INSIDE MEDITATION

Interiority, Reflexivity and Genre in Descartes Meditations.

by

Juan Carlos Donado

September 2012

Submitted to the New School for Social Research of the New School in partial fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dissertation Committee: Dr. Dmitri Nikulin Dr. Richard J. Bernstein Dr. Zed Adams Dr. Miran Bozovic

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2012 Juan Carlos Donado

Caveat pseudophilosophorum lectione & consortio, nihil enim quamlibet scientiam addiscenti periculosius est, qum imperiti aut dolosi ingenii commercium, quo falsa pro veris principia inculcantur, quibus bon fide mala doctrin imbuitur candidus animus. Arcanum hermeticae Philosophiae Opus. Canon VIII. 1623.

(Take heed of reading and keeping company with pseudo-philosophers; nothing, in fact, is more dangerous for the learner of any science than commerce with an ignorant and deceitful spirit, by means of whom false principles are inculcated for truth, whereby a spotless soul of good faith is imbued with false doctrine.)

In memoriam I.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I. PRELIMINARY NOTE 1

II. INTRODUCTION. 3

III. ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION. 13

Inside Meditation.

A. THE CONFESSIONAL. 15

0. Section Overview. 16

1. The Logic of Confession. 16

2. The Spiritual Manual. 25

3. The Confessional in the Meditations: Already now some years ago 44

B. THE LITERARY 77

0. Section Overview. 78

1. I Withdraw Alone. 79

2. Sitting by the Fire. 85

3. The Fiction of Dreams. 92

4. Reading Derrida Reading Foucault Reading Descartes. 98

5. Reading Foucault Reading Derrida Reading Foucault Reading 106

6. The Impossible Fiction of Madness? 115

7.On the Way to the Evil Genius: Concerning Opinions. 122 8. On the Way to the Evil Genius: Some Would Prefer to Declare It a Fiction. 128

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9. The Fiction of the Evil Genius and the Cogito. 137

C. THE METAPHYSICAL 146

0. Section Overview (or Metaphysics In Titulus). 147

1. Descartes Video System. 151

2. Naturally Natural Light. 157

3. Clarity and Distinction. 170

4. Image and Reality of Error. 179

5. Tension and Contention of the Imagination. 195

Appendix: Reading Coincidence or Concerning the Search for The Search for Truth by means of Natural Light. 208 Bibliography. 219

1

I. Preliminary Note.

Although in what follows we borrow the term self-writing from the works of

Michel Foucault, two main reasons compel us to keep our distance from the general

thrust of his analyses. The first consists in Pierre Hadots criticisms of the

Foucauldian notion of criture de soi or self-writing as a traditional technique for

constituting the self.1 Summarily, Hadot believes one writes not to forge oneself a

spiritual identity by writing, but rather to liberate oneself from ones individuality, in

order to raise oneself up to universality (Hadot, p. 210). Hadot makes an important

point about Foucaults interpretation of the relation between time and writing, arguing

that Foucaults take on the role of self-writing as essentially interested in capturing

the past and inflecting the soul toward meditation on the past is simply a mistaken

interpretation (Hadot, p. 209). For Hadot, the ancients were concerned with

possesing not the past, but the present (ibid.). Hadot further states: Writing, like

other spiritual exercises, changes the level of the self, and universalizes it. The

miracle of this exercise, carried out in solitude, is that it allows its practitioner to

accede to the universality of reason within the confines of space and time (ibid., p.

211).

The second reason for keeping our distance from Foucault has to do with his

interpretation of the evolution of confession in the History of Sexuality v. I: An

Introduction. Foucault interprets it as follows: By integrating it into the beginnings

of a scientific discourse, the nineteenth century altered the scope of confession; it no

1 For the whole of Hadots discussion, see: Pierre Hadot, pp. 206-213.

2

longer concerned itself solely with what the subject wished to hide, but with what was

hidden from himself (Foucault 1990, p. 66). Even though Foucaults analysis are

to be considered only an introduction, for eventually he would grapple with

confession in the last and unpublished- volume of The History of Sexuality entitled

Confessions of the Flesh, it is still highly inaccurate, in our view, to assert that at

some point in the history of confession the subject has not been concerned with what

was hidden from himself. This is as manifest in Judaism as it is in Christianity.

Augustine, for instance, while opening up his Confessions (Book I. 5. 6), articulates

his project by precisely quoting Psalm 19:12: Who can understand [his] errors?

Cleanse thou me from secret [faults] (Ab occultis meis munda me, domine). The

quote clearly establishes that, at its core, the confessional ideal also involves, in

Foucaults words, that which is hidden from the subject himself.

3

II. Introduction: Making a Reading.

To begin by asking what it means to make a reading is not at all alien to the

Cartesian spirit. Indeed, in a much celebrated passage at the beginning of Meditation

I, the analysis whereof will be a constant point of return for us, Descartes depicts the

actitivity of meditation his own retreat as a meditating subject- as essentially

involving writing. Being essential to meditation, writing arguably demands that

reading be essential too. Thus, a more careful examination of the Meditations

composition yields enough material to launch an enquiry into the author/ reader

relation for, to our knowledge, there is no other volume in the Western philosophical

canon that, picking up on the tradition of the scholastic Summae, reaches the public

from its very first edition as a work that has been explicitly read and objected to, not

by an anonymous collectivity, but by identifiable others.2

Radically innovating within the tradition of the Summae, the Meditations

effect an alteration in the presentation of same and other as such principles relate to

the notions of an authorial I and a reader. In terms of the principle of sameness, the

author is made reader of the readers objections who, in terms of the principle of

otherness, having reacted to the author as readers, become authors themselves. This

becoming of author into reader and reader into author places same and other in a

2 Amlie Oksenberg Rorty holds a similar view when she states: The Objections and Replies are themselves transformations of a tradition Descartes invites his opponents to speak for themselves, in their own words, for as long as they like: not a constructed dialogue but a genuine correspondence. Nor does he edit his interlocutors not a Thommistic snippet Sed Contra followed quickly by a Responsio. Nor does he present a showy dialectical Disputatio, with a defendens and impugnans. Rather he asks respected fellow scholars to present him with their criticisms. Their objections and his replies are published together; readers can weigh and consider the merits of the arguments in privacy and at their leisure rather than immediately, at a public event (Rorty, p. 19).

4

rather peculiar poietic relation, which does not lack reflexivity: Descartes readers are

made authors by making a reading of the Meditations, and Descartes himself is made

author once more by making a reading of the readings that have been presented as

objections.

The Meditations, therefore, open up the bibliographic space, from the Greek for

book () and writing (), where this poiesis historically takes place. As

our essential task will be to show here, we will advance the claim that the author/

reader relation within the six Meditationes also involves a similar poiesis a poiesis

we will address in terms of a conceptual transition. We must straightforwardly say

that, in our own mind, there is no doubt that Descartes himself picks up on this

intensification and almost redoubling of the notion of reading, as he demands from

us, in his Preface to the Reader, that we become the readers of the readers. Asking us

to withold judging the entire project of the Meditations until reading what others have

put forth in the Objections, such readings are considered now to be a part of the

whole:

But because I yet do not promise to satisfy straightforwardly on everything from the beginning; nor do I confer upon myself so much confidence so as to believe that I am capable of foreseeing which difficulties may anyone observe, first of all, in the Meditations, I will set forth those thoughts by means of which I have, in my view, arrived at a certain and evident knowledge of the truth, so that I can experience if the same arguments, which have convinced me, will perhaps allow me to convince others. Afterwards, however, I will reply to the objections of various men of excellent intellect and scholarship to whom these Meditations were sent for examination before they were submitted to print. For what they objected was so much and so varied that I would dare to hope that it will not be easy for anything other to come to mind for anyone else, at least of any importance, which they have not touched on. And therefore I likewise ask the readers not to pass judgement on the

5

Meditations, until they have been kind enough to read through all these objections and their replies (AT VII, 10-11).

