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- My Body, This Paper, This Fire
- by Michel Foucault
- On pages 56-59 of Histoire de lafolie [Madness and Civilization] I
- said that dreams and madness have neither the same status nor the
- same role in the development of Cartesian doubt: dreams allow me to
- doubt this place where I am, this sheet of paper I see, this hand I hold
- out; but madness is not an instrument or stage of doubt; for "/ who am
- thinking cannot be mad." Madness is therefore excluded, contrary to
- the skeptical tradition, which made it one of the reasons for doubting.
- To sum up Derrida's objection to this thesis, it is no doubt best to
- quote the passage where he gives most energetically his reading of
- Descartes.
- Descartes has just said that all knowledge of sensory origin could deceive
- him. He pretends to put to himself the astonished objection of the
- imaginary nonphilosopher who is frightened by such audacity and
- says: no, not all sensory knowledge, for then you would be mad and it
- would be unreasonable to follow the example of madmen, to put forward
- a madman's discourse. Descartes echoes this objection: since I am
- here, writing, and you understand me, I am not mad, nor are you, and
- we are all sane here. The example of madness is therefore not indicative
- of the fragility of the sensory idea. So be it. Descartes acquiesces to
- this natural point of view, or rather he pretends to be sitting back in this
- *This essay appears as an appendix in the 1972 edition of Histoire de fa folie (PariS:
- PIon) but is not included in the English translation (Madness and Civilization). It is a
- response to Jacques Derrida's critique of the Histoire in "Cogito and the History of
- Madness" (see footnote a). This translation, by Geoff Bennington, has been slightly
- amended.
- 39 4
- natural comfort the better, the more radically and the more definitively
- to spring out of it and unsettle his interlocutor. So be it, he says, you
- think that I would be extravagant to doubt that I am sitting near the fire,
- etc., that I would be extravagant to follow the example of madmen. I
- will therefore propose a hypothesis which will seem much more natural
- to you, will not disorient you, because it concerns a more common,
- and more universal experience than that of madness: the experience of
- sleep and dreams. Descartes then elaborates the hypothesis that will
- ruin all the sensOly foundations of knowledge and will lay bare only the
- intellectual foundations of certainty. This hypothesis above all will not
- run from the possibility of extravagances- epistemological ones - much
- more serious than madness.
- The reference to dreams does not, therefore, fall short of a madness
- potentially respected or even excluded by Descartes: quite the contrary.
- It constitutes, in the methodical order which here is ours, the hyperbolical
- exasperation of the hypothesis of madness. This latter affected only
- certain areas of sensory perception, and in a contingent and partial way.
- Moreover, Descartes is concerned here not with determining the concept
- of madness but with utilizing the popular notion of extravagance
- for juridical and methodological ends, in order to ask questions of principle
- regarding only the truth of ideas. ([Derrida's footnote] Madness,
- theme or index: what is significant is that Descartes, at bottom, never
- speaks of madness itself in this text. Madness is not his theme. He treats
- it as the index of a question of principle, and epistemological value. It
- will be said, perhaps, that this is the sign of a profound exclusion. But
- this silence on madness itself simultaneously signifies the opposite of
- an exclusion, since it is not a question of madness in this text, not even
- to exclude it It is not in the Meditations that Descartes speaks of inadness
- itself.) What must be grasped here is that from this point of view
- the sleeper, or the dreamer, is madder than the madman. Or, at least,
- the dreamer, insofar as concerns the problem of knowledge which interests
- D escartes here, is further from true perception than the madman.
- It is in the case of sleep, and not in that of extravagance, that the
- absolute totality of ideas of sensory origin becomes suspect, is stripped
- of 'objective value' as M. Gueroult puts it. The hypothesis of extravagance
- is therefore not a good example, a revelatory example, a good
- instrument of doubt- and for at least two reasons. (a) It does not cover
- the totality ofthe field of sensory perception. The madman is not always
- wrong about everything; he is not wrong often enough, is never mad
- enough. (b) It is not a useful or happy example pedagogically, because it
- meets the resistance of the non-philosopher who does not have the auMy
- Body, This Paper, This Fire 39 5
- dacity to follow the philosopher when the latter agrees that h e might
- indeed be mad at the very moment when he speaks,a
- Derrida's augmentation is remarkable for its depth and perhaps even
- more so for its frankness. The stakes of the debate are clearly indicated:
- Could there be anything anterior or exterior to philosophical
- discourse? Can its condition reside in an exclusion, a refusal, a risk
- avoided, and, why not, a fear? Derrida rejects this suspicion passionately.
- "Pudenda origo," as Nietzsche said, about the religious and their
- religion.
- Let us confront Derrida's analyses and Descartes's texts.
- l . T H E P R I V I L E G E S O F D R E A M S O V E R M A D N E S S
- Derrida: "Dreaming is a more common, and more universal experience
- than that of madness." "The madman is not always wrong about everything."
- "Madness affects only certain areas of sensory perception, and
- in a contingent and partial way."
- Now, Descartes does not say that dreaming is "more common and
- more universal than madness." Nor does he say that madmen are
- only mad from time to time and on particular points. Let us listen
- instead to his evocation of people who "insist constantly that they are
- kings." Is the madness of these men who think they are kings, or have
- a body made of glass, more intermittent than dreams?
- Yet it is a fact that in the progression of his d oubt, Descartes privileges
- dreaming over madness. Let us leave undecided for the moment
- the problem of whether madness is excluded, merely neglected, or
- taken up in a broader and more radical testing.
- Scarcely has Descartes cited the example of madness only to abandon
- it, than he evokes the case of dreams: "However, I must here take
- into account the fact that I am a man, and consequently have the habit
- of sleeping, and imagining in my dreams the same or sometimes
- more unlikely things than these deranged people do when awake."
- So dreams have a double advantage. On the one hand, they are
- capable of giving rise to extravagances that equal or sometimes exceed
- those of madness. On the other hand, they have the property of
- happening habitually. The first advantage is of a logical and demonstrative
- order: everything that madness (the example I have just left to
- one side) could make me doubt can also be rendered uncertain by
- dreams. In their power to make uncertain, dreams are not outdone by
- madness; and none of the demonstrative force of madness is lost by
- dreams when I need to convince myself of all that I must call into
- doubt. The other advantage of dreams is of a quite different order:
- they are frequent, they happen often; my memories of them are recent,
- it is not difficult to have access to these vivid memories which
- they leave. In short, this is a practical advantage when it is no longer a
- question of demonstrating, but of performing an exercise, and calling
- up a memory, a thought, a state, in the very movement of meditation.
