Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:02:05 +0200
Subject: Re: truth


Cologne, 15 July 1998

Anthony Crifasi schrieb:
> But again, according to the texts I cited in both the Posterior Analytics and
>  the 
> Metaphysics, the reason Aristotle did not focus upon self-certainty was
>  simply 
> that he also considered the metaphysical "external" existence of what we 
> experience to be absolutely certain (as a first principle of knowledge),
>  thereby 
> rendering "self-certainty" a trivial matter. 

Behind this “simply” is hidden one of the most momentous of the seldom shifts in 
Western history. Descartes’ Meditationes are the concentration point for a new 
casting of being that has opened up a completely different historical world from 
the ancient or medieval world. That the beings lying before us, the 
_hypokeimena_, the subjects, can lose their self-evidence signifies an 
ungrounded shift of the way in which being is open to humankind. First with 
Descartes is it clearly pronounced that consciousness itself is the foundation 
of all truth and thus that the human (as consciousness) has become the subject, 
the underlying being. Truth has been displaced by a radical change from the 
opposition truth/falsity with regard to appearances (_phainomena_, that which 
shows itself in the light) to certainty/uncertainty _of the conscious subject_. 
The consciousness of the subject becomes the final, grounding arbiter of truth. 


> Self-certainty was not "entirely 
> unknown to Aristotle," since in the De Anima, he himself addresses the self-
> awareness of sensation (425b13-18) and of intellect (429b9). Rather,
>  Aristotle 
> recognized the issue of self-certainty, but it was a minor matter because,
>  for 
> him, we can be immediately certain not only of self, but of what is
>  "external" to 
> the self. 

Self-certainty is not self-awareness. In other words, self-certainty in 
Aristotle is not an issue for the grounding of truth.

> Similarly, Descartes focuses upon the certainty of the self in the 
> Second Meditation precisely because he already rejected the certainty of 
> external existence in the First Meditation.

Descartes’ program of systematic doubt is itself ungrounded (i.e. not 
self-evident), and its _telos_, viz. the self-certainty of the conscious 
subject, is already fixed from the start. Descartes has to posit dreaming as an 
absolute state of consciousness to reach his goal of an unshakeable foundation 
in self-certainty. But dreaming itself is only a relative state, i.e. dreaming 
is only known about from a more wakeful state. If we were always dreaming, we 
would always be awake, i.e. there would be no difference anymore.

> But again, there are specific texts which support my interpretation over the
>  one 
> which you have proposed - specifically, the ones in the Metaphysics and the 
> Posterior Analytics. According to your interpretation, Aristotle should have 
> never criticized the dream argument AS a violation of a necessary and 
> absolutely certain first principle of demonstration, which is precisely what
>  he 
> did in the Metaphysics in conjunction with the Posterior Analytics. 

I have already provided an alternative interpretation of the texts you have 
adduced. Dreaming is for Aristotle merely one example among others (viz. 
appearances for a sick person differ from those for a healthy person) for 
appearances being deceptive. Aristotle posits different first principles from 
Descartes. Why? Because each is thinking within a different historical opening 
of the truth of beings. The starting point for this whole debate was the shift 
from subjects being the things out there in the world to subjects being 
conscious subjects encountering objects. This shifts displaces the 
self-evidences for Aristotle and Descartes respectively. Thus, Aristotle can 
write at Gamma 5 1010b33ff, in a passage immediately preceding the passage you 
cited:

“But that the subjects (sic! _hypokeimena_) which bring forth the sensation 
(_aisthaesin_) also might not be (sic! _mae einai_) without sensation is 
impossible (_adynaton_). For, sensation is not a sensing of itself, but rather 
there is also something different (_heteron_) apart from the sensation which 
necessarily precedes the sensation. For, the mover is by its nature (_physei_) 
prior to what is moved...”

> Again, Aristotle specifically addresses that problem, through his notion of 
> "analogy." A further non-metaphysical "clarification" is needed only if the
>  one 
> Aristotle gives is inadequate for the phenomena. One cannot simply start by 
> assuming that a non-metaphysical answer is needed at all. Heidegger's 
> analytic, as he himself emphasized in several places in SuZ, emerged
>  partially 
> from his perception of the inadequacy of the Cartesian analysis of the world. 
> Obviously, if there were no such inadequacy, then the phenomena would 
> demand nothing more. When you say that "the Aristotelian account does not 
> see this problem," this already assumes that the problem must be solved non-
> metaphysically, which obviously assumes that no metaphysical solution alone 
> can be adequate.

I agree, the phenomena themselves are decisive, albeit that on the chasmic 
ontological level at which the casting of the being of beings and thus also the 
truth of being is decided, the phenomena themselves shift historically in their 
self-revealing. That is why any historical movement in philosophical thinking is 
always also a re-interpretation of the most profound philosophical texts in the 
Western tradition. The compulsion to learn to think outside long-ingrained 
metaphysical habits of thinking comes from the exhaustion of metaphysical ways 
of thinking experienced as an historical situation. The primacy of the subject 
with its will and rationality has become questionable, and this is experiencable 
also on an everyday level. 

Descartes' program of systematic doubt, against the thinker's declared 
intentions, boils down to putting God as the supreme, omniscient, omnipotent, 
good being into question, for such a being turns out to be the only guarantor 
that the world is not a constant delusion. Descartes radical doubt is already 
the deposition of God, for it makes truth itself, i.e. the openness of beings in 
their being, dependant on a being. God the Creator takes on 'respsonsiblity' for 
truth itself. The figure of the "genium malignum" in Descartes' 
thought-experiment shows that God Himself is only this figure with the opposite 
sign, i.e. genium bonum. Instead of truth being the truth of being, it is the 
truth of a being, viz. God. The oblivion to the difference between being and 
beings (which is also in Aristotle, despite equivocation) has this fatal 
consequence once the authority of the Catholic Church starts to be questioned. 

Michael
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