Difference between revisions of "Gueroult Infinitely Small Objective Reality"

Martial Gueroult on sensations having an infinitely small amount of objective reality[edit]

NOTE: Bold below not in original. Italics are Gueroult's.

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real quality of any body, is foreign to the essence of the soul alone. By itself the soul cannot account for it. It is subjective because it is a state of my consciousness; it is objective because it encompasses something other than my mind alone and it is not reducible to it. In brief, it is the result of the substantial union of my soul and my body; it is subjective-objective. As an expression of that union, it is presented consequently to myself as giving me information on the states of my body, and through their intermediary, on the existence of external things with relation to my body insofar as they are relevant to its subsistence or destruction. In this way it preserves a residue of objective reality—the weakest residue it is possible to conceive—since this representative reality is never a copy of external things. Certainly is entirely alien to the nature of external things, but it is caused by them in me, and it varies according to their geometric variations, which remain unknown to it and whose discovery belongs to the understanding alone. Even though it does not represent things to me, it does refer me to them.

It is therefore natural to grant some objective reality to sensation. Moreover, is it not impossible to conceive an idea completely stripped of objective validity? In fact, it is the difference in objective reality that distinguishes ideas among themselves and consequently renders them perceptible.'37 We perceive and distinguish the idea of heat and the idea of cold."' These ideas must therefore contain some objective reality: however little is the (objective) reality contained in "the idea of heat or the idea of a stone [. . .] we cannot say that this way or manner of being is nothing at all.

However, this objective reality is, in this case, only a minimum. In fact, it is so small that one can barely distinguish it from nothingness; and one risks mistaking nothingness for being. We are therefore dealing with real differentials of objective reality here, even though Descartes himself did not define such a notion. They are the limit or difference between being and nothingness, and consequently, they are just as easily the one or the other. From this results the impossibility for my understanding to express itself about them and the doubt with which my understanding must strike them naturally. If, in fact, their objective reality is so small that I cannot know whether it is or it is not, I cannot know whether they are true, since only what is real is true, and since God is the author of the real and is not the author of nothingness. On the other hand, since clear and distinct ideas have a finite quantity (not an infinitely small quantity) and in a privileged case an infinity of objective reality, it is impossible for my understanding to confuse them with nothingness; it is impossible that my understanding does not immediately recognize them as true—meaning, having God as their author. In brief, it is impossible to doubt them naturally: "Every clear and distinct conception is without doubt (procul dubio) something, and thus it cannot draw its origin from nothingness, but must have God as its author." Sensible ideas having an objective reality as close to zero as possible are

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therefore in me only insofar as I participate in nothingness maximally:

"Natural in light lets me know that they proceed from nothingness, meaning that they are in me only because something is lacking in my nature."

Sensation derives its ambiguity from this character of limit proper to its objective reality, in which being and nothingness are confused. For it is in objective simultaneously, both being and non-being. ln the perspective of non-being, sensible idea represents nothingness as something. It then manifests itself as "materially false," as proceeding from nothingness, being in me insofar as I am imperfect. In the perspective of being, it is materially an infinitely small objective reality, as close as possible to zero, but not reducible to it, and conserving something positive.

"One must not ask what is the cause of this positive objective being which, according to me, makes this idea materially false. This is more so since I do not say that its material falsity proceeds from some positive being, but from its obscurity alone, which to be sure has something positive as its subject and foundation, namely, sensation itself. And in truth, this positive being is in me insofar as I am a true thing; but obscurity, which alone gives me the occasion to judge that the idea of this sensation represents something outside of me that we call cold, has no real cause, but arises only from the fact that my nature is not entirely perfect."

The representation of cold as a real property of bodies outside of me is the representation of nothing as something, since this property is nothing with respect to a body. It arises from the limitation of my knowledge, from my nothingness. But, on the other hand, it is nothing only with respect to the external body, to which representation as copy of what is ideated refers it; but it is not nothing in its content, which has some reality in sensation, under an obscure and confused form, something that certifies that a property of a body unknown in itself (for sensation) acts on mine. Nevertheless, this objective reality is also as small as possible, since the true property of the body to which it refers is for me a void of knowledge.

One can see the importance of these views for the remainder of the deduction. Although sensible ideas are rejected as false by the understanding because they are obscure for the understanding, meaning because it is impossible to discern them in the objective reality that can belong to them, it is no possible that this condemnation remains without being appealed. No doubt the objective reality of sensible ideas is itself only a minimum; and no doubt, as a result, it is obscure and thus even doubtful for my intelligence; but, as a result, it is no less certain that it is not nothing and that its minimum of reality must correspond correlatively to a minimum of truth. In. virtue of its own principles, the understanding will therefore be required to we reendow sensible ideas that were first absolutely condemned, restoring to them some minima objective validity, proportionally to this minimum.

The problem of the objective validity of ideas therefore appears in its fullest extent, such as it will be developed until the end of Meditation VI.

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It will lead to the unfolding of all the objective realities, from the highest, meaning from the maximum absolute, in which it is infinite (God), to the minimum, in which it is at the limit of being and nothingness, a differential (sensible idea), passing through the intermediary that contains a finite quantity of this objective reality, namely, clear and distinct ideas of finite essences. It is the solution of the problem for the absolute maximum (the idea of God) that, since it furnishes the principle of everything that is—however little that is—the real is necessarily true (the principle that is at the foundation of divine universal veracity), it will impart the key to the solution of all the other quantities of objective reality, including the minimum (sensation).