Descartes 1

Protocol 5 July
Author: Kath

MEDITATION I

• Descartes presents the problem - that of accepting false opinions based on principles which can only be most doubtful and uncertain as true - and the urgency of solving such problem.
• “.. to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted up to then and to begin afresh from the foundations if I wished to establish something firm and constant in the sciences.”
• Science – used loosely; uses hard proof (irrefutable) which Descartes wants for Philosophy, too

• Descartes wants a method that philosophy can use which will eradicate human errors. He wishes to guide the reader in the recognition and demonstration of such method.

How Do I Know?

• In answering this, Descartes first wants to get rid of all that is erroneous in order to arrive at something that is indubitable.
• Likened to buildings which[] need to be demolished in order to build a new one with a stronger foundation.
• In the same way, we can treat the Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy as the foundation of Philosophy.

GOAL: SEARCH FOR /ATTAIN CERTITUDE

CRITERION: idea clara et distinct[a] (clear & distinct ideas)

• Descartes wants the certainty found in Mathematics.
• “… two and three added together always make five and a square never has more than four sides; it does not seem possible that truths so apparent can be suspected of any falsity or uncertainty.”

In his search for certitude, Descartes seems to question a lot of things. Does this make him a skeptic?

- Only methodologically speaking as he uses scepticism and universal doubt as tools in order to arrive at what is true.

Because Descartes believes that the destruction of the foundations necessarily brings down with it the rest of the edifice, he decides to assault the principles on which all his former opinions were based.

1. SENSORY EXPERIENCES – cannot be clear and distinct as it can gives us data not congruent with reality.

(ex: though it seems like the sun revolves around the earth, the opposite is actually what is true).

• Everything we can sense cannot be accepted as true and should be subjected to doubt.

2. AWAKE/ASLEEP

• When we are asleep, no matter how absurd our dreams are, we are in total belief of what is happening.
• Although the things in our dreams are [unreal], they are [] formed in the likeness of something real. .

3. EVIL DEMON

• Likened to The Matrix which feeds the people everything they experience. Descartes treats the evil demon as a great deceiver.
• However, he emphasizes the importance of not just blindly accepting into our belief anything that is false and also of preparing our minds against the tricks of this evil demon.

• On the idea of God – one cannot be sure of the idea of God. Therefore, He cannot be the bedrock of certitude.

MEDITATION II

• Begins by giving a “repetition” of Meditation I. (Manifestation of his Jesuit education)
• In his search for certitude, Descartes compares himself to Archimedes who asked only for a fixed point in order to take the terrestrial globe

I can doubt the fact that I doubt, but I cannot doubt the fact that I am thinking

“I am, I exist.”-  bedrock of certitude (cannot be debunked)

• “Though the evil demon deceives me, he cannot cause me to be nothing so long as I think I am something.”
• “I” = A “thinking thing”
• I experience my existence in my act of thinking.
• TO THINK IS TO EXIST = Thinking as an evidence necessary to prove existence.
• [The same insight is expressed differently in] I THINK THEREFORE I AM. 
  [This expression, however, is open to misinterpretation as hasty readers may think that Descartes meant that] existence [i]s a logical consequence of thinking (cause & effect)

Plato 2

Protocol: 26 June
Author: Reg

Socrates’ Counterarguments
1. Corrupting the youth
One person cannot corrupt the whole youth
The youth deliberately went to Socrates to listen to him and question those who think they are
wise but are not.
If this accusation were proven to be true, then these young men would have realized upon
maturity that they have been corrupted and would accuse Socrates and avenge themselves.
2. Impiety
Socrates was guilty of believing in gods but not believing in gods.
“If I do believe in daemon (demigod), then I do believe in gods as well.”
Divine Sign – (If I really know it’s not good, why do I do it anyway?)
When an action is realized to be wrong after it has been done, this feeling comes from a certain
knowledge.
Socrates possesses this knowledge being guided by a daemon to rectify his wrongdoings.
Divine sign – a spirit with him
The divine sign did not interrupt Socrates during the trial. Everything in the trial was in accordance
with truth and justice.
Conscience is [much like the Socratic] divine sign. It is the knowledge one does not know one has.

