PAUL RICOEUR

THE CRISIS OF THE COGITO

ABSTRACT. If Descartes' s Cogito can be held as the opening of the era of modem subjec-
tivity, it is to the extent that the ' T' is taken for the first time in the position of foundation,
i.e., as the ultimate condition for the possibility of all philosophical discourse. The question
raised in this paper is whether the crisis of the Cog#o, opened later by Hume, Nietzsche
and Heidegger on different philosophical grounds, is not already contemporaneous to the
very positing of the Cogito.
Taking as our guide the first three of Descartes' s Meditations, I should like
to stress two points: I want first to underscore the radical discontinuity
introduced into philosophical investigation by the cogito ergo sum, set in
the position of primary truth. Next, I want to show to what extent the Cogito,
such as it was actually formulated by the historical Descartes, falls short of
satisfying the unlimited ambition with which philosophical tradition has
credited him. Descartes' s Meditations - or, to give them their complete
title, which is not without importance for our purposes, Meditations on the
First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Real Distinction
of Mind and Body are Demonstrated - do present the strange character
that, in order to begin to philosophize, the certainty of the self has to be put
in the position of first truth, but that, in order to continue to philosophize,
this same certainty must in a sense be toppled from its dominant position.
The recognition of this crisis of the Cogito, contemporary to the positing
of Cogito, constitutes the thrust of the present investigation.
l . POSITING THE COGITO
The first two Meditations attest to the immense ambition belonging to a
philosophy which the Cogito inaugurates. The universal and radical nature
of the project are apparent in the opening lines: "I was convinced of the
necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions
I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the
foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the
sciences" (Meditation 1). The universal character of the undertaking is of
the same magnitude as the doubt, which does not exempt from the region
of opinion common sense, the sciences - bot h mathematical and physical -
Synthese 106: 57-66, 1996.
@ 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
5 8 PAUL RICOEUR
or the phi l osophi cal tradition. However, the radicalness of the undertaking
is j ust as important as its universality. This radicalness has to do with the
nature of a doubt, itself i ncomparabl e to that one might exercise within the
three aforement i oned domains. The fact that all reality can be suspect ed
of bei ng no more than a dream, that the simple truths of geomet ry and
arithmetic can be hel d to be uncertain, that the distinction bet ween seem-
ing and bei ng vacillates - this threefold quest i oni ng is incomparable to the
l ocal i sed doubt s that stand out against the backdrop of some sensible, sci-
entific or met aphysi cal certainty, whi ch i t sel f is uncont est ed in the moment
of doubt. The hypot hesi s of being compl et el y fool ed stems from a doubt
that Descartes calls "met aphysi cal " in order to signal its disproportion in
relation to all doubt kept within a space of certainty. In order to dramatize
this doubt, Descartes forges the incredible hypot hesi s of a great decei ver
or a malignant demon, the inverted image of a veracious God, reduced to
the state of si mpl e opinion: "How do I know", Descartes asks, "that I am
not also decei ved each t i me I add together t wo and t hr e e ? . . . " (ibid.).
