Alain de Libera When Did The Modern Subject Emerge

2008, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 82, No.
2
When Did the Modern Subject Emerge?
Alain de Libera
Abstract. Tis article oers a tentative deconstruction of Heideggers account of the
modern, that is, the Cartesian, subject. It argues that subjectivity, understood
as the idea of some thing that is both the owner of certain mental states and
the agent of certain activities, is a medieval theological construct, based on two
conicting models of the mind (nous, mens) inherited from ancient philosophy and
theology: the Aristotelian and the Augustinian (or perichoretic) one, developed
in connection with such problems as that of the two wills in the incarnate Christ.
Starting with Nietzsches criticism of the superstition of logicians (the belief that
the subject I is the condition of the predicate think) and Peter Strawsons question
in Individuals (Why are ones states of consciousness ascribed to anything at all?),
the article discusses Peter Olivis and Tomas Aquinass treatments of the problem,
as well as the principle invoked to resolve it: actiones sunt suppositorum, actions
belong to subjects. Against this background, the discussion refers to Heideggers
notion of subjecticity and Armstrongs attribute-theory in order to reappraise
the Hobbesian and Leibnizian contributions to the history of the Self.
T
hought is subjective.
1
Tought is personal. Subject and person be-
long together. Tis is the modern, our modern, common, ordinary
understanding of subjectivity. We speak of the subject of thought
in the sense of the agent of thought. We refer to a so-called Cartesian subject,
meaning: (1) an inner I, to which thoughts should be ascribed as psychological
1
Tis paper is a slightly expanded version of the Aquinas Lecture given at the University
of Dallas on January 28, 2008. I would like to thank Professors Lance Simmons (University of
Dallas), Philipp Rosemann (University of Dallas), William A. Frank (University of Dallas), James
J. Lehrberger, O.Cist. (University of Dallas), Dennis L. Sepper (University of Dallas), Jeremy
duQuesnay Adams (Southern Methodist University), Bonnie Wheeler (Southern Methodist
University), the audience, Marie Azcona (University of Dallas), and all the members of the De-
partment of Philosophy of the University of Dallas whose great sense of hospitality, intellectual
curiosity, and philosophical commitment helped make my Dallas lecture and seminars such an
enjoyable event. Professors Kevin Mulligan (University of Geneva) and Alexandrine Schniewind
(University of Lausanne) made very helpful comments on earlier drafts. My daughter Clmence
de Libera helped me in translating several passages. Teir assistance has been invaluable.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 18:
predicates, and (2) an inner eye, before which they pass in review in foro interno,
in an inner space called the Cartesian theater.
2
For philosophers, however, all
this has become highly controversial. In the Continental tradition, the postmod-
ern idea of a subjectivity without the subject and the various deconstructions that
have given rise to the alleged crisis or death of the subject, go hand in hand
with a no-subject re-articulation of selfhood, agency, and personal identity. In
the analytic tradition, many philosophers would be reluctant to equate person-
hood with subjectivity and most, at least in the recent past, would deal with
the range of loosely related problems we call problems of the self who am
I? what am I? how could I have been? and what matters?without even
mentioning the word subject. Tis holds true for the pioneering collection of
essays published in 1976 by Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, Te Identities of Persons.
3

Indeed, why should we connect what Rorty calls the idea of a person as a uni-
ed center of choice and action, the unit of legal and theological responsibility
with the idea of a subject in which all ideas inhere, and to which representations
and mental operations are to be attributed? Why in the rst place should we
ascribe ones states of consciousness to anything at all? To this question, raised by
Peter Strawson in Individuals,
4
many philosophers would be inclined to answer
that there is no sound reason to ascribe our states of consciousness to anything
whatsoever. Te friends of the so-called Lichtenbergian approach would
maintain with Moritz Schlick and, up to a certain point, with Wittgenstein
himself, that primitive experience is absolutely neutral, or that immediate data
have no owner, or that original experience is without a subject, or that the
pronoun I does not denote a possessor, or that no ego is involved in thinking.
Strawson has ercely discussed this approach, the no-owner or no-ownership
theory of the mind, also called no-subject theory. His criticism of Schlick
does not involve a rejection of subjecthoodwhich makes him a noticeable
exception within the analytic tradition. Rather, he describes Descartess theory
of self or person as a dualism of two subjects or two types of subjects, that is, sub-
stances, each of which has its own exclusive appropriate types of states and
properties, to the extent that states of consciousness belong to one of these
substances, the mind, and not to the other, the body. And he characterizes
the Schlick-Wittgenstein approach, based on Lichtenbergs famous Es denkt
2
R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 50.
3
See Te Identities of Persons, ed. A. Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976). Also see A. Monteores presentation of this book in Identit personnelle, identit
du soi, Critique no. 399/400 (1980): 75164, at 752: Le seul terme dont la pertinence par rap-
port la discussion contemporaine est le plus remarquable en raison de son absence quasi totale
est sans doute celui de sujet.
4
See P. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), 90, 93, 94.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 18
dictum (We should say it thinks, just as we say it lightens)
5
as a dualism of
one subjectthe bodyand one non-subjectthe ego or pure consciousness.
6

Te purpose of this lecture is not to answer the question of whether Strawson
and common usage are right or wrong in ascribing mental states to any subject
at all. I am not interested either in discussing all the various emplotments of
subjectivity that have been proposed in recent historical narratives linking the
emergence of the modern subject either to the centrality and universality of
sentiment in British eighteenth-century literature or to the new inwardness
that is supposed to characterize Protestantism. My goal is to try to determine
why, how, and when philosophers introduced the very notion of subject and
the conceptual scheme of what I will thereafter call subjecthood into psychology
and the philosophy of mind.
7
I.
An answer to the question why? is provided by Nietzsches criticism of
what he calls the superstition of logicians, that is, the idea that a thought
comes when I wish, based on the wrong assumption that the subject I is the
condition of the predicate think. Tis criticism, which is part of Nietzsches
refutation of the Cartesian cogito, runs as follows: a grammatical habit, consist-
ing in adding a doer to every deed is the only ground for the pseudo-apriori
truth of our belief in the concept of substance, and consequently for the logical
superstition of the I, understood as the subject of thought.
Tere is thinking, therefore, there is something that thinks. Tis is the upshot
of all Descartes argumentation. But that means positing as true a priori
our belief in the concept of substancethat when there is thought there
has to be something that thinks is simply a formulation of our gram-
matical custom that adds a doer to every deed.
8
5
See Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London/New York:
Penguin, 1990), 168: To say cogito is already to say too much as soon as we translate it I think.
To assume, to postulate the I is a practical requirement. Schlick refers quite enthusiastically to
Lichtenberg: Lichtenberg, the wonderful eighteenth-century physicist and philosopher, declared
that Descartes had no right to start his philosophy with the proposition I think, instead of saying
it thinks. See M. Schlick, Meaning and Verication, in Gesammelte Aufstze (Vienna: VDM
Verlag Dr. Mller, 1969), 33768.