Human wisdom
One possesses human wisdom when one admits [one's] own ignorance. One knows that his knowledge is
limited.
This shows the attitude of humility

Socrates as an icon
Socrates was used as a symbol/example/icon/sign.
“If anyone wishes to be wise, he must be like Socrates.”
Socrates did not boast at all. He humbly accepted his task of bringing everyone to the same
awareness as he had.

Apologia
“apologetics” – speaking and writing in defense
Early Christian apologetics engaged in writing to defend their beliefs and to give an explanation
Socrates did not ask for an apology from the men of Athens for he did not see anything wrong with
his actions.

Socrates’ ultimate concern during his defense
The over-arching theme was dikē (justice). From the start, the issue has been about justice (18a)
Socrates could have done other things to be acquitted (e.g. bring in his family and friends to arouse
pity) but he did not do such for it is totally unjust and against justice.
Socrates showed no duplicity in him. He was one [and] the same person. He has always been following
the dictates of what is just.
The Greek [idea of dike: e]ach person has the task to be in harmony with that order.
Achilles had the responsibility to avenge the death of Patroclus by killing Hector as demanded by
justice.
Socrates consistency in fulfilling his task to philosophize is the evidence of his justice.

Socrates’ account on fearing death
One who fears death is like the man who thinks he knows what he does not.
Death as a blessing:
Total annihilation
• Death is total emptiness. One falls into total oblivion
• It is complete lack of perception like a dreamless sleep.
• If death is like you’re knocked out for an eternity, isn’t that a pleasurable thing?
A change and a relocating for the soul – (If death merely transfers soul, how can that be beneficial?)Socrates will meet everybody else in the underworld where the just can be found in the isles of the blessed and Elysium fields, while the unjust in Tartarus. • Socrates can still continue his task of questioning people without having to fear death.

Nothing can harm a just man
Socrates sees himself as a gadfly.
The horse kills the gadfly but does not actually harm it. The gadfly is just merely fulfilling its task of
disturbing the horse.
Socrates fulfilled justice through continuing his task of philosophizing. He was not harmed at all by
his accusers.
Wickedness and Death (39b)
Death has not caught up with us. It takes its time
Each one of us has done a wicked thing. This is how wickedness caught us.
When one is being wicked, one allows himself to be destroyed.
When telling a lie, you rip yourself to shred to do two parts:
[One part knows] what the truth is
[The other part puts] a mask to deceive people
A person telling a lie destroys himself and his integrity - (“Integer” – whole number)
A person of integrity is not broken but []whole.

