Experientia and Conscientia
Two Ambiguous Concepts in Descartes's Metaphysics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3970223 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ayumu Tamura (0000-0002-1249-324X, National Institute of Technology, Ibaraki College, 866 Nakane, Hitachinaka, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 578-590 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2025.2491883 |
| OpenAlex | W4409708977 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Descartes uses two ambiguous concepts—experientia (experience) and conscientia (consciousness/conscience)—on which he relies in the arguments that form the basis of his metaphysics, such as the cogito argument and the theory of the free will. It appears, however, that he used experientia and conscientia in a way that was unknown at the time, as shown by the French translations of the Meditations on First Philosophy and the Principles of Philosophy. But despite using these words in a sense that differed from their traditional definitions, Descartes never defined them, and interestingly, seems to have used them interchangeably. In this article, I discuss how Descartes used these words and explain why I think that prior to Cartesians like Malebranche and La Forge, Descartes had conceived the incipient idea of consciousness in the psychological sense that he conveyed by using experientia rather than conscientia. My conclusion is that, while Descartes uses conscientia in the traditional sense of (internal) testimony, which tells us about both the current and past mental states of the subject, he uses experientia in the sense of the actual performance of mental acts such as thinking and judging, which directly tells us only about the present mental state of the subject and is thus closer to our modern psychological concept of consciousness than conscientia
Epistemology · Metaphysics · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical Philosophy and Science · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |