[NOTE: The translation from Portuguese into American English accomplished by DeepL.]
”Notas sobre o conceito de atenção em Descartes.” Revista de Filosofia do IFCH da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, v. 1, no. 2., jul./dez., 2017.1
“Notes on the Concept of Attention in Descartes”
by Lia Levy2 
Resumo: This article seeks to highlight the exegetical advantages of a broader study of the concept of attention in Descartes’ philosophy and to preliminarily advance some hypotheses about its meaning and function. More precisely, it suggests an approximation of the concepts of attention and time, so that the former would be defined—not as an incommunicable subjective experience, or as a quality of this experience—but in relation to the Cartesian concept of duration, both in its connection with the human mind and independently of this connection. Attention would not primarily designate a dispositional psychological state (which would dispose the mind to knowledge). On the contrary, the concept of attention could take on this derivative meaning only insofar as it is conceived as a certain configuration of the soul’s existence, which is properly a temporal duration.Keywords: Descartes; attention; clarity; thought; time; duration.
Abstract: This text aims to show the importance and the exegetical benefits of a study about the sense and the role of attention in Descartes’ philosophy. There will also be a preliminary suggestion on some hypothesis about this theme. I propose that attention means primarily, for Descartes, a configuration of the mind’s temporal duration and, therefore, a metaphysical notion and not just a psychological one. Keywords: Descartes; attention; knowledge; clarity; time; duration.
In his works, Descartes often uses the term ‘attention’ and its cognates not only in a broad, theoretically neutral sense, but also as if it could provide, in itself, essential clarification as to the precise meaning of some of the most fundamental concepts of his theory in the domain of theoretical philosophy and in the domain of practical philosophy. This usage, moreover, runs throughout his work, being found in both his earliest and latest texts, as well as in his correspondence, in which it is used in both French and Latin. On all these occasions, the philosopher appeals to attention as a key element for understanding central concepts: this is the case with the concepts of intuition in the Rules, clarity and distinction in the Principles and admiration in the Passions of the Soul. The same procedure occurs in the correspondence, where the term ‘attention’ is used by Descartes in his replies to requests for clarification and to objections on various topics, such as his theses on music,3 the problem of the supposed circularity of
1 Research carried out with the support of CNPq.
2 Professor of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)
3 Cf. among others, the Letter of September 1629 (AT I, 20), the Letter to Mersenne of October 8, 1629 (AT I, 26-27) and that of December 18, 1629 (AT I, 87).
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his foundation for science, the difference he proposes between the concepts of abstracting and excluding4—on which the argument in favor of dualism rests—and his conception of freedom.5
The difficulties arising from this resource were soon denounced by his first critics6, who criticized the overly subjective and imprecise nature of the notion as used by Descartes. They claimed that Descartes needed to provide another criterion, which did not involve a reference to “mere” attention, so that he could reliably discriminate between clear and distinct perceptions. If this criterion could not be provided, the rule that Descartes defends for recognizing truth could be nothing more than a psychological principle without any normative force in the foundation of science.
Now, although the term only occurs in the definition of ‘clarity’ in the text of the first part of the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes frequently uses the qualifier ‘attentively’ as a necessary condition for understanding his theses and arguments. Therefore, the criticism of lack of precision has repercussions in other objections; for example: (a) that Descartes would have committed a circle in the validation of his general rule7 ; (b) that he was unable to justify the real distinction between the soul and the body satisfactorily because he did not adequately distinguish the operation of abstraction from the operation of exclusion; (c) that his conceptions of freedom and evidence are incompatible with the possibility of correcting error, in the theoretical domain, and of controlling the passions, in the practical domain.
Descartes’ responses to Hobbes and Gassendi converge: he reiterates the reference to attention not only as a condition for understanding his theses and arguments, but as a characteristic, albeit transitory, state of the human mind, which is attested to by experience. However, he insists that it is necessary to distinguish between this state and his criterion of truth, claiming “to have done so exactly in its place, first by dispelling prejudices, then by explaining the main ideas, and finally by distinguishing those that are clear and distinct from those that are obscure and confusing.“8
Since then, the concept of attention has been an awkward topic—so to speak—for scholars of Cartesianism, although—and perhaps above all because—Descartes himself felt perfectly comfortable using it and did not recognize it as a threat to his project of justifying science and the objectivity of his general rule of truth. On the other hand, the contrast between the fact that Descartes uses the term without taking care to define it, and Malebranche’s explicit thematization of the notion of attention in arguments in which he distances himself from his Cartesianism, seems to ratify the hypothesis that attention is not a Cartesian theme, but rather