(Quia ver nequidem etiam aliis spondeo me in omnibus prim fronte satisfacturum, nec tantum mihi arrogo ut confidam me omnia posse praevidere quae alicui difficilia videbuntur, prim quidem in Meditationibus illas ipsas cogitationes exponam, quarum opem ad certam et evidentem cognitionem veritatis mihi videor pervenisse, ut experiar an fort iisdem rationibus, quibus ego persuasus sum, alios etiam possim persuadere. Postea vero respondebo ad objectiones virorum aliquot ingenio et doctrin excellentium, ad quos haec Meditationibus, antequam typis mandarentur, examinandae missae sunt. Satis enim multa et varia ab illis fuerunt objecta, ut ausim sperare non facile quicquam aliis, saltem alicujus momenti, venturum in mentem, quod ii nondum attigerint. Ideoque rogo etiam Lectores, ut non prius de Meditationibus judicium ferant, qum objectiones istas earumque solutiones omnes perlegere dignati sint.)

We will attempt to sketch the contours of our hermeneutical horizon by explicitly

taking a poietical stance that will result in yielding a depiction. By this we mean that

our attempt consists in making a reading that eventually offers a depiction of the

writing involved in the Meditations. This making demands the making of the

elemental building blocks out of which we aspire to understand the relationship

between author and reader a relationship that will be thought in terms of a transition

between two sets of equivalencies. What will characterize the reflexivity of our own

project can be said to consist in that, making a reading to depict writing, this

depiction of writing will only be completed as we understand the role of reading

itself. Ultimately, such reflexivity will only be achieved once we unfold the immanent

relations existing between reading, writing, and the exercise of meditation.

6

What type of writing, and with it, what type of reading does a project like the

Meditations involve? From the very start we would like to push an analogy: if the

Meditations are thought to involve a type of writing that, using Michel Foucaults

expression, we could call self-writing, the reading they summon could also be

considered a self-reading. Already in the Preliminary Note, we have mentioned that

Foucault essentially conceived self-writing as a technique for what he called

constituting the self. We also noted that Pierre Hadot replied to Foucaults

interpretation of self-writing by critically changing the terms of what is at stake,

claiming that self-writing aspires, rather than to constitute the self, to universalize it

by changing the level of the self.

For our own purposes here, we would like to take a different stance from both

Foucault and Pierre Hadot, only to say that, in what regards the Meditations, a

dialectical sublation or Aufhebung could well be what fits the case. By this we mean

that, while constituting the self through writing, the Meditations self-writing would

be aspiring to constitute an essentially universalizable self. This constitution of the

universal would occur through the reading of the self-writing we are trying to

describe, which eventually would result in the selfs constitution through reading or

through what we have called self-reading.

Within the interrelatedness of self-writing and self-reading, two moments

would be clearly distinguishable: one belonging to the constitution of a self whose

architectural parameters consist in universalizability. This moment can be said to be

essentially but not exclusively related to the self-writing of the Meditations. A second

7

moment, nevertheless, where such universalizability actually becomes universal or, if

you will, where such universalizability passes from the potentiality latent in the selfs

construction to a universal actuality, would be essentially related to self-reading. The

non-exclusion of both moments can be understood by grasping that the telos of the

entire written construction is the actualization of the universal in self-reading. In his

own terms, we take Descartes himself to be conceiving a similar state of affairs, when

straightforwardly affirming: Rather, I am not an author to those who read, except

only to those who are willing to seriously meditate with me (Quin etiam nullis

author sum ut haec legant, nisi tantm iis qui seri mecum meditari) (AT VII, 9).

In order for the concept of self-reading to gain the robustness we aspire, we

will have to further determine its conceptual boundaries. Consequently, we would

like to address the notions of self-writing and self-reading by attempting to describe

the summoning between both as technically consisting in a conceptual transition from

one series of first person singular equivalencies (or I equivalencies) to another. The

first series of I equivalencies pertains to the author, just like the second pertains to

the reader. The dynamic we have in mind consists in transitioning from the

equivalencies: author = meditator = character, into the set of equivalencies: reader =

meditator = character. Transitioning from one set of I equivalencies to the other will

be made possible by means of certain modifications exercised on the interiority of the

first person singular. Availability and access to the Is interiority will therefore be

the condition of possibility for the entire project of the Meditations. The operations

8

performed on the subjects inner space will clear the path for constructing the space

of the I in such a way that such space can be literally in-habited by the reader.

Correlating to the terms contained in the I equivalencies, our analysis of

interiority will center on three of its avatars. These are the elemental building blocks

for making our reading: the first is the confessional, the second the literary, and the

third is the metaphysical. Although individually identifiable, these various avatars are

not conceived as excluding each other. On the contrary, we will at some points walk

the extra mile to spot the essential points of contact between them. As if dealing with

three Cartesian planes that we would translucently want to place on top of each other,

characterized by the operations performed within their respective inner spaces, each

avatar of interiority will allow us to plot certain inner coordinates.

We could offer a brief sketch of what we intend to do by saying that the

authorial aspect of the I closely relates to the confessional avatar of interiority, just

as the character relates to the literary and the meditator to the metaphysical. But even

as we begin to make such one-to-one correlations, the conceptual plasticity of the

Meditations rather Cartesianly overwhelms us, and the organicity in which these

notions and avatars appear almost immediately makes us abandon such an inflexible

starting point.

Having said this, we would rather begin again and state that, at a first moment,

the confessional avatar relates especially to the subjects auto-biographical history, as

it pertains to an author who confesses his or her personal experience. At the same

time, nevertheless, immanent limits are drawn to the confessional in the Meditations,

9

when Descartes own confession of a vital crisis that leads to the search for truth

halts, only because a more detailed self-narrative would create a character that, being

too particularly determined, would risk obstructing the reader from further occupying

the authors place and, therefore, would obstruct the meditators meditation.

We could speak similarly about the literary, where an entire literary mise en

scne will depict the character while in his or her meditative retreat. Simultaneously,

nevertheless, the character will employ this same literary mise en scne to deploy

certain fictional devices, such as the fiction of dreams and the fiction of the evil

genius, that allow radical doubt to extend itself, corroding previous certainties and

driving the meditator to discover various metaphysical truths.

Grasping how these equivalencies relate to each other will put us in a position

to provide a better understanding of Descartes employment of the first person

singular as a placeholder for every reader (Hatfield, p. 50). It is in tandem with the

author/ reader relation, therefore, essentially related to the notion of placeholder, that

we would like to think of universal subjectivity generating itself in the Meditations.

From the authors perspective, one could risk saying, the gamble involved in the

Meditations ultimately consists in failing to produce the conceptual transition

sketched above.

Such transition, nevertheless, does not necessarily demand symmetrical terms.

On the contrary, the assymetricity involved in this conceptual movement hinges on

requiring the readers willful acceptance and, therefore, hinges on the fact that such

transition cannot do away with the notion of the gift. Simply put, the reader ultimately

10

allows him or herself to step into the space the author has prepared. Berel Lang puts it

clearly enough when he states: Rather, if the reader chooses to reenact what the

author has done, if he follows the procedure indicated by the latter, he may establish

for himself what the writer has established; it is that personal and individual

construction, a constitution of the philosophical self, which is the prospect offered by

the writer (Lang, p. 55). This, of course, does not mean that the author will not

employ every weapon in his or her arsenal to magnetically draw the reader in. The

analysis of such arsenal lies at the core of our interests in this text.

While speaking about self-writing, we will limit ourselves to merely opening a

question that oversteps the boundaries of this inquiry. The question concerns Plato

and his famous remarks about writing in the Pheadrus (274b ff). It is well known that

Plato divides writing roughly into two: on one hand, he presents us with the writing

that occurs physically, as it were, words that have been written down in ink

(275d, 276c). On the other, he presents us with the writing that is written in the soul

of the listener (276a). The first type of writing is famously compared to a mute

offspring that, as a text passes from reader to reader reaching indiscriminately those

with understanding no less than those that have no business with it (275e), is left to

roam the earth without the aid of the father or author. The second type of writing is

compared to the experience of dialectic exchange, where knowledge is bestowed from

master to disciple in an oral manner that vitally transforms the soul and produces a

seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others (277a).