What happens to the sel f in this dramatic epi sode? There are, it seems
to me, t wo important poi nt s to stress here. On the one hand, all subj ect i vi t y
has not fallen with the col l apse of opinion, although the human body has
f ol l owed the fate of all bodies: i f I can doubt the reality of sensible things,
I can also doubt "that I am in this place, seated by the fire"; with this body-
sel f all the reference points of deictic terms are abolished. And yet, all
subj ect i vi t y cannot be swal l owed up in the depths of doubt, since someone
is performi ng the doubt. The doubt, indeed, is not merel y suffered, it is
directed: "I will at length appl y mysel f earnestly and freely to the general
overt hrow of all my former opi ni ons" (ibid.). Even the hypot hesi s of the
malignant demon is a fiction that I invent: "I become my own deceiver,
by supposing, for a time, that all t hose opinions are entirely false and
i magi nar y. . . " (ibid.). The I is, in this way, raised to a power proportionate
to the radical nature of the doubt it exercises. From this stems our second
remark: the I that doubts, who is it? It is assuredly Descart es' I: in the
Di scourse on Met hod, the autobiographical features of the adventure are
heavi l y stressed. Nor are these features erased in the Meditations, as is
confirmed in the openi ng lines: "Several years have now elapsed since I
first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false
opinions for t r ue . . . " (ibid.). But, as the doubt becomes ever more radical,
the I gradually loses its "t oken" character. This is not, however, in order
to resort to the "I as t ype", to the empt y I found in the table of personal
pronouns. The strangeness adhering to doubt results in the I stripping
itself of its autobiographical character in order to become, not j ust anyone,
in the sense of indicators and deictic terms, but an I as met aphysi cal or
THE CRISIS OF THE GOGI TO 59
hyperbolical as doubt itself, an I that, by shedding its body along the way,
loses its anchoring and, therefore, breaks with the conditions for ordinary
self-designation as well as for identifying reference: "Let us suppose, then
. . . even that we really possess neither an entire body nor hands such
as we see" (ibid.). To the extent, then, that it is j ust as met aphysi cal and
hyperbolical as doubt, t hi s/ possesses immediately the value of an example,
but in a sense of "anyone" which is without any common measure with its
grammatical sense: anyone who, after Descartes, retraces the trajectory of
doubt, says, as he did, I. But, in so doing, this I becomes a non-person, that
is to say, unidentifiable, undesignatable, beyond the distinction bet ween
self-ascribable and other-ascribable predicates. This is why the who of
doubt in no way lacks others, since, by losing its anchoring, it leaves
behi nd the conditions of interlocution and dialogue. One cannot even say
that it is engaged in monol ogue, inasmuch as monol ogue retreats from the
dialogue it presupposes by interrupting it. What is left to say about this
unanchored I? By its very obstination in wanting to doubt, it attests to a will
to certainty and to truth - at this stage we are not distinguishing bet ween
the t wo expressions - whi ch give to doubt a kind of orientation. In this
sense doubt is not Kierkegaardian despair; quite the opposite, the will to
di scovery is what mot i vat es it, and what I want to di scover is the truth of
the very thing that is put into doubt, the fact that things actually are as they
appear to be. In this respect, it is not insignificant that the hypot hesi s of the
malignant demon is that of a great deceiver. The deceit consists precisely in
maki ng seemi ng pass for "true bei ng' (ibid.). By doubt "I persuade mys el f
that nothing has ever existed"; but what I want to find is "somet hi ng that
is certain and true" (ibid.).
This final remark is capital i f we are to understand the turn-around from
doubt to the certainty of the Cogito in the second Meditation. This turn-
about contains three decisive moments. First moment: in accordance with
the ontological aim of doubt, the first certainty derived from the doubt itself
is the certainty of my existence, implied in the very exercise of thought
in which the hypot hesi s of the great decei ver consists: "Doubt l ess, then,
I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him decei ve me as he may, he can
never bring it about that I am nothing, so l ong as I shall be consci ous that
I am somet hi ng" (Meditation II). This is indeed an existential proposition:
the verb "to be" is taken absol ut el y and not as a copula: "I am, I exist".
The reader familiar with the Di scourse on Met hod may be surprised not to
find here the celebrated formula: Cogito ergo sum. Yet it is implicit in the
formula: I doubt, I am. In several different ways: first of all, doubt i ng is
thinking; next, the "I am" is connect ed to doubt by a "therefore", reinforced
by all the prior reasons for doubting, so that the statement must be read:
60 PAUL RICOEUR
"In order to doubt, one must exist". Finally, the first certainty is not on the
order of feeling; it is a proposition: "So that it must, in fine, be maintained,
all things being mat urel y and carefully considered, that this proposition I
am, I exist, is necessarily true each t i me it is expressed by me, or concei ved
in my mi nd" (let us leave aside, for the moment , the restriction; "each time
it is expressed by me"; it will pl ay a decisive role in what I shall later call
the crisis of the Cogito).