6
Strawson, Individuals, 98.
7
Some of these questions are studied in greater detail in A. de Libera, Archologie du sujet,
vol. 1: Naissance du sujet (Paris: Vrin, 2007) and vol. 2: La qute de lidentit (Paris: Vrin, 2008).
8
F. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente. Herbst 1887, Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed.
G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970), VIII/2, 215: Es wird gedacht: folglich
gibt es Denkendes: darauf luft die Argumentation des Cartesius hinaus. Aber das heit unsern
Glauben an den Substanzbegri schon als wahr a priori ansetzen:da, wenn gedacht wird, es
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 18
According to Nietzsche, the very idea of a res cogitans is based on a fallacy:
M: Tinking is an activity.
m: Every activity requires an agent that is acting (that is, a subject that
is acting).
C: Terefore, if there is thinking, there must be something (that is, a
subject) that thinks.
Tus, the Lichtenbergian Es denkt would not escape Nietzsches argument ei-
ther. Te it (thinks) is no real alternative to the I (think): the cogitatur is already
contained in the cogito. Te Es denkt motto entails the same wrong assumption
as Ich denke. Better said, it is the weakest part of the cogito. As a matter of fact,
cogito means two things: (1) that it is thinking, and (2) that I believe that I am
the one who does the thinking. According to Nietzsche, both points are based on
articles of faith. Moreover, the truth of the second clearly presupposes the truth
of the rst. My belief in I being the one who does the thinking presupposes that
thinking is an activity requiring a subjectcall it it or what you please. Tis
is merely a matter of belief, grammatical belief. Both are wrong.
In jenem berhmten cogito steckt 1) es denkt 2) und ich glaube, da ich
es bin, der da denkt, 3) aber auch angenommen, da dieser zweite Punkt
in der Schwebe bliebe, als Sache des Glaubens, so enthlt auch jenes erste
es denkt noch einen Glauben: nmlich, da denken eine Ttigkeit sei,
zu der ein Subjekt, zum mindesten ein es gedacht werden msse . . . .
Aber das ist der Glaube an die Grammatik.
9
I will not discuss those claims as suchalthough it might be illuminating to
compare Nietzsches criticism of Descartes with Schellings dicussion of the cogito,
ergo sum in his 18331834 lectures On the History of Modern Philosophy, which
endorse a post-Lichtenbergian interpretation of the I think as It thinks in me
(es denkt in mir) or there is thinking in me (es wird in mir gedacht), clearly based
on a parallel with it-sentences (subjectless or logically-simple sentences) of the
form es trumte mir.
10
My goal is not to determine whether or not the minor
etwas geben mu, das denkt, ist einfach eine Formulierung unserer grammatischen Gewhnung,
welche zu einem Tun einen Tter setzt.
9
F. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente. AugustSeptember 1885, 40 [23], Smtliche Werke.
Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bnden, ed. G. Colli und M. Montinari (Munich: dtv, 1980),
XI, 639. On Nietzsches relation to Lichtenberg, see M. Stingelin, Unsere ganze Philosophie ist
Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs. Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-Rezeption im Spannungsfeld
zwischen Sprachkritik (Rhetorik) und historischer Kritik (Genealogie) (Munich: Fink, 1996).
10
As evidenced for instance in Johannes Brahmss Lied, Op. 57 # 3 (based on a poem by
G. F. Daumer): Es trumte mir, | Ich sei dir teuer; | Doch zu erwachen; | Bedurft ich kaum. |
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 18
premise of the grammatical syllogism merely reects a bad habit. My goal is
to set out the archaeology of the claim. When and how was it put forward?
II.
Subject and subjecthood are everywhere in early modern philosophy.
Nietzsches criticism of the grammatische Gewhnung is already to be found in
the eighteenth century. Consider, for example, Catharine Trotter Cockburns
criticisms of Isaac Watts. She criticizes Watts for ascribing to mere logical ways
of speaking what he calls our prejudices against allowing a power of thinking to
subsist without a subject. She replies to this ingenious author that actions and
abilities . . . seem unavoidably to imply some subject of them, some being, that
exerts its powers in dierent ways of acting, and then goes on to argue that she
does not nd herself so prejudiced by logical or grammatical ways of speaking
when she says that she cannot frame any idea of a power, without supposing
some being, to which it belongs.
11
So far, so familiar. But can we trace Catherine
Trotters plea for subject and subjecthood back any further? Can we trace it back
to Descartes himself? To the scholastics? To Augustine? To Aristotle?
Te medieval contribution to the rise of the subject has been widely
overlooked. Tis holds true for A. Rortys survey of the historical conditions
that gave rise to the view of the person as the I of reective consciousness,
owner and disowner of its experiences, memories, attributes, attitudes, as well
as for her emplotment of the philosophical conditions, when she expeditiously
describes the movement from Descartes reective I to Lockes substantial
center of conscious experience, to Humes theater of the sequence of impressions
and ideas, to Kants transcendental unity of apperception and the metaphysical
postulate of a simple soul, to Sartres and Heideggers analyses of consciousness
as the quest for its own denition in the face of its non-Being.
12
As a historian
of medieval philosophy this hasty kind of historical scrolling seems to me all the
more unfortunate since the rise of the subject-self is perhaps, from a philosophical
Denn [schon] im Traume | Bereits empfand ich, | Es sei ein Traum. Such sentences, which it
is hard to treat within the terms of the standard (subject-predicate-copula based) combination
theories (as Rojszczak and Smith say), were discussed by F. Brentano in 1883 in Miklosich on
Subjectless Sentences, translated in F. Brentano, Te Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong,
trans. R. Chisholm and E. Schneewind (London: Routledge, 1969), 98108. See A. Rojszczak
and Barry Smith, Truthmakers, Truthbearers and the Objectivity of Truth, in Philosophy and
Logic: In Search of the Polish Tradition, ed. J. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 22968.
Nietzsches claim would be that the common interpretation of subjectless sentences involves an
unshakable belief in the subject-predicate-copula form.
11
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Remarks Upon Some Writers, in Philosophical Writings, ed.
P. Sheridan (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006), 87146, at 101.
12
Te Identities of Persons, 11.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 18o
point of view, one of the best pieces of evidence for the existence of the long
Middle Ages advocated by Jacques Le Go. It is also an ideal opportunity to
stress the importance of theological debates in the history of philosophy. A fair
assessment of late ancient and medieval views on the subject is essential for any
reconstruction of a history of subjectivity with the subject.
