Key Arguments

• Arendt equates Descartes’ solution with the broader modern shift toward truthfulness and reliability as substitutes for lost truth and reality.
• Descartes asserts the mind is the measure of what we affirm or deny, echoing scientists’ discovery that even without truth or certainty, man can be truthful and reliable.
• If everything is doubtful, doubting itself is certain; no one can doubt their own doubt and be uncertain whether they doubt.
• The famous cogito did not arise from self-certainty of thought but as a generalization from the logical certainty of doubting, grounding the introspective turn.

Source Quotes

Success here is not at all the empty idol to which it degenerated in bourgeois society; it was, and in the sciences has been ever since, a veritable triumph of human ingenuity against overwhelming odds. The Cartesian solution of universal doubt or its salvation from the two interconnected nightmares—that everything is a dream and there is no reality and that not God but an evil spirit rules the world and mocks man—was similar in method and content to the turning away from truth to truthfulness and from reality to reliability. Descartes’ conviction that “though our mind is not the measure of things or of truth, it must assuredly be the measure of things that we affirm or deny” echoes what scientists in general and without explicit articulation had discovered: that even if there is no truth, man can be truthful, and even if there is no reliable certainty, man can be reliable.

The Cartesian solution of universal doubt or its salvation from the two interconnected nightmares—that everything is a dream and there is no reality and that not God but an evil spirit rules the world and mocks man—was similar in method and content to the turning away from truth to truthfulness and from reality to reliability. Descartes’ conviction that “though our mind is not the measure of things or of truth, it must assuredly be the measure of things that we affirm or deny” echoes what scientists in general and without explicit articulation had discovered: that even if there is no truth, man can be truthful, and even if there is no reliable certainty, man can be reliable. If there was salvation, it had to lie in man himself, and if there was a solution to the questions raised by doubting, it had to come from doubting.

If everything has become doubtful, then doubting at least is certain and real. Whatever may be the state of reality and of truth as they are given to the senses and to reason, “nobody can doubt of his doubt and remain uncertain whether he doubts or does not doubt.” The famous (“I think, hence I am”) did not spring for Descartes from any self-certainty of thought as such—in which case, indeed, thought would have acquired a new dignity and significance for man—but was a mere generalization of a In other words, from the mere logical certainty that in doubting something I remain aware of a process of doubting in my consciousness, Descartes concluded that those processes which go on in the mind of man himself have a certainty of their own, that they can become the object of investigation in introspection.

Whatever may be the state of reality and of truth as they are given to the senses and to reason, “nobody can doubt of his doubt and remain uncertain whether he doubts or does not doubt.” The famous (“I think, hence I am”) did not spring for Descartes from any self-certainty of thought as such—in which case, indeed, thought would have acquired a new dignity and significance for man—but was a mere generalization of a In other words, from the mere logical certainty that in doubting something I remain aware of a process of doubting in my consciousness, Descartes concluded that those processes which go on in the mind of man himself have a certainty of their own, that they can become the object of investigation in introspection.

Key Concepts

• turning away from truth to truthfulness and from reality to reliability.
• “though our mind is not the measure of things or of truth, it must assuredly be the measure of things that we affirm or deny”
• “nobody can doubt of his doubt and remain uncertain whether he doubts or does not doubt.”
• The famous (“I think, hence I am”) did not spring for Descartes from any self-certainty of thought as such—in which case, indeed, thought would have acquired a new dignity and significance for man—but was a mere generalization of a
• from the mere logical certainty that in doubting something I remain aware of a process of doubting in my consciousness, Descartes concluded that those processes which go on in the mind of man himself have a certainty of their own, that they can become the object of investigation in introspection.

Context

Section 38; explication of Descartes’ response to doubt and the foundation of introspective certainty.