Repository | Book | Chapter

In his determination of the cogito, Maine de Biran explicitly opposes Descartes whom he reproaches for having a static conception of thought which too often appears in the author's Meditations as a substance enclosed within itself whose entire life consists in being modified by a succession of modes which are never more than moments of this substance and, consequently, which do not allow for any surpassing toward other things, any action upon other things, i.e. any action properly so-called. Consciousness is an "I think" and all the modifications of the life of consciousness are only determinations of thought, i.e. ideas. When we are no longer dealing with conceptions properly so-called, but with a desire, an action, a movement, the Cartesian determination of the cogito forces us to say that in reality it is always a question only of ideas, viz. the idea of a desire, the idea of an action, the idea of a movement. With regard to action or movement considered in themselves, they no longer pertain to the sphere of the cogito, they are no longer determinations of thought, but rather determinations of extension.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-1681-0_3

Full citation: