of the Discourse on the Method
i. The Metaphysical Discourse on the Method: The Issue At the outset of the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Descartes elabo
rates a method that he immediately begins to apply. In bringing the Meditationes de prima philosophia to a close, he achieves a metaphysical foundation that is supposed to be final. This dual elaboration— of a method and of a metaphysics— opens the door to many directly or indirectly verifiable theses; however, in terms of an architectonic re
quirement, exigency, it raises a formidable difficulty, which can be formulated as follows: What are the interrelationships between the method and the metaphysics? Or, in two parallel statements: (a) Does the establishment of the method apply or presuppose a metaphysics, partial or complete, implicit or explicit? (b) In turn, has the comple
tion of the metaphysics been carried out by means of a method, and if so, does this method coincide with the one produced by the Reg
ulae? In other words, do method and metaphysics simply follow each other chronologically as two autonomous moments in Descartes’
thought, or, on the contrary, do they overlap partially, or even com
pletely, in various guises? These important questions, the answers to which will either undermine or buttress the entire Cartesian edifice, go beyond the boundaries of a circumscribed study.1 However, this aporia may become more accessible and therefore better able to be answered if we formulate it in slightly different terms: Between the Regulae, hence the method, and the Meditations, hence metaphysics, a middle term— that is, the Discourse on the Method— can be found, at the very least chronologically. The Discourse is not only, or mostly,
a discourse about the method, but rather a discourse by the method on what, from then onward, appears as the domain that it will regulate.
Descartes maps its regions: “because I claim that what they contain could never have been discovered without it [i.e., the method] and that one may know by them how much it is worth.” He is speaking of the three essays on the method, Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry;
yet the method also extends to other areas, since Descartes has “ in
serted a certain amount of metaphysics, physics and medicine in the opening Discourse in order to show that [my] method extends to top
ics of all kinds.” 2 Thus, here, even metaphysics is subjected to the universal and primary method, which tolerates no exception or ex
emption. For, as is confirmed in a contemporary text, it is a “ general Method,” which enables one to “ explicate topics of all kinds” in addi
tion to those of the Essays— in the sense that the mathesis universalis exerts itself in “ any other object whatever” (AT X, 378, 1. 3), and the methodus extends “ to the discovery of truths in any field what
ever” (AT X, 374, 11. 8-9). Hence, although it is omitted by the Regulae, metaphysics must be reintegrated into the realm shared by the objects of the method. This is stated very clearly in the Discourse, since “ in order to show that the method can be applied to everything, I have included some brief remarks on metaphysics, physics and med
icine in the opening discourse.” 3
The question of interference between metaphysics and the method is now contained in a much more sharply delineated hermeneutical problem: How does the method approach metaphysics— for it is now clear that it does— in Part Four of the Discourse on the Method} In other words, what is the discourse of the universal project of the method with regard to metaphysics? But this formulation of the ques
tion remains too vague: It implies that we should determine whether Part Four follows the same methodological principles found in Parts Five and Six, as well as in the other Essays and, further, whether these same principles coincide with the rules of the method formulated in Part Two— all rather difficult tasks indeed. We shall therefore choose a shorter path, which at the same time narrows the scope of our inquiry, and examine the variations, and perhaps the deviations, to which the method subjects metaphysics in Part Four of the Discourse.
These variations— if any— can only be apprehended on the basis of the norm for the statements of Descartes’ metaphysics, namely, the Meditations of 1641.4 In short, we shall attempt to apprehend how in 1637 the method affects the metaphysics whose definitive state-WHAT IS THE METAPHYSICS WITHIN THE METHOD? 21
22 CHAPTER TWO
ment will only appear in 1641. In other words, does the metaphysics stated by the method coincide with the metaphysics stated by itself?
In this context, the Discourse on the Method, especially Part Four, is akin to a closed arena in which method and metaphysics are en
gaged in a struggle. This confrontation leaves us with only a limited set of possible positions, of which the most radical amounts to deny
ing that a confrontation is taking place at all, insofar as the method for the first time unifies science, which is thereby finally freed from any metaphysical foundation. This was the thesis of L. Liard: “In Descartes’ thought, science taken in itself and limited to its own field is independent of any considerations on the essence and the origin of all things. . . . Conversely, Cartesian metaphysics is independent of science,” since “what characterizes his physics and makes it into something entirely new and without precedent is the absence of any metaphysical idea.” From Baillet to A. Boyce Gibson, many critics have solved the problem in this manner, by denying that it could actually be posited.5 The debate therefore cannot take place, for lack of a common battleground. Instances of interference are, however, too numerous to allow such an extreme and simplistic position to remain tenable in the long run.