Plato 1

Protocol 21 June
Author: Alvin

Crossing the threshold: Socratic defense as a form of secondary reflection
A. Illustrating Marcel’s idea of “the self” (existence), Socrates provides his own version of who he is.
- Not only is Socrates’ apology a defense from all his accusations, but also it is a testimony of how
he became who he was.
B. Socrates’ account1 implicates how crucial secondary reflection is to all human activities.
- This entails his “self” emerging out from a conglomerate of forms, entering the very mystery of his
own subjectivity.
II. Content of the deposition: Guilt by association
A. Two accusations: Socrates was purported guilty of corrupting the young and impiety (not believing in
the gods of Athens, but in strange gods)
- During his time, Socrates had a tremendous influence on the Athenian youth. (23c)
- Impiety is more political than religious, as irreverence for the gods is tantamount to treason or
betrayal of his own city-state (anti-patriotism)
B. Context: Looking under the lens of Athens catastrophic defeat in the Peloponnesian war (and the
political upheavals that followed), the aforementioned charges are indeed political.
- Prior to the trial, the Athenians were looking for the causes of their military and political failure. In
this regard, Socrates became the city’s scapegoat.
III. Pre-Socratic defense: Tracing the roots of the slander
A. Pronouncement of the Delphic oracle2 in its structural sense:
- Q (Chaerephon): Is there anyone wiser than Socrates?
- A: No one is wiser. (Notice the negation in the oracle’s reply, for it opens to two possible
interpretations.)
B. On one hand, the reply would implicate Socrates being the wisest of them all.
- However, Socrates entertains the news with sheer bewilderment (an inner disturbance), for he never
believed himself to be wise. (21b)
- He demonstrates an attitude where he doesn’t easily accept the pronouncement. Thus, the
conundrum propelled his investigation, leading Socrates to groups of purportedly wise people.
1. Politicians: Anyone who assumes authority is deemed to be wise.
Having a position to uphold/protect, they appear omniscient when they are actually
not.
2. Poets (contemporaries in Athens): They possess a certain knowledge that became the
wellspring of their poetic works.
As the bystanders seem to have understood the poetic works better that its authors
could, they do not possess that knowledge, being divinely inspired, at all.
Socrates does not pretend such knowledge.
3. Craftsmen: Socrates knows practically nothing of their dexterity in crafting goods that are
being sold in the agora (city center)
Just because they are good in a certain skill, they presume to be good at everything.
- Wisdom becomes illusory. These people don’t think that there is anything they did not know. (22c)
C. On another hand, the reply could also be understood as, “no mortal being is wise because only the gods
can be wise.”
- Socrates admits that he is not wise at all.
Socratic ignorance: Only the gods are wise; thus, all mortal beings are ignorant. Yet,
there is someone from the crowd who is cognizant of his ignorance.
- Role of reversal in the text: What makes him the wiser one is his mere awareness of his ignorance.
This ignorance sets Socrates out in a certain task/mission, which is to bring everybody
else in the same consciousness. He questioned individuals to prove them ignorant of the
matters in which they claim expertise.
But the people’s pride/ego, however, gets in the way of illumination. Consequently, this
has brought him a lot of enemies (his accusers included), attaching him to malfeasance.
- Socrates brings into his defense that his actions are not a betrayal, but rather a form of public
service (life’s work)
[G]od has given Socrates this special task for him to fulfill.
In an attempt to get a better society in the end, he has sought the road less travelled,
ceasing as a patriotic person.
- Horse-gadfly imagery: Despite the horse’s continuous flicking of its tail, shooing the gadfly away,
the gadfly always returns. (30e)
Similarly, Socrates compares himself to a gadfly, continuously rousing the horse from
lethargy. He serves to awaken the consciousness of Athenian society.
Choosing to be sluggish by killing the gadfly, the horse constrains itself from being
a “great and noble” being. Unfortunately, the society eventually turned the flyswatter to
Socrates. The gadfly may have been killed, yet it was still able to fulfill its purpose.

Primary and Secondary Reflection 2

Protocol 14 June
Author: Jaevie


Primary and Secondary Reflection 2

1. Primary Reflection dissolves

• Naturally dissolves the unity of the natural experience
• Abstraction
• Problem seeking solution(s)
• Ex. A mechanic wh[o] looks for the malfunctions of a vehicle

2. Secondary Reflection is essentially recuperative

• High instrument of philosophical research
• Deals with mystery
• Involved self
• Ex. Everyday events
• Life becomes more lived because of reflection; reflection becomes more real because of life

3. “Who Am I?”

• Self in the index cards
• The self that i recognize is an abstraction
• Bundle of experiences & attributes = my self
• Does this “self” exist? No.
• The answers to the questions of primary reflection refer to ourselves
• The self that has become an object
• Index card, passport

4. Subjectivity

• Objectum: something in front of you
• ob (L.) – in front of
• jectum (L.) – act of throwing
• Subjectivity
• sub (L.) – underneath
• Going back to enter the mystery of my subjectivity (my “real” self)
• We cannot fathom subjectivities

5. Discussion of the Quiz

“A human life has always its centre outside itself” –Marcel (par. 10, p. 82, Chpt. V, The Mystery of Being)

• “to live” in the biological sense is not the same as living a human life
• Values, desires, relationships = what makes a life
• The center outside oneself is SOMEBODY[/SOMETHING] ELSE
• Concrete example of Marcel
• MOTHERHOOD
• A mother can’t be herself if she has no children[DUH?]
• VICES
• vices/addictions and bad habits
• one considers oneself incomplete without the negative vice
• Meaning of their lives are one and the same (Mothers and Substance Abusers)
• Artists
• Not far from the pathos of the artists
• Thin line between creativity and insanity
• We aim to live life in a “philosophical way”
• Secondary reflection is not a negation of life but a transcendence
• Secondary reflection goes under the presupposed meaning of life to find our subjectivity

6. Questions

• “confession”
• Formulas
• All about going beyond
• An athlete wh[o] face[s] an accident
• There are many centers present in a human life
• Involves the question of who he is
• The accident may open a new center
• Brings about a new decision
• Opening of new possibilities or closing and opening of one center