ABSTRACT
Descartes writes in the third Meditation: “It is requisite that I should here divide my thoughts (all mental acts) into certain kinds…. Of my thoughts some are, so to speak, images of the things, and to these alone is the title ‘idea’ properly applied; examples are my thought of a man or of a chimera, of heaven, of an angel, or of God. But other thoughts possess other forms as well. For example, in willing, fearing, approving, denying, though I always perceive something as the subject of the action of my mind, yet by this action I always add something else to the idea which I have of that thing; and of the thoughts of this kind some are called volitions or affections, and others judgements.”*
Despite this clear statement, we find Windelband saying that, according to Descartes, to judge is to will.† What misled him is Descartes’ treatment, in the fourth Meditation, of the influence of the will in the formation of our judgements. After all, scholastic philosophersSuarez, for example-have attributed too much to this influence, and Descartes himself exaggerates it to the point of considering every judgement, even those which are evident, as the product of an act of will. But it is one thing to produce the judgement and quite another thing to be that judgement. The view that judgement is a product of the act of will does appear in the passage cited above, and it is probably what led Descartes to assign judgement to the third place in his classification of psychological phenomena. And yet he can add, quite consistently, concerning such phenomena, “Some are called volitions and others are called judgements”.
