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Re-grounding the Cogito: Descartes and the Problem of the Baroque By [Copyright 2015] Ryan R. Fagan Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ________________________________ Chairperson Benjamin C. Sax ________________________________ Luis Corteguera ________________________________ Steven Epstein ________________________________ George Gale _________________________________ Geraldo Sousa Date Defended: 12 May 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Ryan R Fagan certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Re-grounding the Cogito: Descartes and the Problem of the Baroque __________________________ Chairperson Benjamin C. Sax Date approved: 15 May 2015 ii Abstract: The dissertation offers a historically-based critique of the foundations of modernity in view of the truth claims it struggled to articulate and which continue to dominate the West.At the very core of this problem are the natural sciences, and it is from them that the dominant definition of truth in modernity emanates. Since the entrenchment of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, this definition has extended into an entire "worldview" occasioning and determining the modern mode of existence. I argue that to understand the modern foundation of science and truth (and by extension, medicine and all theoretically grounded bodies of knowledge), it is necessary to turn once again to Descartes' seminal role in the histories of philosophy and science. Recognizing Descartes' philosophy as a conceptual point of departure, I give a critical re-reading of his formulation of the Ego cogito-ego sum not only within the internal history of metaphysics (of which science is a part), but as a cultural-historical phenomenon. I further argue that the turn to the Cogito, from which the broader notion of subjectivity derives, can be understood only via the cultural horizon of the Baroque within which the Cogito's criterion for meaning, significance and truth found the conditions of possibility for full expression, which moreover, established the foundation for the natural sciences. By raising the problem of subjectivity (via the Cogito), along with its specific criterion for truth, I am raising the related problem of self-conception. The Baroque is a fascinatingly rich and creative cultural epoch, and reveals a number of possibilities for self-conception, as one may find, for example, in the sonnets of Shakespeare, the essays of Montaigne, and the respective "autobiographies" of Loyola and Cardano. These examples attest to the confusion and richness of such terms as: "subiectum", "self", "anima", "spiritus", "consciousness", "persona", etc., which exist not only during the Baroque epoch, but endure into all subsequent historical periods, iii including our own. The powerful move facilitated by the Cogito formulation, namely the laying out of a foundation of mathematical order from which a universal science may be derived, had far-ranging and deeply penetrating implications for the modern conception of self. On the one hand, the Cogito formulation effectively stabilized the variously and inwardly directed, but as yet, not strictly subjectivist conceptions of self in the early modern period, while on the other hand, it reduced selfhood to a mere abstraction. The attempt to define a self on the basis of strict theoretical terms brings forth a number of problems, not least of all the false division between subject and object (on which the sciences operate) and a perpetuation of the confusion of the terms self and subject, self and consciousness, etc. Yet, even more problematically, the Cogito's legitimating criterion for truth creates in its train an inauthentic orientation of self to world as well as poses serious challenges to the possibility of being fully human in the modern world. iv To my brother, Brennan, who in offering a valuable and different perspective has always—in particular and decisive ways—grounded me as a scholar. To my advisor, Benjamin C. Sax, who taught me to think historically, to love and honor the tradition, and to understand the importance of being its worthy and dutiful heir. To my friend, Art, whose patience and support have sustained me. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1 The Cogito and Metaphoric Possibility …………………………………………………….......6 Re-conceiving the Inner Life ………………………………………………………………...10 CHAPTER ONE ...........................................................................................................................27 The Problem of Modernity ............................................................................................................27 Wrangling with the Question of Modernity ..............................................................................27 A Question of Meaning .............................................................................................................31 The Question of the Modern Individual ....................................................................................33 The Question of Ideology .........................................................................................................44 Theōria and the “Abstracted” Individual ..................................................................................50 CHAPTER TWO ..........................................................................................................................59 The Cogito and Modernity: A Question of the Baroque ...............................................................59 The Question of the Cogito .......................................................................................................60 The Question of Culture ............................................................................................................65 The Question of the Baroque ....................................................................................................67 The Turn to Cultural History ....................................................................................................73 The Question of the Modern Self .............................................................................................85 CHAPTER THREE ......................................................................................................................89 A Metaphor for Modernity: The Microcosm and Pico’s Oratio de hominis dignitate………….89 The Microcosm and the Modern Moment ...............................................................................89 Opening the Question of the Metaphor ....................................................................................94 Laying the Ground: Ereignis and World Disclosure................................................................99 The “Breath of Life,” the Λόγος, and Metaphoric Possibility in the Oratio ……………….109 Invenire and the Modal Action of the Metaphor ...................................................................118 The Three Powers (Drei Potenzen) and the “Phenomenalization” of the Metaphor………..127 The Experience of Possibility ................................................................................................133 CHAPTER FOUR .......................................................................................................................148 “Quod Rectum Iter Veritatis?:” Subjectivity and the Cartesian Self ………………………….148 The Question of the Cartesian Self: Preliminary Concerns....................................................151 The Cartesian Self ..................................................................................................................153 vi The Augustinian Conception of Self: Fides Quaerens [Sapientiam].....................................159 Re-conceiving the “Path to Truth”.........................................................................................177 Reform as a Question of Method...........................................................................................182 CHAPTER FIVE ........................................................................................................................186 The Dream and the Opening of the Baroque World ...................................................................186 Preliminary Concerns ...........................................................................................................186 The Problem of the Dream....................................................................................................188 Cultural Angst and the Deception of Dreams ......................................................................206 Cosmological Uncertainties ……………………………………………………………….215 The Olympic Dreams ...........................................................................................................229 EPILOGUE ……………………………………………………………………………….........235 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………...245 vii INTRODUCTION The dissertation offers a historically-based critique of the foundations of modernity, which it does in view of the truth claims that modernity has striven to articulate, and that continue to dominate the West. At the very core of this problem are the natural sciences, and it is from them that the dominant definition of truth in modernity emanates. Since the entrenchment of the
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