‘Modern philosophy begins with doubt’.
Such is the repeated claim of the protagonist of Søren Kierkegaard’s unfinished novella, Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum est. In the novella, the protagonist, Johannes, is fascinated with philosophical questions as a child, but as he grows up and becomes a student of philosophy, he finds himself increasingly perplexed by the role of doubt in philosophy and its relation to consciousness and reality.
To this day, the starting point for philosophy students is often this idea of doubt. In the Meditations, René Descartes seeks to undermine the justifications for our commonly held beliefs. He does this through the method of doubt: that which is certain, or infallible, knowledge is that which we cannot doubt. First, he claims that, since our senses will sometimes deceive us (e.g., in cases of illusion), they cannot be the source of indubitable knowledge. Second, he goes on to argue that we cannot even be certain of the truth of seemingly self-evident truths, such as those of mathematics, because it is logically possible that we could be deceived about those, too. As a thought experiment, Descartes asks us to imagine that an all-powerful ‘evil demon’ is constantly interfering with our thought processes and making us go wrong whenever we perform calculations. It is logically possible that such a demon could exist, and therefore we cannot claim that the truths of mathematics or logic are indubitable. So, what does this leave us with? According to Descartes, the only thing we cannot doubt is that we exist insofar as we are beings capable of thought. This is because if I doubt my own existence, I must exist to do the doubting, and therefore I cannot claim that it is possible that I do not exist. Note that this does not require that it is certain that I have a physical body; it could still be that I am a brain in a vat, doubting away. But I exist insofar as a cogito, or a thinking entity. Hence, famously, cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.
But whilst such doubt is presented as the bedrock of modern philosophy, there are questions to be raised as to whether it is as valuable as it seems. In particular, the process of doubting everything that can be doubted may not lead us to the objective position of the disembodied knower that it claims to lead us to, because it can be argued that such objectivity is not, in fact, as objective as it seems. In The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture, Susan Bordo argues that Cartesian scepticism is not a universal phenomenon, but rather one which emerges from a perspective that is distinctly Western and male. This is because it involves a radical detachment from self and world.
Bordo takes a psychoanalytic approach and argues that, if gaining independence and moving away from one’s parents leads one to form a detached sense of self, then Cartesian scepticism can be understood partially as the 17th Century’s desire to separate from the “mother-world of the Middle Ages and Renaissance” (Bordo, 1987).
Similarly, in Blackness Visible, Charles W. Mills notes that being able to doubt the external world is an activity which is only available to those who are not subordinated in society; if you are subordinated, then it does not occur to you to doubt the existence of the external world, because your experiences are constantly shaped by the way the external world treats you as inferior and thus controls your position in society. Being able to ignore the external world implies that it does not force itself upon you, because:
“If your daily existence is largely defined by oppression, by forced intercourse with the world, it is not going to occur to you that doubt about your oppressor’s existence could in any way be a serious or pressing philosophical problem; this idea will simply seem frivolous, a perk of social privilege.”[1] (Mills, 1998).
Mills contrasts the position of the Cartesian knower with Ralph Ellison’s novel of black experience, Invisible Man. Rather than doubting the existence of the external world, the problem for the oppressed individual in society is that they are not seen by others as existing as persons in the same capacity; the problem is almost inverted as the subordinated individual must fight against those in power who do not treat them as persons in the fullest sense. Rather than doubting the external world, the subordinated individual must combat the doubt assumed by others over whether they deserve a proper place in the world.
Is Cartesian doubt, then, something which alienates people from philosophy rather than something which draws us into it? My view is that it is quite possible that it is. Not only is the pretended objectivity that the Cartesian position gives us far from realistic, as Mills and Bordo point out, but the assumption of doubting everything around us is so difficult to achieve that the point of it can easily be lost. In ‘Elusive Knowledge’ (1996), David Lewis points out that such doubt is peculiar to epistemology; when we subject our everyday beliefs to such scrutiny as Descartes demands, we find ourselves in a curious state of ‘inextricable darkness’ (Descartes, 1641) as it appears that we can no longer trust any of our knowledge, and yet as soon as we leave the philosophy classroom, we go about our daily lives again and ignore the fact that we have managed to convince ourselves that everything we believe could be false. Similarly, when Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus encounters philosophy students, he quickly becomes disillusioned with their pretences as it becomes clear to him that they are not actually living the radical doubt that they have been talking about; they appear to acknowledge the importance of doubt, yet let it make no change either to their everyday lives or to the way they do philosophy, as they almost appear to think that other philosophers have done all the necessary doubting for them.
The hypocrisy of the focus of the philosophers on a radical doubt which they do not, in fact, assume, leads young Johannes to become disillusioned with philosophy altogether. He finds all philosophy to be unsatisfactory, finding that in every philosophy lecture, he is “alter at the beginning of this lecture” and “dejected at the end, since he perceived that not a single word had been said […] for what followed said nothing, although it gave the appearance of saying something.” (p.164). What is striking about Johannes’ eventual abandonment of philosophy is the stark contrast with his attitude as a young boy who has not yet formally studied the discipline but is fascinated with deep thought. Interestingly, Kierkegaard describes his protagonist’s early love for learning as a kind of falling in love:
“In love he was, ardently in love – with thought, or more accurately, with thinking. No young lover can be more intensely moved by the incomprehensible transition that comes when erotic love [Elskov] awakens in his breast, by the stroke of lightning with which reciprocated love bursts forth in the beloved’s breast, than he was moved by the comprehensible transition in which one thought connects with another”[2] (p.118)
Perhaps it is no mistake that Kierkegaard chooses this unusual comparison between erotic love and a passion for thought. Unlike Cartesian doubt, which can feel like an utter alienation from humanity, Johannes’ early love for thinking is something which is intimately bound up with the rest of the human experience. And perhaps Johannes’ initial approach to philosophy has more appeal that the Cartesian doubt that most philosophy courses begin with. After all, if we connect the project of philosophy more with people’s experience, this can help bring us away from the stereotype that philosophy has no purpose other than armchair speculation which is forgotten about as soon as one leaves the room. Branches of philosophy such as social epistemology, political philosophy, and some areas of philosophy of language have proven themselves to be far from esoteric disciplines, as they connect very directly with real world issues such as social justice.
None of this is intended to undermine the importance of Descartes as a thinker, or to deny that there is any merit in employing the Cartesian method. Without Descartes, modern philosophy would certainly not be as we know it today; furthermore, the undermining of the foundations of our commonly held beliefs has prompted the development of a huge number of fascinating epistemological theories. But we are, in my opinion, mistaken if we see Descartes’ method of doubt as representative of the project of philosophy as a whole. Perhaps it is more accurate to think of philosophy, as the Ancient Greeks did, as beginning with wonder, or as a love for thinking in complex ways about the world, similar to that of Johannes Climacus.
[1] Mills, Charles W., ‘Non-Cartesian Sums: Philosophy and the African-American Experience’ Blackness Visible
Essays on Philosophy and Race, Cornell University Press, 1998
[2] Kierkegaard, Søren. Kierkegaard’s Writings, VII, Volume 7: Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy/Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est. (Two Books in One Volume). Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, 1985.
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