out of which something like a hierarchy of thoughts can be constructed, a hierarchy which will deliver us from only having opinions on such and such a point and from living in cultural anarchy. For doubt, the accomplishment and even the resolution of doubting, is linked to the correct usage of the question of being. When we read, therefore, “that perhaps our hands, and our whole body, are not as we see them,” we underline the verb to be, and understand that in fact they are originally although they don’t show themselves as such. When, for example, Kant tries to show that everything, to the extent that it is spatial, is not simply juxtaposed by chance with others but maintained by that form of being which is space, which precedes all its parts which are rather its limits; which is to say nothing is given in the world itself which is consequently not something abstract but is the original form of the way in which the real is concrete, that is to say concrescit, increases, grows, rises within appearance in unity with itself: this is, in fact, not given within the real. Space as Kant reveals it, as an a priori form of perceiving consciousness, which is really also to say of appearance itself, is not in fact given as it is: it is in it that all is given, it is the very form of the gift, it is the way, the origin from out of which all is delimited. All appearance is delimited based on its spatial form or on its objective form. But in fact this form, this a priori is nothing in things. These seem to be “such as they are,” to be without origin, and in fact they are not. There is therefore an authentic sense in saying that the sensory is deception, but this sense is entirely ontological. Still, what follows is going to show us that it’s not enough to take doubt in a way, but that on the contrary, we should take it in a metaphysical way so that it no longer sets difficulties before us, the apprentice readers. THIRD LESSON OF THE NATURE OF DOUBT (2) SUBSTANCE AND THE EVIL GENIUS psychological
SEVENTH LESSON THE COGITO (3) THE REASONABLE ANIMAL Thus the questions set off again, after the Cogito, identical in degree to those that were before it. “What then did I believe I was before? Without difficulty, I thought that I was a man. But what is a man? Would I say he’s a reasonable animal? Certainly not: for it would be afterwards necessary to seek out what an animal is and what is reasonable [...]” The definition of man as reasonable animal, as classic as it may be, is rejected by Descartes as non-primitive. Descartes’ tone, disdain, severity, are worth noting here; for the “reasonable animal” definition of man belongs to Aristotle and to all of scholasticism, and it’s also, in the end, that of Plato and the whole tradition. Why does he call an “abusive subtlety” the most venerable definition of man in the whole tradition? Why refuse to determine man in his complexity, such that, on the one hand, he manifestly belongs to the animal kingdom, as scientific evidence shows me, and on the other hand, such that, to this fundamental animality is added something essentially different which makes, in spite of this difference, a unity with the rest, that is: reason. It seems, on the contrary, that the duality that there is between the terms “animal” and “reason” may be a sort of dialectical spring already sprung [deja tendu] that is going to give an account of all the richness of human behaviors. One can thus supply many words of wisdom showing that it is always necessary to take into account human weakness [On peut ainsi alimenter bien des sagesses...], that is to say, its rootedness in animality, but also its vocation for thought, and try to account for this “disproportion” in a Pascalian style: “What monster, therefore, is man?” But Descartes refuses. Descartes is the most abstinent philosopher there is: he refuses to use all the resources that such a formula holds within it [porte en elle-même]. And if he refuses, it is because he thinks the road of thought is wholly other. How is that? What allows him to say that? It is not a question, however, of denying what it is customary