I The Supreme - pg. 95

(Written in the margin. Unknown hand: By so doing, you were trying to imitate Descartes, who detested fresh eggs. He let them incubate beneath the ashes and drank down the emrbyonic substance. You wanted to do the same thing without being Descartes. You were not going to eat the Revolution every morning for breakfast with your mate. You turned this country into a lustral, expiatory egg that will hatch heaven only knows when, heaven only knows how, heaven only knows what. Embryo of what might have been the most prosperous country in the world. The best cock in all human legend.)

Book Cycle: Beckett

Queueing rest of Beckett post-Wittgenstein, Hume, Locke, Malebranche

"From the many salient references in his texts, it has been always seemed obvious that philosophical tradition in Beckett is to be found along a line connecting Descartes and Ocasionalism with Scopenhauerian and Kantian philosophy.

Heidegger essay: 'The Origin Of The Work Of Art'

http://books.google.com/books?id=0FCUOvPXsWIC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=philosophical+basis+of+beckett&source=bl&ots=PaClhWfZFE&sig=ZPPpVZKzZgJlFUqG9Hpd69Ti5cE&hl=en&ei=xzyRTLe8B8OBlAfjs7njAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=philosophical%20basis%20of%20beckett&f=false

Meditations - Closing

Dreams are never connected by memory with all the other events of my life, like the things that happen when I am awake. If in waking life somebody suddenly appeared and directly afterwards disappeared, as happens in dreams, and I could not see where he had come from or where he went, I should justifiably decide he was a ghost, or a phantasm formed in my own brain, rather than a real man. But when I distinctly observe where an object comes from, where it is, and when this happens; and when I can connect the perception of it uninterruptedly with the whole of the rest of my life; then I am quite certain that while this is happening to me I am not asleep but awake. And I need not have the least doubt as to the reality of things, if after summoning all my senses, my memory, and my understanding to examine them I have no conflicting information from any of these sources. But since practical needs do not always leave time for such a careful examination, we must admit that in human life errors as regards particular things are always liable to happen; and we must reconise the infirmity of our nature.

Meditations - pg. 121

I must begin by observing the great difference between mind and body. Body is of its nature always divisible; mind is wholly indivisible. When I consider the mind -- that is, myself, in so far as I am merely a conscious being -- I can distinguish no parts within myself; I understand myself to be a single and complete thing. Although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, yet when a foot or an arm or any other part of the body is cut off I am not aware that any subtraction has been made from the mind. Nor can the faculties of will, feeling, understanding and so on be called its parts; for it is one and the same mind that wills, feels, and understands. On the other hand, I cannot think of any corporeal or extended object without being readily able to divide it in thought and therefore conceiving of it as divisible. This would be enough to show me the total difference between mind and body, even if I did not sufficiently know this already.

Meditations - pg. 116

So either this substance is a body -- is of corporeal nature-- and contains actually whatever is contained representatively in the ideas; or else it is God, or some creature nobler than bodies, and contains the same reality in a higher form. But since God is not deceitful, it is quite obvious that he neither implants the ideas in me by his own direct action, nor yet by means of some creature that contains the representative reality of the ideas not precisely as they represent it, but only in some higher form. For God has given me no faculty at all to discern their origin; on the other hand, he has given me a strong inclination to believe that these ideas proceed from corporeal objects must exist. It may be that not all bodies are such as my senses apprehend them, for this sensory apprehension is in many ways obscure and confused; but at any rate their nature must comprise whatever I clearly and distinctly understand -- that is, whatever, generally considered, falls within the subject-matter of pure mathematics.


NOTES: fundamentally different from Berkeley

Meditations - pg. 115

Now I have a passive power of sensation -- of getting and recognising the ideas of sensible objects. But I could never have the use of it if there were not also in existence an active power, either in myself or in something else, to produce or make the ideas. This power certainly cannot exist in me; for it presupposes no action of my intellect, and the ideas are produced without my co-operation, and often against my will. The only remaining possibility is that it inheres in some substance other than myself.