However, i f the first certainty is i ndeed an existential one, it is i mme-
diately fol l owed by a second certainty inseparable from the first: I am
a thinking thing. This devel opment of the first certainty is provoked by
a question: "But I do not yet know with sufficient clearness what I am,
t hough assured that I am" (ibid.). And again: "I am conscious that I exist,
and I who know that I exist inquire into what I am" (ibid.). This passage
from the question who to the question what is prepared by the use of the
verb to be, whi ch oscillates bet ween the absolute use: "I am, I exist" and
the predicative use: "I am something". Something, but what? The reply to
this question leads to the full formul at i on of the Cogito: "I am therefore,
precisely speaking, onl y a thinking thing, that is, a mind, understanding, or
reason - terms whose signification was before unknown to me" (ibid.). By
the question what, we are led into a predicative investigation, concerni ng
that whi ch "belongs to the knowl edge I have of mysel f " (ibid.) or even
mor e clearly, "(that which) appertains to my proper nature" (ibid.). Here
there is a new sifting of opinions by met hodi cal doubt, a sifting similar to
that of the first Meditation, but now the stakes involve the list of predicates
attributable to this I certain of existing in the nakedness of the I am. The
I compl et es its loss of all singular determinations in becomi ng thought;
that is, understanding. One will nevertheless remark that in the expression,
' a thinking thing' , the I receives the status of predicate, but the thought
that is attributed to it itself remains without any determinants. This point
is crucial for understanding the sort of retraction contained in the third
Meditation concerni ng the triumphant status of the I think. If thoughts are
said to "bel ong" to thinking, these thoughts whi ch introduce a diversity
into the Cogito are not considered in relation to their representative value,
which, as we shall see, is very uneven but in relation to the sheer fact of
their bel ongi ng to the subject, ensuring their compl et e equality.
The last remark leads us to the third and final moment of the reflex-
ive conquest. The multiplicity of ideas, even when t hey are cut off from
their representative value, brings us to distinguish different modes within
thinking itself, that is to say, families of ideas corresponding rather well to
the illocutionary acts in the t heory of speech-acts", But what is a thinking
thing? It is a thing that doubts, understends (conceives), affirms, denies,
THE CRISIS OF THE COGI TO 61
wills, refuses, that imagines also, and percei ves" (ibid.). This enumerat i on
poses the question of the identity of the subject, but in an entirely differ-
ent sense than the narrative identity of a concrete person. It can onl y be
a question here of a sort of point-like, ahistorical identity of the I in the
diversity of its operations. This identity is that of a same, which escapes
the alternatives of permanence and change in time, since the Cogito is
instanteneous. It is wort hwhi l e to cite the argument here: "For it is of i t sel f
so evident that it is I who doubt, I who understand, and I who desire, that
it is here unnecessary to add anything by way of rendering it more clear"
(ibid.). What is evident here concerns the i mpossi bi l i t y of separating any
of these modes from the knowl edge I have of myself, hence from my true
nature. Consequently, the evi dence that I am, already ext ended to what I
am, also covers the identity of the ego in the instantaneous diversity of
its acts, The sameness of the s el f is ascribed to the self-evidence of the
Cogito. This argument will be contested by Nietzsche in the famous last
section of the Will to Power.
At the conclusion of the second Meditation, the status of the meditating
subject seems to be totally unrelated to what, within the framework of
ordinary language, we call person, agent, speaker, subject of imputation,
character of narration. As we began to say in connection with the subject
of the doubt, the subj ect i vi t y that posits itself by reflecting on its own
doubt, the doubt that is made even more radical by the fable of the great
deceiver, is an unanchored subjectivity, which Descartes, preserving the
substantialist vocabul ary with which he thinks he has broken, can still call
a soul. But he really means the opposite: what the tradition calls a soul is,
in truth, a subject, and this subject is reduced to the simplest and barest act,
that of thinking. This act of thinking, still without any determined object,
is enough to conquer doubt because doubt already contains it. And since
doubt is voluntary and free, thought posits itself in positing doubt. It is in
this sense that the "I exist as thinking" is a pri mary truth, that is to say, a
truth that nothing precedes.
2. THE CRISIS OF THE COGITO
And y e t . . .
And yet, the very status of primary truth assigned in this way to the Cogito
contains all the seeds of what earlier I termed, by anticipation, the crisis
of the Cogito. The question, indeed, is to know how and at what cost a
second truth can be added to this first one. Descartes offers us a guide, the
order of reasons. But t wo different aspects are to be distinguished in this
order: the analytical order (in the sense of geometers) which is the order of
62 PAUL RICOEUR
di scovery or ordo cognoscendi, and the synthetic order, that of the "truth
of the thing" or ordo essendi (Gu6roult 1953). Accordi ng to the first order,
the Meditations move from the ego to God, then to mathematical essences
and, finally, to sensible things and to bodi es. Accordi ng to the second, God,
si mpl y a link in the first order, becomes the first ring. The Cogito woul d be
truly absol ut e in all respects i f one coul d show that there is onl y a single
order, that in whi ch it is actually first and whi ch the other order sends back
to the second level, deri ved from the first. Now, it does seem that the third
Meditation reverses the order by placing the certainty of the Cogito in a
subordinate posi t i on in relation to divine veracity, whi ch is first according
to the "truth of the thing".
