Marko Ursic, Descartes and Werther (Four Seasons, Spring, 2nd fragment)

Descartes and Werther

Bruno. You still believe that Werther and Cartesius have nothing in common?

John. When I was on the train, I pondered over Werther’s words:

“That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere pursued by this feeling. […] I examine my own being and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.”[1]

… and it crossed my mind now that what the two of them have in common is the doubt, the doubt of oneself, but the crucial difference between them is that thoughts led Descartes from doubt to certainty, and Werther to death. … Yes, the world is more “of imagination and dim desires” than something clear and certain… as well as our life! Right now it all seems as a dream! Right now, sitting by the fire: as if we are here, surrounded by this room, books, garden… only an apparition or perhaps imaginary characters in a book I’m reading. But when I read Werther, I often asked myself the opposite question: is it likely that Werther is simply made up? He is so well presented, so real in his tragedy! Goethe must have felt something similar… it is well known that his youthful love’s name was Charlotte, just like Werther’s. I was especially shocked when I read in the introduction that a certain young man, Jerusalem was his name, and whom Goethe knew well, actually blew his brains out on 30 October 1772 because he was miserably in love; and Goethe asked Kestner, Lotte’s father, to send him a minute description of the event. This is the description, let me find it… it says:

“When Jerusalem was finally alone, he prepared, as it seems, everything for the horrible deed […] He wrote two letters: one addressed to his relatives, the other to Mrs. H. After these preparations, he blew his brains out at around 1 p.m., shooting a hole above his right eye.”[2]

Horrible, isn’t it? He prepared everything, to the smallest detail! How did he managed to write a letter when he knew that after an hour he would no longer be there? Or maybe he wasn’t serious about it till the last minute? … And Kestner reports that in the morning the wretched soul had still been alive, groping, and that he had died only in the high noon! Goethe copied Werther’s death from reality. Where then is the borderline between the real and imagined world, if the imagined one passes over to the real one and vice versa? There is no true borderline between the two, and Descartes realized this in his Meditations. When reading it last year for my exam, the thing that most deeply impressed me was the passage where he asks himself, whether the hands he protrudes, are really his hands, and whether the body in which he thinks, is his body.

“… as for example, that I am in this place, seated by the fire, clothed in a winter dressing gown, that I hold in my hands this piece of paper, with other intimations of the same nature. But how could I deny that I possess these hands and this body, and withal escape being classed with persons in a state of insanity […] I must nevertheless here consider that I am a man, and that, consequently, I am in the habit of sleeping, and representing to myself in dreams those same things, or even sometimes others less probable, which the insane think are presented to them in their waking moments. How often have I dreamt that I was in these familiar circumstances, that I was dressed, and occupied this place by the fire, when I was lying undressed in bed?”[3]

And quite often, master, I’m seized by the doubt of myself – especially lately, now that she’s leaving. I’m not talking just about having doubts of me as a person (this is of course often the matter), because to have doubt of oneself as a person is different from to doubt of myself: when I doubt of myself, it’s not about what I’m capable of or not, it rather seems to me as if I wasn’t real, as if I wasn’t a being among the beings of the world, even worse, as if the world itself is gone, everything at all…

Bruno: Have you ever asked yourself, John, which is the most obvious difference between wakefulness and sleep? If you haven’t, read what Descartes has to say about it:

“At the present moment, however, I certainly look upon this paper with eyes wide awake; the head which I now move is not asleep; I extend this hand consciously and with express purpose, and I perceive it; the occurrences in sleep are not so distinct as all this.”[4]