Such an assessment, I suggest, is best made in two steps: (1) a discussion
of Heideggers account of the dominance of the subject in the modern age, an
account that is based on the distinction between subjecticity or subjectness
(Subiectitt) and subjectivity (Subjektivitt); (2) a study of the genealogy of
Nietzsches alleged grammatische Gewhnung. Te two steps are intimately con-
nected: the distinction between subjecticity and subjectivity and the grammatical
habit constitute two major components of a conceptual scheme I call mental
attributivism, whose rise and fall deserve a very thorough archaeological scrutiny
if we are to understand what exactly happened to the subject in early modern
philosophy. I will attempt to give an overview of both.
III.
To begin with, let us focus on Heideggers account of what he calls the
emphatic positing of the subject in Modern Age.
13
Te term Subiectitt,
which is rendered as subjecticity or subjectness in English translations,
14

has a precise meaning: at rst blush it points to the very quality of being a sub-
jectum, ontologically speaking; that is, according to the meaning of the Greek
hypokeimenon, which it translates, to the quality of being that-which-lies-before,
which, as ground, gathers everything onto itself.
15
According to the concept of
its essence, subiectum is in a distinctive sense that which already lies-before and
so lies at the basis of something else, whose ground it therefore is.
16
Heidegger
never tires of repeating what is actually his most striking point: in this under-
standing subject had rst . . . no special relationship to man and none at all to
the I.
17
We must thus at rst remove the concept manand therefore the
concepts I and I-ness as wellfrom the concept of the essence of subiectum.
Stones, plants, and animals are subjectssomething lying-before of itselfno
less than man is.
18
Yet man has become the primary and only real subiectum.
13
M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 4: Nihilism, ed. David F. Krell, trans. Frank A. Capuzzi
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 96.
14
On subjecticity, see F. Schlegel, Subiectitt bei Heidegger. Zu einem Schlsselbegri des
seinsgeschichtlichen Denkens, Archiv fr Begrisgeschichte 40 (1997/98): 16075.
15
M. Heidegger, Te Age of the World Picture, in Te Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977), 11554, at 127.
16
Heidegger, Nihilism, 967.
17
Heidegger, Te Age, 127.
18
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 18;
Man has become that being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the
manner of its Being and its truth. Man has become the relational center of that
which is as such.
19
When did this occur? Heideggers answer is cut and dried:
with the Cartesian interpretation of man as subiectum. Since Descartes and
through Descartes, man, the human I, has in a preeminent way come to be
the subject in metaphysics. With the Cartesian interpretation of man begins
the completion and consummation of Western metaphysics, which also cre-
ates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every kind and
tendency.
20
Tis claim must be taken literally: after Descartes there is no other
subject, properly speaking, than the human subject transposed into the I. In
other words: Heidegger does not limit himself to saying that with Descartes man
is conceived as a subiectum; he pushes further by asserting that within Descartess
metaphysics man comes to play the role of the one and only subject proper.
Let us try to understand this claim and render it more precise.
According to Heidegger, the modern subject emerges with the Cartesian
cogito sum. Descartess revolution consists in distinguishing the subjectum which
man is to the eect that the actualitas of this subjectum has its essence in the
actus of cogitare (percipere)
21
so that eventually the human Mind becomes
the only, the exclusive subject.
22
In the Heideggerian reconstruction, Descartes
plays the central role in the history of the subject because he completes the
medieval transformation of the Greek hypokeimenon into subiectum by tying its
actuality to a new, non-Aristotelian, dimension: perceptual activity.
Te principle cogito sum, to the extent that it contains and expresses the
essence of cogitatio, posits along with the essence of cogitatio the proper
subiectum, which is itself presented only in the domain of cogitatio and
through it. Because the me is implied in cogitare, because the relation to
the one representing still belongs essentially to representing, because all
19
20
Heidegger, Te Age, 138. Heidegger continues: Te essential modications of the
fundamental position of Descartes that have been attained in German thinking since Leibniz do
not in any way overcome that fundamental position itself. Tey simply expand its metaphysical
scope and create the presuppositions of the nineteenth century, still the most obscure of all the
centuries of the modern age up to now.
21
Heidegger, Metaphysics as History of Being, in Te End of Philosophy, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 203), 154, at 31.
22
Heidegger, Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins, in Nietzsche II (19391946), ed.
B. Schillbach, Gesamtausgabe 6.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1997), 395: Die mens
humana wird daher knftig [gem dieser Auszeichnung ihres Vorliegens] als subiectum den Namen
Subjekt ausschlielich fr sich in Anspruch nehmen, so da subiectum und ego, Subjektivitt
und Ichheit gleichbedeutend werden. Ibid., 411: Wo aber die Subiectitt zur Subjektivitt wird,
da hat das seit Descartes ausgezeichnete subiectum, das ego, einen mehrsinnigen Vorrang. Das
ego ist einmal das wahrste Seiende, das in seiner Gewiheit zugnglichste.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 188
representedness of what is represented is gathered back to it, therefore the
one representing, who can thus call himself I, is subject in an emphatic
sense, is, as it were, the subject in the subject, back to which everything that
lies at the very basis of representation refers. Tat is why Descartes can also
construe the principle cogito sum in the following way: sum res cogitans.
23
Tus sum res cogitans does not mean I am a thing that is outtted with the quality
of thinking, but, rather, I am a being whose mode to be consists in representing
in such a way that the representing co-presents the one who is representing into
representedness. Te Being of that being which I am myself, and which each man
as himself is, has its essence in representedness and in the certitude that adheres to
it. On this interpretation of the principle Cogito sumaccording to which the
certitude of the principle cogito sum (ego ens cogitans) determines the essence of all
knowledge and everything knowable; that is, of mathesis; hence, of the mathemati-
cal
24
truth now means, Heidegger argues, the assuredness of presentation-to,
or certitude. Tus, because Being means representedness in the sense of such
certitude, man, in accordance with his role in foundational representation, therefore
becomes the subject in a distinctive sense. Having an exclusive claim on subjecticity
the Cartesian man, conceived as the distinguished subiectum, secures the do-
minion of the subject, by staking everything on his own priority as subject.
25

Subjecticity thus becomes subjectivity: being is no longer merely created being (ens
creatum); it is certain being, indubitable, truly thought, in a word: representa-
tion (ens certum, indubitatum, vere cogitatum, cogitatio).
26
Te Cartesian shift from
subjecticity to subjectivity may be summed up in four major claims:
(1) Man is subject in the sense of representing I-ness; (2) Te beingness
of beings is equivalent to representedness through and for the I-subject;
(3) Truth means the same as secure conveyance of what is represented
in the self-representing representation: truth is certitude; (4) Man is the
measure of all beings in the sense of the presumption of the de-limitation
of representing to self-securing certitude.