In order to understand what is at stake in the third Meditation, we must
first measure what the second has secured in the face of the challenge posed
by the hypot hesi s of the great deceiver. The Cogito remains an except i on
to doubt inasmuch as certainty and truth coi nci de when "I represent my
sel f to mysel f " (Meditation II1); nothing guarantees the truthfulness of the
clear and distinct ideas of anything else. Moreover, this certainty-truth lasts
but the space of an instant, that of the act of reflection: "Perhaps if I were
to cease thinking, I woul d cease to exist" (ibid.). How can we over come
the precariousness of an evi dence confined to the instant?
The way out offered by the third Meditation is ext remel y subtle. It
was admitted in the second Meditation that ideas whi ch are the content of
thought t hemsel ves participate in the certainty of thought insofar as they
are inseparable from mysel f. But what bel ongs to me in this way are ideas
insofar as they are present in me, abstracting from their representative
value, what Descartes called their "obj ect i ve bei ng" in order to distinguish
this from their "formal being", whi ch put s them all on the same level,
since t hey are all thought by me. The case is quite different i f we consider
ideas from the poi nt of vi ew of their representative value; they then present
varyi ny degrees of perfection. Equal insofar as t hey are thought, ideas are
not so with respect to what t hey represent. Yet, Descartes continues, there
is one idea that is distinct from all others: this is the idea of perfection,
held to be synonymous with the phi l osophi cal idea of God; it is in me like
all ideas but is endowed with a representative content out of proport i on
to my inner self, whi ch is that of an imperfect being, condemned as I am
to attain the truth along the arduous path of doubt. This is the astonishing
situation: a content greater than its container. The question then arises as
to the cause of this idea. Wi t h respect to all my other ideas, I coul d hol d
mys el f to be their cause, for t hey do not possess more bei ng than I do. Of
the idea of God, however, I am not capable of bei ng the cause. Then it was
pl aced in me by the very bei ng that it represents,
THE CRISIS OF THE GOGI TO 63
I am not discussing here the innumerable difficulties that are related to
each of the moment s of this argument: the right to distinguish the obj ect i ve
bei ng of ideas from their formal being, the right to consider the degrees
of perfection of the idea as proportional to the beings represented in this
way, the right to consider God as the cause of the presence of his own
idea in me. I shall go directly to the consequences that concern the Cogito
itself, surpassed in this way by the idea of the infinite or of perfection,
i ncommensurabl e with its condition of finite being.
Even i f the main accent in the third Meditation falls on demonstrating
the existence of God, its effect on the Cogito is by no means negligible. It
can be summed up as follows: "I am not alone in the world . . . . but there
is besi des mysel f some other being who exists as the cause of that idea
(the very idea of infinite and perfect being, the idea of God)". By a sort
of rebound-effect of this new certainty - the existence of God - onto that
of the Cog#o, the idea of mysel f appears to be profoundl y t ransformed
by the sole fact of the recognition of that Other who brings about in me
the presence of its own representation. I appear to be inhabited by an idea
which cannot "come from me" (ibid.). But how did I get here? By changing
the line of attack in the investigation of mysel f. Now I am investigating
my power of "produci ng" my ideas and no longer the fact of having them,
thinking them. It is with respect to this power that the idea of God differs
from all the others: as regards the ideas of things, "t hey exhibit to me
so little reality that I cannot even distinguish the obj ect represented from
non-being, (that) I do not see why I should not be the author of t hem"
(ibid.). The accent indeed falls here on the sel f as author and not si mpl y
as the receptacle of ideas. It is this change in the line of attack that is
deci si ve for the idea of God: it has so much more obj ect i ve reality" than
the idea I have of mysel f that it coul d not have "come from me". Instead,
I have to say that the idea of God is logically prior to the idea of myself:
"in some way I possess the perception of the infinite before that of the
finite, that is, the perception of God before that of mys e l f . . . " (ibid.). One
must thus admit that, i f God is the ratio essendi of mysel f, he becomes,
as a result, the ratio cognoscendi of myself, insofar as I am an imperfect
being, a being that is lacking. For the imperfection attaching to doubt is
known onl y in the light of perfection; in the second Meditation, I knew
mysel f as existing and thinking but not yet as a finite and limited nature.
