デカルトにおける〈欺かれる私〉について

欺かれるという事態からは何が帰結するのか

抄録

Descartes insists, “[...] there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me [...]” (CSM-II, 17; AT-VII, 25). But what is the basis for the insistence that I exist if a deceiver deceives me? At first sight, the Second Meditation seems to say that I exist as an object of the deception, and some earlier studies interpret it as such. Kenny, for example, insists that I exist “as the object of deception, not as the subject of thought.”* On the other hand, however, Wargner insists that I exist “as the active subject whose causal power is being exercised in generating the idea of the demon and all his other ideas.”**

The object of this article is to discuss this interpretative problem, examining the earlier studies of Gouhier, Kenny, Pariente, and Wargner. I reject the traditional interpretation (i.e. by Kenny and Pariente) based on the relation between an act and its object, and analyze what is concluded from being deceived, by focusing on the act of deceit itself. Furthermore, the paper shows: 1) it is not my existing but my thinking that is concluded from the supposition that a deceiver is deceiving me; 2) the abilities to understand, affirm, and deny (cf. AT-VII, 28) are discovered in the situation that I am deceived.

* Anthony Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1987), 57.

** Stephen I. Wargner, Squaring the Circle in Descartes’ Meditations: The Strong Validation of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 110-112.