom.25 The ego cogito is not the foundation for a

19. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 7.20. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 7.21. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 8.22. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 8.23. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 8.24. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 8.25. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 9.


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deductive and universal science, a science ordain geometrico.26 He does

not follow Descartes in inferring the rest of the world through deductive

procedures according to the principles that are innate to the ego.27 This is

the error Husserl considers that Descartes has done. Descartes trans-

formed the ego in a substantia cogitans, that becomes the point of depar-

ture for conclusions by means of the principle of causality.28

Husserl says that we must regard nothing as veridical except the

pure immediacy and givenness in the field of the ego cogito which the

epoch has opened up to us.29 The independent epoch, with regard to the

nature of the world as it appears and is real to me, discloses the greatest

and most magnificent of all facts: I and my life remain untouched by

whichever way we decide the issue of whether the world is or is not.30 To

myself I discovered that I alone am the pure ego, with pure existence

and pure capacities.31 Husserl says that through this ego alone the world

make sense to me and has possible validity.32 Through the phenomeno-









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logical epochi the natural ego, specifically my own, is reduced to the

transcendental ego. This is the meaning of phenomenological

reduction.33

Husserl does not use the Cartesian discovery of the ego cogito as

an apodictic proposition and as an absolute primitive premise, but to no-

tice that the phenomenological epochd has uncovered, through the apo-

dictic I am, a new kind and an endless sphere of being .34 It is the sphere

of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience.35 So, this phe-

nomenological epochd reduces me to my transcendental and pure ego; I

am the sole source and object capable of judgment (solus ipse). The most

important thing is not about the ego cogito but a science about the ego -

a pure egology.36 And this is the ultimate foundation of philosophy in

the Cartesian sense of a universal science.

Derrida on CogitoThe overall approach of Derrida is on Cogito and the history of

madness. Derrida starts his analysis based on Foucault’s reference to

33. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 10.34. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 11.35. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 11.36. Husserl, Paris Lectures. 12.


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Descartes’s Meditations.37 Philosophical dignity has nothing to do with

madness and insanity, they do not have entrance into the philosopher’s

city.38 By its essence Cogito cannot be mad.

Derrida offers an analysis of Foucault’s interpretation of

Descartes and interrogate some presuppositions of Foucault’s history of

madness.39 Foucault reads the Cartesian Cogito within the framework of

the history of madness. Foucault’s a;empt to write a history of madness

as madness speaks on the basis of its own experience and under its own

authority.40 Madness is linked to silence (‘words without language,’

‘without the voice of a subject’) and the language of reason is rejected.

According to Foucault the history of madness is an archeology of a si-

lence.41 Derrida argues that such a history or archeology of silence can-

37. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, a History of Insanity in the Ageof Reason, trans. Richard Howard, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965). 184-187;Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1978). 32.38. Derrida, Writing. 32.39. Derrida, Writing. 33.40. Derrida, Writing. 34.41. Derrida, Writing. 35.


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not be wri;en. No one can speak against the order of reason except by

being for it; the concept of history has always been a rational one.42

But such a book was wri;en by Foucault, that is why, we need to

see its particularities. Silence is not non discourse, but a discourse arrest-

ed by command.43 Foucault goes after the origin of the split between rea-

son and unreason (madness) and their free circulation and exchange.

Reason and unreason are at the same time an act of order, a decree, and

a schism, a separation.44 The common root of reason and unreason/mad-

ness is a logos, a unitary foundation.45 This logos is also the very atmos-

phere in which Foucault’s language moves.46 The heart of the ma;er is

that reason can have a contrary, an other of reason.47 For Foucault the

concept of madness overlaps everything that can be put under the rubric

of negativity.48 The structure of this exclusion is for Foucault the funda-

42. Derrida, Writing. 36.43. Derrida, Writing. 38.44. Derrida, Writing. 38.45. Derrida, Writing. 39.46. Derrida, Writing. 39.47. Derrida, Writing. 41.48. Derrida, Writing. 41.


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mental structure of historicity. The moment of this exclusion does not

have archetypal exemplarity.49

If this great division is the possibility of history itself, what does

it mean to write a history of this division?50 Is it to write the history of

the origin of history?

Foucault interprets the text from Meditations as the philosophical

internment of madness;51 this is a prelude of the historical and sociopolit-

ical drama. It is an act of force. That is why, to write a history of mad-

ness means to execute a structural study of a historical ensemble (no-

tions, institutions, juridical and police measures, scientific concepts)

which holds captive a madness whose wild state can never in itself be

restored.52

Philosophy from Descartes onwards is the system of certainty

that functions to inspect, master, and limit hyperbole, and does so both

by determining it in either of a natural light whose axioms are from the

outset exempt from hyperbolic doubt, and by making of hyperbolical

doubt a point of transition firmly maintained within the chain of rea-

49. Derrida, Writing. 42.50. Derrida, Writing. 43.51. Derrida, Writing. 44.52. Derrida, Writing. 44.


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son.53 Someone philosophizes only in terror, but in the confessed terror

of going mad. The confession is simultaneously, at its present moment,

oblivion and unveiling, protection and exposure.54

53. Derrida, Writing. 60.54. Derrida, Writing. 62.


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Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by JohnCo;ingham. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2004.

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization, a History of Insanity inthe Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Pan-theon Books, 1965.

Husserl, Edmund. Paris Lectures. Translated by Peter Koesten-baum. Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1973.

Sabou, Sorin. “Snippets of Modern Wisdom.” Jurnal teologic Vol 13,Nr 2, (2014): 5-27.

Skirry, Justin. www.iep.utm.edu/descarte/.

Watson, Richard A. “Descartes, Rene.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica.Ultimate Reference Suite, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.


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Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on Cogito - Jurnal teologicjurnalteologic.ro/sites/all/files/volumes/14b/1 Sorin Sabou... · Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on Cogito Conf. Dr. Sorin