4 Cf. Letter to Gibieuf, January 19, 1642 (AT III, 475-476).
5 Cf. Letters to Mesland of May 2, 1644 AT IV, 110; 116-117).
6 Cf. Third Objections, formulated by T. Hobbes (AT VII, 191-192; IX, 149), the Fifth Objections, by Pierre Gassendi (AT VII, 278-279) and the criticisms addressed by Leibniz (Leibniz, 1844; L. Couturat, 1901, p.196, 202–3).
7 Cf. Second Objections formulated by Marin Mersenne, points 3 and 4 (AT VII, 124–26 and 140–46; IX, 98–100 and 110–15); the Fourth Objections authored by Antoine Arnauld (AT VII, 214; IX, 166) Letter to Regius of May 24, 1640 (AT III, 64–65); Conversation with Burman (AT V 148).
The objection known as the “Cartesian circle” actually refers to a family of objections made to Descartes by his contemporaries and taken up by his interpreters. On these different objections, see Jean-Marie Beyssade (1997).
8 Replies to the Fifth Objections, the first reply to what was objected against the Third Meditation (AT VII, 361–62). Cf. also the unfolding of this debate with Gassendi in the letter addressed to Descartes in July 1641 (no addressee, AT III, 402) and his reply in August of the same year (AT III, 426). See also Descartes’ reply to Hobbes: “It doesn’t matter whether or not this way of speaking, a great clarity, is appropriate for use in an argument, as long as it is appropriate for explaining our thinking clearly, which, in effect, it does. For there is no one who does not know that by this expression, clarity in understanding, is meant clarity or perspicuity in knowledge, so that all those who may not have it, think they have it. But this does not prevent it from being no different from an obstinate opinion, which has been conceived without evident perception” (AT IX, 149–50; emphasis added).
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only malebranchism.9
In his article published in 1943, Alan Gewirth tries to defend the Cartesian position from such criticism, without, however, trying to clarify the very notion of attention; this suggests, at least, that he conceives the vocabulary employed by Descartes as inappropriate. The same direction is taken by Martial Gueroult (1968), Raul Landim (1992) and many other interpreters of Cartesianism, in such a way that it can be said that there is practically a consensus10 that recourse to attention makes acceptance of the normative character of the rule of clarity and distinction problematic, insofar as it rests, after all, on an individual, internal and incommunicable experience. Harry G. Frankfurt’s words illustrate this assessment, which is the same as that of the first critics of the Cartesian position:
(…) perceiving a proposition clearly and distinctly does, of course, involve understanding it and paying careful attention to its meaning. There must be more to clear and distinct perception than this, however, if Descartes’ ascription of truth to what is clearly and distinctly perceived is to make any sense. It would certainly be an error to foist upon him the extraordinary claim that the truth of a proposition may be inferred from the fact that someone understands it. Moreover, while clear and distinct perception does involve a direct apprehension of something by the understanding, it is not correct to construe the perception simply as a matter of an immediate experience. To do so is to reduce Descartes’ doctrine to a crudely implausible psychological theory of truth, and to ignore the essentially logical import of his conception of evidence (Frankfurt, 2008, 180–81; my emphasis).
On the other hand, there are authors who, out of exegetical principles, are willing to pay the price they consider necessary to preserve the letter of the text and defend a “psychologizing” reading of Descartes’ theory of knowledge.11 From this perspective, the metaphysical project of “finding something firm and constant in the sciences”, according to the words that open the Meditations, is interpreted as devoid of any sense of juris, taking the form of a project to naturalize the fundamental concepts of epistemology, which would therefore belong exclusively to the register of facts. And this was not because Descartes had failed in his attempt, but because he understood that this should be the case. According to this reading, Cartesian philosophy is part of a broader project to naturalize knowledge that began in the 16th century, of which Kant would be its first critic.
I intend to return to this debate here, but only to start working on a hypothesis about the meaning of the Cartesian notion of attention that is compatible with the thesis that the Cartesian rule for recognizing truth—the rule of clarity and distinction—has objective and, above all, normative value. If this is possible, then the definitions of these concepts exactly
9 Cf. Pierre Blanchard (1956) and D. Brown (2012). The centrality of the concept of attention in Male-Branche’s philosophy, for whom attention is the “occasion of truth”, would rather be associated with the influence of Augustinian thought on Oratorian thought.