This infirmity of the Cogito extends a l ong way: it is not onl y related to the
imperfection of doubt, but to the very precariousness of the certainty that
conquered doubt, essentially to its lack of duration. Left to itself, the ego
of the Cogito is Sisyphus condemned to climb back up, from one instant
to the next, the rock of its certainty against the slope of doubt. On the
64 PAUL RICOEUR
other hand, because he preserves me, God gives the certainty of mysel f the
permanence it cannot draw from itself. The strict cont emporaneousness of
the idea of God and the idea of mysel f, considered from the perspect i ve
of the power of produci ng ideas, makes me say that the idea of God "is
innate, in the same way as is the idea of mysel f " (ibid.). Better yet: the
idea of God is in me as the very mark of the author on his work, a mark
that assures the resembl ance bet ween the two. I have finally to confess
that "I percei ve this l i kenes s . . , by the same faculty by which I apprehend
mysel f " (ibid.).
The fusi on bet ween the idea of mysel f and that of God coul d hardly
be pushed any further. But what are the consequences of this for the order
of reasons? The result is that this order is no l onger present ed as a linear
chain but instead as a loop: of this rebound effect of the end poi nt on
the starting point, Descartes sees but the benefits, namel y the elimination
of the insidious hypot hesi s of a l yi ng God who woul d nourish the most
hyperbol i c doubt; the fabul ous i mage of the great decei ver is conquered
in me as soon as the Other who is truly existing and entirely truthful has
taken its place. For us, however, as for Descart es' s first critics, the question
is whether, by giving the form of a circle to the order of reasons, Descartes
has not made the step that will tear the Cogito out of its initial solitude into
a gigantic vi ci ous circle.
It does seem that the reasoning of the third Meditation is still enum-
bered by an i nsurmount abl e equivocation. The stark choi ce that subsequent
history will uncover continues to be in Descartes a comfort abl e one: it is
present ed as the interweaving of t wo compet i t i ve orders, that of subjective
reasons and that of the obj ect i ve truth of the thing. Descartes thought he
coul d pass smoot hl y from one to the other, by substituting in the exami -
nation of the ideas contained in thought the poi nt of vi ew of their repre-
sentative value in the place of their merel y bel ongi ng to the Cogito, and
by assigning to this representative val ue and equi vocal existential st at us:
"obj ect i ve being". With obj ect i ve bei ng we are still in the Cogito and
aheady outside the Cogito. We are still in the Cogito to the extent that the
degrees of perfection of the obj ect i ve reality of each idea possess evi dence
of the same nature as that of the Cogito itself, due to the fact that obj ect i ve
reality is that of ideas and that ideas cannot be separated from my nature.
We are, nonetheless, outside the Cogito to the extent that the hierarchy of
the degrees of perfection is measured by the highest among these, the idea
of infinity, which, to be sure, is in me as an idea but is not pruduced by me
- as it has more perfection than I do, I who doubt.
It is this pivotal position of "obj ect i ve being", hal f-way bet ween sub-
j ect i ve certainty and obj ect i ve truth that has not st ood up to criticism. What
THE CRISIS OF THE COGI TO 65
has actually been percei ved is the break up of the order rather than its con-
tinuity, by, among others, the authors of the Second and Fourth Objections,
and even more clearly by modem interpreters of Descartes, who come after
the di l emma of modem subj ect i vi t y has made its appearance on the great
stage of history. In the expression: "the obj ect i ve bei ng" of the idea, the
term "bei ng" is primary. Now, what can assure me that the being of the idea
shares the evi dence of the Cogito? And i f it does not share this certainty, it
introduces a het erogeneous element that renders the certainty of the Cogito
useless and sterile. Can it be said that the consci ousness of my finite nature
can si mpl y be added, without occasioning any break, to the naked con-
sciousness of my existence as thinking? But this union is het erogeneous to
the extent that the latter depends on me and so comes from me, whereas
the former does not come from me and in this sense does not depend on
me. Besides, once the union is operated bet ween certainty of existing as
thinking and the truth of finiteness, the former seems not onl y i ncompl et e
and unfinished but genuinely truncated: what indeed is a thought, abstract-
ing from its unequal content and from the principle that governs this very
inequality? If it is true that the union bet ween the idea of mysel f as finite
and imperfect and the idea of God as infinite and perfect is indissociabte
and original in our primary consciousness, then how could I form the first
certainty in fei gned ignorance of this union? Are we to say that this union
rests on the original union of my consci ousness and its contents? But there
is a sharp discontinuity bet ween the principle of uncertainty of the former
and the principle of truth bel ongi ng to the latter. Henceforth, if we take
seriously the transmutation by which the Cogito passes from the second to
the third Meditation, we must then say that the Cogito separated from the
consci ousness of God cannot go beyond the plane of common sense, with
which the Cogito was supposed to have made a clean break.
