Trace of Stoic logic in Descartes: Stoic axiōma and Descartes’s pronuntiatum in the Second Meditation

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 This paper uses the following abbreviations: AT: Œuvres de Descartes, eds. Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, nouvelle présentation, 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1964–1974). Conventional abbreviations, volume numbers (Roman numerals), and page numbers (Arabic numerals) are shown in this order. All emphases (Italics) in the quoted portions have been added by the author. Reference is made to the translation by Cotthingham, et al. (CSM[K]: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes) but some portions of these have been altered by the author.2 Marion, Sur la Théologie blanche de Descartes, 380–381; cf. Brown, Turning Points: Essays in the History of Cultural Expressions, 162.3 Rosenthal, ‘Will and the Theory of Judgment’, 422.4 According to Londey and Johanson, the word ‘propositio’ was established by Apuleius as a name for what is true or false; one can not find this specific usage in literature written prior to his work. See Londey and Johanson, The Logic of Apuleius, 35.5 Abelard, Dialectica, 153.6 Gracia, ‘Propositions as Premisses of Syllogisms in Medieval Logic’, 545.7 Gracia, ibid.8 The following study analyses in detail the distinction between the terms used for the cogito: Tamura, ‘Bringing an End to the Interpretative Dispute on Descartes’s Cogito: the Cogito as Vérité, Cognitio, Propositio, and Conclusio’, 38–48.9 Ramus used ‘propositio’ to name major premises of syllogisms and ‘axioma’, as well as ‘enuntiatio/enuntiatum’, to name propositions that do not constitute syllogisms. See Aho and Yrjönsuuri, ‘Late Medieval Logic’, 83; Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, 303.10 Fonseca’s Institutionum dialecticarum was used as a textbook of Logic in La Flèche. See Camille de Rochemonteix, Un Collège de jésuites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: le Collège Henri IV de La Flèche, 27. In addition, Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations is one of the few references that Descartes himself mentions by name (4ae Resp., AT-VII, 235). Furthermore, Descartes mentions the commentaries of the Coimbrans as a textbook of philosophy with which he was familiar: ‘[I beg you] to tell me which are the most commonly used, and whether they have any new ones since twenty years ago. I remember only some of the Coimbricenses […]’ (AT-III, 185; CSMK, 154). The commentaries are long, so it is impossible to ensure that Descartes read them all, but it is useful to understand how the Latin word ‘pronuntiatum’ was used at the time.11 However, in Fonseca’s Institutiones, ‘pronuntiatum’ is used only once in a way that could be considered a paraphrase of ‘enuntiatio’, as far as I have been able to ascertain: ‘This enuntiatio, “Socrates is not an animal”, […] contradicts the antecedent. […] this pronuntiatum, “Socrates is not a philosopher”, does not contradict the antecedent. ([…] haec enuntiatio, Socrates non est animal, […] repugnat Antecedenti. […] hoc pronunciatum, Socrates non est Philosophus, […] non repugnat Antecedenti.)’ (Fonseca, ‘Institutionum’, 102) Neverthless, we should still distinguish between the two because ‘pronuntiatum’, unlike ‘enuntiatio/propositio’, is never defined in his works and such usage is highly exceptional.12 In the original edition of the Meditations, unlike the AT edition, the sentence ‘I am, I exist (Ego sum, ego existo)’ is not in italics.13 Descartes explicitly denies in his Fourth Set of Replies that his cogito was borrowed from Augustine (whatever the fact is).14 As for Cicero’s Tusculun Disputations, we can estimate that Descartes almost certainly read it. One passage in Descartes’s letter to Elizabeth clearly relies on a passage in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. Descartes writes, ‘It is also true that the knowledge of the immortality of the soul and of the felicities of which it will be capable outside of this life, could give reasons to exit this life to those who are weary of it, if they were assured that they would enjoy all these felicities afterward. But no reason so assures them, and there is only the false philosophy of Hegesias, whose book was prohibited by Ptolemy and was the cause that many killed themselves after having read it, as it tried to argue that this life is evil. The true teaching, altogether on the contrary, is that even among the saddest accidents and the most pressing pains one can always be content, so long as one knows how to use one’s reason.’ (To Elizabeth, 1645, AT-IV, 304); Cicero writes in the Tusculan Disputations, ‘What does cause anguish, or rather torture, is the departure from all those things that are good in life. Take care it may not more truly be said, from all its evils! Why should I now bewail the life of man? I could do so with truth and justice. But what need is there, when my object is to avoid the thought that we shall be wretched after death, of rendering life still more wretched by lamentation? We have done this in the book in which we did our utmost to console ourselves. Death then withdraws us from evil, not from good, if truth is our object. Indeed this thought is discussed by Hegesias the Cyrenaic with such wealth of illustration that the story goes that he was stopped from lecturing on the subject by King Ptolemy, because a number of his listeners afterwards committed suicide.’ (Tusculan, I, 83) See Shapiro, The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, 121 [n. 86]. In addition, Descartes probably relied on Cicero’s Tusclan Disputations when he introduced in his letter to Huygens the city of Ephesus, in which it had been forbidden to excel; the same story can be found in it. See: AT-I, 388; Tusclans, V, 36. In addition, according to Menn, Descartes’s phrase ‘the mind may be led away from the senses (mentem a sensibus abducendam)’ (Med., AT-VII, 12) is based on Cicero’s phrase ‘it requires a powerful intellect to abstract the mind from the senses and separate thought from the force of habit (magni autem est ingenii sevocare mentem a sensibus et cogitationem ab consuetudine abducere)’ (Cicero, Tusculan, 45). Furthermore, when Descartes says, ‘Many people had previously said that in order to understand metaphysical matters the mind must be drawn away from the senses’ (2ae Resp., AT-VII, 131), he is referring to Cicero by ‘many people’; in fact, no one but Cicero had claimed this in the centuries before Descartes. See Menn, Descartes and Augustine, 223 [n. 17].15 Ritter and Gründer, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 1509–10.16 It is often claimed that Descartes did not read Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Floridi, for example, insists that Descartes probably never read the Outlines; if he had read it, he would have mentioned Chrysippus’s rational dog when he discussed animal rationality. See Floridi, ‘Scepticism and Animal Rationality’, 52. Fine, however, refutes him as follows: ‘It is true that he never mentions Sextus by name. But his failure to do so does not show that he had not read him: Descartes does not cite anyone very often; and he likes to present himself as someone who does not spend too much time reading. Sextus was certainly available, in both Greek and Latin.’ See Fine, ‘Descartes and Ancient Skepticism’, 195–234. What is more, ‘Chrysippus’s rational dog’ is also found in Montaigne’s Essays (Book II, Ch. 12: ‘Apology for Raymond Sebon’), which was Descartes’s favourite book, but if we take Floridi’s view, it follows that Descartes would not have read the Essays. In fact, there are several similarities in content between Descartes and Sextus: criticism of the syllogistic, criticism of definition, criticism of majority rule in the search for truth, establishment of guidelines for real-life (‘everyday observances’ in Sextus, ‘provisional moral code’ in Descartes), etc. See Curley, Descartes against the Skeptics, 27; Gaukroger, Cartesian Logic: an essay on Descartes’s conception of inference 11; Fine, ‘Descartes and Ancient Skepticism: Reheated Cabbage?’, sec. 6. Of course, the content similarities between the two are certainly circumstantial. However, in view of the fact that Sextus’s Outlines was quite widely circulated in Descartes’s time, and that Descartes himself writes that ‘I had seen many ancient writings by the Academics and Sceptics on this subject [= doubting all things, especially corporeal things]’ (2ae Resp., AT-VII, 130), it is highly probable that Descartes came into contact with Sextus’s Outlines.17 Cicero’s Academica was widely circulated from the 16th century onwards. As quoted in the immediately previous note, Descartes writes that ‘I had seen many ancient writings by the Academics and Sceptics’ (2ae. Resp., AT-VII, 130). In addition, according to Menn and Brown, Descartes’s deceiving God argument derives from Cicero’s Academica. On the influence of Cicero upon Descartes, see Menn, Descartes and Augustine, chap. 5, sec. B; and Brown, ‘Descartes and Content Skepticism’, 25–42.18 Alexander of Aphrodisiensis, Alexandri In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium, 177–178.19 Bobzien, ‘Stoic Logic’, 87.20 Descartes writes in the Preface to the French edition of the Principles, ‘[one] should study logic. I do not mean the logic of the Schools, for this is strictly speaking nothing but a dialectic which teaches ways of expounding to others what one already knows or even of holding forth without judgement about things one does not know’ (AT-VIII, 13).