27
Tus, on Heideggers view, Descartess metaphysics cannot be but the decisive
beginning of the foundation of metaphysics in the modern age, because
23
24
Ibid., 116. On mathesis see M. Heidegger, What Is a Ting?, trans. W. B. Barton, Jr. and
V. Deutsch (Chicago: Regnery, 1967), 75: Te mathematical (mathemata, what is learnable) is
that evident aspect of things within which we are always already moving and according to which
we experience them as things at all, and as such things . . . the mathematical is the fundamental
presupposition of the knowledge of things.
25
26
Ibid., 117.
27
Ibid., 1367.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 18,
anticipating this ground in an authentically philosophical senseit grounds
the metaphysical ground of mans liberation in the new freedom of self-assured
self-legislation.
28
Such a positive, not to say bombastic, assessment of Carte-
sianism did not come out of the blue. It was inherited from Heideggers own
Schellingian interpretative pattern. Indeed, inasmuch as mans exclusive claim
on subjecticity (which according to Heidegger is the metaphysical trademark of
Cartesianism) is characterized by a liberation from the revelational certainty of
salvation, which had to be intrinsically a freeing to a certainty [Gewissheit] in
which man makes secure for himself the true as the known of his own knowing
[Wissens], and was thus possible only through self-liberating mans guaranteeing
for himself the certainty of the knowable,
29
there is little doubt that the Hei-
deggerian interpretation of Descartes heavily relies on Schellings post-Kantian
reading of Cartesianism as a plea for freedom.
30
Te claim that the essential
modications of the fundamental position of Descartes that have been attained
in German thinking since Leibniz do not in any way overcome that fundamen-
tal position itself,
31
clearly transposes Schellings emplotment of the history of
modern philosophy, based on Descartes rejection of Scholasticismthe true
liberal spirit of the new philosophy being further conrmed by the fact that
Descartes was in Bavaria at the time he posited the very foundations of modern
philosophy.
32
Tis being said, Heideggers account of the shift from Subiectitt
to Subjektivitt has its own features and purposes.
First, it is supposed to point out a major event in the history of Being:
the beingness of beings becomes ambiguous through subjectivity. By such an
ambiguity Heidegger not only means that the rise of objectivity is a coess-
ential part of the dominance of the subjective in the modern age; in other
words, that in modern metaphysics, every being becomes an obiectum. He also
means that every being becomes an object determined by a subiectum, so
28
Ibid., 100.
29
30
On Heideggers reading of Schelling, see his Schellings Treatise on the Essence of Human
Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 1984). Heidegger is perfectly
aware of the Kantian dimension conveyed in his own Schellingian narrative of the history of Be-
ing in the modern age. See Nihilism, 978: If we say pointedly that the new freedom consists in
the fact that man himself legislates, chooses what is binding, and binds himself to it, then we are
speaking Kants language; and yet we hit upon what is essential for the beginning of the modern
age. In its unique historical form, this essence is wrought into a fundamental metaphysical posi-
tion for which freedom becomes essential in a peculiar way (see Descartes, Meditationes de prima
philosophia, Med. IV).
31
32
See F. W. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy [Zur Geschichte der neueren Phi-
losophie. Mnchener Vorlesungen, 1833/34], trans. A. Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 1,o
that however paradoxical and in every aspect articial it might seem, from
Descartes onwards up to Nietzsche himself one must consider the subjecticity
(not subjectivity) of the essence of man as the foundation for the objectivity
of every subject (everything which is present). Accordingly the inner form of
metaphysics, which is based on what may be called transcendence, is changed.
With Descartess nding the subjecticity of the subject in the ego cogito of mortal
man [die Subiectitt des Subiectum im ego cogito des endlichen Menschen], the
metaphysical Gestalt of man as the source of the giving-of-meaning appears,
which is the nal consequence of establishing the essence of man as its au-
thoritative subject.
33
Subjectivity is subjecticity/subjectness in a new guise: die
Subjektivitt ist eine Weise der Subiectitt.
34
Te subjectivistic interpretation
(guise) of the subjecticity of the essence of man, which is the basic feature of
psychologism, is a consequence of Descartess transformation of the question
what is the being? into a question about the fundamentum absolutum incon-
cussum veritatis, the absolute, unshakable ground of truth; it does not belong
to Cartesianism proper. Te modern age is the age of subjectness, in which
every analysis of the situation is grounded, whether it knows it or not, in the
metaphysics of subjectness.
35
Te metaphysics of subjectness is not reducible
to the ontology of subjectivity in the sense of subjectivism. To be a subject is
to be in the subject-object relation; to be in that relation is what constitutes
the subjectness of the subject.
36
A second feature of Heideggers account of the shift from Subjectitt to Sub-
jektivitt is his highly critical assessment of the medieval contribution. Te Middle
Ages see all being from the point of view of creator and creatum. While opening
new possibilities for thinking, by recognizing that self-representing co-constitutes
the Being of the res cogitans, Descartes himself is unable to break through the
scholastic patterns of thought. According to Heidegger, Descartess most central
claim is that every ego cogito is a cogito me cogitare, that is to say, every I repre-
sent something simultaneously represents a myself, me, the one representing
(for myself, in my representing), such that every human representing is a self-
representing.
37
But this manner of speaking is easily misunderstood, and this is
33
Heidegger, Te Question of Being [= ber die Linie, GA 9], trans. J. T. Wilde and W. Kluback
(Albany, N.Y.: New College University Press, 1958), 556.
34
Heidegger, Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins, 411: Versteht man unter Sub-
jektivitt dieses, da das Wesen der Wirklichkeit in Wahrheitd.h. fr die Selbstgewiheit des
Selbstbewutseinsmens sive animus, ratio, Vernunft, Geist, ist, dann erscheint die Subjektivitt
als eine Weise der Subiectitt.
35
Heidegger, Te Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead, in Te Question Concerning Technology
and Other Essays, 53114, at 10102.
36
Heidegger, Hegels Concept of Experience. With a Section from Hegels Phenomenology of
Spirit, trans. K. R. Dove (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 33.
37
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 1,1
the case as well for the claim that I am a thinking thing. In both cases, there is a
risk to reduce Descartess points to a mere conrmation of mans being an object-
at-hand (Vorhandenes), with the simple result that the attribute thinking would
be assigned to him as a distinguishing property.
38
Nothing prevents us from such
a reduction, since, Heidegger argues, Descartes himself oers a supercial and
inadequate interpretation of res cogitans, inasmuch as he speaks the language of
the doctrines of medieval scholasticism, dividing being as a whole into substantia
innita and substantia nita. With substantia being the conventional and pre-
dominant name for hypokeimenon, subiectum in a metaphysical sense, substantia
innita being God, summum ens, creator, and the realm of substantia nita
being ens creatum (divided in turn into res cogitantes and res extensae), the new
delineation of man through the cogito sum might easily be considered as simply
sketched into the old framework (the so-called point of view of creator and crea-
tum). Te verdict is returned: guilty! Here we have the most palpable example
of earlier metaphysics impeding a new beginning for metaphysical thought.