But then, without falling to the level to which Spinoza relegates it, the
Cogito loses its character of first truth to the extent that the idea of mysel f,
separated from the idea of God, "is but the denatured image of mysel f " (M.
Gu~roult, Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons, Aubier, 1953, pp. 244-5):
"In reality there is no consci ousness which is not at the same time the
consci ousness of God (that is to say, of its own imperfection, et c. . . ): the
true Cogito is the Cogito attached to God" (ibid., 244).
A choi ce seems open to us here: either the Cogito has the value of a
foundation, but then it is a sterile truth which cannot be pursued without a
break in the order of reasons; or it is founded on its finite condition of the
idea of perfection and the first truth loses its halo of first foundation.
This choice has been transformed by Descart es' heirs into a dilemma:
on the one hand, Malebranche, and Spinoza even more so, drawing the
66 PAUL RICOEUR
consequences of the reversal performed by the third Meditation, saw in the
Cogito no more than an abstract, truncated truth, stripped of all prestige;
Spi noza is, in this respect, the most coherent: for the Ethics, the discourse
of infinite subst ance alone deserves to be a foundation; the Cogito is not
merel y relegated to the second level, but it loses its formulation in terms
of the first person. At the start of Book II of the Ethics, we thus read:
"man thinks". An axi om precedes this lapidary formula, Axi om I, which
stresses the subordination of the latter: "the essence of man does not include
necessary existence, that is to say, it may j ust as wel l be, fol l owi ng the order
of Nature, that this or that particlar man exist, as that he not exist." The
probl emat i c of the sel f moves away from the phi l osophi cal horizon. On the
other hand, for the entire movement of phi l osophi cal idealism, by way of
Kant, Fichte and Husserl, (at least the Husserl of the Cartesian Meditations)
the onl y coherent reading of the Cogito is the one in whi ch the alleged
certainty of God' s exi st ence is marked with the same seal of subj ect i vi t y
as the certainty of my own existence; the guarantee const i t ut ed by Di vi ne
veracity, behi nd the Cogito as self-positing, does not then constitute more
than an appendix to the pri mary certainty. If this is the case, then the Cogito
is not a pri mary truth that woul d be f ol l owed by a second and a third, an
r~th truth, but the foundat i on that founds itself, i ncommensurabl e to all
proposi t i ons, Transcendental as wel l as empirical. In order to avoi d falling
into subj ect i ve idealism, the "I think" has to be stripped of all psychol ogi cal
resonance, and all the more so, of all autobiographical reference. It has to
become the Kantian "I think", whi ch the transcendental Deduct i on states
"must be able to accompany all my representations". The probl emat i c of
the sel f l eaves this in a sense magnified, but at the cost of the loss of its
relation to the person of whom one speaks, to the I-you of interlocution, to
the sel f of responsibility, to the identity of the historical person. Must we
choose bet ween humiliation and exaltation? Moderni t y at least owes a debt
to Descartes for having been pl aced before such a formi dabl e choice.
REFERENCES
Descartes, Ren6:1979, Medi at i ons on Fi r s t Phi l osophy, Hackett, Indianopolis.
Gu6roult, M.: 1953, Des car t es sel on l' ordre des rai sons, Aubier-Montaigne, Paris.
Department of Philosophy
University of Chicago
1050 E. 59th Street
Chicago, 1L 60637