- The extravagance of dreams guarantees their demonstrative character
- as an example: their frequency ensures their accessibility as an
- exercise. And it is indeed this quality of accessibility which preoccupies
- Descartes here, certainly more so than the demonstrative quality,
- which he mentions once and for all, as if to make sure that the hypothesis
- of madness can be abandoned without regret. On the other
- hand, the theme that dreams happen very often returns several times.
- "I am a man, and consequently I am in the habit of sleeping," "how
- many times has it happened that I have dreamed at night," "what
- happens in sleep," "thinking about it carefully I remember having
- often been mistaken while asleep."
- I am afraid that Derrida has confused these two aspects of dreaming.
- It is as if he had covered them both with one word that joins them
- together by force: "universal." If they could be described as "universal,"
- dreams would happen to everyone and about everything.
- Dreams would indicate that everything could be doubted by everyone.
- But this forces the words; it goes far beyond what Descartes's text
- says; or, rather, it falls far short of the peculiarities of that text; it
- effaces the clear distinction between the extravagance of dreams and
- their frequency; it erases the specific role of these two characteristics
- (demonstration and exercise) in Descartes's discourse; it omits the
- greater importance accorded to habit than to extravagance.
- But why is it important that dreams should be familiar and accessible?
- 2 . M Y E X P E R I E N C E O F D R E A M S
- Derrida: "The reference to dreams constitutes, in the methodical order
- which here is ours, the hyperbolical exasperation of the hypothesis of
- madness."
- Before re-reading the paragraph on dreams,1 let us keep in mind w ha t
- has just been said: "But just a moment-these are madmen, a n d I
- should be no less extravagant if I were to follow their examples."
- The discourse then runs as follows: a resolution on the part of the
- meditating subject to take into consideration that he is a man, that he
- does sometimes sleep and dream; the appearance of a memory, or
- rather of a multitude of memories, of dreams that coincide exactly,
- point by point, with today's perception (sitting here, fully dressed, beside
- the fire); and yet, a feeling that there is a difference between this
- perception and that memory, a difference not only noted but brought
- about by the subject in the very movement of his meditation (I look at
- this paper; I shake my head, I reach out my hand to make the difference
- between waking and sleeping stand out sharply); but then come
- further memories, at a second level (the sharpness of this impression
- has often formed part of my dreams); with these memories, the vivid
- feeling that I am awake disappears; it is replaced by the clear vision
- that there is no certain index that can separate sleep and waking; an
- observation that provokes in the meditating subject an astonishment
- such that the lack of differentiation between waking and sleeping provokes
- the near certainty of being asleep.
- It is clear that making sleep and waking into a theme for reflection
- is not the only consequence of the resolution to think about dreaming.
- In the very movement that proposes it and makes it vary, this theme
- takes if.fect in the meditating subject in the form of memories, sharp
- impressions, voluntary gestures, felt differences, more memories,
- clear vision, astonishment, and a lack of differentiation very close to
- the feeling of being asleep. To think of dreams is not to think of something
- external, whose causes and effects I could know, nor is it to
- evoke no more than a strange phantasmagoria, or the movements of
- the brain which can provoke it; thinking about dreams, when one
- applies oneself to it, is such that its effect is that of blurring the perceived
- limits of sleeping and waking for the meditating subject at the
- very heart of his meditation. The subject who thinks of dreaming is
- thereby disturbed. Applying one's mind to dreams is not an indifferent
- task: perhaps it is indeed in the first place a self-suggested theme; but
- it quickly turns out to be a risk to which one is exposed. A risk, for the
- subject, of being modified; a risk of no longer being at all sure of being
- awake; a risk of stupor, as the Latin text says.
- And it is here that the example of dreaming shows another of its
- privileges: dreams may well modify the meditating subject to this extent,
- but they do not prevent him, in the very heart of this stupor, from
- continuing to meditate, to meditate validly, to see clearly a certain
- number of things or principles, in spite of the lack of distinction, however
- deep, between waking and sleeping. Even though I am no longer
- sure of being awake, I remain sure of what my meditation allows me
- to see: this is just what is shown by the following passage, which
- begins, precisely, with a sort of hyperbolic resolution, "let us suppose,
- then, that we are asleep," or as the Latin text says more forcefully,
- "Age somniemus." Thinking about dreams had led me to uncertainty;
- uncertainty, through the astonishment it provoked, led me to the
- near-certainty of being asleep; this near-certainty is now made by my
- resolutions into a systematic pretense. The meditating subject is put
- to sleep by way of artifice: "Age somniemus," and on this basis the
- meditation will be able to develop anew.
- We can now see all the possibilities furnished by the dream's property
- of being, not universal, certainly, but modestly habitual.
- I. It is a possible, immediately accessible experience, the model for
- which is put forward by countless memories.
- 2. This possible experience is not only a theme for meditation: it is
- really and actually produced in meditation, according to the following
- series: thinking of the dream, remembering the dream, trying to separate
- the dream from waking, no longer knowing whether one is
- dreaming or not, acting voluntarily as though one were dreaming.
- 3. By means of this meditative exercise, thinking about dreaming
- takes effect in the subject himself: it modifies the subject by striking
- him with stupor.
- 4. But in modifying him, in making of him a subject uncertain of
- being awake, thinking about dreams does not disqualify him as meditating
- subject: even though transformed into a "subject supposedly
- asleep," the meditating subject can safely pursue the progression of
- his doubt.
- But we must go back and compare this experience of dreams with
- the example of madness which immediately precedes it.
- 3 . T H E ' G O O D ' A N D T H E ' B A D ' E X A M P L E
- Derrida: "What must b e grasped here is that from this point of view the
- sleeper, or the dreamer, is madder than the madman."
- 399
- For Derrida, madness is not excluded by Descartes: it is simply neglected.
- Neglected in favor of a better and more radical example. The
- example of dreams extends, completes and generalizes what the example
- of madness indicated so inadequately. To pass from madness to
- dreams is to pass from a "bad" to a "good" instrument of doubt.
- Now I believe that the opposition between dreams and madness is
- of a quite different type. We must compare Descartes's two paragraphs
- step by step, and follow the system of their opposition in detail.
- I. The nature of the meditative exercise. This appears clearly in the
- vocabulary used. In the madness paragraph, a vocabulary of comparison.
- If I wish to deny that "these hands and this body are mine," I
- must "compare myself to certain deranged people" (comparare) but I
- would be extravagant indeed "if I followed their examples" (si quod
- ab iis exemplum ad me tran�errem: if I applied to myself some example
- coming from them). The madman: an external term to which I
- compare myself.
