Descartes, Husserl, and Derrida on Cogito Conf. 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]Abstract Cogito 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
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.