10 With the important exceptions of the interpretations of Jean Laporte (1945), Jean-Marie Beyssade (1979) and, more recently, those of Michael Della Rocca (2005). For an overview of more recent interpretations of the Cartesian concepts of clarity and distinction, see Della Rocca’s article, as well as Denis Kambouchner (2006) and Sarah Patterson (2008). For an excellent evaluation of Laporte’s proposal (cf. Henri Gouhier, 1961).
11 Cf. Charles Lamore (1984) and Tom Sorell (2000). The same can be said of those who, like Willis Doney (1955) and Ulysses Pinheiro (1999), consider that the solution to the objection of the circle consists in placing metaphysical doubt on the reliability of memory. On the other hand, it is worth highlighting Ethel Rocha’s (2013) reading, which cannot be properly aligned with these approaches, but which comes close to them by emphasizing the role of attention in distinguishing between mere words (verbiage) and understanding, thus minimizing its role in the criterion for recognizing the truth.
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are offered by Descartes in article 45 of the first part of the Principles of Philosophy can be considered acceptable12. The hypothesis to be explored is that the precise meaning of this notion emerges when the temporal dimension of the Cartesian formulation of the problem of the search for a foundation for science is emphasized, thus following the path opened up by Jean-Marie Beyssade’s interpretation in his book La philosophie première de Descartes (1979).13 To begin examining this hypothesis, I propose reflecting on certain preliminary concepts and theses that need to be considered.
(1) The first point to be mentioned is methodological and exegetical; it organizes the considerations made in this text from the outset. The work of interpreting Descartes’ work is guided here by the search for its peculiarity in the context of the history of philosophy. This means looking, as far as possible, for the elements that define his philosophical project as opposed to those he shares with his predecessors and contemporaries. It also means looking for this peculiarity in relation to the doctrines that, for different reasons, are considered to be in continuity with his philosophy and therefore part of his legacy. Now, it seems reasonably clear to me that the Cartesian conception of attention is part of a doctrine that can be read as a rational psychology that makes up natural philosophy if compared to the philosophy of his contemporaries14, or as a psychology that makes up the metaphysics of knowledge if compared to the philosophy of his predecessors (Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, for example).15 These two readings, however, do not allow us to understand what is peculiar about the way in which Descartes understands the scope of metaphysics in the task of founding science. On the other hand, emphasizing the foundationalist purpose in exclusively epistemological terms, in order to bring it closer to the Kantian critical project,16 seems equally inadequate to me. In doing so, another important aspect of this peculiarity is overlooked: unlike Kant, Descartes believes that the “critical task,” if we want to call it that, can and should be carried out by metaphysics as a special type of knowledge, that is, science.
(2) If we keep this effort in mind, we can better understand the distinction between two problems whose answers involve the notion of attention—and both of which are to be found in Descartes’ philosophy.
On the one hand, Descartes seeks to explain attention “en physicien”,17 that is, as a phenomenon proper to the human being as the substantial union of a body and a mind, which are really distinct from each other. The examination of these explanations leads to what, in Cartesian philosophy, refers to the confluence of three orders of considerations: (a) his metaphysics (by involving his conceptions of
12 It should be noted that this is also the explicit aim of Michael Della Rocca’s article (2005), and although his arguments also emphasize, as I intend, the temporal aspect of Cartesian analysis, they will not be considered here. However, due to their quality and ingenuity, these arguments should be examined in a future text.
13 The reading proposed by Pierre Guenancia (1998), although very different, is close to the approach to be adopted here in that it also gives time a central role in the Cartesian project.
14 I am thinking here of Bernard Williams’ (1978) reading, but also of some other interpretations, which will be mentioned later.
15 Étienne Gilson’s (1950) interpretation inaugurated this approach, which has become the research agenda that has guided an important part of recent Anglo-Saxon studies of Descartes’ works. Cf. among many others, Marleen Rozemond (1998); Jorge E. Secada (2000), John Carriero (2009). In Brazil, Ethel Rocha’s research has yielded valuable results in this discussion. In France, the initial works of Jean-Luc Marion (1981, 1993) adopted this perspective, but his later works gradually moved away from it towards a more personal interpretation, closer to the agenda of phenomenology.