- In the dream-paragraph, a vocabulary of memory. "I am in the
- habit of imagining in my dreams"; "how many times has it happened
- that I . . ."; "thinking carefully about it, I remember." The dreamer:
- that which I remember having been; from the depths of my memory
- rises the dreamer that I was myself, that I will be again.
- 2. The themes of the meditative exercise. They appear in the examples
- that the meditating subject proposed by himself .
- . Examples of madness: thinking one is a king when one is poor;
- imagining one's body is made of glass or that one is a jug. Madness is
- the entirely other; it deforms and transports; it gives rise to another
- scene.
- Examples of dreams: being seated (as I am at this moment); feeling
- the heat of the fire (as I feel it today); reaching out my hand (as I
- decide, at this moment, to do). The dream does not shift the scene; it
- doubles the demonstratives that point to the scene where I am (this
- hand? Perhaps a different hand, in image. This fire? Perhaps a different
- fire, a dream). Dream-imagination pins itself onto present perception
- at every point.
- 5. The central test of the exercise. This consists in the search for
- difference; can I take these proposed themes into account in my meditation?
- Can I seriously wonder whether my body is made of glass, or
- whether I am naked in my bed? If I can, then I am obliged to doubt
- 400
- even my own body. On the other hand, my body is saved if my meditation
- remains quite distinct from madness and dreams.
- Distinctfrom dreams? I put it to the test: I remember dreaming that
- I was nodding my head. I will therefore nod my head again, here and
- now. Is there a difference? Yes -a certain clarity, a certain distinctness.
- But, and this is the second stage of the test, can this clarity and distinctness
- be found in the dream? Yes, I have a clear memory that it
- was so. Therefore what I supposed was the criterion of difference
- (clarity and distinctness) belongs indifferently to both dreams and
- waking perception; so it cannot make the difference between them.
- Distinct from madness? The test is immediately carried out. Or,
- rather, looking more closely, the test does not take place as it does in
- the case of dreams. There is, in fact, no question of trying to take
- myself to be a madman who takes himself to be a king; nor is there
- any question of wondering if I am a king (or a captain from Tours)
- who takes himself to be a philosopher shut up in a room to meditate.
- What is different with madness does not have to be tested, it is established.
- Scarcely are the themes of extravagance evoked than the distinction
- bursts out like a shout: "sed amentes sunt isti."
- 4. The dJect of the exercise. This appears in the sentences, or rather
- in the decision-sentences, which end both passages.
- Madness-paragraph: "But j ust a moment-these are madmen"
- (third person plural, they, the others, istE) ; "I should be no less extravagant
- if I followed their example": it would be madness (note the
- conditional) even to try the test, to wish to imitate all these delights,
- and to play the fool with fools, as fools do. Imitating madmen will not
- persuade me that I am mad (as thinking of dreams will in a moment
- convince me that I am perhaps asleep); it is the very project of imitating
- them that is extravagant. The extravagance applies to the very
- idea of putting it to the test, and that is why the test fails to take place
- and is replaced by a mere registering of difference.
- Dream-paragraph: the sentence " these are madmen" corresponds
- to "/ am quite astonished" (obstupescere: the stupor of indistinctness
- responds to the shout of difference); and the sentence "I should be no
- less extravagant if . . ." is answered by "my astonishment (stupor) is
- such that it is almost capable of convincing me that I am asleep." The
- test that has been effectively tried has "taken" so well that here I am
- (note the present indicative) in uncertainty as to whether I am awake.
- And it is in this uncertainty that I decide to continue my meditation.
- 40 1
- I I w o u ld b e mad to want to act the madman (and I abandon the
- I c I ( 'n ) ; hut lo think about dreaming is already to have the impression
- of h( ' i n g asleep (and that is what I shall meditate on).
- I I i s extraordinarily difficult to remain deaf to the way these two
- pn rngraphs echo one another. Difficult not to be struck by the comp
- l( ' x system of oppositions which underlies them. Difficult not to recogn
- ize in them two parallel but different exercises: that of the demens,
- < l n d that of the dormiens. Difficult not to hear the words and sentences
- con front each other on both sides of the "however," the importance of
- w h ich Derrida so deeply underlined, though I think he was wrong not
- (0 a nalyze its function in the play of the discourse. Difficult indeed, to
- say simply that among the reasons for doubt, madness is an insufficient
- and pedagogically clumsy example, because the dreamer is in
- any case much madder than the madman.
- The whole discursive analysis shows that the establishment of
- Ilonmadness (and the rejection of the test) is not continuous with the
- (est of sleep (and the observation that one is perhaps asleep).
- But why this rejection of the test of the demens? From the fact that it
- does not take place, can one draw the conclusion that it is excluded?
- After all, Descartes speaks so little, and so briefly, about madness
- 4 . T H E D I S Q U A L I FI C A T I O N O F T H E S U B J E C T
- Derrida: "What is significant is that Descartes, at bottom, never speaks
- of madness in this text . . . it is not a question of madness in this text,
- not even to exclude it."
- On several occasions Derrida wisely points out that in order to understand
- Descartes's text properly it is necessary to refer to the original
- Latin version. He recalls - and he is quite right-the words used by
- Descartes in the famous sentence: "But just a moment: these are madmen
- (sed amentes sunt istt), and I should be no less extravagant (demens)
- if I were to follow their examples." Unfortunately, he takes the
- analysis no further than this simple reminder of the words.
- Let us return to the passage itself: "How could I deny that these
- hands and this body are mine, except by comparing myself to certain
- deranged people . . . ?" (The term used here is insant). Now what
- are these insani who take themselves to be kings or jugs? They are
- amentes; and I should be no less demens if I were to apply their examples
- to myself. Why these three terms, or rather why use firstly the
- term insanus, then the couple amens-demens? When it is a matter of
- characterizing them by the implausibility of their imagination, the
- madmen are called insani: a word that belongs as much to current
- vocabulary as to medical terminology. As far as the signs of it are
- concerned, to be insanus is to take oneself to be what one is not, to
- believe in fancies, to be the victim of illusions. As for its causes, it
- comes from having the brain gorged with vapor. But when Descartes
- wants no longer to characterize madness but to affirm that I ought not
- to follow the example of madmen, he uses the term demens and
- amens: terms that are in the first place juridical, before being medical,
- which designate a whole category of people incapable of certain religious,
- civil, and judicial acts. The dementes do not have total possession
- of their rights when it comes to speaking, promising, pledging,
- signing, starting a legal action, etc. Insanus is a characterizing term;
- amens and demens are disqualifying ones. In the former, it is a question
- of signs; in the others, of capacity.
