Montaigne’s Pre-And Post-Modern Notion of Subjectivity

Abstract

Nothing typifies modern subjectivity better than Descartes’s argument in the Sixth Meditation that he is not (identical with) his body. I can think of myself as disembodied, Descartes says in essence, so it is certainly possible that I exist apart from my body — it is possible for God to create a disembodied me. But that would be impossible if my body and I were the same thing; therefore, I am not my body — I have a body, I am related to it as to something distinct from me. How this argument fares vis-a-vis Descartes’s own theory of the divine creation of the eternal truths — how, that is, it is legitimate for him to apparently exempt the necessity of identity from the range of that theory, to believe that God would have to be limited at least by that necessity — will be left aside here. What I intend to emphasize instead is the argument’s devastating power, which can be gathered by considering some of its analogues. Suppose then that I am a disembodied soul; am I, in a Lockean perspective, to be identified with what I remember being? No, for surely I can imagine having different memories, or none at all. Can I be identified at least with what I seem to perceive or know at this time — and never mind how delusive that appearance might be? No, because, again, I can think of myself seeming to perceive or know something entirely different. Am I to find myself in what I feel: in my love of certain people, my hate of others, my indifference for yet others, or maybe the peculiar mixture of pleasure and pain that characterizes my present state of mind? Once again, the answer is disappointingly negative: the possibility of disconnecting myself from those emotions and feelings is enough of an Archimedean lever to separate them from my self in actuality. And the same conclusion will be reached if the same question is asked about any of my dispositions or talents: my skill at drawing, say, or my I.Q., or even my most elementary capacity for reasoning — whatever it is that makes me a rational animal.