11

Leaving aside the complex interrogations Platos distinctions generate within

his own written corpus, the question we want to pose has to do with the place of self-

writing as it relates to the Pheadrus framework: doesnt self-writing represent the

finest perspective to think through the Phaedrus conception of writing? Two

positions, at least in our mind, could be taken to tackle such question. The first would

consider Plato as not being a self-writer a position that could be argued for based on

his Letter VI (341c-d), which we will shortly quote in full. In such an interpretation,

given the immanent need self-writing carries of both transforming the self and

producing a written text, it would precisely be the type of writing that locates itself on

the seams of the Phaedrus distinctions.

The second position, on the other hand, would consist in thinking of Plato

himself as the self-writer par excellence, attempting to explain his choice of genre

(dialogue) precisely as the genre that allows the making visible line by line- of the

transformations of a self engaged in the exercise of dialogue and dialectic. Naturally,

were this the case, yet another example of Socratic irony would be in store, given that

by offering the examples of writing he does in the Phaedrus, Plato would be precisely

excluding his own writing or self-writing from the analysis. This exclusion, in the

end, would become an eliptic inclusion, for Platos dialogues would precisely stand at

a middle point between writing in ink and writing in the soul.

Finally, as a gesture to the reader, we would like to frame the reflexivity of

our project yet again, this time by quoting Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, who stated

concerning reading and meditation that reading arouses a meditation that resembles

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it (Saint-Thierry, p. 257).3 As we have already emphazised, our reading is a reading

of the writing involved in the exercise of meditation. We would consequently want to

leave it up to the readers mind to consider what type of meditation should ressemble

this reading.

3 Lectionis quippe modum similis meditatio sequi solet (Latin text quoted in Belin, p. 71).

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III. About this Translation.

Our analysis will focus on the original 1641-1642 Latin editions of Descartes

Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. Due to the terminological accuracy needed for

our reading, we will provide our own translations of the passages quoted from the

Meditations, offering beside them the original Latin text as warrantor of our choices.

John Cottinghams English translation of the Meditations, which has become the

standard for Cartesian scholars, though accurate and elegant, is certainly liberal. To

illustrate our point using an example that will be crucial for us, Cottingham decides to

render the notion of admission (from the Latin admitto) as accepted (Descartes 2005,

v.ii., p. 12). Although not technically wrong, we do not deem it necessary to distance

ourselves from Descartes original linguistic universe, putting into play a different set

of verbal roots and prefixes as in ac-cipio, instead of focusing on the precise

dynamics of ad-mitto.4

In what concerns alternate translations, at the other extreme of Cartesian

scholarship, George Heffernans bilingual edition of the Meditations has also been

invaluable for our own renditions. Due to its explicit literality, nevertheless,

Heffernan oftentimes sacrifices readability, making the popularity and elegance of the

Meditations as a philosophical pocket book (an important part of the Cartesian

project, one might claim) difficult to understand for a non-Latin English reader.

4 Whereas the ad in ad-mitto is a single preposition meaning towards, the ac in ac-cipio is a contraction of atque or ad + que, meaning and even or and also. The difference between mitto and capio is perhaps even starker, given that capio means to take or seize, whereas mitto means to let go or send off. For a fuller analysis of admitto, see Chapter One, section three below.

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This having been acknowledged, there are also particular differences in

terminology with Heffernan that make our own translation a necessity. For instance,

early on in Meditation I (AT, VII 17), when Descartes expresses the urgency of his

meditative retreat, Heffernan renders the sentence as: I would be at fault if by

deliberating I were to consume that time which remains for what is to be done

(Descartes 1990, p. 87). Descartes original expression for what Heffernan translates

as at fault is in culpa, which literally involves the notion of guilt or culpa. The

importance of these nuances will be made clear in what follows.

Our ideal for translation, therefore, has been to strike a harmonious chord

between elegance and rigour that, alongside our interpretation of the text, delivers the

intensity of Descartes writing. To accompany the present essay with a bilingual

translation of the Meditations still remains a desideratum and constitutes, perhaps,

our horizon of full projective completeness.

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A. The Confessional.

16

0. Section Overview.

Scholars have suggested that Descartes Meditations begin as an

epistemological confession.5 Indeed, the tone of the project (its mood6) is quite

radically set by the voice of a meditating subject who seems to be disclosing intimate

circumstances. It is precisely this confessional aspect, simultaneously disclosing a

history of interiority and showing that the meditator himself has a life that runs

alongside the present meditative retreat, that gives the project of the Meditations its

astoundingly personal character. To examine the particularity of the confessional

space of the Meditations, nevertheless, we will first need to philosophically examine

two closely related subjects. The first is the structure of traditional confession, having

Augustines Confessions in mind as a paradigm of written confession; the second is

the genre of the spiritual manual, focusing on Ignatius of Loyolas paradigmatic

Spiritual Exercises. The link between both and their relation to Descartes

Meditations will hopefully be made clear in the last section of this chapter.

1. The Logic of Confession.

It would certainly take more space than the one allotted here to trace the

Judaic roots of the practice of confession as they permeate the whole Pentateuch,

5 Nikulin 2006, p. 130. 6 Cfr. Wilson, p. 10.

17

clearly back to the book of Leviticus.7 Even a full examination of the practice of

confession in Christianity oversteps the boundaries of this text. For our purposes,

instead, purposes in no way historically exhaustive but logically structural, it will be

necessary to take a step back both from the institutional establishment of the practice

of penance in the Fourth Lateran Council early in the 13th century,8 and from

interpretations concerning practices of penance in the Early Church, such as the

exmologesis considered paradigmatic by Foucault as it is described by Tertullian in

his On Repentance.9

The reason behind such conceptual focus consists in the fact that, as many

scholars have noted, the political context of the institutionalization of penance is not

always irrelevant.10 In the second case, as Foucault himself highlights, exmologesis

has more to do with the dramatic aspect of the revival of confessed sins than with the

transformation of the practice of confession into a written one.11 Even though a line

7 See: Lev 5:5: And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing (emphasis ours). All quotations from Scripture in English, unless otherwise stated, come from the King James Version. 8 In 1215, canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council made it an obligation of every Christian to confess at least once a year to his own priest (Lacoste, p. 1219). 9 See: Tertullian On Repentance, chaps. 9-12. 10 Penance could be administered as a judicial penalty by Church and Emperor acting together against a common enemy. For by c. 1000 penance had a long history as a political punishment administered by rulers as well as bishops (Hamilton, p. 1). 11 Another point of contention against the Foucauldian interpretation of exmologesis might be based on his conceptual neglect of the fact that Tertullians radicality has much to do with the relation between paenitentia and paenitentia secunda, which already represents a purification after baptism. More clearly, paenitentia secunda or exmologesis consists in the possibility of purification after the primordial purification brought about by conversion and its corresponding sacrament: baptism. Sin after baptism is, for Tertullian, a particularly dramatic situation within the Church, for a Christian

18

might be drawn from the public aspect of the exteriorization involved in exmologesis

to the publication involved in confessional writing, the fact that exmologesis itself is

a reenactment or representation that takes place in front of an audience, makes it

radically different from the presentation or representation of sins that takes place at

the face of the reader.

The line of thought we will be attempting to examine here, therefore, intends

to nuclearly focus on the tradition that Augustine himself was drawing from,

inquiring into the interrelation between the two verbs employed in the Greek New

Testament to signify the activity of confession.12

There are two Greek verbs used in the New Testament, rendered into English

as to confess: homologe (),13 generally employed to signify a confession of

faith, and exomologe (),14 generally used as confession of sins. Even at

first sight the proximity between both verbs can be linguistically grasped, for it is

plain that exomologe consists of the verb homologe plus the prefix ek. Found in

when baptized should have already turned away from sin: Penance is often described as a second baptism, a renewal of the original initiation in the Church (Rapp, p. 127). Guy Stroumsa is clear to draw these relationships when he states that baptism was identified with an act of metanoia. The act of re-integration into the community, therefore, would be a a second metanoia, a paenitentia secunda (Stroumsa, p. 173). 12 All Latin and Greek etymologies using both the Lewis and Short and LSJ lexicons were consulted on-line at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?redirect=true&lang=la 13 For the passages where is used cfr. Mat 7:23, Mat 10:32 (2x), Mat 14:7, Luk 12:8 (2x), Jhn 1:20 (2x) Jhn 9:22, Jhn 12:42, Act 7:17, Act 23:8, Act 24:14, Rom 10:9, Rom 10:10, 1Ti 6:13, Heb 11:13, Heb 13:15, 1Jo 1:9, 1Jo 2:23, 1Jo 4:3, 1Jo 4:15, 2Jo 1:7, Rev 3:5. 14 For cfr: Mat 3:6, Mat 11:25, Mar 1:5, Luk 10:21, Luk 22:6, Act 19:18, Rom 14:11, Rom 15:9, Phl 2:11, Jam 5:16.