16 I am thinking in particular here of the influential interpretation of Martial Gueroult (1968) and, to a certain extent, the readings of Edwin Curley (1978) and Harry G. Frankfurt (1970; 2008).
17 The Passions of the Soul (AT IX, 326).
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Substantial dualism and substantial union for the explanation of human nature), (b) his physics (more precisely, his optics and his theory of sensible perception insofar as it depends on the body); (c) his “physiology” (or again, his theory of the possible relations between the human body and the human mind). The most important texts to examine here are the Sixth Meditation, the first and fourth parts of the Principles of Philosophy, the Treatise on the World, the Treatise on Man, the fifth part of the Discourse on Method, the Dioptrics, the Passions of the Soul and the Compendium of Music.18 Such an examination has been taken up more recently, as it is an important stage in the (pre-)history of contemporary psychology, neurophysiology and philosophy of mind.
On the other hand, Descartes employs this notion in several passages of his metaphysics as part of the central arguments for his proposal for the foundation of science. In this case, the central texts to be examined are: the Metaphysical Meditations, but in particular the second, third and fourth; the Objections and Replies that accompany the Meditations (including those discussed in correspondence, but which were not published together with the work), the first part of the Principles of Philosophy, the Rules for the Direction of the Spirit, the fourth part of the Discourse on Method, the Search for Truth and the Conversation with Burman. In these circumstances, Descartes never defines it or treats it as an object of reflection; rather, he uses it as if it were a notion shared with his reader. It is true that the same could be said about the way Descartes uses the notion of truth and others of equal importance to his philosophy, were it not for the fact that he explicitly lists them as part of our innate conceptual arsenal. These concepts dispense with, and even resist, any attempt at definition, since they are a condition for the possibility of other concepts (AT IX, 225–26; AT II, 596–98). However, this is not the case with the notion of attention, which suggests that he assumes that his reader knows what he is referring to simply because of the contingent fact that the term belongs to the philosophical vocabulary of the time.
In this respect, it should be noted that the notion of attention had in fact been circulating in philosophical debate for a long time. If the need to introduce such a notion can be traced back to Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, particularly with regard to the treatment of the phenomenon of the selectivity of sensible perception,19 the intense debate on the concept of species (Pasnau, 1997), which took place at the end of the Middle Ages, put attention back on the agenda as a necessary condition of sensible cognition for some, and sensible and intelligible for others.20 In this sense, readers of Descartes who had some knowledge of the theories involved in this debate would not be surprised by the appeal to the notion of attention as a condition of cognition. Even so, as required by the methodological principle stated in (1), it is necessary to ask whether the notion of attention, as explained by Descartes, can perform the functions he attributes to it in his proposal for the foundation of science. In other words, even if the notion of attention already had its meaning assured as a technical term in the philosophical vocabulary of the period, it is necessary to investigate what meaning it receives in Descartes’ theory of knowledge and whether this meaning is compatible with its use in arguments aimed at establishing the normative value of this theory. First, however, we need to answer with what right we make this demand. We can identify two types of use of the notion of attention. In some texts, it is used spontaneously by Descartes when writing his doctrines; in others, it occurs as
18 See also the Letters to Mersenne of 1629, October 8 (AT, 27) and December 18 (AT, 87). On this aspect of the Cartesian treatment of attention, cf. Gary Hatfield (1995), Deborah Brown (2007), Cees Leijenhorst (2008).
19 Cf. Cees Leijenhorst (2008) and P. Corkum (2010).
20 In his book, in chapter 4 (125-160), Robert Pasnau (1997) discusses the positions of Thomas Aquinas, Petrus Joannis Olivi, Scotus and Ockham. Cf. also on the role of attention in Augustine, Deborah Brown (2007), 2012, and in Thomas Aquinas, Jean Laporte (1931-1934).