39

Traditional language is the enemy. Te language of substance is full of dangers. As
the late Heiddeger writes in On Time and Being: If the fundamentum absolutum
is attained with the ego cogito as the distinctive subiectum, this means: Te subject
is the hypokeimenon which is transferred to consciousness, what is truly present,
what is unclearly enough called substance in traditional language.
40
Te reproach
is not new. It was already central in Being and Time, where it is clearly stated that
Descartes investigates the cogitare of the ego, within certain limitsleaving
the sum completely undiscussed, even though it is regarded as no less primordial
than the cogito. Tose limits are obvious: basically they are all linked to the very
idea of substantiality (Vorhandenheit, presence-at-hand) inherited from the Middle
Ages. In Descartes the meaning of Being which the idea of substantiality embraces,
or the character of the universality which belongs to this signication remains
as unclaried as it was in the ontology of the medievals. One should even say
that in working out this problem ontologically, Descartes is always far behind the
Schoolmen: indeed, he not only evades the ontological question of substantiality
altogether; he also emphasizes explicitly that substance as suchthat is to say, its
substantialityis in and for itself inaccessible from the outset [vorgngig]. Being
itself does not aect us, and therefore cannot be perceived. Tus the possibility
of a pure problematic of Being gets renounced in principle:
Because Being is not in fact accessible as an entity, it is expressed through
attributesdenite characteristics of the entities under consideration,
38
Ibid., 115.
39
Ibid., 114.
40
Heidegger, Te End of Philosophy and the Task of Tinking, in On Time and Being,
trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 5573, at 61.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 1,:
characteristics which themselves are. Being is not expressed through just
any such characteristics, but rather through those satisfying in the purest
manner that meaning of Being and substantiality which has still been
tacitly presupposed. Substantiality is detachable ratione tantum; it is not
detachable realiter, nor can we come across it in the way in which we come
across those entities themselves that are substantially. Tus the ontologi-
cal grounds for dening the world as res extensa have been made plain:
they lie in the idea of substantiality, which not only remains unclaried
in the meaning of its Being, but gets passed o as something incapable of
clarication, and gets represented indirectly by way of whatever substantial
property belongs most pre-eminently to the particular substance.
41
Heideggers criticism of Descartes has been convincingly refuted by J.-L.
Marion.
42
I will not summarize the whole discussion here. I am only concerned
with the questions that Heideggers general treatment of the tradition poses
to the historian of philosophy. Te concept of subjectness belongs to what
Heidegger calls history. It is historical inasmuch as it pertains to the only
kind of historical inquiry that is positively valued from an Heideggerian point
of view: the inquiry into the history of Being. All further considerations are
labeled historiological. According to Heidegger, historiological comparisons
always block the way into history.
43
In the case of Descartes a historiological
report on the meaning and nature of Descartes doctrine is forced to establish
results of the critical sort that have been briey sketched here. A historical
meditation on the inquiry proper, however, would strive to think Descartes
principles and concepts in the sense he himself wanted them to have, even if
in so doing it should prove necessary to translate his assertions into a dierent
language. We have tried so far to account for both ways of dealing with the
Cartesian materials in Heidegger. Heideggers program in the fourth volume of
Nietzsche is clearly delineated:
History as Beingindeed as coming from the essence of Being it-
selfremains unthought. Every historiological meditation of man on
41
Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York:
Harper & Row, 1962), 20, 127.
42
See J.-L. Marion, Questions cartsiennes II (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1996),
10607.
43
Heidegger, Nihilism, 98.On the dierence between history and historiology, see Being
and Time, 428; Letter on Humanism, trans. F. A. Capuzzi and J. G. Gray, in Basic Writings, ed.
David F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1993), 21366, at 239: History does not take place
primarily as a happening. And its happening is not evanescence. Te happening of history occurs
essentially as the destiny of the truth of Being and from it. Being comes to destiny in that It,
Being, gives itself. But thought in terms of such destiny this says: it gives itself and refuses itself
simultaneously.
his condition is therefore metaphysical, and thus pertains to the es-
sential omission of the default of Being. It is necessary to contemplate
the metaphysical character of history as a discipline if we are going to
measure the impact of historiological thought, which at times considers
itself authorized to enlighten, if not to rescue man, who is at stake in the
age of the self-fullling nonessence of nihilism.
44
To put Heideggers major historical claimsthose directly linked with the
distinction between Subiectitt and Subjektivittin a nutshell, one might say
that according to him the very distinction allows one eventually to establish that
the being as subjecticity omits the truth of Being itself in a decisive way, insofar
as subjecticity, out of its own desire for surety, posits the truth of beings as cer-
titude.
45
In other words, subjecticity is part of a historical inquiry, teleologically
oriented, which is entirely constructed or reconstructed from the viewpoint of
the gradual concealment of Being by itself and of nihilism as the ultimate stage
of metaphysics as the history of Being.
Heideggers reconstruction of the history of subjectivity (Subjektivitt)
as a history of the successive generalizations of what he calls subjectness
(Subiectitt) is most valuable. His account of the history of Being is, however,
highly questionable. Instead of following Heideggers lead in opposing histori-
cal and historiological inquiries, I will take another path here. I will endeavor
to study from an archeological point of view Heideggers most fundamental
claim, which as such has to be common to both history and historiology:
Descartess revolution consists in equating mens humana and subiectumthe
human mind becoming the only, the exclusive subjectso that eventually
subiectum and ego, subjectivity and egoity became synonyms.
46
Leaving aside
the historical claim that Das Sein ist in seiner Geschichte als Metaphysik durch-
gngig Subiecti tt,
47
I will rather focus on the archaeology of the subject and
of what I call subjecthood. Te concept of subjecthood does not commit
us to any historical scenario. It is primarily meant to (re)translate Heideggers
assertions into a dierent language: the language of tradition, the language
that Descartes and the schoolmen actually spoke. On this philological basis,
I hope to show that the Heideggerian account of the historical (or merely
historiological?) thread along which one could pursue the historical prov-
enance
48
of the dominion of the subjective in the modern age deserves a
serious reconsideration.
44
45
Ibid., 238.
46
Heidegger, Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins, 395.
47
Ibid., 411.
48
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 1,
IV.
Let me rst dene what sujecthood is in traditional (that is, late ancient
and medieval) philosophy. Inherence and predication are the two components
of subjecthood. Te notion of subjecthood links that of which there can be
predicates, the so-called logical subject, and that in which there are accidents,
the so-called physical subject. According to this distinction, Heideggers claim
should be rephrased as follows: the modern subject emerged when this sub-jective
patternthe subjecthood of the physical subject, which is a substrate for accidents
in a change, and at the same time, the subjecthood of the logical subject, which
is a substrate for the predicates in a propositionwas extended to the human
mind, to a mental subject, thus subjecthood becoming subjectivity. Tis process
could thus be described as the transformation of the ontological principle:
x is a logical subject of predicates and a physical subject in which physical
accidents inhere
into a new principle, allowing for the conception of a mental subject of thought
and volition:
x is a logical subject of predicates and a mental subject in which psycho-
logical accidents inhere.