- The two sentences: In order to doubt my body, I must "compare
- myself to certain deranged people," and "but just a moment-these
- are madmen," are not the proof of an impatient and annoyed tautology.
- It is in no way a matter of saying, "one must be mad or act like
- madmen," but, "these are madmen and I am not mad." It would be a
- singular flattening of the text to sum it up as Derrida does: "since I am
- here . . . I am not mad, nor are you, we are all sane here." The development
- ofthe text is quite different: to doubt one's body is to be like
- those with deranged minds, the sick, the insani. Can I follow their
- example and at least feign madness for my own part, and make me
- uncertain in my own mind whether I am mad or not? I cannot and
- must not. For these insani are amentes; and I would be just as demens
- as they, and juridically disqualified if I followed . . .
- Derrida has obscurely sensed this juridical connotation of the
- word. He returns to it several times, insistently and hesitantly. Descartes,
- he says, "treats madness as an index of a question of principle
- and epistemological value." Or again: "Descartes is concerned here
- not with determining the concept of madness but with utilizing the
- popular notion of extravagance for juridical and methodological ends,
- in order to ask questions of principle regarding only the truth of
- ideas." Yes, Derrida is right to emphasize that it is a question of right
- at this point. Yes, he is right again to say that Descartes did not want to
- "determine the concept of madness" (and who ever made out that he
- did?). But he is wrong not to have seen that Descartes's text plays on
- the gap between two types of determinations of madness (medical on
- the one hand and juridical on the other). Above all, he is wrong to say
- hastily that the question of right posed here concerns "the truth of
- ideas," when in fact, as is clearly stated, it concerns the qualification
- of the subject.
- The problem can, then, be posed thus. Can I doubt my own body,
- can I doubt my actuality? The example of madmen, of the insani invites
- me to do so. But comparing myself to them and acting like them
- implies that I, too, will become demented, incapable and disqualified
- in my enterprise of meditation: I should be no less demens if I followed
- their examples. But if, on the other hand, I take the example of
- dreaming, if I pretend to dream, then dormiens though I am, I will be
- able to continue meditating, reasoning, seeing clearly. Demens I shall
- be unable to continue: at the hypothesis alone I am obliged to stop,
- envisage something else, see if another example allows me to doubt
- my body. Dormiens, I can continue with my meditation; I remain
- qualified to think, and I therefore make my resolution: "Age somniemus,"
- which leads to a new stage of meditation.
- It would have to be a very distant reading which could assert that
- "it's not a question of madness in this text."
- Alright, you say. Let us admit, in spite of Derrida, that it is necessary
- to pay such great attention to the text, and to all its little differences.
- For all that, have you demonstrated that madness is well and
- truly excluded from the progress of doubt? Does not Descartes refer to
- it again with reference to the imagination? Will it not be a question of
- madness when he discovers the extravagance of painters, and all the
- fantastic illusions they invent?
- 5 . T H E E X T R A VA G A N C E O F P A I N T E R S
- Derrida: "What [Descartes] seemed previously to exclude . . . as extravagance,
- he here admits as a possibility in dreams . . . Now, within
- these representations, these images, these ideas in the Cartesian sense,
- everything may be fictitious and false, as in the representations of those
- painters whose imaginations, as Descartes expressly says, "are extravagant
- enough to invent something so new that its like has never been
- seen before."
- It will indeed be a question of madness several more times in the rest
- of Descartes's work. And its disqualifying role for the meditating subAesthetics,
- Method, and Epistemology
- ject will in no way prevent meditation from bearing on it, for it is not
- for the content of these extravagances that madness is put out of play;
- that only happens for the subject who wants "to play the fool" and
- meditate at the same time, when in fact it is a matter of knowing if the
- subject can take madness in hand, imitate it, feign it, and risk no
- longer being sure whether or not he is rational. I think I have made
- this point: madness is excluded by the subject who doubts as a means
- of qualifying himself as doubting subject. But it is not excluded as an
- object of reflection and knowledge. Is it not characteristic that the
- madness talked of by Descartes in the paragraph studied above is
- defined in medical terms, as the result of a "brain deranged or gorged
- with the black vapors of bile"?
- But Derrida could insist and stress the fact that madness is found
- again in the movement of doubt, mixed up with the imagination of
- painters. It is manifestly present as is indicated by the word "extravagant"
- used to describe the imagination of painters: "If it is possible
- that their imagination is extravagant enough to invent something so
- new that we have never seen anything like it . . . certainly at the
- very least the paints [couleurs] with which they compose it must be
- real." Derrida has realized perfectly what is odd about the expression:
- "their imagination is extravagant enough." So well has he realized it
- that he underlines it in his quotation as the peg on which to hang his
- whole demonstration. And I subscribe wholly to the necessity of isolating
- these words and keeping them well to one side.
- But for a different reason- simply because they do not appear in
- Descartes's text They are an addition by the translator. The Latin text
- says only: "siforte aliquid excogitent ad eo novum ut nihil . . ."; "if
- perhaps they invent something so new." It is curious that in support of
- his thesis Derrida should have spontaneously chosen, retained and
- underlined what precisely is only found in the French translation of
- the Meditations; curious, too, that he should insist, and assert that the
- word "extravagant" has been "expressly" used by Descartes.
- It does not appear, then, that the example of dreaming is for Descartes
- only a generalization or radicalization ofthe case of madness. It
- is not as a feeble, inferior, "unrevealing," "ineffectual" example that
- madness is distinguished from dreaming; and it is not for its lesser
- value that, once evoked, it is as if left to one side. The example of
- madness stands against that of dreaming; they are confronted the one
- with the other and opposed according to a whole system of differences
- which are clearly articulated in Descartes's discourse.
- And I am afraid that Derrida's analysis neglects many of these differences.
- Literal differences between words (compararelreminiscere;
- exemplum transJerreito persuade; conditional/indicative). Thematic
- differences between images (being beside the fire, holding out one's
- hand and opening one's eyes/taking oneself to be a king, being covered
- in gold, having a body made of glass); textual differences in the
- disposition and opposition of paragraphs (the first plays on the distinction
- between insanus and demens, and on the juridical implication
- of demens by insanus; the second plays on the distinction "remembering
- being asleep/being persuaded that one is asleep," and on the real
- passage from the one to the other in a mind that applies itself to such a
- memory). But, above all, differences at the level of what happens in"
- the meditation, at the level of the events that follow one another; acts
- carried out by the meditating subject (comparison/reminiscence); f{{
- Jects produced in the meditating subject (sudden and immediate perception
- of a difference/astonishment- stupor- experience of a lack of
- distinction); the qualification of the meditating subject (invalidated if
- he were demens; validated even if he were donniens).
