The Subject and Time: From Cogito to Dasein

Abstract

THE CARTESIAN SUBJECTDescartes was the first to utilize the concept of a subject whose essence is the thinking self. Descartes describes the subject as detached from the world. A good example for this could be found in the formulation of his philosophical motivation for the application of methodological skepticism, or, as it were, for the discovery of the singular fact to which it does not apply - the Cogito.I now know that even bodies are not really perceived by the senses or the imaginative faculty, but only by intellect; that they are perceived, not by being touched or seen, but by being understood; I thus clearly recognize that nothing is more easily or manifestly perceptible to me than my own mind (Descartes, 1970, p. 75).The Cartesian project developed from a view which discovers human existence in the world as utterly immersed in the realm of thought.1 Doubt, which is at the root of Cartesian philosophy, appears in this context as the aspiration for the knowledge belonging to the realm of thought, which could be valid in all possible circumstances. In order for Descartes to be able to doubt, he must already be in some kind of significant relationship with the world, one which enables him to acknowledge what he refers to as bodies. For the human subject, being in a complex and significant relationship with the world always precedes the possibility of doubting. The assumption that the objects we encounter, or even the truths which guide our lives, are formulated exclusively within the realm of thought, conceals and reduces an essential field which involves the human mode of being in the world. Descartes views human existence solely through the prism of thought. In Michael Zimmerman's (1982) words, Descartes converted the beings we encounter in the world into representations, turning the subject-object division into the standard theoretical basis for any form of understanding:Descartes reduced beings to ideas or representations, whose validity is determined according to the standards imposed by the ego-subject. The self-validating subject, which is permanently present because it accompanies all its representations, now becomes the ground and standard for everything (p. 209).Descartes pays no heed to this kind of argument not because his claims are in any way incoherent, but because has confined himself to a worldview which separates mind and body, thought and world, perceiver (subject) and perceived (object).2 According to Heidegger, Descartes' point of departure is not derived from the human mode of being in the world but rather from a metaphysical worldview which partakes in the way he - as a human being - is relating to the world. Descartes the human being and, therefore, Descartes the philosopher, is oblivious to his mode of being in the world.By introducing methodological skepticism into philosophy, Descartes compelled modem philosophy to exchange the search for truth (as expressing the connection between human beings and the world) for the search for inner certainty. The Cogito became the sole, unquestionable foundation for determining the reality and validity of objects.3 Indeed, Cartesian thought grants one the autonomy of knowledge, but, in doing so, it cuts one off from the world. Descartes' thinking reduced the encounter with beings to an encounter with representations, whose validity is dictated by their unifying factor: the subject, the Ego. From this point on, only that which appears before the subject as an object, only that which the subject presents before itself-that is, represents - is real. In this manner, Charles Taylor (1987), commenting on the Cartesian insistence on certainty, shows that, according to Descartes, internal representations have, in fact, no need of the external world and have themselves become the source of all knowledge:This connection was central to Descartes' philosophy. It was one of his leading ideas that science, or real knowledge, does not just consist of congruence between ideas in the mind and reality outside. …