And in order to gain insight into the difference, you needn’t know whether the hand is real or that it is real only to you, because it is clear enough – namely to you yourself, to your mind – and also evident enough that you are experiencing your body in being awake in a manner different from that of the sleep. Let me give you some general advice – whenever you find yourself facing a seemingly unsolvable philosophical dilemma, wavering between a thesis and the opposite antithesis, always help yourself in the following way: since you don’t fully believe in the thesis, e.g. in the assertion “the world is real”, set against it the antithesis “the world isn’t real”. Then try to imagine what new assertions logically follow from it and you’ll soon realize that they are mostly very odd, e.g. “this house isn’t real” or “that tree isn’t real” etc. Isn’t it? You’ll ask yourself and knock on the wall or bump your head against a tree – and it will be quite likely that you’ll believe to a far lesser extent these odd assertions, derived from these antitheses, than the original thesis “the world is real”, – and should therefore better return to it! I’m mentioning this thought experiment to you only in passing: it is a sort of inference, which is known in classical logic known as reduction ad absurdum. Logical, quite formal inferences are of course generally too weak – though indispensable – tools for solving philosophical questions; and as far as I can see, you’ve become contaminated enough with philosophy that logic alone will not be enough to avert you from the thought that there is no essential difference between wakefulness and sleep. I would therefore like to remind you of Husserl, who by his phenomenological reduction described and explained the difference between the two as the transcendental difference of intentional states of consciousness itself – without referring to, what might provisionally be called the “real reality”, which he put in “brackets”, i.e. outside the scope of philosophy as a “strict science”. To the consciousness, the difference between wakefulness and sleep is obvious.

John. This I know, master Bruno, and I think that even Descartes anticipated Husserl’s solution – which can be inferred from the sentence quoted above – but for Descartes the story isn’t finished yet, because he says afterwards:

“But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.”[5]

So even the famous Cartesius with his clear and distinct comprehension of the world could not positively distinguish wakefulness from sleep; how on earth could it then be done by me… or the miserable Werther?

Bruno. Let me first of all correct you: Cartesius did not claim that it is the sensual world that we should comprehend clearly and distinctly, but the ideas, which, however, are independent of the world, regardless of its nature. “Let us suppose, then, that we are dreaming”, he wrote in the First Meditation, but “for whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three make five, and that a square has but four sides” etc.[6] However, it does hold true that he later became doubtful even about clear and distinct ideas, when he put on the stage of his doubt that almighty deceiver… but we haven’t yet spoken about him, or have we?

John. Is it possible to talk about the world as an apparition in dreams without the almighty deceiver?

Bruno delighted. Ha, good question… but let me suggest that we should first try to answer the first question: what makes Cartesius and Werther kindred spirits and what makes them different? You said: they both doubt of themselves. True, but if we follow Cartesius: who or what is this personal self which one can doubt? …and who or what is myself I cannot doubt? Could we talk about two different selves? Of course, the first one is the psychological self, related to the body, when “seated by the fire” or “when lying undressed in bed”, and the second the metaphysical self (Husserl would correct us here: not metaphysical but transcendental), which isn’t necessarily related to the body, since it is also present in sleep as the pure subject of dreams, regardless of the reality of its intentional content. We have thus arrived to Descartes’ famous thought from the Second Meditation, to the famous cogito ergo sum, to the self, whose truthfulness depends solely on myself and can therefore be shaken not even by the almighty deceiver:

“Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him [the deceiver] deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. So that it must, in fine, be maintained, all things being maturely and carefully considered, that this proposition (pronunciatum) I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.”[7]

Cartesius thinks that the “Archimedes’ point” of certainty is sufficient enough – although at first it is nothing more than just a point without extension, either physical or metaphysical; cogito is sufficient, Cartesius thought, because you can build on it, as on the needle’s point, the whole edifice of metaphysics, grounding on it (i.e. on your self) the proof of the existence of God and the world! It is actually very difficult to believe in this doctrine and it is small wonder that Cartesius’ contemporaries shook their heads: do we really hear that it is possible to prove God and posit the whole world on only one, though doubtlessly necessary sentence “I am, I exist”? It’s not even clear as to how the cogito with his recognized certainty steps outside himself. Because the zero point of certainty is far from being the world, not even in our wildest dreams. Could we therefore say that Descartes is teaching us a new variant of creation from nothing? It does seem it is a sort of creation ex nihilo, because in order for cogito to avoid nothingness, when stepping into the world, he again has to be assisted by the benevolent God, which is – and this is a novelty of Cartesius’ metaphysics compared to the classics – logically derived by the very cogito from himself as the sole existent idea among all the other uncertain ideas, doubtful because of the almighty deceiver. However – who can guarantee for cogito that the deceiver isn’t deceiving him in respect of the validity of the logical inference (deduction) in the argument for God’s existence? Even though for the cogito, itself beyond doubt, though just a “point” of certainty, his logic seems as clear & distinct as possible, he can be given a safe guarantee that he is not mistaken in his subsequent inference, namely when trying to step out of himself to God and the world, only by God himself – but how can that happen before his existence has been proven? A non-existent God after all could not guarantee anything, neither the truthfulness of the equation that two and three make five, let alone the validity of Descartes’ logical inferences in Meditations, as clear & distinct as they might be! Ergo, Cartesius’ critics exclaimed: this is a circular argument, petitio principii! … Do you follow, John?

