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The Circle of Ideas and the Circularity of the Meditations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1966

Edwin B. Allaire
Edwin B. Allaire
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Extract

Arnauld's suspicion was right: the Meditations is circular. That is not surprising, for there is no escape from the circle of ideas into which Descartes drove himself. Nor is it surprising that Descartes failed to see what Arnauld suspected. What is surprising is that some still fail to see what Arnauld suspected. They fail, I think, because they are bewildered. They cannot understand how Descartes could have committed such a blunder, nor how, if he had, he could have failed to see it once Arnauld pointed to it. The purpose of this paper is to explain Descartes’ blunder and blindness by exhibiting the confusions underlying his conviction that he does escape the circle of ideas.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , September 1966 , pp. 131 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1966

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References

1 The Philosophical Works of Descartes (2 vols.), translated by Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. (Cambridge, 1934), II, 92Google Scholar. (Henceforth, I shall refer to this edition as HR.)

2 Cf. Doney, Willis, “The Cartesian Circle,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 16, 324–338CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Richard H. Popkin is an exception. He sees clearly what Arnauld suspected. (The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Van Gorcum, 1960), pp. 196–216.) Popkin's perspective is historical rather than structural. He therefore does not try to diagnose Descartes' blindness.

3 Cf. Hintikka, Jaakko, “Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?” Philosophical Review, 71, 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Cogito, Ergo Sum as an Inference and Performance,” ibid., 72, 487–496.

4 HR, I, 158.

5 HR, I, 158.

6 HR, I, 158–159.

7 HR, I, 159.

8 HR, I, 183.

9 HR, I, 184.

10 HR, I, 181.

11 Cf. Bracken, Harry M., “Berkeley and Malebranche on Ideas,” Modern Schoolman, 41, 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. Allaire, Edwin B., “Berkeley's Idealism,” Theoria, 29. (Reprinted in Essays in Ontology (Nijhoff, 1963), 92-105.)Google Scholar

13 Cf. Van Iten, Richard J., “Berkeley's Alleged Solipsism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophic, 16, 447–452Google Scholar.