Sum Res Volans:
The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
Andreea Mihali
ABSTRACT: This paper challenges the standard interpretation of Descartes’s view that
the essence of the mind is thinking. Most commentators take the essence of the mind to be
constituted by thoughts as objects of awareness. By contrast, the position defended here is
that willing is as much part of the essence of the Cartesian meditating mind as awareness.
Willing is not just a type of thought, but whenever thinking occurs it invariably involves both
awareness and willing. To substantiate the claim that Descartes could not separate willing
from the one meditating, the paper examines the role of the will at all the key junctures of
the Meditations: the cogito, the clarity and distinctness of some of our ideas, the arguments
for God’s existence, and the propensity to believe that our ideas of sensible things come
from those things.
I
n Meditation II Descartes identifies “thought” as inseparable from the
one meditating:
Thinking? At last I have discovered it—thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am,
I exist—that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. . . . I am, then, in
the strict sense only a thing that thinks.1
Within the context of the Meditations the certainty that thought constitutes the
essence of the mind is not obtained until Meditation VI. There, due to the divine
guarantee, “simply by knowing that I exist and seeing at the same time that absolutely
nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I can
infer correctly that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing.”2
Most commentators,3 following Descartes himself, take this to mean that the essence of the mind is constituted by thoughts as objects of awareness.4 In this paper
1
AT VII, 27; CSM II, 18. All citations from Descartes in this paper are from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols., ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny
(Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985–1991). Parenthetical references to Descartes’s works use
the following abbreviations:
AT: Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes, 2nd ed., 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin/
C.N.R.S., 1974–86).
CSM: John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans., The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, 2 vols. (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985).
CSMK: John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, trans., The
Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991).
2
AT VII, 78; CSM II, 54.
3
Representative of this view is Anthony Kenny, Descartes (New York NY: Random House, 1968).
4
In the Geometrical Exposition, Descartes explicates “thought” through the notion of awareness: “Thought.
I use this term to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it. Thus
International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 51, No. 2, Issue 202 (June 2011)
150Andreea Mihali
I argue that willing is as much part of the essence of the Cartesian meditating mind
as awareness, for willing is not just a type of thought. Whenever thinking occurs,
it invariably involves both awareness and willing.5 The one meditating is as much
a res volans as a res cogitans.
This paper will have seven sections. The first contains a brief analysis of Descartes’s
concepts of essence and awareness. The next five sections show that willing pertains
to the essence of the mind to the extent that Descartes and those who want to follow him are engaged in Cartesian meditation. The cogito, clarity and distinctness,
the arguments for the existence of God, the arguments for the existence of material
things, and the light of nature viewed as instinct can be seen to depend on the will.
The final section extends the scope of the discussion to include the ordinary person
and provides concluding remarks.
Descartes establishes what belongs to the essence of a thing by determining what is inseparable from that thing, what that thing cannot exist without,
the elimination of which would change the thing beyond all recognition. The
procedure used to find out what pertains to the meditator’s essence consists of
eliminating features of himself such as the characteristics that he previously took
to pertain to the nature of a body; these are followed by nutrition, movement and
sense perception, which are body dependent.6 He finds it impossible to eliminate
thinking from himself, and so he concludes that thinking pertains to his essence.7
In Meditation VI Descartes seems to continue this process of elimination by excluding imagination and sense perception from the meditator’s essence. Although
they are thoughts, they are body-dependent thoughts.8 In this paper this process
of elimination is continued on Descartes’s behalf by inquiring whether it is possible to leave out the will as well. Could Descartes achieve any of the things he
all the operations of the will, the intellect, the imagination and the senses are thoughts” (AT VII, 160; CSM
II, 113).
5
For insightful analyses of Descartes’s arguments that the essence of the mind is thinking, see Norman
Malcolm, “Descartes’s Proof that his Essence is Thinking,” The Philosophical Review 74 no. 3 (1965):
315–38; Stephen Schiffer, “Descartes on His Essence,” The Philosophical Review 85 no. 1 (1976): 21–43;
and John Carriero, “The Second Meditation and the Essence of the Mind” in Essays on Descartes’s Meditations, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley CA: Univ. of California Press, 1986), pp. 199–223. None
of these authors draws the connection that I am focusing on in this paper between willing and the essence
of the Cartesian mind.
6
After the cogito, the meditator attempts to get a better grasp of the “I . . . that necessarily exists” (AT
VII, 25; CSM II, 17). He accomplishes this by reviewing what he previously believed himself to be. It is
in this context that nutrition, movement, and sense perception are set aside as not inseparable from the I
(AT VII, 27; CSM II, 18). However, just a few paragraphs later in Meditation II, sense perception is given
a much narrower meaning (seeming to see, hear; AT VII, 29; CSM II, 19). Taken in this way, sense perception qualifies as thinking and might pertain to the essence of the mind. This will be shown not to be the
case in Meditation VI.
7
AT VII, 27; CSM II, 18. Descartes does not use the term “essence” to refer to what is inseparable from
the meditator until Meditation VI.
8
Descartes first eliminates imagination: the power of imagining that “is not a necessary constituent of
my own essence, that is, of the essence of my mind” (AT VII, 73; CSM II, 51). Then he lumps together
imagination and sensory perception: “Now I can clearly and distinctly understand myself as a whole without
these faculties; but I cannot conversely understand these faculties without me, that is without an intellectual
substance to inhere in” (AT VII, 78; CSM II, 54).
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
151
does in the Meditations without a will? Is it even possible to conceive an act of
thought with no volitional aspect?9
This paper contends that Descartes could not separate willing from the one
meditating. To substantiate this claim, it investigates the role of the will at all the
key junctures of the Meditations: the cogito, the clarity and distinctness of some of
our ideas, the arguments for God’s existence, and the propensity to believe that our
ideas of sensible things come from those things. Then the normative underpinnings
of all these key aspects of the Meditations are uncovered: the mind’s inclination
towards the true and the good is interpreted as the volitional aspect of the light of
nature, which in turn contains the laws of all thinking.
The goal of Descartes’s Meditations is to establish science on certain and unshakeable foundations. The first item known with certainty is the cogito; from the
cogito Descartes extracts the clarity and distinctness rule that in turn derives its
viability from the divine guarantee. Only because God exists and is not a deceiver
is it possible to trust that our clear and distinct ideas map the world. God has also
endowed us with a propensity to conclude from our ideas of sensible things to the
existence of those things in the external world. More generally, God has given us
an innate bias towards the true and the good. All these crucial points of the Meditations involve the will.
By bringing to light the pivotal role of the will in the economy of the Meditations the position defended in this paper comes close to Peter Schouls’s approach in
Human Nature, Reason, and the Will in the Argument of Descartes’s Meditations.10
Schouls emphasizes the primacy of the will (as active) over reason (as passive) in
the Meditations by interpreting the introduction of the evil genius, the attention
necessary for the cogito, the determination of imagination to propose hypotheses,
and the suspension of judgment as acts of will. The goals of the two approaches,
however, are very different. Schouls’s intention is to show that the scope of doubt
in Meditation I is due to Descartes’s views of human nature as involving both intellectual and volitional aspects. According to Schouls these Cartesian views of human
nature come from Descartes’s pre-doubt period and are validated through doubt.11
By eliminating imagination and sense perception from the long list of types of thought mentioned in
Meditation II after the cogito, Descartes is left with pure thought and with willing. It is not trivial to argue
that willing pertains to the essence of the Cartesian mind because it does not follow from the argument
presented in Meditation II that the essence of the mind is thinking that any of the types of thought listed
pertains to the essence of the mind. What pertains to the essence of the mind must pertain to it necessarily
i.e., occur all the time: for every single moment of our existence a thought must be going on. But it does not
follow from this that a pure thought must be going on. (This would be too strong a condition especially at
the beginning of Meditation II where the mind is not yet fully versed in the rigorous discipline of meditating and turning away from the senses completely.) Even in Meditation VI, to say that a pure thought must
be occurring at every single moment of our life (including while we dream) seems too strong. However, I
still want to argue that at every moment of our existence willing is occurring. This is my thesis. A problem
immediately seems to arise for my thesis: what does the will do while we dream? As Descartes does not
rule out the possibility of clearly and distinctly perceiving things while we dream, maybe the will is capable
of assent while in a dreaming state.
10
Peter Schouls, “Human Nature, Reason, and the Will in the Argument of Descartes’s Meditations” in
Reason, Will and Sensation, ed. John Cottingham (Oxford UK: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 175.
11
Schouls, “Human Nature, Reason, and the Will,” p. 164.
9
152Andreea Mihali
The purpose of this paper is to argue explicitly for the will as part of the essence of
the Cartesian soul by continuing on Descartes’s behalf the process of elimination that
led him to conclude that thinking was inseparable from himself qua meditator. Unlike
Schouls, this author makes no claims as to whether Descartes possesses a pre-doubt
conception of human essence that is subjected to doubt and emerges unscathed.
Having shown that the will pertains to the essence of the Cartesian mind qua
meditator, the scope of the argument will be broadened to the will’s pertaining to the
essence of the mind as such. The ordinary person both in the pre- and the post-doubt
case is examined. The pre-doubt ordinary person, as described in Meditation VI12
and in the Principles13 is an Aristotelian of sorts, trusting the evidence of the senses
and believing that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses. The
post-doubt person has internalized the procedures put forth in the Meditations and
thus spontaneously applies the clarity and distinctness rule. In both these cases, the
will is prominent as assent, as focus, and as attention. Assent is paramount in such
circumstances, for a disengaged attitude is difficult to attain; most of the time, we
automatically take a stand, and thus all thought has a volitional side. The pre-and
post-doubt person has desires that he acts on and also has the experience of acting
deliberately; voluntary action is a sign of the will. Therefore, the ordinary person’s
mental life includes the will as an essential aspect. But we must begin by coming to
recognize the Cartesian inquiring mind as essentially a thinking and willing thing.
1. Descartes’s concepts of essence and awareness
Since the terms “essence” and “awareness” play a key role in coming to see that
willing pertains to the essence of the Cartesian mind alongside awareness, it is important to get a clear understanding of Descartes’s use of these concepts.
Regarding “essence,” Descartes tells Arnauld in the Fourth Set of Replies: “If
something can exist without some attribute, then it seems to me that this attribute
is not included in its essence.”14 Thus the meditator cannot exist without thinking,
for thinking is included in his essence, as we see from Meditation VI. Descartes/the
meditator cannot exist without thinking. For every single moment of his existence
there has to be at least one thought occurring in his mind.15 To argue that willing
pertains to the essence of the mind is tantamount to maintaining that at every moment of the meditator’s existence there is something volitional going on in his mind.
In Meditation II Descartes states: “But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What
is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling,
and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.”16 It does not follow from this list of
mental operations that willing pertains to the essence of the mind. This passage only
points out that we possess a faculty of willing as well as faculties of understanding,
AT VII, 74–76; CSM II, 51–53.
AT VIIIA, 35–36; CSM I, 218–19.
14
AT VII, 219; CSM II, 155.
15
For a detailed treatment of Descartes’s views on essence, see Schiffer, “Descartes on His Essence,”
pp. 21–26.