19

twenty six verses throughout the New Testament, homologe literally means to say

the same, for which reason among its meanings one also finds to agree, to

acknowledge, and to promise.

Although still present in the meaning of confession as exomologe (found

only in ten New Testament verses), this latter verb carries with it the important

connotation of also meaning to praise.15 Thus one finds exomologe being used either

with a direct, accusative object in the sense of confessing sins: And [they] were

baptized in the Jordan, confessing their sins ( ) (Matt

3:6); with an indirect, dative object in the sense of praise: I thank/ praise thee

( , ) (Matt 11:25, Luk 10:21); or by itself in the sense of

giving consent: He consented/promised () and watched for an

opportunity... (Luk 22:6). What interests us here is that, even though a certain

constancy might be said to exist within the four gospels in the use of homologe as a

confession of faith and exomologe as confession of sins, already by the time of the

writing of the first Johannine epistle, homologe is also being used in the sense of a

confession of sins.16

About three hundred years later, by the time Augustine is writing his

Confessions, contemporaneous with Jeromes translation of the Vulgata Latina, a

semantic unification has already occurred: not only has the meaning of both

15 This captures in Greek the spirit of the Hebrew verb Le-hodot, both to thank and to confess. 16 1Jhn 1:9: If we confess our sins ( ).

20

exomologe and homologe collapsed into the Latin verb confiteor,17 but even the

various meanings of exomologe as to confess and to praise (with the sole exception

of Luk 22:6, where Jerome translates exomologe for spondeo) are rendered by

Jerome with the same Latin verb.18

It is not surprising that this phenomenon eventually took place, for such

linguistic interchangeability is ultimately based on the conceptual proximity of the

two branches of confession. That is: a confession of sins (exomologe) does not occur

without an implicit confession of faith in a normative standard to which the

confessant aspires and in relation to which he or she has fallen short. In turn, the

explicit belief in the existence of this standard is what is actually verbalized in the

case of a confession of faith (homologe).

Both branches of confession can also be said to touch in what regards the

notion of witnessing or , for both types of confession demand the bearing of

a witness in front of self and other, either against oneself or, as it were, for the faith.

And even though it is not accurate to assert that all testimonies are confessional, for

our purposes here we will consider all confessions pertaining to the tradition of Latin

confessio to be testimonial. In the case, for instance, of a confession of faith

(homologe), the confessant bears witness of his or her faith in front of God and

another who simultaneously witnesses such a bearing of witness. It is in this dynamic

that we encounter the first instance of confessional reflexivity as it relates to 17 The only place where Jerome does not translate for confiteor is Matt 14:7 where, in the sense of to promise, he uses the phrasing: cum iuramento pollicitus est. 18 See summarily in the Vulgata Latina Matt 3:6, 11:25, and 1Jhn 1:9.

21

witnessing: the other who witnesses a confession immediately, and inevitably,

becomes a witness of the bearing of witness.

Its history of martyrs aside, the word martyr actually deriving from the Greek

for witness or , in Christianity there are two paradigmatic instances of the

witness. As a couple of passages already cited clearly state,19 the foremost witness is

Christ, who in the book of Revelation, for instance, is described precisely as the

faithful witness or (Rev 1:5). It is not necessary or even possible

to examine this topic in more detail here (for the topic of witnessing traverses almost

the whole Gospel of John), but rather exhibit the second paradigmatic instance of the

witness in Christianity: that of John the Baptist, who in the opening verses of the

same Gospel of John is described precisely as one who came to bear witness of the

light ( ) (Jhn 1:7).

It is worthwhile to note how the notion of the witness and the two notions of

confession relate to the figure of John the Baptist, for it is concerning him that the

first use of occurs in the New Testament. 20 The other branch of

confession (homologe) is also clearly associated to his figure in the following

context: while the people confess their sins to John the Baptist (), John

the Baptist himself confesses in front of the people that he is not the Christ: And he

confessed () and denied not (); but confessed (), I

19 See: Mat 10:32. 20 See: Mat 3:6.

22

am not the Christ (Jhn 1:20). Both in this passage and in the verse succeeding the

aforementioned Matt 10:32, the verb homologe is explicitly, almost rhetorically,

opposed to the verb (to deny, refuse or negate), clearly establishing the

positivity implied in the activity of confession as homologe.

Taking a step towards the general analysis of confession, we would like to

conceptualize the stance represented by John the Baptist so as to summarize what is

philosophically at stake in the tradition that Latin confessio eventually inherits. We

will claim that the Baptists witness epitomizes the link between the two stances of

confession and its relationship to light, for every confession that places itself within

this tradition will have to involve a personal witness of the determinations of light

(). This means: every confession that entails a witness will demand both a

positive affirmation of what light is and a negative determination of what light is not.

It might be objected that a determination of the metaphor of light is always

involved, from the Platonic dialogues onwards, in the activity of philosophizing. In

Platos case, nevertheless, we must say that what distinguishes the determinations of

light attempted in his work (under the guise of the idea of the good) from the tradition

that leads to Latin confessio is the personal aspect of his presentation: Socrates, of

course, is not Plato. Precisely, the interest generated by the famous Letter VII,

considered by some the first political confession (Nikulin 2006, p. 130), consists

in such text being the only instance we know where Plato himself uses the first person

singular to state, among other things, that there has never been or will there ever be a

written doctrine ascribable to Plato about certain problems with which I [Plato] am

23

concerned There is no writing of mine about these matters, or will there ever be

one. For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words (Letter VII,

341c-d).

What we intend to examine here is that from the New Testament to various

Early Church Fathers, the practice of confession has always been immanently linked

to a personal determination of light. It is not coincidental that two of the closest, most

probable antecedents of Augustines Confessions, Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165 CE) and

Cyprian (ca. 200-258 CE), articulate the confession of their own conversions using

precisely the metaphor of light. As told in the Dialogue with Trypho, right before his

own conversion, Justin Martyr has an encounter with a respectable old man who tells

him: Above all, beseech God to open to you the gates of light (Saint Justin Martyr,

p. 160). Right after this encounter, Justin experiences his own conversion, which he

describes using another image of light: But my spirit was immediately set on fire I

discovered that his was the only useful philosophy (ibid.).

Cyprian of Carthage, on the other hand, in the beautiful epistle Ad Donatus,21

describes his state before and after conversion as a lying in darkness and gloomy

night (in tenebris atque in nocte caeca iacerem), wavering hither and thither, tossed

about on the foam of this boastful age, and uncertain of my wandering steps, knowing

nothing of my real life, and remote from truth and light (veritatis ac lucis alienus).

But after that a light from above, serene and pure, had been infused (lumen infundit)

into my reconciled heart (Ad Donatus, 3-4). 21 In The Ante-Nicene Fathers v.5, pp. 275-280, edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson. Grand Rapids, MI: W. M. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1986.

24

But one must look no further than Augustine himself who, after hearing a

boys voice or a girls voice that tells him to open the Scriptures and read, describes

his own conversion as follows: For in that instant, with the very ending of the

sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the

darkness of uncertainty vanished away (quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo omnes

dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt) (Confessions, X. VIII. 29).

To consider this tradition as positing two truths, one external (God) and one

internal (the self) (Taylor, p. 17) is to greatly misinterpret the issue. Although it is

not pertinent to deploy a full theological discussion on such matter, to correctly

understand the tradition of confessio it must be said that, in Christianity, the

phenomenon of logos is related both to interiority as archetypical immanence and to

transcendence as a cosmological aspect of the trinitarian structure of the divine.

Relevant to our discussion concerning interiority is how this inner abiding of the

logos creates a necessary link between witnessing and interiority, for such logical

abiding brings to the fore the second reflexive instance of the confessional practice:

whoever confesses bears witness of the inner abiding of the primordial witness, that

is, of the logos.

This is a strong point made in the first Johannine epistle: He that believeth

hath the witness in himself ( ) (1Jhn 5:10; emphasis

ours). For this same reason, Augustines project in the Confessions will demand both

a deepening of the examination of subjective structures of interiority and,

simultaneously, an ascent towards the transcendental structures of cosmological

25

logos. We take it then to be the case that, in confessio, there is much more at stake

than just an understanding of illumination as a disclosure of the self (Foucault

1997a v. 1, p. 243). What is confessed in confession is also a personal experience of

the determinations of light and in traditional confessio such light is necessarily linked

to the notion of the inner, determined both as logos and as witness. Closing the full

circle of witnessing, we may say that the witness involved in confessio consists of a

multiple reflexivity. By definition, the witness bears witness of the logos witness.

Let us keep this in mind when analyzing the reflexivity that Descartes appropriates in

his own confessional dynamic.

2. The Tradition of the Spiritual Manual.

As we have said, the reason behind our focus on Augustines Confessions has

to do with the paradigmatic place he occupies in the evolution of the confessional

practice into a written one. Our intention here is not to problematize the psychological

aspects entailed in the author of written confession,22 but rather to depict the

22Although we must notice that the guilt present in the Meditations first paragraph will be reminiscent, for instance, of Berggrens psychological analysis of confession: During confession, and because of it, an assimilation takes place, a reassociation of a previously dissociated mental life He [the confessant] is burdened with a sense of guilt because of certain actions, or he feels himself to be generally inadequate and worthless (Berggren, p. 144).

26

communicative structure of a text that, understood as a sacrifice for Augustine,23 is

supposed to capture the essence of a practice that was originally oral.24

By turning to Augustines famous passage in The City of God (X., 5.), which

deals with the notion of sacrifice, we will attempt to better picture how writing might

fit into the equation of confession. Augustine states: A sacrifice, therefore, is the

visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice (Sacrificium ergo visibile

invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, id est sacrum signum est) (Augustine 2000, p.

308). Augustine defines the sacrifice as a sign because of its capacity to render visible

another sacrifice that essentially occurs within the believer: He [God] does not

desire the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a contrite

heart the true sacrifice of ourselves (X., 5-6).

The relation between sacrifice and visibility seems to befit the practice of writing

within the tradition of Latin confessio. In a well known passage of the Vita Antonii

that Foucault rather insightfully highlights, Athanasius describes how Antony used to

recommend to his fellow monks the written notation of actions and thoughts:

Let this observation be a safeguard against sinning ( ): let us each note and write down our actions and impulses of the soul as if we were about to report them to each other ( ); and you may rest assured that from utter shame of becoming known we shall stop sinning and entertaining sinful thoughts altogether. Who, having sinned, would not choose to lie, hoping to escape detection? Just as we

23 Cfr. Confessions, IV. 1. 1; V. 1. 1; VIII. 1.1; IX. 1.1; XI. 2.3; XII. 24. 33. All quotations from the Confessions are taken from the translation by F. J. Sheed and are quoted according to the standard form of book, chapter, and paragraph. 24 For a radical stance on the immanent orality of confession, see Nikulin: For this reason, confession can only be oral. As such it can only be imitated in the written, which, however, is a narcissistic betrayal of its orality (Nikulin 2006, p. 130).

27

would not give ourselves to lust within sight of each other, so if we were to write down our thoughts as if telling them to each other ( ), we shall so much the more guard ourselves against foul thoughts for shame of being known. Now, then, let the written account stand for the eyes of our fellow ascetics, so that blushing at writing the same as if we were actually seen, we may never ponder evil. Molding ourselves in this way, we shall be able to bring our body into subjection, to please the Lord and to trample under foot the machinations of the Enemy (Athanasius, p. 73 [translation modified]).25

The passage leaves no doubt that Antony is not referring to a proper written

confession, for his self-examination is very similar to the Stoic practices of daily

meditation described by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, among others, which include

both the writing and reading of right and wrong actions and thoughts.26 What interests

us, nevertheless, is the way in which Antony relates writing to the gaze. As Foucault

puts it, writing offers what one has done or thought to a possible gaze what others

are to the ascetic, the notebook is to the recluse (Foucault 1997a, v 1., pp. 207-208).

Insightful as Foucaults remarks are, Antonys conceptions seem to demand a

more detailed elaboration. It is not that the notebook totally replaces the other in the

ascetic community, but rather that the notebook or writing is the locus of what we

would like to consider a powerful fiction that includes the other, for Antonys

prescription centers around an as if. Antony does not prescribe that the monk actually

25 We relied heavily on Robert T. Meyers translation provided in Foucault 1997a, v 1., p. 207. Greek text is available at: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu. 26 Senecas famous remarks on reading and writing in his Epistle 84 to Lucilius: We should not limit ourselves to either writing or reading; the former will depress ones powers and exhaust them, the other will relax and weaken them (Seneca, p. 155). In the very first page of his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius recalls his painting master Diognetus advice, stating: To hear the lectures first of Baccheius, then of Tandasis and Marcian, in boyhood to write essays and to aspire to the camp-bed and skin coverlet and the other things which are part of the Greek training (Marcus Aurelius, p. 1).

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writes to submit his writings to possible readers, but that he writes as if others were

reading what is being written. It is enough to immerse writing within this as if for

writing to have actual implications on the monks ethical behaviour. The effects of

fiction on the monks inner states are, therefore, real, and this real effect produced by

fiction is something we must have in mind when turning to Descartes own fictions in

the Meditations.

Aside from its effectuality, Antonys fiction also serves an important role in

terms of temporality, especially in what concerns the present. Because writing

manifestly pretends to make the self visible to the other, but not to the other only as

reader, but to the other as reader at the time of writing, writing is an essential tool in

achieving the intensification of the present. We consequently highlight the present

participles employed by Athanasius in the original Greek: or

about to report and, especially, or as if reporting. It is the

possibility of writing as if being simultaneously read by another, that is: it is the

coincidence between the time of writing and the time of reading that stirs up the

emotions of shame and guilt which, within the monastic community, help transform

the self by means of refraining the monk from sinning.

Concerning the Vita Antonii, it is worthwhile to note that in the same 55, just

before the passage quoted above, Antony is indeed referring to Gods capacity of

seeing all things. Writing as a means to make the self visible would thus function,

within the frame of an omniscient deity, as an extension of Gods gaze and, in a way

that we must be careful not to exaggerate but never to underestimate when turning to

29

written confession, would be granting the reader access to the privileged position held

only by God, in private confession, or by the confessor in an oral one.

This access, we stress again, does not in any way imply that written confessio

does not have its limits. Its limits are made manifest by Augustine himself who, in an

enigmatic passage of his Confessions, decides to pass over some of his past sins in

silence. Augustine merely states: For I dared so far one day within the walls of Your

church and during the very celebration of Your mysteries to desire and carry out an

act worthy of the fruits of death (Confessions III. III. 5). We do not know, and can

only imagine, what Augustine was confessing. We do know, nevertheless, regardless

of the lack of details, that Augustine is confessing. The setting of limits clearly

distinguishes the tradition of Latin confessio from our contemporary media spectacle

where written or, especially, televised confession does not have any whatsoever.

Returning to Antony, it is also crucial to keep in mind the employment of

writing as a safeguard or . The Greek term literally means a

security against stumbling or falling, in a way that can be applied, as Sophocles does

for instance, to a city or state.27 Quite literally, then, the notion chosen by Antony to

describe the role of writing belongs to the metaphor of architecture. In the conext of a

written confession, writing would be serving the role of making the self visible to

itself and to the other as reader. At the same time, nevertheless, writing provides the

27 Raise up our city, so that it stands fast ( ) (Sophocles, p. 12; translation modified).

30

possibility of stabilizing confessed utterances in such a way that the whole of

confessional receptivity is radically transformed. We will turn to this briefly.