Yet, if we believe that method and metaphysics do indeed clash in the Discourse, we can still approach their confrontation in two quite different ways. We might accept “the necessity to continually search for a commentary on the Discourse in the Meditations,” which is what E. Gilson set out to do, while presupposing, with H. Lefèvre, that the metaphysics is constant and sufficiently intangible that it seems
“impossible to base a history of [Descartes’] thought on a chronology of the works.” 6 In this hypothesis, the continuity between 1637 and 1641 is reinforced, so that any shortcoming of the Discourse or any divergence from the final statement of the metaphysics found in the Meditations simply reveals a temporary and insignificant imperfec
tion, which can be corrected without a solution of continuity by a subsequent development.7
However, this reconciliation by means of continuity suffers from a considerable weakness, since it does not take into account an impor
tant difference between 1637 and 1641: Whereas the Meditations raises its “ very slight and so to speak metaphysical reason for doubt”
(AT VII, 36, 11. 24-25) to such a level that one has to invoke an omnipotent God (i.e., “ deceiving God” ) and genius malignus— in short, a summa dubitatio (460,1. 3)— the Discourse only acknowledges
the fact that we are often in error. This gap between the different levels of acceptance of doubt is repeated when the boundaries of doubt are drawn: In one case, doubt even affects common evidence, mathematical and logical truths, and all “ external” existences; in the other case, only sensory knowledge vacillates in the usual fallibility, but nothing else. Thus, in Part Four the Discourse lacks the theoreti
cal moments that bring the Meditations into the hyperbolical, that is to say metaphysical, realm. This is an undeniable textual fact, which was conclusively established by Ferdinand Alquie. Besides, Descartes himself declares in 1637 that he “ thus doubts everything that is mate
rial” — thereby admitting that he leaves all intellectual evidence un
touched.8
We must therefore present a third hypothesis to account for this.
Alquie gave it a famous, although rather extreme, formulation: If the Discourse is entirely silent on the “ deceiving God” and the genius malignus, as well as on doubt about the existence of the outside world and mathematical truths as they define the metaphysical starting point for the Meditations, one must logically conclude that, in 1637, Descartes had not yet formulated the definitive version of his meta
physics. The usual counter argument— namely, that the Discourse is not unaware of the definitive metaphysics but limits itself to outlining it— actually contradicts itself, since “from the fact that Descartes did not present an elaborated metaphysics in the Discourse in 1637, we cannot conclude that he had at that time elaborated any metaphysics at all.” The undeniable absence of themes that are essential to the metaphysics of the Meditations prevents us from granting a meta
physical status to the Discourse. Moreover, Alquie adds, when the Discourse enunciates a genuinely metaphysical theme, such as “I think, therefore I am” {DM, 32, 1. 19 = 33, 1. 17), we must suspect that, conceptually, it has not yet reached its full metaphysical role.
Hence, “the cogito of the Discourse is not the foundation of all truth, but the most certain of all truths. The conclusions Descartes draws from this concern science rather than ontology.” 9 Thus, in 1637, the themes we encounter either are not metaphysical or have not yet attained a metaphysical status, and strictly metaphysical theses are lacking. Thus, in Part Four of the Discourse the method absolutely forbids the deployment of metaphysics— except in the unrecogniz
able form of metaphysical remnants stifled by the blind certainty of methodical science.
We must now examine the metaphysical status of the Discourse in WHAT IS THE METAPHYSICS WITHIN THE METHOD? 2 3
24 CHAPTER TWO
light of these three hypotheses, and especially in light of the last one, which is the most powerful and best argued of the three.
2. The Explicitly Metaphysical Intention
Yet— and this constitutes a clue rather than simply an anomaly—
Alquie himself does not follow up on the logical consequences of his own hypothesis. While this hypothesis seems to be leading to the conclusion that the Discourse on the Method avoids any and all meta
physics (almost in the sense of Liard), Alquie, curiously, introduces another compromise in fine: The Discourse remains partially meta
physical in its theological developments, but, being unaware of the genuine ego cogito and doubt, is ignorant of the origin of metaphysics.
