For living is one thing and knowing is
another; and, as we shall see, perhaps there is such an opposition
between the two that we may say that everything vital is anti-rational,
not merely irrational, and that everything rational is anti-vital. And
this is the basis of the tragic sense of life.
The defect of Descartes' _Discourse of Method_ lies not in the
antecedent methodical doubt; not in his beginning by resolving to doubt
everything, a merely intellectual device; but in his resolution to begin
by emptying himself of himself, of Descartes, of the real man, the man
of flesh and bone, the man who does not want to die, in order that he
might be a mere thinker--that is, an abstraction. But the real man
returned and thrust himself into the philosophy.
"_Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagee_." Thus begins the
_Discourse of Method_, and this good sense saved him. He continues
talking about himself, about the man Descartes, telling us among other
things that he greatly esteemed eloquence and loved poetry; that he
delighted above all in mathematics because of the evidence and certainty
of its reasons, and that he revered our theology and claimed as much as
any to attain to heaven--_et pretendais autant qu'aucun autre a gagner
le ciel_. And this pretension--a very laudable one, I think, and above
all very natural--was what prevented him from deducing all the
consequences of his methodical doubt.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89