16
AT VII, 28; CSM II, 19.
12
13
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
153
imagining, and sense perception, faculties that we actualize from time to time. This
paper makes the stronger claim that willing is always going on: willing and thinking
are coextensive with meditating in the Cartesian sense.
A consequence of this argument is recognizing “thought”17 as an object of immediate awareness that is internal to us and has a volitional aspect. This volitional
aspect may manifest itself as completed, potential, or required. Completed volitional
aspects are exemplified by acts of assent. Volitional potential is illustrated by the
passions that possess motivational impact: they incline the will towards assenting.
Finally, volitional aspects are required for acts of other mental faculties. For instance,
acts of imagination are initiated by and depend on the will for their continuation.
Interpreting Descartes in this manner does not amount to equating thought with
awareness, but if we follow Descartes in explicating the notion of thought through
that of awareness, we find that to think means to be immediately aware of an asif-image of a thing that is internal to us and volitionally colored, either directly by
being an act of will or indirectly by being initiated by an act of will or by having
the potential to bring one about.
For Descartes, we become aware of a thought by directly perceiving its form,
what Descartes calls an “idea.” Awareness18 cannot be a part of the definition of
“thought,” for this is one of the innate ideas mentioned in Meditation III. Descartes
explains that the understanding of thought “seems to derive simply from my own
nature.”19 In the Principles, “thought” is numbered among the simple natures that
are self-evident and only rendered more obscure by logical definitions.20 The concept of awareness that Descartes works with here takes awareness to be a type of
immediate knowledge, as Lilli Alanen argues.21 All ideas are about some thing or
other, and we always know both that we have them and what they are about, even
though their object may be grasped only very obscurely. Intentionality22 and awareness are characteristic of all thoughts.
Descartes is famous for having maintained that there is nothing in the mind of
which we are not in some way aware. The awareness in question is a type of reflexive consciousness and applies to all mental acts. As in the case of intentionality,
Descartes’s concept of awareness has to match the different kinds of thought that
17
In the Second Set of Replies Descartes tells his objectors: “I use this term [thought] to include everything
that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it. Thus all the operations of the will, the
intellect, the imagination and the senses are thoughts. I say ‘immediately’ so as to exclude the consequences
of thoughts; a voluntary movement, for example, originates in a thought but is not itself a thought” (AT
VII, 160; CSM II, 113).
18
The terms “consciousness” and “awareness” are used interchangeably throughout this paper because
Descartes does not have much by way of a theory of consciousness taken as a technical term by contemporary theories of consciousness. Awareness is for him a kind of immediate “knowledge” that is an intrinsic
feature of all mental states and processes.
19
AT VII, 38; CSM II, 26.
20
AT VIIIA, 8; CSM I, 195–96.
21
Lilli Alanen, Descartes’s Concept of Mind (Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003).
22
I take all ideas in the Cartesian sense to be representational although it is not always easy to determine
what they represent. See Lilli Alanen, “The Intentionality of Cartesian Emotions” in Passion and Virtue in
Descartes (Amherst NY: Humanity Books, 2003), pp. 107–29; and Byron Williston, “The Epistemic Problem
of the Cartesian Passions,” International Philosophical Quarterly 43 no. 3 (2003): 309–32.
154Andreea Mihali
he identifies. In order to account for the way in which we are aware of innate ideas
while they remain at the dispositional stage and for those ideas that leave no memory
traces,23 Descartes works with “a very attenuated sense of consciousness.”24
Alanen maintains that Descartes used “awareness” mostly with the sense of “immediate knowledge” that enjoys transparency and a kind of limited incorrigibility.25
By taking Cartesian awareness to be a kind of immediate knowledge Alanen places
it in the category of “reflexive consciousness”:
Of the various features discussed by contemporary philosophers as characteristic of the
mental, the closest to the kind of awareness accompanying thought in Descartes’s wide
sense is the reflexivity that Harry Frankfurt takes to be distinctive of consciousness and
that he describes as a secondary awareness of primary differentiating responses to stimuli:
“To hear a sound consciously, rather than to respond to it unconsciously, involves being
aware of hearing it or being aware of the sound as heard. . . . The self-consciousness
in question is a sort of immanent reflexivity in virtue of which every instance of being
conscious grasps not only that of which it is an awareness but also the awareness of it.”26
In Identification and Wholeheartedness Frankfurt acknowledges that there are not
two distinct acts of awareness—first, the awareness of the sound, and then the
awareness of the awareness of the sound—for this would be just the beginning
of an infinite regress. Rather Frankfurt maintains that the awareness of the sound
renders itself “visible.”27
23
As is the case with thoughts that occur in early childhood when the brain has such a soft structure that
traces cannot last and thus memories cannot be formed, although the thoughts themselves are conscious
while occurring.
24
Alanen, Descartes’s Concept of Mind, p. 83. Taking into account the types of objects that we can be
aware of (extra-mental and mental objects), we find five types of consciousness common to both Descartes’s
theory of mind and to contemporary theories. Our awareness of extra-mental objects can be phenomenal
consciousness and access consciousness, in roughly Ned Block’s sense of the term as outlined in “On a
Confusion about the Function of Consciousness,” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 18 no. 2 (1995): 227–87.
Our awareness of mental objects can be, going from simple to complex: reflexive consciousness, reflective
consciousness (additional thoughts bearing on first-order thoughts) and/or awareness of a self (apparent
mostly in Descartes’s practical writings).
25
“[A]s soon as I think of something, I am noninferentially aware of what I am presently thinking about.
. . . This certainty does not entail a full epistemological transparency and incorrigibility of thoughts. . . . As
for transparency, it is no doubt characteristic of some thoughts, notably of clear and distinct propositional
thoughts. But clearness and distinctness represent a norm or an ideal, not a common property of thinking. A
large part of our conscious thoughts are obscure and confused, yet we are aware of them and cannot doubt
having one confused thought after another, even when, as may be the case with sensory perceptions, we
are unable to tell what they are about. Awareness, like clearness and distinctness, comes in degrees, and the
Cartesian notion of thought is broad enough to cover all sorts of mental states, from actually entertained
distinct and transparent ideas to the most confused and even unconscious feelings” Alanen, Descartes’s
Concept of Mind, pp. 99–100.
26
Alanen, Descartes’s Concept of Mind, p. 100.
27
“The claim that waking consciousness is self-consciousness does not mean that consciousness is invariably dual in the sense that every instance of it involves both a primary awareness and another instance of
consciousness which is somehow distinct and separable from the first and which has the first as its object.
That would threaten an intolerably infinite proliferation of instances of consciousness.” Harry Frankfurt,
“Identification and Wholeheartedness” in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), p. 162.
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
155
This type of awareness is “consciousness’s awareness of itself” and qualifies both
the object and the act of thought. “Not only the acts of thought but the very activity of
thinking—as in performing judgments or focusing one’s attention—is self-reflexive
and renders itself, like the source of light in the metaphor that Frankfurt uses, visible when enlightening other things.”28 The presence of this type of awareness in all
thought is what allows Descartes to state at the end of Meditation II that the mind is
much better known than the body, because for every single external object that the
intellect will later come to know, it obtains implicit re-affirmation of its existence
and its main features, incorporeality and thinking.29 Moreover, the sheer number
of instances of awareness accompanying knowledge about sensible objects serves
to strengthen and deepen our knowledge of the nature of our minds, although the
mind has more and better purely mental ways of knowing itself.30
Since the thesis of this paper is that willing pertains to the essence of the mind
alongside awareness, a look at the relation between the will and awareness according
to Descartes is necessary. Descartes distinguishes between the faculty of will and
its actualizations, between will and volitions.31 Volitions are ideas32 in the broader
sense of the term: “Other thoughts have various additional forms: thus when I will,
or am afraid, or affirm, or deny, there is always a particular thing which I take as the
object of my thought, but my thought includes something more than the likeness
of that thing. Some thoughts in this category are called volitions or emotions.”33
We are immediately aware of volitions qua thoughts having various additional
forms. Volitions are accompanied by corresponding perceptions, “for it is certain
that we cannot will anything without thereby perceiving that we are willing it.”34
Alanen, Descartes’s Concept of Mind, p. 101.
At this point in the Meditations the meditator does not know anything about the existence of external
objects. However, Descartes’s point in this passage is applicable even after proving the existence of external
objects in Meditation VI: both in the hypothetical scenario of Meditation II and in the real-life situation of
Meditation VI, the mind is better known than the body. The mind is always better known than the body.
30
“For if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, clearly this same fact entails much more
evidently that I myself also exist. It is possible that what I see is not really the wax; it is possible that I do
not even have eyes with which to see anything. But when I see, or think I see (I am not here distinguishing
the two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something. By the same token, if I
judge that the wax exists from the fact that I touch it, the same result follows namely that I exist . . . and in
view of this I know plainly that I can achieve an easier and more evident perception of my own mind than
of anything else” (AT VII, 33–34; CSM II, 22–23).
31
For good discussions of the will, its relation to the intellect, and its role in judging and error, see Hiram
Caton, “Will and Reason in Descartes’s Theory of Error,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 84–104; Anthony
Kenny, “Descartes on the Will,” in Cartesian Studies (Oxford UK: Basil Blackwell, 1972); David Rosenthal,
“Will and the Theory of Judgment” in Descartes’s Meditations: Critical Essays, ed. Vere Chappell (Lanham
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997); André Gombay, Descartes (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2007); and Byron
Williston, “The Epistemic Problem of the Cartesian Passions,” International Philosophical Quarterly 43
no. 3 (2003): 309–32.
32
If we take “idea” to designate everything that is immediately perceived by the mind (AT VII, 181;
CSM II, 127).
33
AT VII, 37; CSM II, 26. There is an element of desire common to volitions and emotions: “As for the
will and the emotions, here too one need not worry about falsity; for even if the things which I may desire
are wicked or non-existent, that does not make it any less true that I desire them” (AT VII, 37; CSM II, 26,
my emphasis).
34
AT XI, 343; CSM I, 336.
28
29
156Andreea Mihali
Having clarified the Cartesian concepts of “essence” and “awareness,” it is time to
draw out the volitional trajectory of the Meditations.
2. The will and the cogito
Meditation I starts with the meditator’s declared intention of demolishing all his
opinions. Doubt emerges as a more economical procedure (both in terms of time
and resources) than attempting to establish patent falsity.35 Having “some reason
for doubt” is enough for rejecting any opinion.36 Moreover, the meditator opts for
attacking the basic principles of beliefs, thus rejecting whole classes instead of individual opinions. The result of this process will be the cogito. The will is essential
in clearing the way for the cogito by ensuring the continuation of the process of
doubt (listed among the modes of willing in the Principles37), until only evidential
factors enter into the formation of beliefs. In Meditation I we read:
I must make an effort to remember it [to withhold my assent from these former beliefs
just as carefully as I would from obvious falsehoods, if I want to discover any certainty].
