Difference between revisions of "Gueroult Infinitely Small Objective Reality"

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

152 THE FIRST PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE consciousness; it is objective because it encompasses somethiangreosthler than real quality of any body, the soul cannot account for it. It is subjective because it is one. "" my mind alone and it is not reducible to it. In brief, it is the substantial union of my soul and my body; it is subjective-obj is foreign to the essence of the soul al stat'Be‘oiftm ectiuv result of the expression of that union, it is presented consequently to myself as giving ant information on the states of my body, and through their intermediarY the existence of external things with relation to my body insofar as they: relevant to its subsistence or destruction. In this way it reserves a residue oe objective reality—the weakest residue it is possible to conceive—since this representative tea ay 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. oreover, 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. 13y 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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