The gap is no longer between the Discourse and the Meditations but, within Part Four of the Discourse, between the ego on the one hand and God on the other: “ although it contains a perfectly elaborated metaphysics concerning the proofs of the existence of God, Part Four of the Discourse . . . does not include a purely metaphysical statement concerning the doubt or even the cogito.” w Can we legitimately divide up in this way the metaphysical tenor attributed to the Discourse, especially in such a short text? Doesn’t this unexpected compromise suggest the existence of still hidden difficulty concerning either the interpretive hypothesis or the Discourse itself? And, in general, can the question of the metaphysical status of the Discourse find even the embryo of an answer in the strict framework of the three hypotheses we have examined so far, or should we, basing ourselves on them but going beyond them, assert a new one, which would be irreducible to heterogeneity, homogeneity, or absence?
Besides, contrary to the claims of earlier interpretations, one thing is evident: The Discourse explicitly claims a metaphysical project, for it concerns itself, among other things, with “ a certain amount of metaphysics.” 11 Descartes’ correspondence is not as explicit as the text itself, whose introductory summary announces “in the fourth [part], the arguments by which he [the author] proves the existence of God and the human soul, which are the foundations of his meta
physics” {DM, i, 11. 7-9). Moreover, in 1644, Descartes will let the Specimina transpose into Latin the following marginal note to Part Four: “Arguments by which the existence of God and of the human soul is proven, which are the foundations of metaphysics” (AT VI, 557-58). He had to do so, because the first lines of Part Four use
WHAT IS THE METAPHYSICS WITHIN THE METHOD? 25
the term explicitly: “I do not know whether I should tell you of the first meditations that I had there, for they are perhaps too metaphysi
cal and uncommon for everyone’s taste. And yet, to make it possible to judge whether the foundations I have chosen are firm enough, I am in a way obliged to speak of them” (DM, 31, 11. 14-20). Thus, as early as 1637 we encounter metaphysical meditations, which antici
pate the (questionable) translation of the Meditationes de prima philo- sophia of 1641 by the due de Luynes in 1647. We also encounter an early parallel to the “metaphysical reason for doubt” of 1641 (AT VII, 36 ,11. 24-25). The metaphysical intention of the project of 1637 is thus borne out, as an intention, in the texts.12
A second fact supports this first conclusion: Beyond the Medita
tions, the Discourse also anticipates the Principles of Philosophy, thanks to its discussion of the “principles of philosophy” (DM, 8, 1. 31).
The Discourse does not simply debate the “principles of the other sciences” (DM, 29, 11. 28-29), but also “ doubt[s] the principles”
(DM, 15, 1. 22; see 21, 1. 31; 70, 1. 29; 73, 1. 14)— that is, the usual principles— in order to replace them with “ simple and general . . . principles,” namely, the “ principles [I] had discovered” (DM, 64, 11. 27, 29). The ambition to substitute some principles concerning knowledge as a whole for others would in itself be sufficient to estab
lish the metaphysical legitimacy of the Discourse, since it is specifically echoed in the 1647 preface to the French translation of the Principia:
“ the principles of knowledge, i.e., what may be called ‘first philoso
phy’ or ‘metaphysics’ ” (AT IX, 16, 11. 13-16 ) or, in other words,
“metaphysics, which contains the principles of knowledge” (AT IX, 1 4 ,11. 8-9). But there is more: In 1637, where does Descartes unveil the “ principles of the philosophy [he] use[s]” (DM, 71, 1. 7), those he attributes to himself, “my principles” (DM, 7 7 ,1. 2 = 7 5 ,1. 17)?
Precisely in Part Four, in which, “observing that this truth ‘I think, therefore I am’ was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking” (DM, 3 2 ,11. 18-23). Reiterating what was established in Part Four, Part Five confirms it with the “ resolution . . . to assume no principle other than the one I have just used to demonstrate the existence of God and of the soul” (DM, 41, 11. 1 - 4). This principle— which is indeed metaphysical, since it guarantees their true principles to all sciences— is also metaphysical for another reason: It clearly concerns two of the privileged objects of any spe
26 CHAPTER TWO
cial metaphysics— especially that of Descartes in 1641— namely, God and the soul. Thus, if the search for principles does illustrate the metaphysical project, we have to conclude that the Discourse, en
gaged in the discovery of a first principle, legitimately belongs to metaphysics.
We should perhaps add a strange coincidence to these obvious facts. While setting out his first principle, Descartes writes, “ the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking” (DM, 32, 1. 23). This choice of wording can be taken to mean a philosophical principle that is being sought, which is how it has been read by the principal interpreters of Descartes. But it can also be taken to mean a philoso
phy that is itself being sought. In this sense, in his search for a first principle, Descartes is in search of philosophy— itself being sought.
