Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

VI
ON THE EVIDENT
Critique of Descartes and Sigwart
(From the notes to Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, 1889)
The distinction between judgements which are evident and judgements which are blind
is much too striking to have escaped notice altogether. Even the sceptical Hume is far
from denying the distinction. According to what he says in the Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding (Section IV), the evident comprises analytic judgements (which
are supposed to include the axioms and proofs of mathematics) and certain impressions;
but these latter do not include the so-called inferences from experience. Inferences from
experience, according to Hume, are not the effects of reason, but the effects of a habit or
custom which is entirely unreasonable (see Section V).
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.”*
* Cum hic dico me ita doctum esse a natura intelligo tantum spontaneo quodam impetu me ferri
ad hoc credendum, non lumine aliquo naturali mihi ostendi esse verum, quae duo multum
discrepant. Nam quaecunque lumine naturali mihi ostenduntur (ut quod ex eo quod dubitem
sequatur me esse, et similia) nullo modo dubia esse possunt, quia nulla alia facultas esse potest,
cui aeque fidam ac lumini isti, quaeque illa non vera esse possit docere; sed quantum ad impetus
naturales jam saepe olim judicavi me ab illis in deteriorem partem fuisse impulsum cum de bono
eligendo ageretur, nec video cur iisdem in ulla alia re magis fidam. [English translation from the
Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E.S.Haldane and G.R.T.Ross, Vol. I, pp. 160–161.]