Olivier Dubouclez

Cet article examine le traitement donné par Descartes et certains de ses successeurs d’une question classique, quoique peu étudiée, celle de savoir si l’on peut penser plusieurs choses à la fois. Le thème d’une saisie simultanée est central dans la théorie cartésienne de la connaissance, en particulier dans les Regulæ, où il s’appuie sur le recours à une attention divisée. Restreignant ce pouvoir à la seule imagination, Clauberg voit dans le corps vivant le paradigme de la simultanéité. Spinoza offre quant à lui un point de vue synthétique : la simultanéité dans le corps et l’esprit sont des expressions de la puissance individuelle et de son progrès. L’attention n’est plus comme chez Descartes une condition de la simultanéité intellectuelle, mais un obstacle qu’il s’agit de surmonter pour comprendre plus et mieux.

Throughout the 80’s Derrida has explored the theme of invention. He has specifically studied Descartes’ conception and explained why it should be rejected. Indeed, it is grounded in both a theological and political conception of the subject, accomplishing the metaphysical position of “logocentrism” in the field of politics. However, with Psychè. Inventions of the Other, Derrida seems to hold a different point of view. He insists on the positive aspect of what he calls then “the invention of the same”, which, according to him, is the major thread of the techno-scientific invention (as well as of the philosophical production of truth) in modern times. While connected to this “politics of research”, Descartes’ project of a “universal language” is for the first time countersigned by Derrida. But such an acknowledgement should not preclude the fact that Descartes and Derrida deeply disagree on the economy of invention: firmly anticartesian, Derrida considers that inventio does not depend on any cogitatio since the event of invention is related to the play of what he famously calls “differance”. As long as such an event takes place within the res extensa, invention cannot be fully rationalized and will remain open to “chance”, understood as a supplementary effect of writing and a way to open a new conception of the community. Invention, through its excess, announces the coming of a new era.

On a pris l'habitude de voir en l'analyse un instrument logique de décomposition et de clarification des concepts, confirmant du même coup l'évaluation critique qu'en a donnée Kant : l'analyse est un procédé stérile qui ne contribue en rien à l'expansion et au renouvellement des connaissances. Soulignant la cohérence de ses emplois historiques, le présent ouvrage cherche au contraire à rétablir l'analyse en sa fonction inventive : de l'Antiquité au XVII siècle, la méthode analytique constitue, en effet, une solution aux insuffisances de la déduction logique ; s'appuyant sur la construction et le déchiffrement des figures, elle offre une voie à la fois détournée et probante pour la résolution des problèmes. Descartes est l'héritier de cette tradition, mais il est aussi, à maints égards, l'artisan de la conception moderne de l'analyse dont il a fait la voie privilégiée de la connaissance de soi dans les Méditations métaphysiques. Accomplissement heuristique de "l'ordre des raisons" mais aussi aventure temporelle inscrite dans la durée féconde de la méditation, l'analyse se révèle alors l'instrument d'une raison radicalement inventive.

At the beginning of Meditation IV the meditator triumphantly announces that he has “now no difficulty in turning away (convertam) from imaginable things and toward things which are objects of the intellect alone” (AT, VII, 53). Meditation VI thereafter confirms that pure intellection, as opposed to imagination, consists only in turning towards oneself (convertat) and demands no “peculiar effort of the mind” (73). However efforts of attention are required throughout the Meditations and Meditations IV, V and VI are no exceptions in this respect. Descartes’ Second Set of Replies (156-159) confirms that attention is needed as a mental support for metaphysical analysis in order to embrace different ideas and connect different parts of a demonstration. A thorough examination of the Meditations shows something even more interesting: attention is conceived by Descartes as a varying force that can be diminished or relaxed but also, and most importantly, increased as comparative forms like “attentius” (19; 55; 66; 71) or “diligentius” (32; 35; 45) suggest. For sure, it is an original aspect of Cartesian meditative exercise: we are not only invited to maintain our attention but also to make it more intense at a certain point. Such an increase is crucial for the development of the dream argument (55) and also for the achievement of both proofs of the existence of God (45; 66). But is it not a kind of deus ex machina that the meditator puts forward in order to overcome otherwise unsolvable difficulties? A posterior work, The Passions of the Soul, can help us understand such a strategy. In article 72, Descartes distinguishes between two kinds of attention; the first one stems from wonder and is “at its full strength from the start” (XI, 382); it is contrasted with a second type “which, being weak at first and growing only gradually, can be easily diverted” (Ibid.) Further on Descartes says that passion is useful in “strengthening thoughts… and causing them to endure into the soul” (383) but that “the application of our understanding” has the same effect when “our will fixes [it] in a particular attention or reflection” (384). This last case applies to the Meditations: the meditator who is constantly exposed to misleading influences would be easily “diverted” and even stopped if he was not pushed by his own will to go further in his metaphysical inquiry. “Peaks” of attention occurring in the Meditations are caused by volitions originating in the meditator’s resolution to attain truth and certainty and, as we shall see, they are used against three types of harmful influence: sensitive in Meditation I, imaginative in Meditation II and III, and intellectual in Meditation IV and V where old philosophical habits stand in the way of Cartesian theology.