Descartes’ Dreaming Prisoner and the Desire for Certainty
a revealing analogy ending his first Meditation
Fairly extensive attention has been paid in secondary literature on Rene Descartes to the extended analogy found at the end of the first of his Meditations On First Philosophy. This may be in part because, on the surface, it has all of the characteristics of a rhetorical embellishment, a facile comparison, simply reiterating what has been said before and providing a useful ending point for that first Meditation.
Another reason for this neglect may also be that this section comes after three intense and interesting sequences of increasingly problematic doubt, often (and quite naturally) taken to be the very core of the first Meditation. So it comes to be seen, or even ignored, as an afterthought, since it does not seem to deepen the earlier-articulated doubts.
Since the Meditations, like the Discourse on Method, presents the reader with a fictional composition that purports to represent and reflect Descartes’ actual thoughts and reasonings, this section may be ignored by some readers because it seems too carefully contrived, and in part, because the audience, in most cases, already has a good idea where the narrative is going.
It may also be that, given the wealth of themes to be uncovered in the Meditations, many more closely related to epistemological and metaphysical than moral concerns, this final section that does articulate a practical analogy simply gets passed over
The passage, however, actually is of some importance. It is a metaphor, a complex analogy to be exact, but its role, I argue, is not merely embellishment or ornamentation. While this conclusion to the first Meditation does not provide us with another set of objects of doubt (or even explicitly a new type of doubt), it does, however, give us a valuable insight into the motivation and scope of Descartes’ project in the First Meditation in relation to his larger projects.
This post is intended to be the first of three. In this one, I would like to elaborate and explain the structures of the metaphors Descartes develops in the passage. The second post will focus on relationships between various parts of the metaphorical structures and Descartes philosophical aims. In the third post, I will suggest we can speak of three different types of doubt, different from each other in scope, object, relation to passions and understanding, and in structure.
Analysis of the Metaphor
It is a fair question to ask, what purpose this metaphor serves, particularly given its place directly after the passage in which he introduces the possibility of being deceived by a malin génie. Let us examine it in detail.
Here it is in the French translation:
Mais ce dessein est pénible et laborieux, et une certaine paresse m’entraine insensiblement dans le train de ma vie ordinaire. Et tout de même qu’un esclave qui jouissait dans le sommeil d’une liberté imaginaire, lorsqu’il commence à soupçonner que sa liberté n’est qu’un songe, craint d’être réveillé, et conspire avec ces illusions agréables pour en être plus longuement abusé, ainsi je retombe insensiblement de moi-même dans mes anciennes opinions, et j’appréhende de me réveiller de cette assoupissement, de peur que les veilles laborieuses qui succéderaient à la tranquilité de ce repos, au lieu de m’apporter quelque jour et quelque lumière dans le connaisance de la vérité, ne fussent pas suffisantes pour éclaircir toutes les ténèbres des difficultés qui viennent d’être agitées.
And here is an English translation:
But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being woken up, and goes along with the pleasant illusion as long as he can. In the same way, I happily slide back into my old opinions and dread being shaken out of them, for fear that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labor when I wake, and that I shall have to toil not in the light, but admid the inextricable darkness of the problems I have now raised.
There is more than one single metaphorical structure at work here. First of all, let us note that the passage itself contains a four-part analogy.
The relationship of the prisoner or slave to his sleep is analogous to Descartes and his rest.
The contents of those two states, the agreeable illusions of the prisoner and Descartes’ former opinions, are likewise analogous.
Then, there is the analogy between the actual state of the slave and the laborious wakenings of Descartes.
Finally, the states themselves are in a relation of analogy, the sleep of the prisoner to his wakefulness being compared to the rest of Descartes’ former opinions and the laborious wakenings.
Second, there is also a metonymical relationship already in play, between Descartes and his reader, since the reader is supposed to be following along with the meditator.
Third, and most important, there is a structural element in the passage which is not shared in common between Descartes and the slave or prisoner. This is what we should concentrate upon from the beginning.
The condition of the imaginary person and Descartes are presented as comparable, very much so, to the extent that the complex of the condition of the prisoner or slave can cast some light on Descartes’ own position at the end of the First Meditation. But Descartes is not in bondage, though he fears he may be, because — and this is the surplus structural element in the metaphor — he has the possibility of liberation through the avoidance of the state which dissimulates that it is not in bondage.
For Descartes, then, the state corresponding to awakening has two possible values, slavery or servitude and freedom. It may be, he concedes, that in waking, and indeed in taking on the labors of philosophical introspection, instead of bringing him a light which will allow him the knowledge of truth, he will encounter only the shadows of difficulties. Still, these will not be the same as those of his quotidian existence. Rather, one must surmise, they must be those of a false and now unsatisfactory philosophy, a philosophy which can only give probable truth which then can give rise to more troubling doubts.