Meditations - pg. 114

And although sense-perceptions did not depend on my will, it must not be concluded, I though, that they proceed from objects distinct from myself; there might perhaps be some faculty in myself, as yet unknown to me, that produced them.

Meditations - pg. 108

Thus I see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends entirely on my awareness of the true God; before knowing him I could have no perfect knowledge of anything. And not it becomes possible for countless things to be clearly known and certain to me; both about God himself and other intellectual beings, and about the whole field of corporeal nature that is the subject-matter of pure mathematics.

Meditations - pg. 104

For there is indeed no necessity for me ever to happen upon any thought of (cogitationem de) God; but whenever I choose to think of (cogitare de) the First and Supreme Being, and as it were bring out the idea of him from the treasury of my mind, I must necessarily ascribe to him all perfections, even if I do not at the moment enumerate them all, or attend to each. This necessity clearly ensures that, when later on I observe that existence is a perfection, I am justified in concluding that the First and Supreme Being exists.

Meditations - pg. 100

This is the chief and greatest perfection of man; so I think today's meditation has been of no small service, since I have been investigating the cause of error and falsehood. And surely no other cause is possible than the one I have explained. For whenever I restrain my will in making decisions, so that its range is confined to what the understanding shows it clearly and distinctly, I just cannot go wrong. For every clear and distinct perception is something; so it cannot come from nothingness, but must have God for its author; God, I say, the supremely Perfect, who it is absurd should be deceitful; therefore, it is indubitably true. Thus today I have learnt, not only what to avoid, so as not to be deceived, but also what to do,so as to attain the truth; I shall certainly attain it if only I take enough notice of all that I perfectly understand, and distinguish from this from everything else, which I apprehend more obscurely and confusedly. For the future I will take good care of this.

Meditations - pg. 99

And I have no right to complain that the part God has wished me to play in the world is not the greatest and most perfect of all.

Meditations - pg. 98

Now when I do not perceive clearly and distinctly enough what the truth is, it is clear that if I abstain from judgment I do right and am not deceived. But if I assert or deny, I am using my free will wrongly; if the side I take is falsehood, then clearly I shall be in error; if I embrace the other side, I shall by chance fall upon the truth, but nevertheless this decision will be blameworthy; for it is obvious by the light of nature that perception by the understanding should always come before the determination of the will. There is inherent in this wrong use of free will the privation in which the nature (forma) of error consists; this privation, I say, is inherent in the actual operation in so far as it proceeds from me; not in the faculty I received from God, nor even in the operation, in so far as it depends on him.

Meditations - pg. 96

Whence then do my errors originate? Surely, just from this: my will extends more widely than my understanding, and yet I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but apply it to what I do not understand. Since it is here indifferent, it easily turns aside from truth and goodness; and so I fall into both error and sin.

Meditations - pg. 95

There may be innumerable things of which I have no idea; but this is not properly to be called a privation, but a merely negative lack, of the ideas. I can bring forward no reason to show that God ought to have given me a greater power of knowledge than he did; however skilled I understand an artisan to be, I do not think he ought to have put into every one of his works all the perfections he is able to put into any.

Meditations - pg. 93

Certainly, so long as I think only of God, and turn my attention wholly to him, I can discern no cause of error or falsehood. But when I turn back to myself, I am aware of my liability to innumerable errors. When I look fora cause of these, I observe that I possess not only a real and positive idea of God, the supremely perfect being, but also what I may call a sort of negative idea of nothingness -- of that which is furthest removed from all perfection. I am a kind of intermediate between God and nothingness, between the Supreme Being, I have nothing in me to deceive me or lead me astray; nevertheless, in so far as I also participate somehow in nothingness, non-being -- that is, in so far as I am not myself the Supreme Being, and am lacking in no end of things -- it is not surprising that I am deceived. Thus I know at any rate that error as such is not a positive reality dependent on God, but merely a deficiency; and in order to go wrong I need no faculty expressly given me by God; I happen to go wrong because the faculty of right judgment that he has given me does not exist in me in an infinite degree.

