New APPS

By: Samir Chopra 

In 'Five Parables' (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes,

I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last meeting, some students gathered around and began with the conventional, 'Gee, what a great course.' The subsequent remarks were more instructive: 'But you could not help it…what with all those great books, I mean like Descartes…' They loved Descartes and his Meditations.

I happen to give terrible lectures on Descartes, for I mumble along saying that I do not understand him much. It does not matter. Descartes speaks directly to these young people, who know as little about Descartes and his times as I know about the green family and its time. But just as the green family showed itself to me, so Descartes shows himself to them….The value of Descartes to these students is completely anachronistic, out of time. Half will have begun with the idea that Descartes and Sartre were contemporaries, both being French. Descartes, even more than Sartre, can speak directly to them….I do find it very hard to make sense of Descartes, even after reading commentaries, predecessors, and more arcane texts of the same period. The more I make consistent sense of him, the more he seems to me to inhabit an alien universe.

A few brief responses:

1. 'Conventional'? This makes me think Hacking inhabits 'an alien universe.' Students gathering around me at the end of the semester and telling me they thought they had just finished a 'great course'? Be still my beating heart.

2. I suspect I too give 'terrible lectures on Descartes.' I've now taught Descartes four times–twice in introductory core classes, and twice in Modern Philosophy–and I remain unconvinced that I've been competent in making Descartes understandable on any of those occasions. In part, this is because, like Hacking, I  'find it very hard to make sense of Descartes.' Perhaps it's because of the apparatus that Descartes employs, perhaps because I don't find foundationalism a coherent doctrine, or perhaps it's the scholastic language in the Meditations. Whatever the reason, I feel defeated by Descartes.

3. What I find most surprising about Hacking's comments is his recounting of his students' reactions. For  I am not alone in this relationship with Descartes: I sense a general skepticism directed at him from my students as well. This might be because of my incompetent teaching of Descartes, but I've come to think that many students find the Meditations a let down after the Discourse on Method (and the opening of the Meditations). There is an austerity, a novelty, promised there that the subsequent sections simply do not deliver on; students, in particular, feel cheated by Descartes' reliance on a benevolent, non-deceiving God to make his arguments work. (Of course, this is merely an impressionistic take on students' reactions whenever these portions make their appearance: 'All that talk about the Enlightenment, a new method, rejection of authority, an intellectual hygiene and discipline, and then we get this?')

My second time teaching Modern Philosophy, I geared up, determined to finally lay the Descartes bugbear to rest, reading the Meditations carefully, determined to make sense of them to myself and to my students, to give good 'ol Rene the best chance possible. Three weeks later, I surrendered.   

Note: This post was originally published–under the same title–at samirchopra.com. (It provoked a couple of interesting comments from folks who have had no problem teaching Descartes.) I would love to hear from others on whether there are particular philosophers they have had difficulty teaching–for whatever reason.