My habitual opinions keep coming back, and, despite my wishes, they capture my belief,
which is as it were bound over to them as a result of long occupation and the law of custom. . . . In view of this, I think it will be a good plan to turn my will in completely the
opposite direction and deceive myself, by pretending for a time that these former opinions
are utterly false and imaginary. I shall do this until the weight of preconceived opinion is
counter-balanced and the distorting influence of habit no longer prevents my judgments
from perceiving things correctly.38
As the will is continuously active in the process of doubting described in Meditation I,
it could not be affected by the doubt, no matter how widespread. The meditator
never doubts that he has a will in the same way that he never (successfully) doubts
the existence and reliability of his reason. On this issue, another difference from
the views of Peter Schouls should be pointed out. Schouls argues that Descartes
does extend the process of doubt to both reason (in its “compositive”39 and intuitive
For a thorough historical account of the process of doubt in Meditation I, see Leo Groarke, “Descartes’
First Meditation: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 22 (1984): 281–301.
36
Descartes/the meditator seems to say that he will not waste time in attempting to show that his opinions
are false: “But to accomplish this, it will not be necessary for me to show that all my opinions are false,
which is something I could perhaps never manage. Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my
assent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those
which are patently false. So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each
of them at least some reason for doubt. And to do this I will not need to run through them all individually,
which would be an endless task. . . . I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs
rested” (AT VII, 18; CSM II, 12).
37
AT VIIIA, 17; CSM I, 204.
38
AT VII, 22; CSM II, 15 (my emphasis).
39
I use the term “reason in its compositive function” following Peter Schouls, who contrasts it with reason in its intuitive function. The latter grasps self-evident items, “absolutely simple aspects of knowledge.”
Schouls (“Human Nature, Reason, and the Will,” p. 167) takes reason in its compositive function to be a
reference not only to deduction but also to the intellectual aspects of imaginings and sense perceptions.
35
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
157
functions) and to the will. He interprets the cogito as establishing not only the existence of the “I” but also the reliability of reason in its intuitive function. He takes
the beginning of Meditation II to depict an experience of extreme passivity, which
he equates with doubting the existence and efficacy of free will. The Cartesian agent
escapes this situation by supposing that passivity is not the ultimate state of being,
for it is due to a doubt that was self-imposed.40
The will is not just present throughout the process of doubting but is involved in
an arduous struggle with itself: habit (“[the meditator’s] habitual opinions,” “the
distorting influence of habit”) and “[the meditator’s] wishes” battle for supremacy,
while the meditator sides with his wishes. Three things are notable in this passage:
(1) “wish” and “desire” are equivalent since “wish” corresponds to “want[ing] to
discover any certainty” in the previous line of the quotation. (2) “Desire” is treated
as an act of will not just in the Principles41 but in the Meditations as well. And (3)
a distinction needs to be drawn between passional and volitional desire in the Passions.42 The “desire” mentioned in the Meditations belongs to what the Passions
calls the volitional kind.
When in Meditation II Descartes lists what the mind does, he mentions “is
willing” and “desires to know more.” Thus desire is linked to the will’s activity.
Given the fact that this connection between desire and the will is found in other
places of his works, Descartes was not by mistake or merely accidentally referring
to them together in the Meditations. For instance, in a letter to Mersenne from
1639 Descartes explicates the will’s infinity as “desiring all perfections”: “God
has given us a will which has no limits. It is principally because of this infinite will
within us that we can say we are created in His image.”43 The infinity of our will
is explicated in this letter as the desire that we have for the possession of every
perfection we can conceive of.44 Since in Meditation IV Descartes stresses the infinity of the human will and takes it to be the reason why we share a likeness with
God, the connection between desire and the will is probably in the background
of the Meditations.
The struggle between the meditator’s habits and his wishes is reiterated with every
single kind of belief under scrutiny, even though Descartes envisages a happy ending: “the weight of my preconceived opinions is counter-balanced and the distorting
influence of habit no longer prevents my judgment from perceiving things correctly.”45
Schouls, “Human Nature, Reason, and the Will,” pp. 165, 169–70.
AT VIIIA, 17; CSM I, 204.
42
Passional desire is one of the six primitive passions and is defined as “an agitation of the soul caused by
the spirits which dispose the soul to which, in the future, for the things it represents to itself as agreeable”
(AT XI, 392; CSM I, 358; a. 86). Volitional desire is the mode of the will by means of which we commit
ourselves to practical pursuits. The main difference between passional and volitional desire consists in the
presence versus the absence of animal spirits as causes of desire: passional desire has the movements of the
animal spirits as its proximate cause, while volitional desire is caused by the agent who is its ultimate source.
43
AT II, 628; CSMK 141–42 (emphasis added).
44
In the Fifth Set of Replies Descartes tells Gassendi: “In the case of any given object, there may be many
things about it that we desire but very few things of which we have knowledge” (AT VII, 377; CSM II, 259).
Whenever the will misapplies its practical function (which is to initiate actions, i.e., to precede the intellect)
to theoretical matters (where it should follow the intellect’s lead) we make mistakes.
45
AT VII, 22; CSM II, 15.
40
41
158Andreea Mihali
In Meditation IV we are told that the strategy worked, and its success is offered as
a precedent for the usefulness of the procedure while the effort needed to achieve
results in the first instance is downplayed. As Descartes endorses an internalist model
of justification, it is not just the fact that there are reasons in favor of a certain belief
but also the way in which those reasons are seen by the agent that counts towards
the formation of a certain belief. Although there may be probable reasons pointing
towards X, if the agent sees those reasons as conjectures rather than as certain and
indubitable reasons, this way of evaluating reasons changes the direction of the will’s
assent from pro to con: “[T]he mere fact that I found that all my previous beliefs
were in some sense open to doubt was enough to turn my absolutely confident belief
in their truth into the supposition that they were wholly false.”46
In Meditation I assent is implicitly taken to be controlled by the will. Although
it is very difficult, it is always in our power to “resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehood.”47 Both the struggle and the eventual balance attained must
bring the will to the forefront of the meditator’s awareness, so that doubting he
has a will while “stubbornly and firmly persisting in this meditation”48 would be
as self-defeating as doubting he has reason while entertaining this very thought.
The difference between these two scenarios consists in that the latter is attempted
while the former is not explicitly taken up. That the will remains unaffected by
doubt is confirmed by its absence from the list of things affected by doubt: on this
list, only memory seems to pertain to the mind.49 While at the end of Meditation
I assent was only implicitly attributed to the will, in Meditation IV this point is
explicitly stated.
In the Synopsis Descartes describes the process of doubt as the mind using its
own freedom.50 In Meditation II, while acknowledging the seriousness of the doubts
raised so far and his inability to envisage any solution for finding something certain, the meditator “will make an effort and once more attempt the path which [he]
started on yesterday.”51 The effort mentioned in this passage signals the presence
and activity of the will. Furthermore, doubting is said to be arduous, strenuous,
difficult, hard, etc. Given Descartes’s later references to resoluteness as pertaining
to the will,52 the effort mentioned here can plausibly be viewed as indicating the
will’s presence and activity.
AT VII, 59; CSM II, 41 (my emphasis).
AT VII, 23; CSM II, 15 (my emphasis).
48
That “the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions
of dreams which he [the evil genius] has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as having no hands, or eyes, or flesh, or blood, or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things” (AT
VII, 23; CSM II, 15).
49
AT VII, 24; CSM II, 16.
50
AT VII, 12; CSM II, 9.
51
AT VII, 16; CSM II, 16.
52
In the Passions of the Soul Descartes describes the second component of generosity as “his feeling
within himself a firm and constant resolution to use [his will] well—that is, never to lack the will to undertake and carry out whatever he judges to be best” (AT XI, 446; CSM I, 384; a. 153, my emphasis). For an
enlightening account of Cartesian generosity see Lisa Shapiro, “Cartesian Generosity,” Acta Philosophica
Fennica 64 (1999): 249–75.
46
47
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
159
We can thus interpret Descartes as saying that doubting involves the will. When
we focus on doubting, we are using our wills because focus involves the will.53
Doubting involves the will. Now, doubting is difficult, and so we have an additional
reason to say that the act of doubting involves the will. The reason that doubting is
difficult is that we desire to find the truth and we do not want to be content with mere
probability; this desire is an act of will. Doubting also includes using our freedom;
so, by engaging in doubt, we can become aware of being free.
It becomes clear that in the Meditations Descartes takes doubt to be an act of will
just as in the Principles. First, he mentions doubting and willing together; second,
the doubting strategy of Meditation I contains the same volitional and intellectual
aspects as those spelled out in a letter to Buitendijck from 1643. The Meditations
use intellectual doubt (as reasons are adduced to show that everything is less than
clearly perceived) and volitional doubt of the instrumental variety (as Descartes makes
clear that the meditator is after a greater degree of cognitive certainty than previously
possessed). To see how the doubt of the Meditations maps onto Descartes’s later distinction, let us inquire into what doubting something means according to Descartes.
If, as Descartes explains to Bourdin,54 doubting means not committing oneself
either to the truth or the falsity of the proposition in question, why the emphasis
in Meditations I and II on turning the will in the completely opposite direction as
soon as something seems merely probable? This could amount either to convincing oneself of its falsity or to just supposing it to be false. If the latter alternative is
what Descartes has in mind, then doubting is an act of the intellect, not the will. If
the former is what he means, then there does not appear to be any definite commitment, but just an effort to go against a probable proposition. It seems that Descartes
mistakes an act of the intellect (supposing) for a previous act of the will (focusing
attention) on which it is dependent.
Three main ways of addressing this matter come to mind: (a) Descartes has no
consistent way of using “doubt.” He unsystematically attributes it sometimes to
the intellect, sometimes to the will. This alternative should only be embraced as
a last resort, given the importance of the concept of “doubt” in the Meditations:
Descartes’s whole project in this work hinges on the doubt’s success at cleansing
the mind from preconceived opinions.
Two more charitable alternatives are available to us: (b) Descartes sees doubt
as composed of supposition plus the effort needed to continue supposing a certain
idea, to refrain from assenting to it. While doubting, the Cartesian agent exerts his
will to prevent an act of assent from being formed and forces the mind to be content
with an act of the intellect instead. (c) Supposition is only conceptually distinct
from doubt. Descartes’s modal and conceptual distinctions allow for mental acts
to be categorized as both acts of the intellect and acts of the will, depending on
the criterion of taxonomy: according to the end-result they are perceptions, while
according to their starting point they are initiated by the will. Supposition reveals
The focusing function of the will is dealt with in detail in the next section of this paper.
“What I said was that doubtful items should not be regarded as having any more basis than those which
are wholly false; but this was so as to enable us to dismiss them completely from our thought, and not so as
to allow us to affirm first one thing and then its opposite” (AT VII, 462G; CSM II, 310).
53
54
160Andreea Mihali
itself as one such hybrid mental state. Alternatives (b) and (c) are compatible and
are both employed by Descartes, as we will see below.
Supposition is “an act of the intellect and not of the will, and it shows all the
more that we neither believe it nor want it believed.”55 The same point is repeated
to Buitendijck: “For what is thus imagined and attributed hypothetically is not
thereby affirmed by the will to be true, but is merely proposed for examination to
the intellect.”56 Along the same lines, in the Meditations supposition follows upon
the exertion of the will to go against the habit of assenting to highly probable opinions.57 Supposing has both volitional and intellectual aspects.