Tis transformation constitutes the Cartesian moment proper, that is, the
moment when mens humana made an exclusive claim on the [term] subject.
49
With such reformulation, Heideggers claim is rather unsatisfactory, I am
afraid. If we are to study past philosophers on their own terms, it is clear that
there is no Cartesian subject in Descartes. Te Cartesian subject is the re-
sult of a retrospective projection that started with Kant. For over two hundred
years, Kant has lent credence to the idea that the subject was a Cartesian inven-
tion, and thus encouraged even the greatest thinkersincluding Heidegger
the Schellingianto look for traces of a semantic mutation of terms, such
as subject, which the philosopher of the Meditations almost never used. Te
distinction between a logical (pros kategorian) and an ontological (pros hyparxin)
subject, the two components of subjecthood, in the Aristotelian tradition is
indisputable: it is well evidenced in the Greek Commentaries on the Categories.
Its Latin aftermath is impressive: the medieval distinction between subiectum
inhaesionis or inharentiae and subiectum attributionis was a standard one in the
textbooks of the second scholasticism (Goclenius, Burgersdijk) and was still
considered a logical commonplace in the Classical Age, including the Cartesian
French scholasticism (Pourchot, Bary) and those John Locke once referred to
49
Ibid., 96.
as the whole tribe of Logicians. Yet Descartes was certainly not the rst either
to apply the conceptual scheme of subjecthood to the mens humana or to ap-
ply the term subject to the mens, the I, or the egofor two reasons at least.
One is obvious: others did it before him. Te other is less obvious: Descartess
overriding desire to avoid doing so. In other words, if the transition from sub-
jecticity to subjectivity is to be Cartesian, it cannot possibly be based on the
mere interpretation of the I as a hypokeimenon-subiectum, that is to say, on the
extension of subjecthood to the mental, which would be at variance with the
most genuine spirit of Cartesian philosophy. My aim is to show that, according
to Heideggers own criteria, the decisive move was made both after Descartes,
in the critical reception of the cogito, sum, and before him, in the Middle Ages,
when medieval theologians re-introduced the Aristotelian hypokeimenon into
the eld of psychology.
Let me dene what I will hereafter call mental attributivism. By men-
tal attributivism I understand any interpretation of the soul (or thought, or
understanding, or mind) that contains or implies an assimilation of mental or
psychic activities, operations, or dispositions to attributes or predicates of a
subject dened as an ego or an I. I say mental attributivism to avoid con-
fusion with attributivism proper, the so-called attribute theory, that is, the
theory interpreting the soul or mind as some sort of dispositional property of
the body or the organism, a dispositional property being the capacity or abil-
ity something has for engaging in a certain activity in certain circumstances.
50

Attributivism being the doctrine in which the soul is conceived as a property,
the opposite doctrine, substantialism, is the theory according to which the soul
is conceived, not as a property but as a thing, a subject of properties.
51
At-
tributivism, substantialism, and mental attributivism are ultimately based on
the same view: the substance-attribute view. According to attributivism, mind is
an attribute and the body a substance; according to substantialism, mind is a
substance and the body another substance. Attributivism is monist, substantial-
ism, dualist. Combining these criteria we are left with four possible positions:
(1) S1: substantialism (+), mental attributivism (+); (2) S2: substantialism (+),
mental attributivism (); (3) A1: attributivism (+), mental attributivism (+); (4)
A2: attributivism (+), mental attributivism ():
mental attributivism
substantialism (S1) + (S2)
attributivism (A1) + (A2)
50
H. Granger, Aristotles Idea of the Soul (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 10.
51
Ibid., 12.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 1,o
According to Armstrong, a dualist theory holds that mind and body are distinct
things, so that for a dualist a man is a compound object, a material thinghis
bodysomehow related to a non-material thing or thingshis mind.
52
Carte-
sianism is one of the two main types of dualist theory: For the Cartesian Dualist
the mind is a single non-material or spiritual substance somehow related to the
body. Armstrong adds that, although the term Cartesian refers to Descartes,
and we nd this view of the mind and body expounded by Descartes in his Sixth
Meditation, the term, as he uses it, is not to be restricted to the exact theory
put forward by Descartes, but is to be applied to any view that holds that a
persons mind is a single, continuing, non-material substance in some way related
to the body.
53
Te attribute theories of the mind argue that men, besides hav-
ing physical properties, have further properties, non-physical properties, quite
dierent from those possessed by ordinary physical objects, and that it is the
possession of these unique properties that gives men a mind.
54
When coming to
historiological considerations that concern our present purpose, Armstrong seems
more puzzled: he does not know exactly where to put either Aristotle or Aquinas.
He says that Aristotles doctrine, put forward in De Anima, that the mind is the
52
D. Armstrong, A Materialist Teory of the Mind (London: Routledge, 1993), 6.
53
Ibid. Te second type of dualist theory is bundle dualism, the term bundle echo-
ing Humes notorious description of the mind as a bundle of perceptions. Te bundle
dualist takes the mind to be a succession of non-physical particulars or items distinct from,
although related to, the body. According to Armstrong, this form of dualism characteristically
arises out of reection on the di culties of Cartesian Dualism (ibid., 7). Tis is certainly the
case. But to consider Humean every bundle dualism would certainly be mistaken as well.
Catharine Trotter Cockburns discussion of Edmund Law, for instance, represents another
type of bundle dualism, more intimately related to the di culties of Cartesian Dualism. As
a matter of fact, Laws two major claims that (1) the substance of spirit consists in the powers
of thinking and acting and (2) the aggregate of the properties of any being is the being itself
are both anti-Cartesian. See Cockburn, Remarks Upon Some Writers, 100. Cockburns answer to
point (2) is a beautiful defense of subjecthood: I confess myself ignorant indeed of what the
substance of that being is, but cannot think that a su cient reason to exclude it from existence,
as this new philosophy would do, tacking properties and actions together, without any subject of
either; somewhat unphilosophically, as it seems to me (ibid., 101). From an ontological point
of view bundle dualism is already evidenced in Hobbess discussion of the Ship of Teseus.
It is implied in the third opinion on individuation discussed in the De corpore: x and y are the
same, if, and only if, they are the same aggregate of accidents. See Elements of Philosophy, Part
II, chap. 11, 7, in Te English Works of Tomas Hobbes, ed. W. Molesworth (London: Bohn,
18391845), vol. 1, 135: Some place individuity in the unity of matter; others, in the unity of
form; and one says it consists in the unity of the aggregate of all the accidents together. Tis being
said, I guess that bundle dualism could be traced back either to Plotinuss sumfrhsij theory
as evidenced in Enneads VI [44], iii, 8, 1623 and 307 or, more convincingly, to Porphyrys
denition of an individual, in Isagoge 7.1927, as a collection (qroisma) of properties which
can never be the same for another.