John. Yes, only now at the very end I lost it a bit. I thought how cruel spring can be! People say youth is beautiful. Have they forgotten all about their suffering?

Bruno. Chase away these thoughts! You are calling philosophy for help, aren’t you? Well then, think about philosophy! … Let me repeat: Cartesius’ argument of the existence of God in the Third Meditation, and consequently the truthfulness of the world in the Fourth Meditation, is circular exactly because God cannot guarantee in advance, before he is proven, the validity of the logic by means of which the cogito seeks proof of this very God, derived from himself, from his ideas – a strict doubter might after all say that that famous Cartesius’ logical clarity & distinctness, by means of which he articulates his Meditations from the first to the last sentence, is just a delusion, a ruse of the almighty deceiver! Except if the logic itself is God, which would then imply a step back to Platonic Logos.

John. Now I understand better where the problem is.

Bruno. Even Cartesius realized the relevance of these criticisms, which can shake the very starting “point” of certainty, cogito ergo sum, if ergo implies a logical inference, deduction of existence from thinking, and this is probably why in Meditations he no longer puts down cogito ergo sum, as in a few years older Treatise on Method, but rather, as we read before, that the sentence “I am, I exist” is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind. There can actually be no doubt of this, since the sentence is a performative: already by uttering or conceiving himself in mind, it validates its own truth: cogito-sum. … Not so long ago I read an interesting article of a Finish logic and philosopher Jaakko Hintikka, who discusses the same matter.[8]

However, it remains an unsolved metaphysical question as to whether cogito-sum as a performative, which necessarily validates its own truth, i.e. myself, “the thinking thing”, validates the existence of God and the world as well, namely without deduction, which could be reproached for circularity. Does the cogito-sum in his clear & distinct intuition, in his performative function, spread over cogito-sum & deus est and further over mundus est, that is through God’s mediation? – In my opinion this cannot be so, since the pure self doesn’t make possible and doesn’t guarantee the necessary truth of anything outside itself; it can speak with certainty only about his (or her) existence, his zero point, detached from the world, thought not identical with God. All that transcends the zero point of the self-certainty, which is evident in the intuition “I am, therefore I exist”, is in Cartesius’ meditations derived from this fundamental intuition by means of logic – the later, however, if we are consistent in our methodical doubt – is again guaranteed by God… and thus we run in the circle, in which only the central point stands still, the very cogito. Later, it was Kant who showed the way out of this vicious circle, and still later, even more convincingly by Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations: in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, cogito is no longer a “point”, but rather a “field” of certainty, which also encompasses the world as the intentional correlate of the consciousness… but we shall discuss this in more detail some other time. I’d like us to stick to Cartesius…

John. Master Bruno, allow me to interrupt you for a moment: even if it’s true that there exists a pure self, be it in the form of a point, as in Descartes, or transcendental in structure, as later in Kant and Husserl, and even if I believe in the certainty of the deduction of the world from the pure self… how can such a mental skeleton help that genuine doubt, by which Werther was so overwhelmingly possessed… and myself too?

Bruno. This is exactly my point: the Cartesian self-certainty of the self is not entirely without influence on the broad “field” extending around the undisturbed “point” – even if it cannot help us provide undisputed evidence of the immortality either of the soul or of the world or of God. The self-certain cogito has namely, inter alia, an important psychological effect. Although the pure metaphysical self cannot clothe itself into the experientially psychological one, it can exert good influence on the latter. Has it ever crossed your mind, John, that reading Cartesius’ works does good to your self?

John. Which self – the metaphysical or psychological?

Bruno. If we are interested in the psychological aspect – both; if only in the metaphysical – actually none.

John. Now here’s a hard nut to crack! Well, let’s say I am now more interested in the psychological aspect, because right now it’s my soul which desperately needs help. How could the reading of Descartes strengthen my psychological self? Don’t you think, master, that in a miserable man this self is already too strong? He wants to speak incessantly but of himself, of his problems, desires, his love…

(Translated by Janko Lozar)