by William Egginton
Popularly known as the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes won that title ostensibly by rejecting traditional modes of intellectual inquiry largely associated with commentary on prior texts, and replacing them with the first attempt at a kind of radical phenomenology. The drama of this attempt is conveyed autobiographically in the first of his six Meditations, in which he describes the strenuous process of sloughing off received ideas and subjecting everything he thinks he knows to doubt. He finds it tough going, and repeatedly realizes that he has fallen back on some “long standing opinions” that “take advantage of his credulity.” His last ditch effort to subject all possible knowledge to doubt comes in the form of a figure he calls an evil genius or demon, in Latin a genius malignus, “supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me. I will regard the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things as nothing but the bedeviling hoaxes of my dreams, with which he lays snares for my credulity.”
This device leads him, of course, at the outset of the second meditation to fall upon the distinction that still bears his name, the dualism between what can be doubted—namely the accuracy of my knowledge about the extended world—and what cannot be—the fact that there is some thing that is doing the doubting, that is thinking, having that knowledge, true or false, about the extended world: “And let him do his best at deception, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I shall think that I am something.”
…
While it has hardly constituted a cottage industry, in the 400 years since Cervantes published Don Quixote and the almost 400 since Descartes published his Meditations, a few scholars have noted the similarities between Descartes’ evil genie and the enchanter who bedevils Don Quixote’s world, popping up as the perfect rationalization for every instance when Quixote’s assertions are disproven, when reality fails to deliver on his illusory expectations. Descartes seems to acknowledge having read Don Quixote in his Discourse on Method, where he warns readers of falling under the influence of “fables, tales of chivalry, and even of the most faithful histories…lest they conceive of plans that surpass their abilities.” The first French translations of Don Quixote were published in 1614 and 1618, and the two books were translated anew by François de Rosset and published in 1639, two years before Descartes published his Meditations. But there is no need to yearn for greater evidence of a direct influence; by that time every intellectual in Europe was aware of Cervantes’ creation; his influence was impossible to avoid.
More of this lovely essay here.
Oh My!