- It is clear that this last set of differences controls all the others; it
- refers less to the signifying organization of the text than to the series
- of events (acts, effects, qualifications) which the discursive practice of
- meditation carries with it: it is a question of the modifications of the
- subject by the very exercise of discourse. And I have the feeling that if
- a reader as remarkably assiduous as Derrida has missed so many
- literary, thematic or textual differences, then this is through having
- misunderstood those differences which are the principle of these others;
- namely, the "discursive differences."
- �
- We must keep in mind the very title of "meditations." Any discourse,
- whatever it be, is constituted by a set of utterances which are produced
- each in its place and time, as so many discursive events. If it is
- a question of a pure demonstration, these utterances can be read as a
- series of events linked one to another according to a certain number
- offormal rules; as for the subject of the discourse, he is not implicated
- in the demonstration - he remains, in relation to it, fixed, invariable
- and as if neutralized. On the other hand, a "meditation" produces, as
- so many discursive events, new utterances that carry with them a
- 4 0 6
- series of modifications of the enunciating subject: through what is
- said in meditation, the subject passes from darkness to light, from
- impurity to purity, from the constraint of passions to detachment,
- from uncertainty and disordered movements to the serenity of wisdom,
- and so on. In meditation, the subject is ceaselessly altered by his
- own movement; his discourse provokes effects within which he is
- caught; it exposes him to risks, makes him pass through trials or
- temptations, produces states in him, and confers on him a status or
- qualification he did not hold at the initial moment. In short, meditation
- implies a mobile subject modifiable through the effect of the discursive
- events that take place. From this one, one can see what a
- demonstrative meditation would be: a set of discursive events which
- constitute at once groups of utterances linked one to another by formal
- rules of deduction, and series of modifications of the enunciating
- subject which follow continuously one from another. More precisely,
- in a demonstrative meditation the utterances, which are formally
- linked, modify the subject as they develop, liberating him from his
- convictions or on the contrary inducing systematic doubts, provoking
- illuminations or resolutions, freeing him from his attachments or immediate
- certainties, including new states. But, inversely, the decisions,
- fluctuations, displacements, primary or acquired qualifications
- of the subject make sets of new utterances possible, which are in their
- turn deduced regularly one from another.
- The Meditations require this double reading: a set of propositions
- forming a system, which each reader must follow through ifhe wishes
- to feel their truth, and a set of modifications forming an exercise,
- which each reader must effect, by which each reader must be affected,
- if he in turn wants to be the subject enunciating this truth on
- his own behalf. And if there are indeed certain passages of the Meditations
- which can be deciphered exhaustively as a systematic stringing
- together of propositions - moments of pure deduction -there exist on
- the other hand sorts of "chiasmas," where the two forms of discourse
- intersect, and where the exercise modifying the subject orders the
- succession of propositions, or controls the junction of distinct demonstrative
- groups. It seems that the passage on madness and dreaming is
- indeed of this order.
- Let us take it up again now as a whole and as an intersection of the
- demonstrative and ascetic schemas.
- 1 . The immediately preceding passage presents itself as a practical
- syllogism. . . /" -� I ought to be wary of somethmg that has deceIved me once )
- My senses, through which I have received the truest and---Surest
- things I possess, have deceived me, and more than once
- I ought therefore no longer to trust them.
- Clearly, it is here a question of a deducive fragment whose import
- is completely general: all that I have taken to be the most true falls
- under the sway of doubt, along with the senses which furnished it. A
- fortiori, there can therefore remain nothing that does not become at
- least as doubtful. Need I generalize any further? Derrida's hypothesis,
- that the (ineffectual) example of madness, and the (effectual) example
- of dreaming are summoned to operate this generalization, and to
- carry the syllogism of doubt farther forward, can thus not be retained.
- But then by what are they summoned?
- 2. They are summoned less by an objection or restriction than by a
- resistance: there are perceptible things that "one cannot rationally
- doubt." It is the word "plane' that the translator renders by "rationally."
- What then is this "impossibility," given that we have just established
- a completely binding syllogism? What, then, is this obstacle
- that opposes our doubting "entirely" "wholly," "completely" (rationally?)
- given that we've just performed a rationally unassailable piece
- of reasoning? It is the impossibility of this subject's really effecting
- such a generalized doubt in the exercise which modifies him; it is the
- impossibility of constituting oneself as universally doubting subject.
- What is still a problem, after a syllogism of such general import, is the
- taking-up of the advice of prudence into effective doubt, the transformation
- of the subject "knowing he must doubt everything" into a subject
- "applying his resolution-to-doubt to everything." We see why the
- translator has rendered "plane' as "rationally": by wanting to carry
- through this qualification "rational" that I brought into play at the
- very beginning of the meditations (and in at least three forms: having
- a sufficiently mature mind, being free of cares and passions, being
- assured of a peaceful retreat). If I am to resolve myselfto doubt everything
- thoroughly, must I first disqualifY myself as rational? If I want to
- maintain my qualification as rational, must I give up carrying out this
- doubt, or at least carrying it out in general terms?
- The importance of the words "being able to doubt completely" consists
- in the fact that they mark the point of intersection of the two
- discursive forms-that of the system and that of the exercise: at the
- level of ascetic discursivity, one cannot yet doubt rationally. It is thus
- this level that will control the following development, and what is
- involved in it is not the extent of doubtful things but the status of the
- doubting subject, the qualificative elaboration that allows him to be at
- once "all-doubting" yet rational.
- But what, then, is the obstacle, the resistance point of the exercise
- of doubt?