Meditations - pg. 90

But before examining this more carefully, and at the same time seeking or other truths inferable from this, I wish to stay a little in the contemplation of God; to meditate within myself on his attributes; to behold, wonder at adore the beauty of this immeasurable Light, so far as the eyes of my darkened understanding can bear it. For just as we believe that the supreme happiness of another life consists merely in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty; so even now the same contemplation, though much less perfect, makes us aware that we can get from it the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.

Meditations - pg. 86

Nor can it be said that this idea of God may be false in relation to its subject-matter, and thus come from nothingness -- as I observed just now about the idea of heat and cold and so on. On the contrary, it is supremely clear and distinct and representatively more real than any other; none is in itself truer, or less open to the suspicion of falsehood. This idea, I say, of being supremely perfect and infinite is true in a special degree; for even if it maybe imagined that, as I said about the idea of cold, the idea does not manifest to me any [positive] reality. Moreover, it is supremely clear and distinct; for all my clear and distinct conceptions (quidquid ... percipio) of any genuine reality that involves some perfection are wholly comprised in it. It is nothing against this that I do not comprehend the infinite, or that there are in God countless things that I not only cannot comprehend, but perhaps cannot in any way reach with my mind (cogitatione); for it belongs to the definition of the infinite that I who am finite cannot comprehend it. It is enough for me to understand and believe just this: whatever I clearly conceive (percipio), and know to involve some perfection, and perhaps countless other things as well that I do not know, must exist in God either as such or in a higher form; so that my idea of God has the highest degree of truth, and is the most clear and distinct, of all my ideas.

Meditations - pg. 85

It only remains to be considered whether there is some element in the idea of God that couldnot have originated from myself. By the word 'God' I mean a substance that s infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and the Creator of myself and anything else that may exist. The more I consider all these attributes, the less it seems possible for them to have originated from myself. So, by what I said above, it must be inferred that God exists.
I have indeed the idea of a substance just from the fact of being a substance; but I could not on that account have the idea of an infinite substance, for I myself am finite; unless, indeed, that idea proceeded from some substance that was really infinite.

Meditations - pg. 79

The chief problem is about the ideas that I regarded as taken from external objects. What is my motive for thinking them similar to those objects? Nature seems to have taught me. Moreover, I find they do not depend o my will, or upon myself; I often get them even if I do not wish; for instance, I now feel heat willy-nilly, and so think this sensation or idea of heat comes to me from an object other than myself -- from the heat of the fire I am sitting over. And nothing appears more obvious than the judgment that what the object implants in me is its own likeness rather than something else.

Meditations - pg. 70

What then am I? A conscious being (res cogitans). What is that? A being that doubts, understands, asserts, denies, is willing, is unwilling; further, that has sense and imagination. These are a good many properties -- if only they all belong to me. But how can they fail to? Am I not the very person who is now 'doubting' almost everything; who 'understands' something and 'asserts' this one thing to be true, and 'denies' other things; who 'is willing' to know more, and 'is unwilling' to be deceived; who 'imagines' many things, even involuntarily, and perceives many things comnig as it were from the 'senses'? Even if I am all the while asleep; even if my creator does all he can to deceive me; how can any of these things be less of a fact than my existence? Is any of these something distinct from my conciousness (cogitatione)? Can any of them be called a separate thing from myself? It is so clear that it is I who doubt, understand, will, that I cannot think how to explain it more clearly. Further, it is I who imagine; for even if, as I supposed, no imagined object is real, yet the power of imagination really exists and goes to make up my experience (cogitationes). Finally, it is I who have sensations, or who perceive corporeal objects as it were by the senses. Thus, I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. These objects are unreal, for I am asleep; but at least I seem to see, to hear, to be warmed. This cannot be unreal; and this is what is properly called my sensation; further, sensation, precisely so regarded, is nothing but an act of consciousness (cogitare).