54
Armstrong, A Materialist Teory, 11.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 1,;
form of the body is perhaps a version of the Attribute theory,
55
adding that,
though he lacks the space to substantiate the accusation, he is inclined to see
in Tomism an uneasy and somewhat confused oscillation between an Attri-
bute theory and Dualism.
56
I think that Armstrongs perplexity derives in part
from the fact that he cannot see any clear and important way of sub-dividing
Attribute theories.
57
On my view, introducing mental attributivism makes it
possible to supply such a clearand hopefully importantway of subdividing
dualist, materialist, and compromise theories like the so-called attribute theory.
My view strongly suggests to drop the charge against Aquinas as well.
In their standard versions both attributivism and substantialism are commit-
ted to mental attributivism: in the standard version of substantialism, advocated
by Descartes (S1), thought is the immediate (essential), principal, not to say
unique attribute of the mind; in the standard version of attributivism advocated
by Hobbes (A1), thought is an immediate attribute of the body. S2 and A2 seem
at rst glance more di cult to instantiate. Tis is mainly due to the fact that the
best-suited candidates would be ancient and/or medieval thinkers: Augustine for
S2; Aquinas and Aristotle (at least on Aquinass interpretation) for A2.
V.
Leaving aside for the moment Augustine and Aquinas, let us resume the
discussion of Heideggers interpretation of the role played by Descartes in pro-
viding the point of departure for modern dominion of the subjective. From
the viewpoint of what I call subjecthood, if Heideggers claim were correct,
the word mind should denote for Descartes that subject in which the activi-
ties or dispositions of knowing, willing, feeling, or desiring inhere; e converso
the word subject should denote the mind or the I by which the activities or
dispositions of knowing, willing, feeling, or desiring are accomplished or brought
about. In order to meet all the requirements of a modern subject-centered
philosophythat is, to provide us with a subject that could simultaneously be
55
On this problem see J. Barnes, Aristotles Concept of Mind, Proceedings of the Aristo-
telian Society (197172): 10114. Barness attribute theory has been criticized by C. Shields,
Soul and Body in Aristotle , Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 6, ed. J. Annas (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1988), 10336, esp. 112. According to Shields, Barnes sees persons as material
substances which none the less have immaterial properties which are causally or non-causally
necessitated by physical states of the body (112). In other words: 1. Persons have some im-
material states. 2. Tese cannot be states of the soul, since it is not substantial. 3. Terefore,
they must be states of the body or compound [of body and soul], both of which are material
(112). On Barness pseudo-materialism see R. Sorabji, Body and Soul in Aristotle, Philosophy
49 (1974): 6389, esp. 70.
56
57
Ibid., 12.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ 1,8
understood both as a subject of thought and as a thinking subjectCartesian
philosophy should display an extensive use of these two words, with those precise
meanings. Now consider the rst claim. It is indisputable that the idea of the
mind as a subject of thought, in the sense of a subject of attribution/inherence
can be found everywhere in post-Cartesian literature. It is to be found in Kant,
when he claims that by this I, or he, or it (the thing), which thinks, nothing is
represented beyond a transcendental subject of thoughts = x, which is known
only through the thoughts that are its predicates, and of which, apart from them,
we can never have the slightest concept.
58
It is also evidenced in the numerous
texts of the Lockean or post-Lockean tradition, ranging from Catharine Trotter
to William Hamilton, which argue that the subject or substance in which every
psychic phenomenon inheres is in itself unknown. Pace Heidegger, however,
it is not present in Descartes.
To the best of my knowledge, Descartess defense of S1 refers to the subject
in only two texts. In both cases, the French philosopher borrows the word from
his opponents. Tese opponents are Tomas Hobbes, a major exponent of A1,
and Henricus De Roy, better known as Regius.
In the third set of Objections to the Meditationes de prima philosophia Hobbes
makes a striking point. He accepts the inference from I think (cogito, which
he equates with sum cogitans) to I am (ego sum). But he challenges Descartess
further inference that the thinking thing, the res cogitans, is undoubtedly mens,
animus, intellectus, ratio. Tis, he says, amounts to saying, I am walking,
therefore I am a walk. Descartes has confused the thing that understands and
the act or power of understanding: Yet all philosophers distinguish the subject
from its faculties and acts, that is, from its properties and essences (omnes tamen
Philosophi distinguunt subjectum a suis facultatibus et actibus, hoc est a suis pro-
prietatibus & essentiis).
59
In brief, Descartes fails to grasp that I know only that
ego cogito because we cannot conceive any act without its subject (sine subjecto
suo). And he fails to grasp this because, up to a certain point, he precisely lacks
a concept of the subject.
60
Te continuation of Hobbess argument is a canoni-
cal exposition of attributivism. For Hobbes goes on to argue that a subject, in
this case the subject of thoughtthat subject or substance in which the phe-
nomena of knowing, willing etc. inherecan be conceived as only corporeal
or material.
61
58
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, A 346, B 404 (available online at
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html; accessed on March 28, 2008).
59
R. Descartes, Tird Objections, II, AT [uvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery
(Paris: Vrin, 19641974)] VII, 1723; IX, 134.
60
See M. Moriarty, Early Modern French Tought: Te Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003) 1113.
61
See AT VII, 173; IX, 135.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: 1,,
Descartess reply is based on common usage. He of course agrees that a
walk (ambulatio) can never mean a walker; but, he says, mens, animus, intellectus,
ratio are commonly understood to be capable of denoting both the faculties of
reason and understanding, and the things endowed with these faculties. Te
core of his reply is thus concerned with the words a philosopher should use.
His own terminology has, he argues, the merit of abstraction; it perfectly ts his
philosophical purpose, since he seeks to purge his notion of substance of all that
does not belong to it, whereas Hobbes uses terms as concrete as possible, to sug-
gest that the thinking thing cannot be divorced from the body. In other words,
subiectum is, for Descartes, a concrete term, along with materia and corpus,
62
and
for him, referring to the subject of thought can have only one practical goal:
to mislead the reader. Why then should this term be used to dene the essence
of Descartess philosophy? It is certainly essential to Hobbess philosophy; it is
not central to that of Descartes.
Hobbess major claim is that it is possible . . . that the thinking thing be the
subject of mind, reason or understanding, and thus something corporeal (potest . . .
esse ut res cogitans sit subjectum mentis, rationis, vel intellectus, ideoque corporeum
aliquid).
63
Obviously, Descartes and Hobbes do not share the same language.