- 3. My body, and the immediate perception I have of it? More exactly
- an area defined as "the vivid and the near" (in opposition to all
- those "distant" and "weak" things which I can place in doubt without
- difficulty): I am here, wearing a dressing gown, sitting beside the
- fire -in short, the whole system of actuality which characterizes this
- moment of my meditation. It is of the first importance that Descartes
- here involves not the certainty that one may have in general of one's
- own body but, rather, everything that, at this precise instant of meditation,
- resists injact the carrying-out of doubt by the subject who is
- cUlrentlymeditating. Clearly, it is not certain things that in themselves
- (by their nature, their universality, their intelligibility) resist doubt
- but, rather, that which characterizes the actuality of the meditating
- subject (the place of his meditation, the gesture he is in the process of
- making, the sensations that strike him). If he really doubted all this
- system of actuality, would he still be rational? Would he not precisely
- be renouncing all these guarantees of rational meditation which he
- gave himself in choosing, as has just been said, the moment of the
- undertaking (quite late in life, but not too late: the moment that must
- not be allowed to slip past has come), its conditions (peace and quiet,
- with no cares to form distractions), its place (a peaceful retreat). If I
- must begin doubting the place where I am, the attention I am paying
- to this piece of paper, and this heat from the fire which marks my
- present moment, how could I remain convinced of the rational character
- of my undertaking? In placing this actuality in doubt, am I not at
- the same time going to render impossible all rational meditation and
- remove all value from my resolution to discover the truth at last?
- It is in order to reply to this question that two examples are called
- on, side by side, both of which force one to call into doubt the subject's
- system of actuality.
- 4. First example: madness. Madmen indeed are completely d eluded
- as to what constitutes their actuality: they believe they a re
- dressed when they are naked, kings when they are poor. But can I
- take up this example on my own account? Is it through this that I shall
- be able to transform into an effective resolution the proposition that
- we must doubt everything which comes to us from dreams? Impossible:
- "isti sunt dementes," that is, they are juridically disqualified as
- rational subjects, and to qualify myself among them, following them
- ("transfer their example to me") would disqualify me in my turn, and
- I should not be able to be a rational subject of meditation ("I should be
- no less extravagant" . . . ) If one uses the example of madness to
- move from systems to askesis, from the proposition to the resolution, it
- is quite possible to constitute oneself as a subject having to call everything
- into doubt, but it is impossible to remain qualified as a subject
- conducting rationally his meditation through doubt to an eventual
- truth. The resistance of actuality to the exercise of doubt is reduced by
- too strong an example: it carries away with it the possibility of meditating
- validly; the two qualifications "doubting subject" and "meditating
- subject" are not in this case simultaneously possible.
- That madness is posited as disqualificatory in any search for truth,
- that it is not "rational" to call it up to carry out necessary doubt, that
- one cannot feign it even for a moment, that this impossibility is immediately
- obvious in the assignation of the term demens: this is indeed
- the decisive point at which Descartes parts company with all those for
- whom madness can be in one way or another the bringer or revealer
- of truth.
- 5. Second test: dreaming. Madness has therefore been excluded,
- not as an insufficient example but as an excessive and impossible test.
- Dreaming is now invoked: because it renders the actuality of the subject
- no less doubtful than does madness (one thinks one is sitting at
- table and one is naked in one's bed); and because it offers a certain
- number of differences with respect to madness -it forms part of the
- virtualities of the subject (I am a man), of his frequently actualized
- virtualities (I often sleep and dream), of his memories (I clearly remember
- having dreamed), and of his memories, which can return as
- the most vivid of impressions (to the point where I can compare my
- present impression validly with my memory of my dream). From
- these properties of dreaming, it is possible for the subject to conduct
- the exercise of a calling into doubt of his own actuality. First stage
- (which defines the test): I remember having dreamed what I now
- perceive as my actuality. Second stage (which for a moment appears
- to invalidate the test): the gesture I make in the very instant of my
- meditation to find out if I am asleep indeed appears to have the clarity
- and distinction of waking perception. Third stage (which validates the
- test) : I remember not only the images of my dream, but also their
- clarity, as great as that of my current impressions. Fourth stage
- (which concludes the test) : at one and the same time I see manifestly
- that there is no certain mark for distinguishing dream from reality;
- and I am so surprised that I am no longer sure whether at this precise
- moment I am asleep or not. These two sides of the successful test
- (uncertain stupor and manifest vision) indeed constitute the subject
- as if.{ectively doubting his own actuality, and as validly continuing a
- meditation that puts to one side everything that is not manifest truth.
- The two qualifications (doubting everything that arrives through the
- senses and meditating validly) are really effected. The syllogism had
- required that they be simultaneously in play; the subject's consciousness
- of his actuality had formed an obstacle to the accomplishment of
- this requirement. The attempt to use the example of madmen as a
- base had confirmed this incompatibility; the effort made to actualize
- the vividness of dreams showed, on the one hand, that this incompatibility
- is not insurmountable. And the meditating subject becomes
- doubting subject at the end of opposing tests: one that has constituted
- the subject as rational (as opposed to the disqualified madman), and
- one that also constituted the subject as doubting (in the lack of distinction
- between dreaming and waking).
- Once this qualification of the subject has finally been achieved
- ("Age somniemus" ), systematic discursivity will once again be able to
- intersect with the discourse of the exercise, take the upper hand, place
- intelligible truths under examination, until a new ascetic stage constitutes
- the meditating subject as threatened with universal error by the
- "great trickster." But even at that stage of the meditation, the qualification
- as "nonmad" (like the qualification as "potential dreamer") will
- remain valid.
- It seems to me that Derrida has vividly and deeply sensed that this
- passage on madness has a singular place in the development of the
- Meditations. And he transcribes his feeling into his text, at the very
- moment at which he attempts to master it.
- I. In order to explain that the question of madness should appear at
- this precise point of the Meditations, Derrida invents an alternation of
- 4 1 1
- voices that would displace, reject, and drive out of the text itself the
- difficult exclamation: "but just a moment- these are madmen."
- Derrida did indeed find himself faced with a knotty problem. If, as
- he supposes, it is true that this whole movement of the first meditation
- operates a generalization of doubt, why does it pause, if only for a
- moment, over madness or even over dreaming? Why take pains to
- demonstrate that vivid and recent sensations are no less doubtful than
- the palest and most distant ones, once it has been established, in general
- tenns, that what comes via the senses must not be trusted? Why
- make this swerve toward the particular point of my body, this paper, ·
- this fire? Why make a detour toward the singular trickeries of madness
- and dreaming?
- Derrida gives to this deviation the status of a break. He imagines a
- foreign intervention, the scruple or reticence of a straggler worried by
- the movement overtaking him and fighting a last-minute rearguard
- action. Descartes has scarcely said that we must not trust the senses
- when a voice would be raised, the voice of a peasant foreign to all
- philosophical urbanity; he would, in his simple way, try to broach, or
- at least to limit the thinker's resolution: "I'm quite happy for you to
- doubt certain of your perceptions, but . . . that you are sitting here,
- by the fire, saying these things, holding that paper in your hands and
- other things of the same nature."z You'd have to be mad to doubt
- them, or rather, only madmen can make mistakes about such certain
- things. And I'm certainly not mad. It is at this point that Descartes
- would take over again and say to this obstinate yokel: I'm quite prepared
- to admit that you're not mad, since you're unwilling to be so;
- but remember that you dream every night, and that your nightly
- dreams are no less mad than this madness you refuse. And the naive
- reticence of the objector who cannot doubt his body because he does
- not want to be mad wou�d be conquered by the example of dreaming,
- so much "more natural," "more common," "more universal."