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in response to certain objections made to her, it seems to be used to indicate what was lacking for the interlocutor to correctly understand her theses and arguments. In both cases, however, these uses suggest that the notion is an integral part of the Cartesian explanation of these issues, being associated with the central conceptual and argumentative framework of Cartesian metaphysics and its project for the foundation of science. In fact, the notion of attention is used explicitly in the definition of the following concepts: intuition and deduction in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind,21 and clarity and distinction in the Principles of Philosophy.22 It characterizes at least one, if not the main, of the fundamental aspects of the intellectual act for Descartes, appearing both in one of his first definitions (1619) and in his later definition (1644). If the term ‘intuition’ seems to have been abandoned along with the project of the Rules, the same cannot be said of the function of attention as a distinctive element of this act, which places it, along with the notion of representation, at the center of the Cartesian conception of the nature of the mental act whose objective validity is in question and must be justified. This attitude is in perfect agreement with other contexts in which, when pressed by his interlocutors as to the validity of his arguments, Descartes responds by resorting to the notion of attention. Among the many passages23 in which it is possible to identify this procedure, I will highlight one, from the Conversation with Burman, which leaves no doubt as to the importance of the notion of attention for Cartesian philosophy. The objection to Descartes that he responds to is one of the versions of what has become known as the “problem of the Cartesian circle”, that is, the problem that strikes at the heart of his entire project: the justification of the validity (read normative value) of the general rule of clarity and distinction as a criterion for recognizing truth.
[Burman] There seems to be a circle, because in the Third Meditation the author uses axioms to prove the existence of God, although he is still not sure that he is not mistaken about them.
[Descartes] He does use such axioms in the proof, but he knows that he is not mistaken about them because he is attentive to them [quoniam ad ea attendit]. And as long as he pays attention to them [quamdiu autem id facit], he is certain that he is not being deceived and is compelled to give his assent to them (AT V 148; my emphasis).
[Descartes] If we don’t know that all truth has its origin in God, then no matter how clear our ideas are, we won’t know whether they are true or whether we are wrong. I say this, of course, while we are not paying attention to them [cum ad eas non adverteremus] and are merely remembering that we perceive them clearly and distinctly. For at other times, when we are paying attention to the truths themselves [quando ad ipsas veritates advertimus], even if we don’t know that God exists, we cannot have any doubt about it. Otherwise, we could not prove that God exists. (AT V 178; my emphasis)
21 Rule III: “By intuition I mean not the floating conviction provided by the senses or the misleading judgment of an imagination of inadequate compositions, but the concept of the pure and attentive mind [purae & attentae] so easy and distinct that no doubt remains to us about what we understand; or else, what is the same thing, the concept of the pure and attentive mind [purae & attentae], without possible doubt, which arises only from the light of reason” (AT X, 368).
22 Part One, article 45: “And [there are] even very many men [who] in their entire lives never perceive anything in a sufficiently correct way to form a certain judgment about it. Indeed, a perception on which a certain and indubitable judgment can be based requires not only that it be clear, but also that it be distinct. Clear I call that which is manifestly present to an attentive mind [quae menti attendenti praesens & aperta est], just as we say that those [things] are clearly seen by us which, being present to a seeing eye, move it in a sufficiently strong and manifest manner. What is distinct, however, is that which, in addition to being clear, is so precisely separated from the others that it contains absolutely nothing else in itself that is clear.” (AT VIII, 21-22)
23 Cf. Answers to the Fourth Objections (AT IX 325-326), to the Seventh Objections (AT VII, 460), Letter to Launay of July 22, 1641 (AT III, 420), Letter to Gibieuf of January 19, 1642 (AT III, 475-476), Letter to Mesland of May 1644 (AT IV, 116-117), Letter to Elizabeth of September 15, 1645 (AT IV, 295).
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[NOTE: The following three passages by Burman and Descartes are also repeateded in the original article.]
[Burman] There seems to be a circle, because in the Third Meditation the author uses axioms to prove the existence of God, although he is still not sure that he is not mistaken about them.
[Descartes] He does use such axioms in the proof, but he knows that he is not mistaken about them because he is attentive to them [quoniam ad ea attendit]. And as long as he pays attention to them [quamdiu autem id facit], he is certain that he is not being deceived and is compelled to give his assent to them (AT V 148; my emphasis).
[Descartes] If we don’t know that all truth has its origin in God, then no matter how clear our ideas are, we won’t know whether they are true or whether we are wrong. I say this, of course, while we are not paying attention to them [cum ad eas non adverteremus] and are merely remembering that we perceive them clearly and distinctly. For, on other occasions, when we are paying attention to the truths themselves [quando ad ipsas veritates advertimus], even if we don’t know that God exists, we cannot have any doubt about him. Otherwise, we could not prove that God exists (AT V 178; my glyphs).