Despite the lack of cognitive commitment to the truth or falsity of a proposition,
supposition can be considered an attitude because it has the appropriate structure (“I
suppose that X”) and because it has a motivational impact. Attitudes pertain to the
will as the attitude-providing faculty; so supposition pertains to the will as well by
being initiated, commanded, and maintained in action by the will. Had supposition
not been an attitude, we would be completely indifferent with respect to its object,
for we would simply notice it and move on. However, the passages just quoted stress
that for Descartes the role of supposing that X is to motivate further inquiry with
the goal of getting to the truth about X.
As supposing is an act of the intellect and doubting is an act of the will, they
appear to be modally distinct, because intellect and will are different modes of the
mind.58 In the Principles a modal distinction obtains between two modes of the same
substance, or between a mode and the substance in which it inheres.59 However, in
the Passions Descartes provides examples of passions (which are just obscure ideas,
i.e., acts of the intellect) that can be taken as volitions and vice versa: perceptions
of volitions, the perceptions resulting from the soul’s application to imagine something non-existent or to consider something purely intelligible.60 Doubting fits the
latter description, for the object of doubt is an already formed belief, i.e., something
“purely intelligible,” although the initial belief may be about corporeal objects.
According to these examples there are at least some thoughts that deserve both
these qualifications (obscure ideas and acts of the will) and as such are only conceptually distinct.61 Because these thoughts are only conceptually distinct, the way they
are categorized will be a matter of perspective on our part. That this is Descartes’s
meaning when it comes to supposing is confirmed by the already mentioned letter
55
AT V, 9; CSMK, 316. The supposition to which Descartes is referring in this letter is the existence of
an evil genius as a means to prove that God is not a deceiver.
56
AT IV, 64; CSMK 230.
57
AT VII, 22; CSM II, 15.
58
AT VIIIA, 17; CSM I, 204; a.32.
59
“A modal distinction can be taken in two ways: firstly, as a distinction between a mode, properly so
called, and the substance of which it is a mode; and secondly, as a distinction between two modes of the
same substance. . . . The second kind of modal distinction is recognized from the fact that we are able to
arrive at knowledge of one mode apart from another, and vice versa, whereas we cannot know either mode
apart from the substance in which they both inhere” (AT VIIIA, 29; CSM I, 214).
60
AT XI, 343–44; CSM II, 335–36, a. 20.
61
A conceptual distinction is recognized “by our inability to perceive clearly the idea of one of the two
attributes if we separate it from the other” (AT VIIIA, 30; CSM I, 214).
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
161
to Buitendijck where Descartes distinguishes between doubt as pertaining to the
intellect and doubt as pertaining to the will. Doubt pertains to the intellect when it
is assessed in terms of possibility or impossibility; while doubt pertaining to the will
can be evaluated in terms of permissibility or impermissibility. Doubt is possible
when reasons pointing in a certain direction amount to a less than “evident proof”;
doubt is permissible when the goal towards which it is directed is worthwhile (e.g.,
when we doubt in order to ensure that the result of our inquiries is true knowledge).
Doubt is impermissible when we, like the Skeptics, doubt just out of stubbornness
and for the sheer sake of doubting, because we wish to remain in doubt. Descartes
calls the first type of volitional doubt “doubt as a means,” and the second, “doubt
as end.”62 The doubt of the Meditations is both possible and permissible and thus
pertains to both the intellect and the will.
It is clear, given Descartes’s emphasis on the strenuous nature of the process of
doubt and his statement in the Fourth Replies that it takes effort to exercise a faculty,63
that for him the presence of effort is a clear sign of the will. In Meditation IV the
meditator claims to know by experience that the freedom of his will is not restricted
in any way. He may be making reference to the now completed process of doubt.
In the Principles, with reference to the process of hyperbolic doubt, Descartes will
claim that we have an innate idea of the freedom of our will.64
Not only is the effort to refuse assent to merely probable opinions indispensable for getting the mind in the right state, but once the meditator realizes that he
can only exist as long as he is thinking, he immediately gives his assent, which is
an act of will. The cogito is an intuition not an argument65 (not a deduction to use
Descartes’s terminology), so there are no steps involved but only an instantaneous
realization that I am, I exist.66 The mind does not need to make the additional effort
of attending to the steps composing an argument, for in the case of the cogito there
are no such steps.67 The mind struggles to keep up the doubting process and then
62
In this letter Descartes answers his correspondent’s question “whether it is ever permissible to doubt
about God—that is, whether, in the order of nature, one can doubt of the existence of God” (AT IV, 63;
CSMK 229). Above I extended Descartes’s remarks concerning the possibility and permissibility of doubting about God to all objects of doubt.
63
“[W]hen we concentrate on employing one of our faculties, then immediately, if the faculty in question
resides in our mind, we become actually aware of it” (AT VII, 247; CSM II, 172).
64
AT VIIIA, 19–20; CSM I, 206.
65
In the Rules Descartes states: “Thus everyone can mentally intuit that he exists, that he is thinking, that
a triangle is bounded by just three lines, and a sphere by a single surface, and the like. Perceptions such as
these are more numerous than most people realize, disdaining as they do to turn their minds to such simple
matters” (AT X, 368; CSM I, 14).
66
Reading the cogito as an intuition, not an argument is in agreement with Hintikka’s performative
interpretation. See Jakko Hintikka, “Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?” in Meta-Meditations:
Studies in Descartes, ed. A. Sesonske and B. N. Fleming (Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 1967), pp. 50–76.
Hintikka explicates the cogito as follows (p. 61): “In Descartes’s argument the relation of cogito to sum is
not that of a premise to a conclusion. Their relation is rather comparable with that of a process to its product.
The indubitability of my own existence results from my thinking of it almost as the sound of music results
from playing it or (to use Descartes’s own metaphor) light in the sense of illumination (lux) results from the
presence of a source of light (lumen).”
67
I return to the problem of deduction and the successive steps it involves below when treating of clarity
and distinctness.
162Andreea Mihali
automatically assents to the necessary proposition I am, I exist. The assent given to
this necessary proposition—not temporally distinct from the intuition but part and
parcel of it—remains an act of will.
We can conclude that the process of doubt is an exhausting process; its initiation
and continuation depend on the will but also involve intellectual aspects: doubt and
supposition are aspects of the same process and when sufficiently maintained they
lead to the cogito. Once the latter is discovered, the agent spontaneously assents to
the proposition I am, I exist; and the act of assent is an act of the will.
3. Clarity and distinctness and the will
The will turned out to be involved in the cogito in two main ways: as doubt and
as assent. After the cogito the meditator becomes certain of being a thinking thing
and goes on to extract the clarity and distinctness rule.68 Similarly to the cogito,
the clarity and distinctness of our ideas is conditional on the activity of the will:
clarity and distinctness depend on concentration and focused attention—in other
words, on the will.
The intellect simply perceives ideas; it is a passive power that only reflects whatever comes its way.69 It is the will that not only directs it to different objects but is
also responsible for the length of time the intellect attends to a certain object and
for the attention given to it (e.g., whether it is only one or several objects that are
considered, or one or several aspects of a single object). The more attentively we
attend to an object, the clearer our perception of it. The clarity and distinctness of
our ideas depends on the will because: (1) clarity depends on the will and (2) distinctness never occurs without clarity. This interplay between intellect and will is
presupposed in the dynamics of the Meditations, but spelled out only in Descartes’s
later works.70
The clarity and distinctness of our ideas depend on attention in different ways, depending on the object under scrutiny: first, a difference arises depending on whether
the object under consideration is material or purely intellectual. A distinction seems
to be in order between a strict and a loose sense of the term “attention.” In the strict
sense attention is a body-dependent activity that involves the intellectual inspection
AT VII, 35; CSM II, 24.
I argued elsewhere that intellectual passivity in Descartes should be read with qualifications because
the intellect is also the faculty of deduction: inference-making is a very important function of the intellect
and in drawing inferences the mind is more active than in merely being aware of something. Still, bringing
something before the mind’s eye is not an intellectual but a volitional process. When making inferences the
mind conforms to laws of thinking and rationality that are part of its very nature in a way that is not dissimilar
to the will’s conforming to laws of right epistemic and moral conduct (i.e., the clarity and distinctness rule
and the “act resolutely in accordance with the best available knowledge” rule). However, making inferences
is not under our control as neglecting the laws of moral conduct is: choice is involved in the latter but not
the former. While we have no choice with regard to the rules of inference, we do have a choice whether or
not to think of something so this involves the will.
70
In the Principles Descartes states: “I call a perception ‘distinct’ if, as well as being clear, it is so sharply
separated from all other perceptions that it contains within itself only what is clear” (AT VIIIA, 22; CSM
I, 207–08). Using the example of pain Descartes establishes that a perception can be clear without being
distinct but not the other way around.
68
69
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
163
of brain carvings; in the loose sense, however, “attention” refers to focusing and to
considering purely intellectual objects (like doing math without picturing anything
in the imagination). Second, as soon as we attend to an object, our mental grasp is
clear and distinct if it is a simple nature; however, if the object is a complex one,
then the clarity and distinctness of our idea depends on a process of reducing the
object to something as close to a simple nature as possible.71 The apex of such a
reducing procedure is arriving at the essence of the object in question.
Combining the two criteria of the intellectual/material object and the simple/complex object, we obtain the following cases. As simple natures are purely intellectual,
the only type of attention involved in clearly and distinctly perceiving such objects
is attention in the loose sense of a mental gaze attending to the object in question.
Complex objects can be either intellectual (like deductive chains) or material (e.g.,
externally existing material objects of which we perceive several aspects). In the case
of complex purely intellectual objects, only attention qua mental focus is involved;
however, it must be prolonged, and it involves several steps, unlike the contemplation of the simple natures that we grasp instantaneously. When it comes to material
objects, we usually perceive multiple features. In the wax example Descartes/the
meditator turns his mental gaze on the piece of wax. This is an act of attention in
the strict sense, for brain carvings facilitate the representation of the wax.72 Then,
using attention in a loose sense, i.e., purely mental focus, Descartes gradually and
with difficulty disregards all aspects of the wax but extension.
In the Principles clarity is defined as the property of an idea that is present and
accessible to an attentive mind, while distinctness involves the ability to separate an
idea sharply from others.73 Presence to the mind depends on turning our mental gaze
towards an object, while being able to separate an object from others follows from
maintaining our mental focus on that object. There are two conditions for increasing our chances of possessing clear and distinct ideas: we must begin by isolating
only a few aspects of an object and focus on them.74 The longer and more carefully
we examine something, the clearer and more distinct our perception of it will be.75
With respect to isolating only a few aspects of an object, Descartes uses the analogy between only confusedly seeing the whole of the sea due to our limited vision
and a more clear and distinct view obtained by fixing our gaze on some part of it. He
often refers metaphorically to our deliberately considering a certain object as turning
See Peter Schouls, Descartes and the Enlightenment (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ.
Press, 1989), pp. 39–63. Schouls emphasizes Descartes’s process of reducing complex objects to their simpler components in order to render our perceptions clear and distinct. Schouls does not, however, draw the
distinction I am proposing here between attention in a strict and attention is a loose sense.
72
At this point in the Meditations Descartes does not know whether he has a brain or not so it may seem
anachronistic to attribute to him references to “brain carvings.” However, the description of the steps involved
in perceiving the wax share important similarities with the way Descartes describes the inner workings of
sense perception, imagination, and attention in the Passions. These similarities warrant using Descartes’s
later texts to better grasp the movement away from the meditator’s initial reliance on his “supposed” sense
organs and towards the purely “mental scrutiny” of the wax.
73
AT VIIIA, 22; CSM I, 207.
74
Fixing our mental gaze on something, on “some part of [it] at close quarters” is a precondition of clarity
and distinctness (AT VII, 113; CSM II, 81).
75
AT VII, 42; CSM II, 29.
71
164Andreea Mihali
our mental gaze76 or our mind’s eye77 towards it: “so long as I think only of God,
and turn my whole attention to him, I can find no cause of error or falsity. But when
I turn back to myself, I know by experience that I am prone to countless errors.”78
Descartes thinks that we find it difficult to fulfill the second condition necessary
for acquiring clarity and distinctness: “my nature is also such that I cannot fix my
mental vision continually on the same thing, so as to keep perceiving it clearly.”79
Insufficient persistence in examining a thing results in obscure or confused ideas.
The latter are explicated as “contain[ing] some element of which we are ignorant.”80
Clarity and distinctness come in degrees: our idea of God is the truest and most
clear and distinct of all our ideas.81 Clarity and distinctness can be circumscribed
to a certain domain given a certain purpose: sensory perceptions are sufficiently
clear and distinct to inform the mind about what is beneficial and detrimental to
the composite.82
While all our ideas need our attention (i.e., we need to attend to them) in order to
become clear and distinct, not all of them need our prolonged attention to acquire
clarity and distinctness.83 In the Second Set of Replies Descartes mentions perceptions of the intellect that are “so transparently clear and at the same time so simple
that we cannot ever think of them without believing them to be true.”84 These perceptions are intuitions: attending to them is enough to convince us of their truth. In
the same passage from the Second Replies he further refers to “other truths which
are perceived very clearly by our intellect so long as we attend to the arguments on
which our knowledge of them depends.” This is a reference to deductions: we must
attend not only to the result but to the sequence of reasoning steps that depend on
memory. Once we do not attend to the arguments any longer but still remember the
conclusion, the latter perceptions need the divine guarantee to ensure their truth.85
Turning one’s mental gaze and applying one’s mind are not accidental but deliberate moves. They are in our power, which for Descartes means that they are controlled
by the will.86 That this is Descartes’s meaning is confirmed in the Passions where
volitions properly so called are defined as “actions of the soul which terminate in the
soul itself, as when we will to love God or, generally speaking, to apply our mind
“Yet when I turn to the things themselves” (AT VII, 36; CSM II, 25).
“That is, when I turn my mind’s eye upon myself” (AT VII, 51; CSM II, 35).
78
AT VII, 54; CSM II, 38. The mind has a directive function that is performed by the will: the will is the
mind in its directedness towards certain objects as the metaphor of light used in the Rules shows (AT X,
361; CSM I, 10).
79
AT VII, 69; CSM II, 48.
80
AT VII, 147; CSM II, 105.
81
AT VII, 46; CSM II, 32.
82
AT VII, 83; CSM II, 57.
83
While clarity and distinctness are properties that come in degrees (i.e., we have ideas that are more or
less clear and distinct than other ideas), there are categories of ideas that can never be rendered clear and
distinct. Such confused ideas are sensory ideas and passions: both sensations and passions are sufficiently
clear for their purposes, which are to signal to the mind the presence of beneficial or detrimental objects
but these types of ideas can never become distinct.
84
AT VII, 146; CSM II, 104.
85
AT VII, 146; CSM II, 104.
86
AT VII, 38; CSM II, 26.
76
77
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
165
to some object which is not material.”87 In Meditation VI the distinction between
the intellect and the imagination is drawn in terms of the mind’s turning inwards,
towards itself, rather than outwards, towards the body.88 The difference between
intellect and imagination as faculties of the mind lies in the additional effort of
which we can become aware when we imagine something.89 Although this effort is
not explicitly attributed to the will, it is likely that an act of imagination includes an
act of will that redirects our mental gaze from inside outward, towards a material
object.90 In the Passions the process of imagining something that we have never seen
starts with a volition, and the volition is connected with a movement of the gland;
the latter drives the spirits towards areas of the brain where paths representing the
thing are carved.91
It might be objected that making all acts of focused attention include acts of
will results in collapsing the distinction between perceptions and judgments, as in
Spinoza. It is true that a consequence of making willing pertain to the essence of
the mind is giving a privileged status to judgments, but this is in agreement with
Descartes’s description of the pre-doubt view of the functioning of our minds: assent
immediately follows the mind’s grasping of ideas. Driving a wedge between the
intellectual presentation of an idea and the volitional commitment to the truth of the
idea in question is one of the goals of the meditating process. The meditator tries to
buy himself time to better examine things. Distinguishing between entertaining an
idea and assenting to it is also part of Descartes’s reductive efforts. Breaking down
complex things into their simpler components applies not only to rendering ideas
clear and distinct but also to gaining a better understanding of the various faculties
composing our minds.
Saying that willing is always present in thinking is not the same as saying that
assent is always present in thinking. Spinoza argues that will and intellect are one
and the same thing because every idea involves affirmation: in conceiving the idea
of a triangle we are affirming that its three angles are equal to two right angles. According to Spinoza, all ideas involve commitment to the truth of something. It was
argued in the previous sections that Descartes attributes a broad range of functions
to the will: affirming, denying, pursuing, avoiding, focusing attention, doubting,
and initiating acts of other faculties (such as imagination, sense perception, and
memory). Any one of these functions offers reliable evidence when it comes to
proving that willing is involved in all thought.
Thus far we have analyzed the loose sense of Cartesian attention. In the strict
sense, attention is also commanded by the will; it is a body-dependent activity in
which animal spirits are directed towards certain areas of the brain where certain
AT XI, 343; CSM I, 335 (my emphasis).
AT VII, 74; CSM II, 51 (my emphasis).
89
AT VII, 73; CSM II, 51.
90
Another alternative would be to allow for a minimum threshold of effort that indicates the will’s
contribution to a mental act. However, this would present serious difficulties of quantification (how do we
accurately determine when a mental effort is strenuous enough?). There is no indication of such a distinction in Descartes’s works.
91
AT XI, 361; CSM I, 344.
87
88
166Andreea Mihali
images are carved and the flow of spirits is maintained for the intended time.92 The
difference between volitions terminating in the soul itself and acts of attention in
the strict sense seems to consist in a difference between their objects: immaterial or
material. While both imagination and attention are initiated by the will,93 the distinction between them lies in that imagination performs the initial brain carving that
represents a new object, while attention is a revisiting of already existing patterns.
Both the initiation of the intellectual inspection of an object and the quality of
the resulting perception depend on the will. In the passage about the piece of wax
Descartes states:
Let us concentrate, take away everything that does not belong to the wax, and see what is
left: merely something extended, flexible and changeable. . . . And yet . . . the perception
I have of it is a case not of vision or touch or imagination—nor has it ever been, despite
previous appearances—but of purely mental scrutiny; and this can be imperfect and
confused, as it was before, or clear and distinct as it is now, depending on how carefully
I concentrate on what the wax consists in.94
Attending to the piece of wax is an act of attention in the strict sense, for (unbeknownst to the meditating agent) it involves material aspects (e.g., brain carvings
corresponding to the color, taste, smell, shape of the wax). “Taking away everything that does not belong to the wax” means disregarding those brain carvings and
focusing exclusively on extension; this process is an act of attention in the loose
sense, an act of mental focus. The “scrutiny of the mind” mentioned in the passage
quoted above involves judgment as the example of men and automata makes clear,95
although at this point in Meditation II the meditator is not yet aware of the fact that
“the faculty of judgment that is the mind” is composed of intellect and will.
In conclusion, we may say that when the mind turns its mental gaze to a certain
object, this is an act of the will. If the object is immaterial, the act involved is one
of mental focus. If the object is also simple, then the idea obtained due to our attending to the object is clear and distinct. If the object is immaterial but complex,
the act involved is one of mental focus, but we need to maintain our mental gaze
on it for some time and to break the object down into simpler components before
obtaining a clear and distinct idea. If the object is material, the initial act is one of
attention in the strict sense, for attending to brain carvings is needed. The process
through which the mind sets aside all aspects of the object that can be eliminated
AT XI, 361; CSM I, 344.
Not all imagining processes are deliberate, for some of them may be initiated by random movements
of the spirits (AT XI, 345: CSM I, 336).
94
AT VII, 31; CSM II, 20–21.
95
“We say that we see the wax itself, if it is there before us, not that we judge it to be there from its color
and shape; and this might lead me to conclude without more ado that knowledge of the wax comes from
what the eye sees, and not from the scrutiny of the mind alone. But then if I look out the window and see
men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as
I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge
that they are men. And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by
the faculty of judgment which is in my mind” (AT VII, 32; CSM II, 21).
92
93
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
167
from it without changing the object beyond all recognition is an act of mental focus.
The result of this process of elimination constitutes the basis for judgment. Rendering an idea clear and distinct involves turning one’s mental gaze (with or without
brain carvings) towards the object, maintaining mental focus (when dealing with
complex objects), which can be difficult and thus involves the will as effort, and
finally, assenting to the resulting idea.
4. The will and the proofs for the existence of God
We saw above that, according to Descartes, the certainty of remembered conclusions
resulting from intricate deductive chains depends on God’s veracity.96 Heeding his
own advice to examine as soon as the opportunity arises whether there is a God
and if he is a deceiver,97 Meditation III presents two arguments for the existence of
God. Each argument includes a step depending on the will’s contribution: doubt,
desire, want, and lack are attributed to the will and taken as signs of imperfection
in us. The will is not only an impetus towards something better and more perfect
than ourselves, i.e., God, but the ways in which the will acts are also the sure sign
of the distance between ourselves and God.
Both arguments unfold in a familiar Cartesian manner. Starting from a list of
alternatives that Descartes considers exhaustive, all but one option are eliminated.
The first argument starts from our idea of God whose objective reality is so great
that it could only have been caused by God (because Descartes works with a causal
principle that requires “as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause”98):
All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So from what has been said
it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.99
Our idea of God cannot be obtained by negating our idea of the finite; it cannot be
materially false because perfection and imperfection are not on an equal footing
when it comes to the degree of reality they contain. It cannot result from our idea
of a potentially limitless increase in our knowledge, for potentiality implies both
failure to have attained perfection and the impossibility of actually ever attaining
it because increasing in perfection by means of successive steps means that further
increase will always be possible. Here the will appears in the guise of “doubt and
desire” in the very first step of the argument:
AT VII, 146; CSM II, 104.
“For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else” (AT VII, 36;
CSM II, 25).