- Derrida's hypothesis is a seductive one. It resolves with the utmost
- nicety his problem, which is to show that the philosopher goes directly
- to the calling into question of the "totality of beingness" [la
- totalite de l'etantite], that this is precisely the form and philosophical
- mark of his procedure; if he happens to stop for a moment at a "beingness"
- as singular as madness, this can only be if some innocent tugs at
- his sleeves and questions him; by himself he would never have lingered
- among these stories of jugs and naked kings. In this way the
- 41 2
- rejection of madness, the abrupt exclamation "but just a momentthese
- are madmen" is itself rejected by Derrida and three times enclosed
- outside philosophical discourse: first, since it is another subject
- speaking (not the philosopher of the Meditations but the objector raising
- his scarcely refined voice); second, because he speaks from a
- place which is that of nonphilosophical naIvete; and, finally, because
- the philosopher takes over again and by quoting the "stronger," more
- "telling" example of dreaming disarms the objection and makes the
- very man who refuses madness accept something far worse.
- " But it is now clear what price Derrida has to pay for his skillful
- hypothesis. The omission of a certain number of literal elements
- (which appear as soon as one takes the trouble to compare the Latin
- text with the French translation); the elision of textual differences (the
- whole play of semantic and grammatical opposition between the
- dream paragraph and that on madness): finally, and above all, the
- erasure of the essential discursive determination (the double web of
- exercise and demonstration). Curiously, by imagining that other naive
- objecting voice behind Descartes's writing, Derrida has fudged all
- the text's differences; or, rather, in erasing all these differences, in
- bringing the test of madness and that of dreaming as close together as
- possible, in making the one the first faint failed draft of the other, in
- absorbing the insufficiency of the one in the universality of the other,
- Derrida is continuing the Cartesian exclusion. For Descartes, the
- meditating subject had to exclude madness by qualifying himself as
- not mad. And this exclusion is, in its turn, no doubt too dangerous for
- Derrida: no longer for the disqualification with which it threatens the
- philosophizing subject but for the qualification with which it would
- mark philosophical discourse; it would indeed determine it as "other"
- than the discourse of madness; it would establish between them a
- relationship of exteriority; it would send philosophical discourse
- across to the "other side," into the pure presumption of not being mad.
- Separation, exteriority, a determination from which the philosopher's
- discourse must indeed be saved if it is to be a "project for exceeding
- every finite and determinate totality." This Cartesian exclusion must
- then be excluded because it is determining. And Derrida is obliged to
- proceed to three operations to do this, as we can see: first, he affirms,
- against all the visible economy of the text, that the power of doubt
- specific to madness is a fortiori included in dreaming; second, he
- imagines (to account for the fact that there is any question of madness
- in spite of everything) that it is someone else who excludes madness,
- OIl his own account and following the oblique line of an objection;
- finally, he removes all philosophical status from this exclusion by
- denouncing its naive rusticity. Reverse the Cartesian exclusion and
- make it an inclusion; exclude the excluder by giving his discourse the
- status of an objection; exclude the exclusion by rejecting it into
- prephilosophical naIvete: Derrida has needed to do no less than this
- to get through Descartes's text and reduce the question of madness to
- nothing. We can see the result: the elision of the text's differences and
- the compensatory invention of a difference of voices lead Descartes's
- exclusion to a second level; philosophical discourse is finally excluded
- from excluding madness.
- 2. But madness does not allow itself to be reduced in this way. Even
- supposing that Descartes was "not speaking" of madness, at the point
- in his text where it is a question of insani and dementes, supposing
- that he gave way for a moment to a yokel in order to raise such a
- crude question, could it not be said that he proceeds, albeit in an
- insidious and silent manner, to exclude madness?
- Could it not be said that Descartes has de facto and constantly
- avoided the question of madness?
- Derrida replies to this objection in advance: Yes indeed, Descartes
- fully faces up to the risk of madness; not as you pretend in a prefatorial
- and almost marginal way with reference to some business about
- jugs and naked kings, but at the very heart of his philosophical enterprise,
- at the precise moment where his discourse, separating itself
- from all natural considerations on the errors of the senses or the engorgements
- of the brain, takes on its radical dimension in hyperbolic
- doubt and the hypothesis of the evil genius. That is where madness is
- called into question and faced up to; with the evil genius I indeed
- suppose that I am even more radically mistaken than those who think
- they have a body made of glass - even go so far as persuading myself
- that two and three do not perhaps add up to five; then with the cogito I
- reach that extreme point, that excess with respect to any determination
- which allows me to say, whether mistaken or not, whether mad
- or not, I am. The evil genius would indeed be the point at which
- philosophy itself, in the excess proper to it, risks madness; and the
- cogito would be the moment at which madness is erased (not because
- of an exclusion but because its determination when faced with reason
- would stop being pertinent). According to Derrida, then, we should
- not attach too much importance to this little farce of the peasant who
- interrupts at the beginning ofthe text with his village idiots: in spite of
- all their motley, they do not manage to pose the question of madness.
- On the other hand, all the threats of Unreason would be at play beneath
- the far more disturbing and gloomy figure of the evil genius.
- Similarly, the taking up by dreams of the worst extravagances of madmen
- at the beginning of the text would be an easy victory; on the other
- hand, after the great panic of the evil genius, we should need no less
- than the point of the cogito (and its excess with respect to the "totality
- of beingness") to make the determinations of madness and dreams
- appear to be nonradical. The great solemn theater of the universal
- trickster and of the "I think" would repeat the still natural fable of the
- madman and the sleeper, but this time in philosophical radicality.
- To hold such an interpretation, Derrida had to deny that it was a
- question of madness at the point where madness was named (and in
- specific, carefully differentiated terms); now he has to demonstrate
- that there is a question of madness at the point where it is not named.
- Derrida puts this demonstration into operation through two series of
- semantic derivations. It is enough to quote them:
- Evil genius: "total madness," "total panic," "disorder of the body" and
- "subversion of pure thought," "extravagance," "panic that I cannot master."
