The cogito-Argument as First Principle

Cartesian Dilemmas in 17th Century Transylvania

Abstract

The paper investigates János Pósaházi’s criticism on Descartes’s philosophy as developed in his Syllabus (Cluj 1685) and an anonymous author’s defence of Descartes against this criticism; the text of the latter has been preserved in a manuscript composed in the same year in Transylvania. In his observations to the Cartesian assertion 68 among the criticised 32 assertions (listed as assertions 45 to 76 in the Syllabus), Pósaházi claims that Descartes’s cogito-argument cannot meet the requirements of the first principle of philosophy. Even if one allows for the conclusiveness of the cogito-argument (which is rejected explicitly in other passages of Pósaházi’ Syllabus), it cannot be regarded as the first principle of philosophy since its validity depends on other principles that precede the cogito. According to the anonymous author of the Vindiciae, Pósaházi’s critique fails in as much the rival principles cannot be thought of without the preceding certainty of the cogito. Therefore, Descartes was right in supposing the cogito-argument as the first principle of philosophy.