98
“For where, I ask, could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? And how could the cause
give it to the effect unless it possessed it? It follows from this both that something cannot arise from nothing, and also that what is more perfect—that is, contains in itself more reality—cannot arise from what is
less perfect. And this is transparently true . . . also in the case of ideas, where one is considering only . . .
objective reality” (AT VII, 40–41; CSM II, 28).
99
AT VII, 45; CSM II, 31.
96
97
168Andreea Mihali
I clearly understand that there is more reality in an infinite substance than in a finite
one, and hence that my perception of the infinite, that is God, is in some way prior to
my perception of the finite, that is myself. For how could I understand that I doubted
or desired—that is, lacked something—and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there
were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own
defects by comparison?100
The only way the meditator could see doubt and desire, which are acts of will, under the description of lack and imperfection is by implicitly employing a standard
of comparison, i.e., perfection as pertaining to God. Thus the idea of perfection is
not obtained by a simple logical operation of negation. Rather, perfection and our
perception of it have priority and make possible our perception of the finite. The
priority in question stands for ontological “superiority” and “condition of possibility,” not temporal priority. It is not that we first perceive God’s perfection and
infinity and only subsequently perceive ourselves, but rather that the perception we
have of ourselves as volitionally imperfect is already colored by an idea of which
we become explicitly aware only later on.101
The second argument is intended as reinforcement for the first and goes from our
existence as beings having the idea of God to God as our creator and to our idea of
God as the mark of the craftsman on his work:
If one concentrates carefully, all this is quite evident by the natural light. But when I relax
my concentration, and my mental vision is blinded by the images of things perceived
by the senses, it is not so easy for me to remember why the idea of a being more perfect
than myself must necessarily proceed from some being who is in reality more perfect. I
should therefore like to go further and inquire whether myself, who have this idea, could
exist if no such being existed.102
The alternatives for the source of our being are ourselves, our parents, or other
beings less perfect than God. Our parents cannot have caused us, for they seem to
have simply informed the matter that was to become our bodies but had no influence
whatsoever on us as thinking things. If a being less perfect than God caused us then
the ultimate cause of that very being must be God (on pain of regress). Several beings
could not have caused us because we would lack the unity and simplicity that we
see our idea of God as possessing. The only alternatives left are God and ourselves.
In eliminating himself as the source of his being the meditator states: “Yet if I
derived my existence from myself, then I should neither doubt nor want, nor lack
anything at all; for I should have given myself all the perfections of which I have
AT VII, 46; CSM II, 31.
Descartes allows for such a scenario, for example, at the beginning of Meditation III where he wants
to see if there are things within himself that he hasn’t yet noticed (AT VII, 35; CSM II, 24). Moreover, only
as a result of the two arguments for the existence of God in Meditation III does Descartes conclude that
his idea of God is innate (AT VII, 51; CSM II, 35). In the Third Set of Replies he will characterize innate
ideas as dispositions: they are not continuously before the mind but we have the capacity to summon them
up (AT VII, 189; CSM II, 132).
102
AT VII, 47; CSM II, 32–33.
100
101
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
169
any idea, and thus I should myself be God.”103 According to this passage no one
powerful enough to bring himself into existence as a thinking thing would voluntarily settle for the imperfection manifested in doubt and want. Moreover, if we had
brought ourselves into existence, we would have the power to maintain ourselves in
existence. As we lack the power to maintain ourselves in existence, this means we
did not have the power to bring ourselves into existence and something else must
have created us. The result of these two arguments is not only to show that God
exists but also that he is no deceiver, as deceit would be incompatible with divine
perfection, which was part of the initial definition of God.104
In Meditation IV, when summarizing the two arguments for God’s existence,
Descartes presents doubt not as part of the premises involved in the proofs but as
a catalyst for bringing our idea of God from a dispositional to an occurrent stage.
Although Descartes mentions the idea of God in Meditation III before the two arguments for his existence,105 he makes it seem that without doubt and desire he would
never even have come across the idea of God: “And when I consider the fact that I
have doubts, or that I am a thing that is incomplete and dependent, then there arises
in me a clear and distinct idea of a being who is independent and complete, that
is, an idea of God.”106 Once the idea is discovered, doubt and desire have a further
role to play in proving that God himself caused our idea.
Descartes then concludes that God exists because self-examination reveals to the
meditator that his desiring and doubting are signs of imperfection and that God must
be the standard used to arrive at such an evaluation. Moreover, the meditator does not
have the power to maintain himself in existence, and thus he must conclude that God
exists as his creator and supporter. Once God’s existence is proven, Descartes thinks
that he can see a way forward to the knowledge of other things, like material objects.
5. The will and the proof for the existence of bodies
Having proven the existence and veracity of God, the meditator attempts to reinstate
his confidence about the reality of the external world. He proceeds by bringing back
and analyzing secondary properties (like colors, tastes, sensations of heat) that have
been withdrawn from consideration as subject to doubt. In Meditation VI the will is
presented as powerless to control sensations, for we are unable to experience them
AT VII, 48; CSM II, 33.
AT VII, 51–52; CSM, II, 35.
105
Descartes has an idea of God from the pre-doubt stage. In Meditation III God is mentioned as maybe
giving the meditator a nature so as to be deceived all the time, which would have been easy for Him given
the preconceived belief in His supreme power. Then Descartes states that he has no cause to think that there
is a deceiving God, and does not even know for sure whether there is a God but he must examine these matters as certainty seems be impossible without this knowledge (AT VII, 36; CSM II, 25). The idea of God is
listed as an idea properly so called (AT VII, 37; CSM II, 25). Descartes’s understanding of a supreme God
is an idea having more objective reality than ideas of finite substances (AT VII, 40; CSM II, 28). The idea
of God then appears when Descartes attempts to find if there is anything else besides himself in the world:
“Among my ideas, apart from the idea which gives me a representation of myself, which cannot present
any difficulty in this context, there are ideas which variously represent God, corporeal and inanimate things,
angels, animals and finally other men like myself” (AT VII, 43; CSM II, 29).
106
AT VII, 53; CSM II, 37 (emphasis added).
103
104
170Andreea Mihali
whenever we want. This lack of control suggests that the causes of these ideas are
external objects existing independently of us. The will has a strong propensity to
believe that external things are indeed the causes of our sensations; this propensity,
underwritten by God’s veracity, plays a crucial role in the argument for the existence
of external things. Without such a propensity the Cartesian agent would not be able
to progress beyond the uncertainty expressed in Meditation III about whether or not
his adventitious ideas are truly caused by external things.
In Meditation III the meditator takes the example of heat and describes his inability not to feel heat while sitting by the fire.107 He explicates this inability in
terms of the independence of his sensation from his will and infers that the source
of his sensation is something different from himself, which transmits to him its
own likeness.108 He judges in this way because “a spontaneous impulse leads [him]
to believe it,” not because it was revealed by the natural light. In Meditation VI,
while rehearsing “all the things which [he] previously took to be perceived by the
senses, and reckoned to be true,” he makes the same point while referring to the
will as “consent.”109 When making these remarks in Meditation III, the meditating
Descartes has not yet proven the existence and veracity of God and so he cannot
trust the impulse in question, especially given that he had the experience of other
natural impulses that proved to be very poor guides of conduct.110
During his pre-doubt period and thus while “apparently taught by nature” Descartes concluded that his sensations were caused by external things transmitting
their likeness, that he had a body, and (in Scholastic fashion) that there was nothing
in the intellect that had not come from the senses.111 Despite the reasons for doubting the information obtained through the senses (perceptual illusions, phantom
limb syndrome, dreaming, and the evil genius), these very considerations are used
as premises in the argument for the existence of external bodies. The faculty of
sensory perception that the Cartesian agent notices within himself is passive, for
it simply recognizes without producing the ideas of sensible objects. The cause of
these ideas must therefore be an active faculty. This active faculty cannot be in him,
for it presupposes no intellectual act and at times acts against his will: “So the only
alternative is that it is in another substance distinct from me—a substance which
contains either formally or eminently all the reality which exists objectively in the
ideas produced by this faculty.”112
In the Passions of the Soul Descartes admits that we have some control over moderate sensations and
passions: “The soul can prevent itself from hearing a slight noise or feeling a slight pain by attending very
closely to some other thing, but it cannot in the same way prevent itself from hearing thunder or feeling a
fire that burns the hand” (AT XI, 364; CSM I, 345; a. 46).
108
AT VII, 38; CSM II, 26.
109
“For my experience was that these ideas [hardness and heat, tactile qualities, light, colors, smells, tastes,
etc.] came to me quite without my consent, so that I could not have sensory awareness of any object, even
if I wanted to, unless it was present to my sense organs; and I could not avoid having sensory awareness of
it when it was present” (AT VII, 75; CSM II, 52).
110
“But as for my natural impulses, I have often judged in the past that they were pushing me in the wrong
direction when it was a question of choosing the good, and I do not see why I should place any greater
confidence in them in other matters” (AT VII, 39; CSM II, 27).
111
AT VII, 75–76; CSM II, 52–53.
112
AT VII, 79–80; CSM II, 55.
107
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
171
The reason why these considerations carry argumentative weight is the addition of
a strong propensity towards believing that the causes of his sensations are external
things (not God or other creatures “more noble than a body”113), a propensity that
can be trusted because God was proven to be veracious. If the source of our ideas
of external things was God or other creatures, we should have a faculty suited for
informing us of this source. In Meditations IV and VI God’s veracity was explicated
in terms of a high ratio of success at arriving at the truth when properly using a
faculty and in terms of having the alternative of corroborating the results of one
faculty by using one or several other faculties.114
We can be sure that there is no such faculty in us because if such a faculty were
in us, it would become active whenever we tried to exercise it.115 In attempting
to find out whether or not corporeal objects exist, we are presumably mustering
all the resources appropriate to such a task; still, the propensity to believe that
external things cause our sensory ideas is the only one that comes to light. As we
lack alternative faculties, it must be the case that the one that we do possess, the
propensity to take external objects as the causes of our sensible ideas, is the one
liable to bring about correct results, when properly used. These remarks about
the absence of another faculty for recognizing the source of our sensible ideas
respond to a worry raised in Meditation III that there may be “some other faculty
not yet fully known to [us], which produces these ideas without any assistance
from external things.”116
The propensity to believe that our sensations were caused by external things is
just an application to a class of cases of the more general propensity of the will
that Descartes mentions in Meditation IV as the inclination to follow “a great light
in the intellect,” i.e., to assent to clear and distinct ideas.117 The Cartesian will is
not impartial but has an inbuilt bias towards the true and the good. Some things
naturally prompt the will; they incline it towards giving its assent.118 Although
sensations and passions are not clear and distinct per se (when taken as accurately
representing the world), they are sufficiently clear and distinct for their purpose,
which is to indicate what is beneficial and detrimental to ourselves as unions of
AT VII, 79–80; CSM II, 55.
AT VII, 61–62; CSM II, 42–43; AT VII, 89; CSM II, 61–62.
