Abstract

There is something else that Descartes does not question: the meaningfulness of language as a whole and of a particular tongue in so far as he uses it as he does. The doubt bears on the way the mind, or language, divides and composes what is: this and that thing, this and that relation. The quest of Descartes may, I think, be interpreted in this way: Is there a word, or group of words, which can safely be assumed to isolate a definite object of thinking which, as determined, would be more than an object of thinking, or creature of language?