This surplus structural element, however, revalues the entire structure of the analogy. Let us turn to the analogy proper. On both sides, we have a subject who suffers certain states, but who at the same time has a certain amount of control over which state he will be in. Presumably, however, the sleep and its pleasant illusions, the habits of everyday life and Descartes’ former opinions, is itself not independent from the other state, the difficulties imposed by slavery or a philosophy which cannot provide one with certainty. The dependence is not only an ontological matter, however. It is also one of the order of knowledge.
In both the sleep of the slave and the daily routine of Descartes, there is a double relation of knowledge. On the one hand, they both know that this state is not real, that it is a comfortable illusion. This, however, is only in relation to the other state, that of servitude or that of doubts which are resolved only hydra-like to raise further doubts.
At the same time, this knowledge is, through the power of illusion or routine, kept from the dreaming slave or the benumbed Descartes. We would not be wrong to speak a structure of repression here, provided that we make the distinction that what is repressed, that which the subject knows well enough to not know, is not some absolute and final level of reality, but the very lack of such. Or, better, the irresolvability of that reality which is being concealed.
The state which is being avoided, for both Descartes and the prisoner, is not a level of a system of facts which would all make sense in an ensemble. It is rather that there is a certain sense to be made about them. But also that this sense is not one which ultimately makes sense, of the order of full knowledge, and not also unresolved and contradictory affects.
The surplus element, however, alters the structure for Descartes. And, it is at this place where the analogy undergoes a certain disequilibrium. Descartes is himself conscious of his freedom, while the slave is conscious of his unfreedom. Descartes’ consciousness of his freedom is twofold.
First, in that he can pose the problem that he faces, and which drives him to take refuge (after his succession of self-imposed doubts) in his everyday routine and former opinions, the problem that he might not arrive at light in the knowledge of truth, but rather only the shadows of difficulties, the very difference between them is posited, and both of these are cast as possible outcomes.
This means that Descartes is posed with the choice to take that difficult path, or to lapse back into his former opinions, a choice he knows he can make. The slave or prisoner does not have this choice. Sooner or later, someone else will wake him up. He is after all a unfree person, a possession or subject of another. Descartes has the choice posed to him: either think in a new and rigorous way, or go back to opinions and routines. And both of these are possibilities for him.
At the same time, given that, structurally in the analogy, the light in the knowledge of truth corresponds to the missing possibility of the slave, namely freedom, the option for freedom, this option is, in effect, the freedom towards freedom. In this, however, freedom is understood negatively, as liberation from the bondage of falsity. At this point, it can be only negatively figured as knowledge of truth, because Descartes has not yet come to resolve the doubts as he shall do in the later Meditations.
This metaphor is deceptive, though, because it gives one the impression that it does remain within the scope of Descartes’ choice to either lapse back into his routine, dispel the doubts as his own creations, and as not being insights into the untruth of that position, or to take on this difficult and laborious design.
We know already, from the Discours that Descartes is no stranger to these doubts and difficulties. Indeed, the first sentence of the Second Meditation shows that the peaceful rest of everyday life is no longer an option for him.
La méditation que je fis hier m’a rempli l’esprit de tant de doutes, qu’il n’est plus désormais en ma puissance de les oublier. . .
So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday’s meditation, that I can neither put them out of my mind . .
He is now in the condition of the painful awakening.
Et cependant je ne vois pas de quelle façon je les pourrai résoudre.
. . .nor see any way of resolving them
He can no longer avoid the difficulties of doubts hidden behind doubts, and, with yet another metaphor, describes his position.
Et si comme tout à coup j’étais tombé dans une eau très profonde, je suis tellement surpris, que je ne puis ni assurer mes pieds dans le fond, ni nager pour me soutenir au-dessus.
It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top.
This metaphor, however, is clearly, given the one we have been discussing, a dissimulation. Certainly he cannot swim on the surface, since that has been ruled out by the doubts which assail his former opinions. And, having no bottom to place his feet upon is, in another register, precisely his fear of the earlier Meditation, that he would be left with only shadows of difficulties.
Shadows and the water he flails around in have much in common. First, they are intangible, at least in that there is nothing lest to push back upon, which is why he can no longer swim. Both of them surround Descartes as well. And, while for others, they may be a veil of security, and harken back to the safety of floating in the womb’s amniotic fluid, for Descartes, the lack of security is frightening.
He does not have to say it, but one of the corollaries to his fall into the deep water is that, if he does not come up with something quickly, he will drown. (We might also read in to this the issue and concern of madness raised in the First Meditation). At this point, the only way out is through continuing this difficult path ahead of him, to see where it ends up. The sleep of the slave has already been left behind. The question for Descartes is no longer whether to go back to his former opinions, but whether he will be able to sustain the inquiry, and to finally arrive at some certainty.
(this piece was previously published in Practical Rationality)