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.But no matter how precisely we may be informed, through historical research, about such “self-interpretations” (even about those of a whole series of philosophers), we learn nothing in this way about what, through all these philosophers, “the point of it” ultimately was, in the hidden unity of intentional inwardness which alone constitutes the unity of history.Only in the final establishment is this revealed; only through it can the unified directedness of all philosophies and philosophers open up.From here elucidation can be attained which enables us to understand past thinkers in a way that they could never have understood themselves.This makes it clear that the peculiar truth of such a “teleological consideration of history” can never be decisively refuted by citing the documented “personal testimony” of earlier philosophers.This truth is established only in the self-evidence of a critical over-all view which brings to light, behind the “historical facts” of documented philosophical theories and their apparent oppositions and parallels, a meaningful, final harmony.§ 16.Descartes as the primal founder not only of the modern idea of objectivistic rationalism but also of the transcendental motif which explodes it.WE SHALL NOW BEGIN actually to carry out the clarification of the unifying sense of the modern philosophical movements.Here the particular role assigned to the development of the new psychology will soon become evident.To this end we must go back to the primally founding genius of all modern philosophy, Descartes.After Galileo had carried out, slightly earlier, the primal establishment of the new natural science, it was Descartes who conceived and at the same time set in systematic motion the new idea of universal philosophy: in the sense of mathematical or, better expressed, physicalistic, rationalism—philosophy as “universal mathematics.” And immediately it had a powerful effect.This does not mean, then (in accord with our exposition above), that he had fully and systematically thought out this idea in advance, much less that his contemporaries and successors, constantly guided by it in the sciences, had it in mind in explicit form.For this it would have been necessary to have the higher systematic development of pure mathematics under the new idea of universality which appears in its first, relative maturity in Leibniz (as mathesis universalis) and which is now, in more mature form, still a subject of lively research as the mathematics of definite manifolds.Like all historical ideas that result in great developments, those in the new mathematics, the new natural science, and the new philosophy live in very diverse noetic modes in the consciousness of the persons who function as the bearers of their development: sometimes they strive forward like instincts, without these persons having any ability to give an account of where they are going; sometimes they are the results of a more or less clear realization, as plainly and simply grasped goals, possibly crystallizing into ever more precise goals through repeated consideration.On the other hand, there are modes in which these ideas become leveled down, are made unclear when ideas are taken over which have been made precise in another area and now take on different kinds of vagueness (we have already learned to understand this kind of thing): ideas emptied [of meaning] which have been obscured and have become mere word-concepts; ideas burdened, through attempts at exposition, with false interpretations, etc.In spite of all this, they are driving forces in the development.And the ideas which interest us here also have their effect on those who are not trained in mathematical thinking.It is well to take note of this when one speaks of the power of the new idea of philosophy, having its effect throughout the whole modem period in all sciences and culture, as it was first grasped and mastered in a relatively stable way by Descartes.But it was not merely in the inauguration of this idea that Descartes was the founding father of the modern period.It is highly remarkable at the same time that it was he, in his Meditations—and precisely in order to provide a radical foundation for the new rationalism and then eo ipso for dualism—who accomplished the primal establishment of ideas which were destined, through their own historical effects (as if following a hidden teleology of history), to explode this very rationalism by uncovering its hidden absurdity.Precisely those ideas which were supposed to ground this rationalism as aeterna veritas bear within themselves a deeply hidden sense, which, once brought to the surface, completely uproots it.§ 17.Descartes’s return to the ego cogito.Exposition of the sense of the Cartesian epochē.LET US CONSIDER the progress of the first two Cartesian meditations from a perspective which allows its general structures to come to the fore—the progress to the ego cogito, the ego of the cogitationes of the various cogitata.This beloved examination question for philosophical children, then, shall be our subject.In truth, there is in these first meditations a depth which is so difficult to exhaust that even Descartes was unable to do it, to the extent that he let slip away the great discovery he had in his hands.Even today, and perhaps especially today, everyone who would think for himself ought, it seems to me, to study these first meditations in the utmost depth, not being frightened off by the appearance of primitiveness, by the well-known use of the new ideas for the paradoxical and basically wrong proofs of the existence of God, or by many other obscurities and ambiguities—and also not being too quickly comforted by one’s own refutations.It is with good reasons that I now devote considerable space to my attempt at a careful exposition, not repeating what Descartes said, but extracting what was really involved in his thinking and then separating what he became conscious of from what was concealed from him, or rather what was smuggled into his ideas, because of certain things—of course very natural things—taken for granted.These were not merely remains of Scholastic traditions, not merely accidental prejudices of his time, but were things taken for granted throughout the millenia which can be overcome only by clarifying and thinking through to the end what was original in Descartes’s thought.Philosophical knowledge is, according to Descartes, absolutely grounded knowledge; it must stand upon a foundation of immediate and apodictic knowledge whose self-evidence excludes all conceivable doubt.Every step of mediate knowledge must be able to attain the same sort of self-evidence.A survey of his hitherto existing convictions, acquired or taken over, shows him that doubts or possibilities of doubt arise on all sides [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]