Notes-2

Chapter 2: Metaphysics, Fideism, Speculation

  1. For this argument, see once again Descartes (1985a), Sixth Meditation, as

well as Descartes (1985b), Second Part, 1st article.

  1. Concerning the thinkability of the thing-in-itself, see Kant (1929), Critique

of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (London: Macmillan), Preface to the Second Edition, B xxvi-xxvii, p. 27.

  1. Kant (1929), A594/B622, p. 502.

  2. G. W. Leibniz (1990), ‘Monadology,’ in Philosophical Writings, G. H. R.

Parkinson (ed.) (London: J. M. Dent & Sons), §32, p. 184.

  1. Cf. Descartes (1991), J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, A. Kenny

(eds), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), letter to P. Mesland, 2 May 1644.

  1. Concerning the point that the gods themselves (and hence thinking

beings in general), although described as imperishable by Epicurus, must be conceived as essentially perishable, in contrast to elementary natures, see Marcel Conche (1987), Épicure. Lettres et maximes [Epicurus: Letters and Maxims] (Paris: PUF), Introduction, p. 44 and passim.

  1. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. D. F. Pears

and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge), p. 73.

  1. Wittgenstein (1974), p. 73. On this point see Wittgenstein (1966), ‘Lecture on

Ethics’ in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, C. Barrett (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 53–72. See also Wittgenstein

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(1979,) Notebooks 1916–1916 (2nd edition), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), entry dated 20.10.16: ‘Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists. That there is what there is.’ (86e).

  1. Heidegger (1998b), ‘Postscript to “What is Metaphysics” ’, in Pathmarks, W.

McNeill (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 234.

  1. Concerning this twofold de-absolutization of the principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, see Wittgenstein (1974), 3.031; Heidegger (1996), The Principle of Reason, tr. R. Lilly (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press); and Heidegger (1994), Grundsätze des Denkens [The Principles of Thought], in Gesamtausgabe, Band 79 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann).

  2. I speak of ‘naïve’ realism and of ‘speculative’ idealism in order to

underline the fact that, from within correlationism, the realist construal of the absolute is inevitably considered inferior to its idealist construal, since the former marks a break with every form of correlationism, while the latter acknowledges it sufficiently to absolutize it.

  1. For an example of such a displacement of the status of non-contradiction

carried out from within the Critical perspective, cf. Francis Wolff’s particularly detailed analysis in Wolff (1997), pp. 21–69.

  1. For an account of the originary and, according to us, enduring links

between modern scepticism and fideism, see the classic study by Richard Popkin (2003), The History of Scepticism: From Savanarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press), as well as the valuable work by Frédéric Brahami (2001), Le travail du scepticisme. Montaigne, Bayle, Hume [The Work of Scepticism: Montaigne, Bayle, Hume] (Paris: PUF).

  1. Heidegger (1986), Zürich Seminar in Gesamtausgabe, Band 15 (Frankfurt:

Vittorio Klostermann). Concerning the parallel between Wittgenstein and Heidegger on the silence which the question of God imposes upon contemporary thought, cf. Jean-Luc Marion (1995), God Without Being, tr. T. A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), especially ch. 3, ‘The Crossing of Being’, pp. 53–107, where the original German text of Heidegger’s ‘Zürich Seminar’ is reproduced and discussed.

  1. We can only allude here to the predominant role played by fideism in

the constitution of modern thought. This issue will be treated in greater depth in a forthcoming work in which we hope to develop the theoretical positions that we are merely sketching here, as well as their ethical consequences: L’inexistence divine. Essai sur le dieu virtuel [Divine Inexistence: An Essay on the Virtual God].

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