Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

38
The True and the Evident
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!
One might say that what we have here are vestigial organs in the development of
psychology. After the great advances which Descartes himself has made in the theory
of judgement, they survive to remind us of a stage long since past. There is one point,
however, with respect to which this phenomenon is to be distinguished from similar
phenomena in the evolution of species. In the present case, the vestigial organs, not having
adapted themselves to the stages that follow, become highly troublesome, with the result
that Descartes’ additional efforts on behalf of the theory
of knowledge turn out to be in vain. To quote Leibniz, Descartes remains in the “antechamber
of truth”. 56 It is only from this point of view that we are to understand the peculiar hybrid
character of Descartes’ clara et distincta perceptio, of which it is so difficult to obtain a
clear and distinct idea. If we are to find that which distinguishes insights from all other
judgements, we must look for it in the inner peculiarities of the act of insight itself.
To be sure, there are those who have looked in the right place without having found what
they were looking for. We have seen how Sigwart misconceives the nature of judgement.
Judgement, according to him (op. cit., sections 14 and 31, esp. 4 and 5), involves a relation
between ideas and also a feeling of compulsion, or an irresistible impulse, which pertains
to the ideas. This feeling, according to him, is to be found even in connection with the most
blind of prejudices. In such cases it is not normative, but (Sigwart says explicitly) it is taken
to be normative and universal. How do these cases differ, then, from insights? Sigwart says
(see section 3, for example) that the evident character of a genuine insight is constituted by
such a feeling. But the feeling which pertains to the insight is not merely one that is taken
to be normative and universal; it must be one that is normative and universal.
The untenability of this theory seems to me to be obvious; there are more reasons for
not accepting it.
(1) The peculiar nature of insight—the clarity and evidence of certain judgements which
is inseparable from their truth—has little or nothing to do with a feeling of compulsion. 57 It
may well be that, at a given moment, I cannot help but judge in the way in which I do judge.
But the clarity in question does not consist in any feeling of compulsion; no awareness of a
compulsion to judge in a certain way could, as such, guarantee the truth of the judgement.
One may reject indeterminism and thus hold that every judgement, given the circumstances
under which it is made, is necessary; and yet one may deny, with perfect right, that every
such judgement is true.
(2) In trying to locate the consciousness of an insight in the feeling of a compulsion
to believe, Sigwart asserts that the consciousness of one’s own compulsion is at the same
time a consciousness of a similar necessity for every thinker to whom the same grounds
are present. If he means that the one conviction is indubitably connected with the other,