ABSTRACT
It is one thing, however, to take note of a fact, and another thing to provide a clear and distinct account of its nature. If the nature of judgement has been almost universally misconceived until very recent times, it is hardly to be expected that the nature of the evident would be properly understood. Even Descartes’ usual discernment fails him here. He was very much concerned with the problem, however, as we may see from the following passage taken from the third of his Meditations: “When I say that I am so instructed by nature [he is referring to so-called external perception], I mean merely a certain spontaneous inclination which impels me to believe in this connection, and a natural light which makes me recognize that it is true. But these two things are very different. For I cannot doubt that which the natural light causes me to believe to be true; as for example, it has shown me that I am from the fact that I doubt, or other facts of the same kind, And I possess no other faculty whereby to distinguish truth from falsehood, which can teach me that what this light shows me to be true is not really true, and no other faculty that is equally trustworthy. But as far as natural impulses are concerned, I have frequently remarked, when I had to make active choice between virtue and vice, that they often led me to the part that was worse; and this is why I do not see any reason for following them in what regards truth and error.”*
It is clear from this passage that the concept of the evident had not escaped Descartes and that he took note of the distinction between an insight (Einsicht) and a judgement which is blind. Yet, despite the fact that he took care to distinguish the class of judgements from that of ideas, he misplaces the distinguishing characteristic of the evident which pertains always to the insightful judgement, and classifies it with ideas instead of with judgements. What he called the idea-the presentation, that which is before the mind-is the basis of the judgement, and Descartes assumes that the idea is that which is evident. He even goes so far as to call this idea a “cognoscere”—an instance of knowing. A matter of knowing something and yet not a judgement!