115
“But it must be noted that, although we are always actually aware of the acts or operations of our minds,
we are not always aware of the mind’s faculties or powers, except potentially. By this I mean that when we
concentrate on employing one of our faculties, then immediately, if the faculty in question resides in our
minds, we become actually aware of it, and hence we may deny that it is in the mind if we are not capable
of becoming aware of it” (AT VII, 246–47; CSM II, 172).
116
AT VII, 39; CSM II, 27.
117
AT VII, 59; CSM II, 41.
118
The challenge is to distinguish accurately between propensities that truly incline the will towards the
true and the good and those that only seem to do so such as judgments made since childhood without any
rational basis (AT VII, 83; CSM II, 57) and true errors of nature (AT VII, 85; CSM II, 57). Judgments made
since childhood “without any rational basis” can be corrected if one keeps to the rigorous discipline resulting from the process of doubt; while the true errors of nature (an example of which is the case of the dropsy
sufferer) are justifiable by appeal to God’s benevolence and omniscience coupled with the need to take into
account not just the individual but the general good (AT VII, 89; CSM II, 61).
113
114
172Andreea Mihali
mind and body.119 Therefore, even in their case the will is inclined to follow a clarity
and distinctness of sorts.
Since we are passive with respect to our sensory ideas, they must come from
an active principle. That principle cannot be in us because God would then be a
deceiver. God’s veracity and benevolence (as understood throughout the Meditations) require him to provide us with sufficient resources, either in the form of a
faculty or a complex of several faculties, for arriving at the truth. When it comes
to our sensory ideas, the only available resource is our propensity to believe that
they are caused by external things. This propensity is just a particular case of the
general inclination towards the true and the good that is, as it were, one of our
default settings.
Although in Meditation III Descartes distinguishes between a spontaneous impulse that leads us to believe that our sensory ideas come from external things and
the natural light that reveals to us indubitable information,120 it turns out that both
the spontaneous impulse of Meditation III (which I equate with the great propensity
of Meditation VI) and the natural light pertain to our nature and that the former is
a species of the latter. In the Second Set of Replies Descartes maintains that his
argument for the existence of bodies depends on the causal principle of ideas. We
can conclude that the strong propensity of Meditation VI is the volitional side of
the primary notion “all the reality or perfection that is present in an idea merely
objectively must be present in its cause either formally or eminently.”121 This point
reinforces the claim that the great propensity of Meditation VI is just a particular
instance of the will’s inclination to follow a great light in the intellect.
6. The light of nature as instinct
This section argues that the will’s inclination towards the true and the good is just the
volitional side of the light of nature.122 Truths revealed by the light of nature have a
high level of volitional attractiveness, which is why Descartes refers to reason as a
type of instinct.123 Our minds are so fashioned by God that they have as their normative basis both intellectual and volitional laws: the intellectual laws are contained in
AT VII, 83; CSM II, 57.
AT VII, 38–39; CSM II, 26–27.
121
AT VII, 135; CSM II, 97.
122
At the end of the fifth section we came to view the great propensity of Meditation VI (to believe that
our ideas of sensible things really come from those things) as the volitional side of Descartes’s causal
principle of ideas. The latter was first stated in its general form in Meditation III and then applied to the
idea of God. This allowed Descartes to demonstrate God’s existence. The same causal principle works in
the background of the proof for the existence of bodies. For this reason we above reached the conclusion
that the great propensity of Meditation VI is the volitional side of the causal principle applied to the set of
corporeal objects. Up to this point in Descartes’s arguments the causal principle of ideas was dealt with
moving from its general form to its particular application, on the one hand and from its intellectual to its
volitional side, on the other. In this section we will come full circle: the will’s inclination towards the true
and the good (of which the great propensity was just a particular case) will prove to be the volitional correspondent of the light of nature (which is the repository of primary notions including the causal principle
of ideas).
123
AT II, 599; CSMK 140.
119
120
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
173
the natural light that is the precondition of all thinking; on the volitional side, our
nature urges our “assent to the teachings of the natural light.”
Taking into account the components involved, we have to draw a distinction between a broad and a narrow sense of “nature” as applied to the meditator.124 In the
broad sense “nature” refers to the totality of things bestowed on us as composites
of mind and body by God.125 In the narrow sense, our “nature” is identical with our
“essence” and consists solely in being a thinking thing.126 Both the broad and the
narrow senses of “our nature” include volitional elements.
According to Meditation VI, “our nature” in the sense of “the totality of things
bestowed on [us] by God” teaches us in three ways: it teaches us about purely
intellectual matters through the natural light; it teaches us about purely corporeal
matters; and it teaches us about what is beneficial or detrimental to ourselves as
composites of mind and body.127 The latter category of teachings of nature is the
one given most attention in Meditation VI. Our nature “vividly” teaches us that we
have a body, that pain signals something wrong with the body, and that hunger and
thirst are signs of food and drink deprivation, respectively. Using these and other
sensations nature also teaches us about the intermingling between the mind and the
body. Nature also instructs us about the existence of other bodies and about their
potential for advantage or harm.128
The teachings of nature mentioned here can be classified as information-providing
(e.g., “you have a body,” “there exist other bodies”) and advice-giving (e.g., “eat
some food if you feel hungry,” “if you feel thirsty drink water,” “avoid hurtful bodies,” etc). The semantic content of these ideas is informational and instructional,
respectively. The same applies to the semantic content of the teachings of the natural
light: innate ideas inform us what thought is, what a thing is,129 and so on; and, similarly to the pieces of practical advice above, our nature commands us with respect
to purely intellectual matters: “assent to what is revealed by the natural light.” In
particular instances, this is manifested not as an explicit command but mostly as “a
great light in the intellect” followed by “a great inclination in the will.” Compelled
assent is the normative aspect of clear and distinct ideas.
My distinction between a broad and a narrow sense of “nature” differs from Descartes’s way of employing these terms. In Meditation VI Descartes takes “my nature” in the broad sense to mean “the totality of
things bestowed on me by God” (AT VII, 80; CSM II, 56); compared to this “my nature” including whatever
pertains to me as a combination of mind and body is “more limited” (AT VII, 82: CSM II, 57). Above I used
nature in the broad sense as whatever refers to the composite and nature in the narrow sense as what pertains
to the mind alone. In other words, Descartes’s broad sense of nature consists of what pertains to the mind,
what pertains to the body, and what pertains to the composite; while my broad sense of nature consists of
what pertains to the composite and my narrow sense of nature consists of the essence of the mind.
125
AT VII, 82; CSM II, 57.
126
AT VII, 78; CSM II, 54. From the cogito coupled with the elimination of features that he thought
away, in Meditation II Descartes concludes sum res cogitans (AT VII, 27; CSM II, 18). In Meditation IV
Descartes raises the question whether his thinking nature is identical with the idea of corporeal nature he
notices he possesses (AT VII, 59; CSM II, 41). In Meditation VI, during the real distinction argument, he
uses “essence” and “nature” interchangeably.
127
AT VII, 82; CSM II, 57.
128
AT VII, 81; CSM II, 56.
129
AT VII, 38; CSM II, 26.
124
174Andreea Mihali
In the previous sections we encountered the role of the will in the functioning of
other mental faculties like imagining (redirecting the mental gaze to brain carvings),
sense perception (redirecting the mental gaze to external objects), and supposing
(inhibiting commitment, which is an act of the will, and substituting for it an act
of the intellect). These faculties presuppose norms provided by the natural light:
all thinking depends on innate ideas, which exist in us potentially.130 This is most
obvious in the case of higher thought, which is regulated by rules of rationality and
consistency contained in the intellect as natural light. In Comments on a Certain
Broadsheet Descartes gives the example of the principle of transitivity, a common
notion that is universal and bears no affinity to corporeal motions.131 He takes the
difference between sense data (be they auditory, visual, etc.) and our ideas of the
objects that provide the sensory information as proof that such ideas cannot be
produced out of sense data. These ideas, he concludes, must be innate.
The teachings of the natural light are either implicit or explicit: as implicit, they
are the very norms of rationality and higher thinking (i.e., reasoning). These norms
can be made explicit and be verbally formulated. It is not just that the teachings of
the natural light are intellectual in content but that they manifest a certain attraction by which the agent is inclined to assent to them. “Our nature” also “urges”132
us to assert them. That both our nature as composite of mind and body and our
nature as natural light issue commands is confirmed by their characterization as
types of “instinct.”
In a Letter to Mersenne from 13 November 1639 Descartes makes reason a
special kind of impulse in a way that emphasizes the innateness, immediacy, and
spontaneity of the natural light. We are told that there are two kinds of instincts.
One that is characteristic of us as human beings is purely intellectual in nature and
called “natural light” or “mental vision.” The second kind of instinct is due to our
animal nature; it is an impulse towards the preservation of the body and enjoyment
of bodily pleasures. The former kind of impulse should be trusted while the latter
should not always be followed.133
In Meditation III the natural light is opposed to “natural impulses” that are internal
to us but opposed to our will. Natural impulses are deceptive, and heeding them
would mean falling into error and sin. On the other hand, whatever the light of nature
reveals cannot in any way be open to doubt.134 The “natural impulses” of Meditation
130
AT VIIIB, 361; CSM I, 305. In Comments on a Certain Broadsheet Descartes states: “When he says
that the mind has no need of ideas, or notions or axioms which are innate, while admitting that the mind
has the power of thinking (presumably natural or innate), he is plainly saying the same thing as I, though
verbally denying it. I have never written or taken the view that the mind requires innate ideas which are
something distinct from its own faculty of thinking. I did, however, observe that there were certain thoughts
within me which neither came to me from external objects nor were determined by my will, but which came
solely from the power of thinking within me; so I applied the term ‘innate’ to the ideas or notions which are
the forms of these thoughts in order to distinguish them from others, which I called ‘adventitious’ or ‘made
up’” (AT VIIIB, 358; CSM I, 303).
131
AT VIIIB, 359; CSM I, 304.
132
AT VII, 84; CSM II, 58.
133
AT II, 599; CSMK 140.
134
AT VII, 38–39; CSM II, 26–27.
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
175
III and “the teachings of nature qua composite” of Meditation VI would have to be
included in the “animal nature instinct” category mentioned above. Meditation VI
shows how the teachings of nature are necessary for our corporeal well-being as
pointers for the quick resolution of situations where knowledge by way of clear and
distinct ideas is difficult or impossible to obtain. However, the teachings of nature
are not infallible, as shown by phantom limb syndrome and dropsy.135 Moreover,
sometimes the teachings of nature make us pay too much attention to our bodies
and not enough to our souls and moral natures.136 Their epistemic fallibility and
the overemphasis on our corporeal nature to the detriment of our moral nature may
be the reasons why the Letter to Mersenne recommends not following our animal
instincts all the time, and the Passions direct us to “use experience and reason
[which is another kind of instinct] in order to distinguish good from evil and know
their true value.”137
From these considerations we can infer that, if the will were just an accidental
aspect of ourselves, there would be no thinking. As things stand now, the natural
light works in the background to make possible all thinking, reveals to us information
that is fully indubitable, and commands us to assent to those pieces of information.
This point brings additional strength to the case for the will as included in the essence of the Cartesian mind.
7. Conclusions
In this paper we have retraced Descartes’s steps in the Meditations starting from the
hyperbolic doubt stage, where the will was used to ensure the continuation of the
process of doubt. In our consideration of the clarity and distinctness rule, the paper
showed that a necessary condition for clarity and distinctness in our ideas is attention due to the will. In our review of the arguments for God’s existence, we noted
that desire and doubt figure as part of the premises. We then saw that the argument
for the existence of sensible objects turns on a propensity underwritten by divine
veracity. This propensity to believe that our ideas of sensible things were caused
by those very things is a particular case of the general inclination towards the true
and the good manifested by the will. Finally, the will’s inclination towards the true
and the good was interpreted as the volitional side of the light of nature; the light
of nature is the normative basis of all thought.
The will appears at all of these stages as effort, as the deliberate settling of one’s
mental gaze on an object, as focus, as inclination and/or as assent. Given this broad
range of functions, if the elimination process that led Descartes to the conclusion
that thinking is inseparable from him were continued, it would not be possible to
think away the will. Having a will is constitutively necessary for being an inquiring
thing, in Descartes’s specific sense of this term. Since Descartes’s intention in the
Meditations is to prove that thinking is the essence of the mind tout court, not just
the mind engaged in the meditating process, in order to make willing coextensive
AT VII, 82–86; CSM II, 56–59.
AT XI, 430–31; CSM I, 376.
137
AT XI, 431; CSM I, 376.
135
136
176Andreea Mihali
with thinking (in so far as it pertains to the essence of the Cartesian mind), we must
briefly consider the differences between the meditator and the ordinary person.
Although neither the pre-doubt nor the post-doubt epistemic agent is engaged
in the same types of mental activities as the meditator, willing is still a central and
indispensable component of their mental lives. Often, the will marks our engagement with and commitment to a certain proposition or state of affairs. The attitude
of detachment and disengaged contemplation of an idea is difficult to achieve and,
when achieved, it is the result of the agent’s effort of always keeping the will in
check. Thus, whether engaged or disengaged, thought has a volitional facet.
Moreover, we turn our mental gaze towards a certain object. We focus our attention, no matter how inconstantly, on it. We assent to it. We also experience desires
for certain things, desires on which we sometimes act. Whenever these desires
become effective we have tacitly assented to them. The will is doubly involved in
desiring: desire is one of the primitive passions, and as such it is an inclination of
the will. Desire is also numbered among the modes of the will in the Principles.
Apart from implicit assent, we often deliberately undertake and do things: in such
cases of voluntary action, the will is undoubtedly present. Although we may not
be aware that all these aspects of our lives involve the will until we go through
the meditating process, once we do engage in meditation, we realize that thinking
always presupposes willing.
Therefore, paying close attention to Descartes’s practice and despite the fact that he
does not state this explicitly, the will pertains to his essence as a thinking thing. The
meditator emerges not just as res cogitans but as res volans as well. This latter feature
of himself, so prominent in the Passions,138 is already present in the Meditations.
In closing, let us look at two questions that could be raised about the view that
willing pertains to the essence of the Cartesian mind. (1) What is the relation between the argument offered in this paper that willing pertains to the essence of the
mind and Arnauld’s objection that adequate knowledge is needed for Descartes’s
conclusion that thinking constitutes the essence of the mind? (2) What foundation
underlies the distinction between intellect and will if every act of the one entails
an act of the other, given Descartes’s refusal to admit any thoughts devoid of any
foundation in reality?
(1) The first question concerns the relation between the position defended here
and Arnauld’s criticism of Descartes’s argument that the essence of the mind consists
in being solely a thinking thing. In the Second Set of Replies Arnauld argues that
having clear and distinct ideas of a thinking thing and of a corporeal, extended thing
does not warrant the conclusion drawn in Meditation VI that the essence of the mind
consists of thinking alone. Arnauld further maintains that for such a conclusion to
follow, adequate knowledge is required, the kind of knowledge that assures us that
nothing knowable about the thing under scrutiny was left out. In the absence of such
knowledge all that Descartes can conclude is that thinking is all he knows to pertain
to the essence of the mind, not all there actually is to that essence.
138
As Deborah Brown argues in Descartes and the Passionate Mind (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press 2006), p. 28.
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
177
Descartes responds to Arnauld by pointing out that adequate knowledge cannot
be required for finding out what pertains to the essence of the mind because it is too
strong a condition for any human to meet. If adequate knowledge were required, we
would never know what pertains to the essence of the mind because we could never
know that we possess adequate knowledge about anything (unless God tells us).
According to Descartes, we do possess knowledge about the essence of the mind,
so less than adequate knowledge must be all that is needed.
Lisa Shapiro points out that the strength of Arnauld’s objection stems from the
assumption that what we take as our essence is just what we are—no more, no less—
making it inappropriate for us to claim anything about parts of our essence. Does
the position that willing pertains to the essence of the mind fall prey to Arnauld’s
criticism as well? Or does it escape this criticism because it only makes claims about
willing as part of the essence of the Cartesian mind?
The intention of this paper was neither to defend nor to circumvent the strategy
used in the Meditations to prove that thinking pertains to the essence of the mind.
The only aim pursued was showing that, problematic as the strategy is, it depends
on the will. Reflecting on what makes this strategy possible we find that willing is
indispensable. However, this does not contradict Descartes’s contention that thinking
constitutes the essence of the mind. Rather, when we reflect on Descartes’s strategy,
we discover a new aspect of the essence of the meditator’s mind in the same way in
which (even though we have a clear and distinct idea of God) we can still discover
new aspects that render it more clear and distinct.
(2) This paper also argued that willing is not on equal footing with other types of
thought (like sense perception, imagining, and pure thought), but that it is on equal
footing with awareness. Willing is not just an object of awareness, for whenever
we are aware of something we are also willing something. This forces us to modify
our common understanding of Descartes’s theory of mind because, on the reading
proposed here, the distinction between intellect and will in Descartes ceases to be
a modal one and becomes only a conceptual one. And this gives rise to the problem
of what grounds the conceptual distinction between intellect and will qua faculties
of the mind, given Descartes’s recognizing no thoughts devoid of any foundation
in reality.139 A letter from 1645 or 1646 and articles §60–65 of the Principles of
Philosophy will help us address the issue of the difference between modal and
conceptual distinctions and their respective grounds.
In a letter from 1645 or 1646 Descartes argues that a real distinction obtains
between two substances, while modal and conceptual distinctions pertain to reason
as ratio ratiocinatae because they have a foundation in reality. An example of a
modal distinction is the distinction between shape and motion, on the one hand,
and corporeal substance, on the other. An example of a conceptual distinction is the
distinction between “existence, duration, size, number and all universals,” which
Descartes refers to as “modes of thinking.” Neither the modal nor the conceptual
distinction pertains to ratio ratiocinantis because they are grounded in reality.140
139
140
This is an objection raised by Deborah Brown.
AT IV, 348–50; CSMK 279–81.
178Andreea Mihali
The ground of the modal distinction as applied to a corporeal substance, on the
one hand, and to shape and motion as its modes, on the other, is the fact that “the
same body can exist at one time with one shape and at another with another, now
in motion and now at rest; whereas, conversely, neither this shape nor this motion
can exist without this body.”141 As Descartes states in the Principles, a substance
can be clearly perceived apart from a mode, but a mode cannot be understood apart
from the substance.142 A modal distinction is grounded on a unilateral ontological
dependency: modes depend on substances, but substances are independent of modes.
Descartes’s modal distinction applies to modes and the substances of which they
are modifications as well as to several modes of the same substance.143
Descartes’s conceptual distinction applies to attributes, that is, features “without
which the things whose attributes they are cannot be.”144 The difference between
modes and attributes consists in the presence versus the absence of change in the
things themselves: modes are modifications of the things themselves while attributes remain constant.145 In the case of attributes any change is a change in our
way of conceiving the thing in question. Hence Descartes’s referring to attributes
as modes of thinking: “A conceptual distinction is a distinction between a substance
and some attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible;
alternatively, it is a distinction between two such attributes of a single substance.”146
If we exclude from the substance the attribute in question, we cannot have a clear
and distinct idea of the substance, and the same goes for having a clear and distinct
idea of two attributes of the substance.
What grounds a conceptual distinction is our ability to conceive differently, though
not clearly and distinctly, a certain thing depending on what we include in or exclude
from our current thought of the thing in question: “We do indeed understand the
essence of a thing in one way when we consider it in abstraction from whether it
exists or not, and in a different way when we consider it as existing; but the thing
itself cannot be outside our thought without its existence, or without its duration
or size, and so on.”147 Applying Descartes’s three distinctions to the same example
yields the following results: a triangle is really distinct from another triangle; our
thought about the triangle’s existence is modally distinct from our thought about
the triangle’s essence; and finally, the triangle’s essence and the triangle’s existence
qua attributes are conceptually distinct.
The lessons learned from this letter and from the Principles lead us to conclude
that it would not be possible to have a clear and distinct idea of the intellect apart
from the will if they were only conceptually distinct. Some of Descartes’s own pronouncements lend support to this conclusion. Descartes’s description of volitions as
AT IV, 349; CSMK 280.
AT VIIIA, 29; CSM I, 214.
143
AT VIIIA, 29; CSM I, 214.
144
AT IV, 348; CSMK 280.
145
“[T]hat which always remains unmodified—for example, existence and duration in a thing which exists
and endures—should be called . . . an attribute” (AT VIIIA, 26; CSM I, 212).
146
AT VIIIA, 30; CSM I, 214.
147
AT IV, 349; CSMK 280.
141
142
Sum Res Volans: The Centrality of Willing for Descartes
179
thoughts having additional forms makes volitions dependent on ideas that pertain to
the intellect. Thus we seem to be unable to form a clear and distinct idea of volitions
when we separate them from the ideas that make them possible. But, as we have seen,
acts of the intellect have volitional sides as well: imagination, which is dependent
on the will as effort, brings about invented ideas; supposition, which is an act of the
intellect, depends on the will as effort to inhibit commitment so that the mind be able
to simply consider an idea and what might follow from it. Given this dependence of
the will on the intellect (to provide contents) and of the intellect on the will (to initiate, to continue, and to end its acts), we can separate intellect and will in thought,
but in so doing we risk having a negative impact on the clarity and distinctness of
our ideas of intellect and will.
This way of understanding the relation between intellect and will is analogous to
the relation between thought and the thinking substance: “We have some difficulty
in abstracting the notion of substance from the notion of thought,” but we have
a very clear and distinct understanding of intelligent substance when we regard
thought as constituting the nature of intelligent substance.148 Hence, the ground of
the conceptual distinction between intellect and will is the same as the ground of
the conceptual distinction between thought and the thinking substance: an interdependence that yields clarity and distinctness, when reflected in our thoughts on the
matter, but obscurity when left out.149
AT VIIIA, 31; CSM I, 215; a.63.
For detailed and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper I am grateful to Byron Williston,
Rockney Jacobsen, and Peter Loptson. I would also like to thank Deborah Brown and Lisa Shapiro for
interesting suggestions regarding this paper.
148
149