In the context of visibility, Augustine brings up a passage belonging to the

Epistle to the Hebrews: But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such

sacrifices God is well pleased (Hbr 13: 16).28 It is not difficult to see the connection,

even through brief linguistic analogies, between communicatio as sacrifice and

confession as the most intimate of all communications.29 But what does this intimacy

consist of? To answer such question, we will have to return to the closeness between

the two branches of confession, for it is here that a possible interpretation of

confessional intimacy could be attempted in temporal terms.

We find the need to supplement Foucaults definition of confession as to

declare aloud and intelligibly the truth of oneself (Foucault 1997b, p. 173) with an

understanding of the temporal aspects of this self-truth that is confessed.

Apprehended within the dynamic of exomologe and homologe, confessional truth

will be essentially linked to both the past (in the sense of a confession of sins) and to

the present (in the sense of a confession of faith). As a primordial break which has its

important nuances, confession is linked to the past in terms of a past history that the

subject him or herself rejects.

But this rejection, or what the confession of sins has of rejection, cannot occur

unless the subject has gone through the essential transformative experience of 28 In Augustines Latin, using the Vetus Latina translation: Bene facere, inquit, et communicatores esse nolite oblivisci; talibus enim sacrificiis placetur Deo (Augustine 2000, p. 309). 29 The other is most intimately met in confession (Nikulin 2006, p. 128).

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conversion or . This literal turning or twisting marks the subjective split

between a was and an is. Simultaneous with a confession of his or her past, therefore,

the subject confesses his or her conversion. It is in this communication of the

phenomenon of conversion that the subject reveals his or her present. Completing the

full temporality involved in the tradition of Latin confessio, nevertheless, the future of

the converted subject will also come to the scene as a future reality in which the

converted confessant professes to believe. It is the presence of both past, present and

future this temporal wholeness- that makes confession utterly intimate.

It can be plainly seen how Augustine builds up the narrative of his

Confessions up to the point where he communicates his conversion in Book VIII. We

will claim that the move made in Book X actually consists in the thematization of this

latent temporal present of confession. As was the case in Antonys conception of

writing, Augustine himself will radicalize the intensification of the present by not

only employing the literary tools to stir up the heart (Confessions X. 3. 4) of the

reader in present, but by actually taking the stance of confessing what he is at the

present time of writing his Confessions. Augustine himself marks the shift as follows:

But again, O Lord my God, to whom daily my conscience makes confession, relying

more in the hope of Your mercy than in its own innocence, with what profit, I

beseech You, do I confess unto men in Your sight by this book, not what I once was,

but what I now am? (Confiteor per has litteras adhuc quis ego sim, non quis

fuerim?) (Confessions X, 1.3; emphasis ours).

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Confession, we have said, only makes sense from the vantage point of a

present where the subject has experienced conversion. This means that at the moment

of confession, the confessant must have already experienced a subjective split that

creates a chasm between past and present, eventually endowing the future with

unforseen possibilities. This subjective split, nevertheless, is more complex than just a

simple break with the past, for although the confessant can no longer be said to be

what he or she was (identification with his or her past no longer stands30), from the

perspective of conversion all past events contained in this personal history are re-

interpreted as leading to the present subjective circumstances that have made

conversion possible.

From the perspective of narrating such a personal history, conversion is also

responsible for granting subjective access to the meaning of an auto-biographical

narrative that would otherwise be disjointed or non-sensical. Fritz Stolz puts it even

more radically: Life cannot really be understood without the turning point of

conversion so conversion has to happen, even if it seems not to be necessary (Stolz,

p. 11). We could frame what we are attempting to say by articulating the phenomenon

of conversion in terms of the discovery of a teleology previously hidden from the

subject. Once the subject has converted, this teleology is made manifest as presently

involving the subject him or herself. This discovery and acknowledgement of

teleology is an important aspect of what makes confession partake of the essence of

praise or laudatio (confession as exomologe), implying that the subject that has 30 Facing such a personal history of past mistakes entails emotions such as guilt and shame: so that I am ashamed of what I am and renounce myself and choose You (Confessions, X. 2. 2).

33

experienced such teleology will, in the act of an autobiographical confession, recount

the steps that have led him or her to such a discovery. In the Pauline terminology

Augustine employs, such a narration will recount the steps that have led him back to

grace through grace: For when I am wicked, confession to You simply means being

displeased at myself; when I am good, confession to You means simply not

attributing my goodness to myself: for You, O Lord, bless the just man, but first You

turn him from ungodliness to justice (Sed prius eum iustificas impium) (Confessions,

X. 2. 2).

By the same token, conversion can also be interpreted as the pivotal spatio-

temporal moment where the personal determinations of light fully constitute

themselves, for it is only after experiencing conversion that, alongside the negative

determinations of what light is not, the subject can establish the positivity of what

light is. In a nuclear manner, conversion contains in itself the specificity that produces

the witness. It is in conversion that the witness testimony is produced, for the witness

must necessarily bear his or her witness. The essential bearing of witness can

therefore be said to consist in bearing subjective conversion. It is from this bearing or

undergoing conversion that the witness subjectivity as sub-iectum can be inferred,

from the Latin infero, a close relative of Descartes future refero, which we will later

grapple with in Chapter Three.

It is clear that for Augustine writing has an important place within the

structure of confessional testimony. Here, one could go into the influence of Pauls

writings in the course of Augustines conversion and, as Pierre Courcelle well makes

34

the point, consider Paul as the subject of the first known Christian autobiography,

recounted in Acts 22: 6-16 and 26: 4-18.31 Even though Augustine, as Paul, hears a

voice in the famous garden scene in Milan (the famous tolle, lege of Confessions

VIII, 12.29), the great difference between both is that the voice Augustine hears bids

him to read. When confessing his conversion in writing, therefore, Augustine is

writing about hearing a voice that leads to reading. The interconnection of reading

and writing cannot but stand out.

Although the most relevant of all, Augustines is not the only case where reading

and conversion go hand in hand in the Confessions. Moreover, in her outstanding

Augustines Confessions: Communicative Purpose and Audience, Annemar Kotz

devotes an important portion of her analysis to arguing that, of the six conversions

narrated in Book VIII of the Confessions, all of them have to do (including Antonys)

either with reading or hearing:

Victorinus converted through reading but also through talking to Simplicianus. Of Ponticianus colleagues we learn that one needs nothing more than reading a conversion story (that of the monk Antony in this instance) to come to an immediate conversion All we learn about Antonys conversion at this stage is that it is brought about by hearing Scripture Alypius conversion is presented, like that of the second agent at Trier, with very little detail, except for the information that the final catalyst is the reading of Scripture Antony had heard a reading from Scripture and applied what he read to his own life (Kotz, pp. 174, 175, 177).

It has already been emphasized that both exomologe and homologe coincide in

the fact that they are structured around the externalization of a personal witness by 31 The first Christian auto-biography is Saint Pauls narrative, which we read in Acts (Courcelle, p. 119; translation ours). In these passages of the book of Acts, Paul himself speaks about the great light that shone from heaven and the same time a voice called him to repentance.

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means of verbalizing. Both significations, therefore, involve an inter-subjective space

in which a once personal witness is made public through the speaking voice. If

written confession is not to lose any of its sacrificial value (and for Augustine it does

not), writing must be able to capture the total truth value of the confessional dynamic.

But what happens to the structure of confessional receptivity when put into writing?

When criticizing the traditional attachments of what he calls the metaphysics

of presence, Jacques Derrida emphazises the priority given to that which is never

primarily reading, but rather listening (Derrida 1978, p. 34). His analyses are far too

intricate and complex to be tackled here in detail, but various of his claims in Of

Grammatology concerning the status of writing in the Western philosophical tradition

might be relevant for our discussion:

The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning The difference between signified and signifier belongs in a profound and implicit way to the totality of the great epoch covered by the history of metaphysics, and in a more explicit and more systematically articulated way to the narrower epoch of Christian creationism and infinitism when these appropriate the resources of Greek conceptuality Thus, within this epoch, reading and writing, the production or interpretation of signs, the text in general as fabric of signs, allow themselves to be confined within secondariness (Derrida 1997, pp. 12-13, 14-15).

One wonders if such debasing of writing in the epoch of the logos can

stand a confrontation with Augustines Confessions. In this, and perhaps in this only,

both Foucault and Derrida remain at a close distance: one looks for a conclusive

confrontation with the figure of Augustine in each of their works, but that search

yields little fruit. It has been mentioned already that Foucaults last work, Confessions

36

of the Flesh, was meant to deal with Augustine, and Derridas Typewriter Ribbon, a

conference turned essay addressing the genre of confession, is disproportionately

devoted to Rousseaus Confessions which, in a dramatic and palpable way, differ

from Augustines project in his own Confessions.

In any case, the question here seems to be appropriately addressed in

Derridas terms, for there might not be any other type of writing that intends to

capture the original, speaking, present voice as much as confessional writing. From

this confessional phoneticism, nevertheless, it does not seem to follow that writing is

debased in any way. On the contrary, the importance of this phonetization is

manifested in the fact that reading, as much as listening, is henceforth credited as an

effective agent in the production of arguably the most crucial of all religious

experiences: conversion. It is in this way that the notion of the text is raised to its

highest possible spiritual position.

What does follow from the writing of confession is a radical alteration in the

structure of confessional reception, especially in what concerns the place of the other

as its recipient. The circulation of oral confession was certainly restricted,

circumscribed by the spatio-temporal limits of an oral transmission intended for a

chosen audience either of trusted spiritual brethren or of authoritative Church elders.32

The act of confession itself had a performative immediacy, which meant that once

performed, confession came to silence. The notion of privacy was therefore crucial in

32 In the 4th Century monastic context of Basil of Cesarea, for instance, the only criterion put forward by Basil is that sins ought to be confessed in the presence of those who are able to help the sinner (Bitton-Ashkelony, p. 183).

37

oral confession, up to the point that scholars still debate the limits and contours of

public and private penance.33

All this, of course, changes considerably once confession is put into writing.

For once, the place of the other as recipient of confession bursts open in a way

reminiscent of Platos discussion of writing in the Phaedrus: henceforth, confession

roams the earth passing from one reader to another and everyone, even those that

have no business with understanding (275e) have access to the written confession.

This unthematized subtext of the universal receptivity of written confession is

probably behind Augustines attempt to restore the exclusivity of his audience as his

Confessions turn towards the present in Book X. Augustine puts it rather symbolically,

stating that his present confession is intended for the mind of my brethren not the

mind of strangers nor the children of strangers, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and

whose right hand is the right hand of iniquity (Confessions X. 4. 5).

As a consequence of the universalization of confessional reception, written

confession also universalizes the possibility of witnessing such a confession. Every

reader therefore becomes a witness, partaking in the dynamic of witnessing already

described. As reading becomes coextensive with witnessing, the performative

dimension of the practice is also transformed. Therefore, every time the confession is

read, the act of confession is re-enacted. But this re-enactment has a specific meaning,

for written confession severs the essential, performative tie between the particular

33It is, however, much easier to simplify penance into a bipartite practice of either secret or public penance in the abstract than it is in reality They were interchangeable parts of a single process (Hamilton, p. 8).

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confessant and confession itself, placing the reader as witness in a particularly active

position: the confessant might pass, but his confession, as long as it is read, remains.

What existed only in the recipients memory after the silence of oral confession, now

permanently exists in writing a writing that serves both as a confessional memory

bank and as the condition of possibility of a universal confessional availability:

confession, as it were, is now zuhanden, that is: ready-at-the-readers-hand.

As it has been emphasized already, one of the most problematic issues of a

written confession an issue to which Augustine returns time and time again- is that

of the reader as interlocutor. Augustine himself acknowledges that his own

confessional interlocution reaches out towards the reader in order to stir up the

heart (Confessions, X. 3. 4). This stirring of the heart has much to do with a

production in the reader of mimesis. That is: using the technical terms of classical

rhetoric, the written confession is essentially a protreptic or ,

understanding with Mark Jordan that: The unity of the protreptic genre could be

provided, then, by the recurring situation of trying to produce a certain volitional or

cognitive state in the hearer at the moment of decision about a way-of-life (Jordan,

p. 331). As a protreptic, therefore, the state which written confession aspires to

produce is precisely that of conversion.

When describing the intensity of his own conversion, in a way that will

already bring Descartes to mind, Augustine explicitly attaches the value of confidence

to light (luce securitatis), in direct opposition to darkness as doubt (dubitationis

tenebrae). The relation between both light and darkness is articulated in terms of a

39

shining or an infusion on the side of light (from the Latin infundo), which produces

the vanishment of all darkness in the heart. We have to note that Augustine is moving

within a tradition where mind and heart are intimately connected. As an example of

this intimacy, suffices for us to quote one of the many passages where mental

processes are described in terms of the heart: Why do you reason in your hearts?

( ) (Luke 5:22). The Greek term employed,

dialogismos, can also be translated as calculation, argument or discussion.

It will be important for us to remember how the metaphor of light relates to

the inner landscape of the subject. For now, it is only appropriate to mention that,

among the many differences between Descartes and Augustine, a crucial one will

have to do with a conspicuous and almost obligatory rethinking of the heart in the

Meditations. We will limit ourselves therefore to opening a series of questions: can

this radical redetermination of the heart in the Meditations be accountable for making

it so akin to the mind that it is ultimately absorbed by it? Does this absorption remove

an anatomical correlative that stands for the mental in the body? Can the most

notorious problem of Cartesian philosophy, namely: the relationship between mind

and body, be related to these cardiac tensions?

Having addressed what we might call the protreptic mimesis latent in

confessional discourse, we will now have a better perspective in order to grasp the

close relationship between confession and the spiritual manual. Taking Ignatius of

Loyolas Spiritual Exercises as a paradigm of such genre, a text Descartes was quite

surely acquainted with having been brought up at the famous Jesuit college of La

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Flche, we will focus on what might now seem a foreseeable connection: the spiritual

manual is structured around the mimesis that, in confession, still remains as one

discoursive possibility among others. Loyola himself highlights a two-fold

relationship of antecedence and consequence between confession and the spiritual

manual when recommending weekly confession to one who is on the path of

spiritual instruction, but also considering the spiritual exercises as a preparation for

confession (Loyola, p. 8).

Intersubjective mimesis between spiritual director and exercitant, therefore, has

now become the center of the genre of the spiritual manual, for in the manuals

mimetical experience lies its use. In a way that radically transcends the realm of mere

theoretical speculation, in the spritual manual the notion of order relates to that of use

through the effects that are to be produced on the reader/ user who undergoes the

exercises prescribed in the manual. It is impossible to miss Loyolas remarks

concerning the right order in which the spiritual exercises should be given:

It should be observed that when the exercitant is engaged in the Exercises of the First Week, if he is a person unskilled in spiritual things, and if he is tempted grossly and openly, for example, by bringing before his mind obstacles to his advance in the service of God our Lord, such as labors, shame, fear for his good name in the eyes of the world, etc., the one who is giving the Exercises should not explain to him the rules about different spirits that refer to the Second Week. For while the rules of the First Week will be very helpful to him (le aprovecharn), those of the Second Week will be harmful (le daarn), since they deal with a matter that is too subtle and advanced for him to understand (Loyola, p. 4).

The order of the exercises clearly has to do with the well-being of whom we could

call, from the undergoing or pathos involved in the concept of the exercitant, the

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patient. The spiritual manual, therefore, can be said to have an essential medical

dimension to it a medical dimension that someone like Kotz will argue is also

present in the language in which the protreptic intent of the Confessions is

articulated.34 For it to be succesfully used, therefore, the spiritual manual must, by all

means, conserve and augment the patients health.35 Salus in Latin famously means

both health and salvation, and health can only be enhanced by the right dosification

of the spiritual exercises. The spiritual director is therefore advised to check for

certain symptoms in the exercitant, described by Loyola as desolations (desolaciones)

and consolations (consolaciones) (Loyola, p. 3, 5).