This is how P. de Courcelles understood this passage, which he translated in the Specimina as “primum ejus, quam quaerebam, Phil- osophiae, fundamentum,” that is to say, “the first foundation of the philosophy I was seeking” (AT, 558, 11. 27-28). But then, given this second reading, can we not identify here something akin to an echo of what Aristotle did not yet name metaphysics but some
times designated as a science that was being sought (f| em<Ttr||ir| f|
S,T|TOD|leVt
|)?13
We can now add a third argument to the first two: Metaphysics is identified in the Discourse by the implicit intention of a search as much as by explicit occurrences, since, beginning with Aristotle, the search for a metaphysics can precede the actual discovery of the word— which, indeed, only it will make possible.
Faced with these arguments— the occurrences of “metaphysics,”
the occurrences of “principle,” the allusion to the “ science that is being sought” — can we reasonably doubt the metaphysical status of the Discourse} Probably not, at least not absolutely, and this is perhaps why Alquie himself promptly abandons the more extreme formula
tion of his thesis. But it nevertheless remains possible, in spite of this, to defend a more flexible version of the nonmetaphysical character of the Discourse. In order to do so, still according to Alquie, we have only to distinguish between, on the one hand, a metaphysics that is perfectly elaborated with regard to the proofs of the existence of God and, on the other hand, the absence of a properly metaphysical expo
sition of the doubt or even of the cogito. In this final form of the question, a study of the metaphysical or nonmetaphysical character
of the Discourse amounts to examining the validity of each of these two theses.
3. The Imperfect Proof of the Existence of God
Does Part Four of the Discourse on the Method provide a perfect meta
physics with regard to the proofs of the existence of God? True, the Discourse develops two proofs of the existence of God. To begin with, as in Meditation III, the a posteriori proof appears in two versions, the first based on the “ idea of a being more perfect than my own”
(DM, 34,1. 13), which anticipates the proof by the idea Dei in general ^ (DM, 33, 1. 25 = A T VII, 40, 1. 5-45, 1. 18); the second based on dependence (DM, 3 4 ,11. 28-29), which heralds the proof by the ori
gin of the finite ego (DM, 3 4 ,1. 2 4 -3 5 ,1- 6 = A T VII, 4 6 ,1. 29-51, 1. 5). As in Meditation III, the a priori proof appears next: It examines the idea of God in relation to ideas pertaining to the “object studied by geometers” (DM, 36, 1. 5), and it concludes that the former, as opposed to the latter, necessarily implies existence (DM, 36, 11. 4 - 31 = AT VII, 6 5 ,1. 16 -6 9 ,1- 9)- Yet the Discourse does not provide, even as a sketch, anything equivalent to the third argument of 1641—
namely, the proof of the existence of God as causa sui (Replies, A T VII, 10 8 ,1. 7 - 1 1 2 , 1. n ; 1 1 8 ,1. 12 - 1 1 9 , 1. 26; 2 3 5 ,1. 15 -2 4 5 ,1. 24).
This is undoubtedly a significant exception to the so-called “ fully elaborated metaphysics” of the proofs of the existence of God of 1637. This is actually confirmed as soon as one lists the names attrib
uted to God in the Discourse or, rather, the concepts from which Descartes attempts to produce the existence of God. Their various occurrences lead in the end to two basic concepts.
(a) First, God is defined on the basis of perfection alone, which is simply increased to a maximum (or more often to hyperbole, with the use of a comparative). Thus God is defined as: “ some nature that was in fact more perfect” (DM, 34, 1. 1); “the idea of a being more perfect than my own” (DM, 34, 1. 13); “ a nature truly more perfect than I was and even possessing in itself all the perfections of which I could have any idea, that is . . . God” (DM, 34, 11. 20-24); “ the perfect being I participated in” (DM, 3 5 ,11. 1-2); “ all the perfections
(a) First, God is defined on the basis of perfection alone, which is simply increased to a maximum (or more often to hyperbole, with the use of a comparative). Thus God is defined as: “ some nature that was in fact more perfect” (DM, 34, 1. 1); “the idea of a being more perfect than my own” (DM, 34, 1. 13); “ a nature truly more perfect than I was and even possessing in itself all the perfections of which I could have any idea, that is . . . God” (DM, 34, 11. 20-24); “ the perfect being I participated in” (DM, 3 5 ,11. 1-2); “ all the perfections