This passage is clear enough to mark the centrality of the notion of attention—even when it occurs only in Descartes’ answers—with regard to his foundationalist project. I don’t intend to go into it here, because its analysis would raise questions about the reliability of this text, which was not written by Descartes24 and would require us to add to our initial problem the treatment of another difficult problem in Cartesian philosophy. It is enough to note that the position attributed to Descartes in the passage is the same one he defends both in the Third Meditation (AT VII, 36; IX-1, 28) and in his correspondence.25 It illustrates the broadening of the conceptual and argumentative framework surrounding the notion of attention and, together with the set of analogous texts, shows that its clarification does not only involve the study of concepts linked to epistemological problems solved by a metaphysics of knowledge (in a non-Cartesian sense) or by a naturalized psychology, but to the heart of the project of Cartesian metaphysics to “find something firm and constant in the sciences”.
(3) Having said this, the problem that now arises is to try to delineate, from the point of view of the concept of attention, the equivalent of this metaphysical proposal which, placing itself at the base of physical knowledge (its “root”), has the function of describing knowledge as the exclusive fruit of understanding as a faculty proper to human nature, natural light, as well as claiming for this naturalistic theory a normative value that can ensure the title of science to what is produced according to its standards. Thus, clarity and distinction should not just be characteristics of the intellective act discovered through analysis. And Descartes’ oft-stated thesis about evidence, that we cannot but assent to a clear and distinct perception, should not be considered simply the recognition of a characteristic of our nature. These are indeed facts about our understanding, discovered in the course of metaphysical investigation, but which can only be taken as objects of metaphysics if they can somehow become norms26 and thus provide elements for the foundation of science.
24 On this subject, I refer to the text by J.-M. Beyssade which serves as an introduction to the edition of this work (1981).
25 Letter to Regius of May 24, 1640 (AT III, 64–65).
26 For an analogous approach, but focused on the meaning and function of the first certainty discovered in the Second Meditation, cf. Michelle Beyssade (1993).
53 Modern & Contemporary, Campinas, v. 1, n. 2, jul./dez., 2017. Lia Levy
On this point, I actually intend to do more than develop certain elements, contained in arguments already put forward by some commentators, which seem to me to be essentially correct and sufficient to resolve the issue. My only contribution would be to underline the relationship between Descartes’ use of the notion of attention and the theses defended by these interpretations.
As has already been emphasized by Alan Gewirth (1943) and Yvon Belaval (1960), there is at least one point on which Leibniz’s objection to the criterion of clarity and distinction cannot be answered by Descartes in terms that satisfy his objector. For Descartes, the criterion for recognizing truth, whatever it may be, cannot be an algorithm, a set of procedures that can be operated automatically by a machine devoid of a soul, as the German philosopher wanted. For Descartes, the clarity and distinction of perceptions is based, in one way or another, on a “psychological discipline” (Gewirth, 1943, p. 18). This means that the criterion proposed by Descartes for distinguishing the true from the false is based on an activity of the mind, freely determined by its will, through which it examines the perceptions of objects with method.27 Contrary to Leibniz, it is not possible to conclude anything certain solely by virtue of form and without due attention and evidence.28
It does not follow, however, that the criterion provided by Descartes is entirely resistant to any logical consideration (Gewirth, 1943, p. 19) and is reduced to a strictly psychological state about which only the empirical subject can testify, and therefore cannot be validated in an intersubjective context. In search of this balance between the Leibnizian extreme of formal reasoning expressed in the desideratum of a characteristica universalis and the extreme of exclusively subjective and, by definition, non-sharable sensation, Descartes specialists have come up with the most different and interesting proposals.29 Among them, those that preserve the reference to attention are only those that interpret Cartesian philosophy as devoid of any normative pretension. On the other hand, those who favor this claim leave aside any attempt to include the notion of attention, generally favoring the concept of distinction over that of clarity.
It is interesting to note that this movement of commentators, in its own way, retraces the similar movement of those who, in the 17th century, reclaimed the Cartesian heritage. Thus, for example, Malebranche will highlight the concept of clarity and its relationship with the notion of attention as opposed to that of distinction, while Arnauld, in chapter 9 of Logic or the Art of Thinking, does exactly the opposite, practically reducing the concept of clarity to that of distinction.