- Cogito: "mad audacity," "mad project," "project which recognizes
- madness as its freedom," "disorder and inordinate nature of hyperbole,"
- "unheard-of and singular excess," "excess tending toward Zero
- and Infinity," "hyperbolic point which ought to be, like all pure madness
- in general, silent."
- All these derivations around Descartes's text are necessary for the evil
- genius and the cogito to become, as Derrida wishes, the true scene of
- confrontation with madness. But more is needed: he has to erase from
- Descartes's texts themselves everything showing that the episode of
- the evil genius is a voluntary, controled exercise, mastered and carried
- out from start to finish by a meditating subject who never lets
- himself be surprised. If it is true that the hypothesis of the malign
- genius carries the suspicion of error far beyond those illusions of the
- senses exemplified by certain madmen, then he who forms this fiction
- (and by the very fact that he forms it voluntarily and as an exercise)
- escapes the risk of "receiving them into his belief," as is the case and
- misfortune of madmen. He is tricked, but not convinced. Perhaps everything
- is illusion, but no credulity attaches to it. No doubt the evil
- genius tricks far more than does an engorged brain; he can give rise
- to all the illusory decors of madness, but he is something quite different
- from madness. It could even be said that he is the contrary of
- madness: since in madness I believe that an illusory purple covers my
- nudity and my poverty, while the hypothesis of the evil genius permits
- me not to believe that my body and hands exist. As to the extent of the
- trap, it is true that the evil genius is not outdone by madness; but, in
- the position of the subject with respect to the trap, there is a rigorous
- opposition between evil genius and madness. If the evil genius takes
- on the powers of madness, this is only after the exercise of meditation
- has excluded the risk of being mad.
- Let us reread Descartes's text. "I shall think that the sky, the air, the
- earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all other external things are nothing
- but illusions and daydreams" (whereas the madman thinks that
- his illusions and daydreams are really the sky, the air and all external
- things). "I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes . . . but
- believing falsely that 1 have all these things" (whereas the madman
- believes falsely that his body is made of glass, but does not consider
- himself as believing it falsely). "I shall take great care not to receive
- any falsity into my belief' (whereas the madman receives all falsities).
- It is clear: faced with the cunning trickster, the meditating subject
- behaves not like a madman in a panic at universal error but as a no
- less cunning adversary, always alert, constantly rational, and remaining
- in the position of master with respect to his fiction: 1 shall prepare
- my mind so well for all the ruses of this great trickster that however
- powerful and cunning he may be, he will be unable to catch me out.
- How far we are from Derrida's pretty variations on themes: "total
- madness, total panic which I am unable to master, since it is inflicted
- by hypothesis and I am no longer responsible/or it. " How is it possible
- to imagine that the meditating subject should no longer be responsible
- for what he himself calls "this painful and laborious design"?
- Perhaps we should ask how it is that an author as meticulous as Derrida,
- and as attentive to texts, could have been guilty of so many omissions
- but could also operate so many displacements, transpositions,
- and substitutions? But perhaps we should ask this to the extent that in
- his reading Derrida is doing no more than revive an old tradition. He
- is, moreover, aware of this; and this conformity seems, justifiably, to
- comfort him. He shies in any case from thinking that the classical
- interpreters have missed through lack of attention the singularity of
- the passage on madness and dreaming.
- On one fact at least I am in agreement: it is not as an effect of their
- lack of attention that, before Derrida and in like manner, the classical
- interpreters erased this passage from Descartes. It is by system. A
- system of which Derrida is the most decisive modern representative,
- in its final glory: the reduction of discursive practices to textual traces;
- the elision of the events produced therein and the retention only of
- marks for a reading; the invention of voices behind texts to avoid
- having to analyze the modes of implication of the subject in discourses;
- the assigning of the originary as said and unsaid in the text to
- avoid placing discursive practices in the field of transformations
- where they are carried out.
- I will not say that it is a metaphysics, metaphysics itself or its closure
- which is hiding in this "textualization" of discursive practices. I'll
- go much farther than that: I shall say that what can be seen here so
- visibly is a historically well determined little pedagogy. A pedagogy
- that teaches the pupil there is nothing outside the text, but that in it, in
- its gaps, its blanks and its silences, there reigns the reserve of the
- origin; that it is therefore unnecessary to search elsewhere, but that
- here, not in the words, certainly, but in the words under erasure, in
- their grid, the "sense of being" is said. A pedagogy that gives conversely
- to the master's voice the limitless sovereignty that allows it to
- restate the text indefinitely.
- Father Bourdin supposed that, according to Descartes, it was impossible
- to doubt things that were certain, even if one were asleep or
- mad. With respect to a well-founded certainty, the fact of dreaming or
- of raving would not be pertinent. Descartes replies very explicitly to
- this interpretation: "I do not remember having said anything of the
- sort, nor even having dreamed it while asleep." Indeed - nothing can
- be clearly or distinctly conceived of which is not true (and at this
- level, the problem of knowing whether or not the conceiver is dreaming
- or raving does not need to be asked). But, Descartes adds immediately,
- who then can distinguish "what is clearly conceived and what
- only seems and appears to be so"? Who, then, as thinking and meditating
- subject, can know whether he knows clearly or not? Who, then,
- is capable of not deluding himself as to his own certainty and of not
- being caught out by it? Except precisely those who are not mad?
- Those who are "wise." And Descartes retorts, with Father Bourdin in
- his sights: "But as only the wise can distinguish what is clearly conceived
- from what only seems and appears to be so, I am not surprised
- that this fellow can't tell the difference between them."
- N OT E S
- a Translations of the passages quoted from Derrida are taken, with some modifications, from the
- version by Alan Bass in Writing and Difef rence (London: Routledge, 1978). The translation of the
- French words "extravagance" and "extravagant" poses some problems: Bass habitually, but not
- exclusively, uses "insanity" and "insane," and it is true that the French words carry an overtone
- of madness absent from most uses of the English cognate forms. However, in the discussion of
- the "extravagance" of painters, the translation "insanity" is clearly excessive, and Bass resorts
- to the English "extravagance." I have preferred to use this form throughout in the interests of
- consistency and clarity and have modified Bass's version of Derrida accordingly. - Ed.
- I use this term paragraph out of amusement, convenience, and fidelity to Derrida. Derrida says
- in a picturesque and jocular manner: "Descartes starts a new paragraph" [va a la ligne). We
- know this is quite mistaken.
- 2 I am quoting Derrida. In Descartes's text, these things it is so difficult to doubt are characterized
- not by their "nature," but by their proximity and their vividness - by their relation to the meditating
- subject.
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