In this manner, the spiritual manual might be thought to be functioning within

the logic of the pharmakon. As is well known, pharmakon in Greek both signifies

medicine and poison. And we can well say that what determines the pharmakon either

as medicine or poison is precisely the notion of a dose or , literally: a giving.

The appropriate dose of the appropriate pharmakon will enhance the patients health,

but the excess thereof will produce a state of infirmity or intoxication. A lack in the

pharmakons dose, on the other hand, will be responsible for not bringing about the

patients health by means of a cure. It is this capacity of discriminating and

determining the exact dose for the right patient that distinguishes and we could even

say makes- the physician.

34 See: Kotz, pp. 117-196. 35 Definitely reminiscent of the Platonic tradition is Berggrens description of the confessor as physician of the soul (Berggren, p. 40).

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A particular element of the medical dimension of the spiritual manual is its

relationship to time. We are dealing here with the measure of a dose and this

dosification is essentially tied to following an orderly unfolding in time. For Loyola,

duration is of critical importance, recommending rather an excess of time spent on

each exercise than to cut the devoted hour of meditation or contemplation short: Let

him rather exceed an hour than not use the full time (Loyola, p. 5). As the translation

nicely brings up, the use implied in the spiritual manual is rather crucially a use of

time. But Loyola is not unflexible concerning the overall duration of the Spiritual

Exercises, acknowledging the many differences in possible exercitants, knowing that

some are slower in attaining what is sought others more diligent than others, some

more disturbed and tried by different spirits (Loyola, p. 2). At stake, nevertheless, is

the way in which time affects a subject who is undergoing radical modifications in his

or her own subjectivity. Loyolas prescriptions seem to suggest that too much time

spent in the whole of the spiritual project is not profitable. The Spiritual Exercises are

intended to be finished in approximately thirty days (Loyola, p. 3), but too little

time spent in each one of the spiritual exercises is the enemys victory.

As the spiritual evolution of the exercises becomes gradually more intense, an

adjustment of the appropriate dose is demanded from the spiritual director in order to

bring forth the best possible results in the exercitant. Loyolas main concern in his

Introductory Observations is to clarify how the exercitants subjectivity should be

exposed to the later, more advanced spiritual exercises, only after it has been affected

by the performance of the former ones. Loyola, nevertheless, reserves this task for the

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spiritual father. In a way that summarizes the structure of the manual, Loyola states:

To one who is more disengaged, and desirous of making as much progress as

possible, all the Spiritual Exercises should be given in the same order in which they

follow below (Loyola, p. 9). We emphasize the words as much progress as possible

as they can only be conveyed with authority by an author who has experienced and

undergone the spiritual exercises him or herself, and who structures the work

according to the knowledge that such an undergoing has provided.

In the ascetic chain that leads from the first exercises to the last, the notion of

order as a methodical following is intertwined not only with the meaning that these

latter spiritual exercises may have, but also with the medical concern for the

exercitants salus. Loyola himself describes the exercises of the First Week using

organic terminology. He calls them the purgative way or via purgativa (Loyola, p.

4). From the Latin purgare, Loyolas first exercises intend to cleanse, purify or clear

the exercitants self before subjecting him or her, in the Second Week, to what he calls

the illuminative way or via iluminativa (ibid.).

The removal of certain elements lodged within the exercitants self must be

accomplished before subjecting him or her to the experience of light. And the first

step to be taken in this purge is a daily Examination of Conscience whose purpose is

to purify the soul and to aid us to improve our confessions (Loyola, p. 18). This

same concern is at the base of another important category without which an analysis

of the spiritual manual would not be complete: that of obedience. Just as the author

had to submit to his or her previous experience as patient, the reader/ exercitant must

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submit at least temporarily- to the authority of the author or, in Loyolas case, to the

authority of the spiritual director.

3. The Confessional in the Meditations: Already now some years ago...

We will turn to the confessional operations exhibited in the first lines of

Meditation I by focusing on Descartes crucial notion of admission:

Already now some years ago, I noticed how many a large number of falsehoods I had admitted for truths in my first years, and the highly doubtful nature of whatever I had afterwards built upon them, and that everything in life was to be fundamentally overturned and, once and for all, begun from its very first foundations were something firm and lasting ever desired to be established in the sciences. But the work seemed immense and I waited for an age so mature that none more apt to grasp the discipline would ensue. And for that reason, having hesitated so long, I would hereafter be guilty if the remaining time for action were consumed in deliberating. Therefore, having now opportunely rid the mind of all cares and provided myself with a secure leisure, I withdraw alone, in earnest at last and unrestrictedly, to apply myself to this general overturning of my opinions (AT VII, 17-18). (Animadverti jam ante aliquot annos qum multa, ineuente aetate, falsa pro veris admiserim, & qum dubia sint quaecunque istis postea superextruxi, ac proinde funditus omnia semel in vit esse evertenda, atque a primis fundamentis denuo inchoandum, si quid aliquando firmum & mansurum cupiam in scientiis stabilire; sed ingens opus esse videbatur, eamque aetatem expectabam, quae foret tam matura, ut capessendis disciplinis aptior nulla sequeretur. Quare tamdiu cunctatus sum ut deinceps essem in culp, si quod temporis superest ad agendum, deliberando consumerem. Opportune igitur hodie mentem curis omnibus exsolvi, securum mihi otium procuravi, solus secedo, seri tandem & libere generali huic mearum opinionum eversioni vacabo.)

We have suggested above that the notion of admission or admitto cannot be fully

grasped without inquiring into the dynamic of interiority it implies. Composed of the

preposition ad (to or towards) plus the verb mitto (to send out, to put forth, to emit),

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ad-mitto seems to have originally signified the act of sending out or dispatching. In a

diplomatic mission, for instance, a king would send out a messenger or envoy to

reach another hierarchs court. Even though our understanding of the term focuses on

the movement from outer to inner (and we will take this to be its main signification),

in a way that we will attempt to relate both to the practice of confession and later to

the metaphysics of Meditation III, admission etymologically signifies movements

both from outer to inner and from inner to outer.36

But let us focus now on Descartes employment of the notion of admission,

for it is in the analysis of gestures such as these that, in our opinion, the complexity of

the Meditations relation to tradition most truthfully shines forth. We will depict the

initial confessional gesture of the Meditations in a reflexive way: not only does

Descartes admit, but he admits he has admitted. For our purposes, this is as important

a philosophical gesture as we can get from Descartes at such an early stage. A

connection already might be intuited between the reflexivity of traditional confessio,

which we have described above in terms of the witness of the witness, but

appropriated as the conceptual reflexivity of the admission of admission. Such

appropriation would occur by means of the notion of interiority, due to the fact that

both reflexive dynamics necessitate and imply an essential connection to the subjects

inside.

36 It is also thought provoking that, in Latin medical literature, mitto can also have the purgative meaning of letting blood out.

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That every confession demands an admission is something that can be

reasonably argued, making such a case even in linguistic terms. For instance, in the

Latin lexicon that will serve as the basis for most of our etymological inquiries, Lewis

and Short list definition C. 2. of the verb credo or to believe precisely as: to admit as

true. Such terminology can be easily applied to the definition of homologe (or a

confession of faith) to state that, as a profession of belief, a confession of faith is

essentially an act of admitting as true. We could also draw a line between admisssion

and witnessing by the same means: if conversion is the act that constitutes the witness

and no conversion is devoid of a profession of belief, then no witnessing is devoid of

an admission of truth.

What mostly interests us here, nevertheless, is the way in which Descartes

carefully operates on the subjects inner landscape by employing a concept so close to

the traditional confessional dynamic, but yet liable of being constructed in such a way

that it affects the interiority of a universal subject. What we observe early in the

Meditations, therefore, is the purgative movement from inner to outer of what

Descartes calls falsehoods or falsum, and the subsequent movement from outer to

inner, which will be played out after the Cogito from Meditation III onwards, of what

he calls truth or verum. This last movement, nevertheless, will only complete itself by

Meditation VI. We will theref