What I propose, then, is to try to find this balance by preserving both the foundationalist aspect of Cartesian metaphysics and the reference to attention not only in the definition of clarity, but also in the passages in which Descartes uses it. To this end, I think that Jean-Marie Beyssade’s interpretation in his 1979 book may provide the key to this
27 Cf. AT VII, 362, and also: A. Gewirth (1943); J. M. Humber, (1981); E. Curley, 1986: ” . . . the essential task of the analytic method is […] to turn the unclear and indistinct ideas of common sense into clear and distinct ideas Descartes needs to make his argument demonstrative” (p. 157).
28 Rules X, AT X, 405–06.
29 For example, A. Gewirth suggests that the idea of x is minimally clear if it contains the property that constitutes the nature and essence of x, and minimally distinct if it does not contain anything that is contradictory to the essence of x; this would become all the clearer if more attributes are added to them that are necessarily connected to the nature of x. This idea would also become more distinct since “the richer the content, the more it is distinct from other ideas” (quoted by Sarah Patterson 2008, p. 219). According to Curley (1986): ” . . . having a clear and distinct idea of a thing, or of a kind of thing […] is a matter of recognizing that there are certain properties we cannot but ascribe to a thing of that kind (clarity) and others which we are not at all compelled to ascribe to it (distinctness)” (p. 170).
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problem, as well as offering an excellent candidate for the peculiarity of Cartesian philosophy, which distinguishes it from its predecessors, contemporaries and successors. In fact, his reading presents the Cartesian project for the foundation of science as the establishment of the “time of science”, homogeneous and vectorial, through its differentiation from the “natural time of the spirit,” to which the rhythm of attention and distraction belongs (p. 5). This proposal deserves a longer and more detailed discussion than I can present in this communication; but this brief characterization is enough to formulate, albeit imperfectly, the hypothesis that I intend to develop in later studies and of which I present a first formulation below.
Firstly, I suppose that the rhythm of attention and distraction is not just a stylistic and literary resource used by Descartes in the Metaphysical Meditations, but constitutes the starting point of the conceptual construction of the problem of ensuring the objective and normative validity of the rule of truth and, therefore, of the metaphysical problem in its own sense. To this end, the notion of attention (and, consequently, distraction) would be defined not as an incommunicable subjective experience, or as a quality of this experience, but in relation to the Cartesian concept of duration, both in its connection with the human mind and independently of this connection. It would not primarily designate a dispositional psychological state (which would dispose the mind to knowledge). On the contrary, the concept of attention could take on this derivative meaning insofar as it is conceived primarily as a certain configuration of the soul’s existence, which is properly a temporal duration. In this sense, attention would be a modification of the duration of the mind taken as a flow of thoughts. This modification reduces or contains this flow, concentrating it into a unity which, even if it contains a plurality of thought objects, whether or not they refer to the present, makes them present concomitantly to the soul in the form of the now. And it would be for this reason that the concept of attention could be used in metaphysics as a condition of possibility for the act of knowing an object as such, that is, as a unity that remains, to which—in principle—more than one property can be referred, and which can be recognized.
However, it is necessary to investigate to what extent it is correct to say that, in Descartes, time and duration, in relation to which attention, as a movement of thought, must be considered, it is also necessary to account for the reflective element that more often than not covers attention.
This is undoubtedly about recovering, at least to some extent, the Augustinian treatment of attention and time,30 but not necessarily in opposition to the Thomist treatment. In fact, this hypothesis brings the Cartesian concept of attention closer to the Augustinian concept of intentio as an integral part of distentio animi, which would itself be what characterizes temporality.
On the other hand, as Jean Laporte masterfully showed in three articles published from 1931 to 1934, attention occupies a central position in the Thomist explanation of the role of the will in controlling the passions, but also in the process of knowledge. Thus, in Thomas, as in Descartes, and not only in Malebranche, attention is not a mark of the passivity of the understanding, but is based on the activity of our mind as naturally composed of will and understanding (Jean Laporte, 1945). As the occurrences of the term in Descartes’ work show, it is possible to say that attention can be the result of both exogenous and endogenous factors. Our attention can either be captured by external causes, including our own body, or directed by our will in the pursuit of truth and happiness.
However, a conceptual effort is needed to identify, as our precept
30 Deborah Brown (2007) demands: “Although Descartes and Augustine thus have different accounts of how attention is oriented, their views converge on a number of central points” (p. 174).
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methodological, what is properly Cartesian about this notion. And that requires more than I can offer at the moment.
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