When Hobbes objects to Descartes that omnes . . . Philosophi distinguunt
subjectum a suis facultatibus et actibus, hoc est a suis proprietatibus & essentiis,
he is speaking a philosophical jargon that is entirely unacceptable to Descartes.
For instance, this is how Hobbes denes essence, form, subject, and matter:
Now that accident for which we give a certain name to any body, or the
accident which denominates its subject, is commonly called the issixci
thereof; as rationality is the essence of a man; whiteness, of any white
thing, and extension the essence of a body. And the same essence, in as
much as it is generated, is called the ioix. Again, a body, in respect of
any accident, is called the sun;icr, and in respect of the form it is called
the xarrii.
64
An essence is that accident for which we give the thing, or the subject, its name;
that accident whichlet me insist on this formulationdenominates its subject.
Every subject is a body:
I dene what it is we call essence, namely, that accident for which we give
the thing its name. As the essence of a man is his capacity of reasoning; the
essence of a white body, whiteness, &c., because we give the name of man
62
See AT VII, 174; IX, 1356.
63
AT VII, 173; IX, 134.
64
T. Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, II, Te First Grounds of Philosophy, chap. 8 (Of
Body and Accident), 23, in Te English Works of Tomas Hobbes, vol. 1, 118.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :oo
to such bodies as are capable of reasoning, for that their capacity; and the
name of white to such bodies as have that color, for that color.
65
Hobbess terminology involves a complete destruction of traditional ontology.
It is based, however, on a very common scholastic principle: every accident
denominates its subject (accidens denominat proprium subiectum). If there is
an attributivist formulation of subjecthood, it is that introduced by Hobbes.
Te only Cartesian contribution to the emergence of the subject in its modern,
Cartesian, sensethat is, the rst-person relationship between thought and
existence, not to say personal identityis to accept the general axiom that we
cannot conceive an act without a subject (that is, Nietzsches grammatische Gewh-
nung) and to reject, as contrary to all linguistic usage and logic (contra omnem
loquendi usum omnemque logicam), the idea that every subject should be material,
when logicians and others commonly assert that some substances are spiritual,
others corporeal.
66
Tis is not enough to allow one to consider Descartes as the
father of modern subjectivity. Descartess claim is that there are incorporeal
substanceslet us say incorporeal subjects. Tis claim is not primarily con-
cerned with the idea that the thinking thing should be I as a subjectsubject
of thought, thinking subject. It is concerned with Hobbess thesis according to
which the expressions incorporeal substance or incorporeal subject imply a
contradictionin other words, that to say that x is an incorporeal substance
amounts to saying that there is no x:
To men that understand the signication of these words, substance, and
incorporeal; as incorporeal is taken not for subtle body but for not body,
they imply a contradiction: insomuch as to say, an angel, or spirit is (in
that sense) an incorporeal substance, is to say in eect, there is no angel
nor spirit at all.
67
I hope it is now obvious why I previously spoke of Descartess overriding de-
sire to avoid any assimilation of the thinking I to a subject of thought. In his
own philosophical context or eld of presence
68
a statement about a subject
65
T. Hobbes, Six Lessons of the Principles of Geometry, &c. to the egregious Professors of the
Mathematics, one of Geometry, the other of Astronomy, in the chairs set up by the noble and learned sir
Henry Savile, in the university of Oxford, lesson 2: Of the Faults that Occur in Demonstration,
in Te English Works of Tomas Hobbes, ed. W. Molesworth, vol. VII, 220.
66
AT VII, 175; IX, 136.
67
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, Part Tree: Of a Christian Commonwealth, chap. 34: Of the
signication of spirit, angel, and inspiration in the books of holy scripture, in Te English Works of
Tomas Hobbes, ed. W. Molesworth, vol. III, 394.
68
M. Foucault, Te Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pan-
theon Books, 1972), 57. By eld of presence Foucault understands all statements formulated
elsewhere and taken up in a discourse, acknowledged to be truthful, involving exact description,
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :o1
of thought or about mind as a subject had to refer to a body or a corporeal
substrate. In short, Descartes was forced to accommodate the subject in his
dualist approach of man. One may now show that Strawsons interpretation of
Cartesian philosophy as a dualism of two subjects or two types of subjects is
true to the extent that Descartess own assessment of a two-subject theory is a
hapax legomenon, based on a further concession to the linguistic habits of the
language of his second opponent: Regius.
In fact, the second occurrence of subject in Descartes takes place in his
Notae in programma quoddam (Notes on a Program, also referred to as Comments
on a Certain Broadsheet), that is: a pamphlet Descartes wrote during the winter
of 16471648 in reply to the Explicatio mentis humanae, a broadside recently
put out by his former disciple Henricus De Roy, who had by then become his
adversary. In the Explicatio mentis humanae Regius had argued that there could
perfectly be a single subject for thought and extension, intended as two dierent
modes of the same substance. To prove his thesis, he claimed that there is no
reason why the mind should not be a sort of attribute co-existing with exten-
sion in the same subject.
69
For Descartes, this was the second and apparently
the last opportunity to deal with the question of subjecthood. To Regiuss claim
Descartes responds that attributes which constitute the natures of things, as
thought and extension do, cannot be said [to be] present together in one and
the same subject; for that would be equivalent to saying that one and the same
subject has two dierent naturesa statement that implies a contradiction, at
least when it is a question of a simple subject . . . rather than a composite one.
70

I have no space here for a minute description of the whole controversy. Be it
su cient to call attention to some of Descartess most fundamental claims: (1)
thought and extension are not two modes of the same substance; (2) they are
essential or main or principal attributes of two dierent substances: mind and
body; (3) two dierent modes can inhere in the same subject; (4) two essential
or principal attributes cannot have the same subject; (5) each substance has
only one essential or principal attribute; (6) there is no subject common both
to thought and extension. M. Rozemond has described claim 5 as the Attribute
Premise,
71
which according to her is absolutely central in Cartesian dualism but
is generally not at all explicit when Descartes argues for the real distinction
72

well-founded reasoning, or necessary presupposition, those that are criticized, discussed, and
judged, as well as those that are rejected or excluded (ibid.).
69
AT VIII/2, 343; I, 2945; trans. G. MacDonald Ross (available online at http://www
.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk; accessed on March 28, 2008).
70
AT VIII/2, 34950; I, 298.
71
M. Rozemond, Descartes Case for Dualism, Journal of the History of Philosophy 33 (1995):
2963, now in Descartess Dualism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
72
Descartess Dualism, 36.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :o:
between mind and body. One exception: the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet.
Te rst claims are well explained in the following passage:
I am the rst person to have considered thought to be the distinctive at-
tribute of incorporeal substance, and extension as the distinctive attribute
of corporeal substance. But I have not said that these attributes inhere in
them as if in subjects distinct from themselves. And here we must be careful
not to understand attribute as meaning no more than mode (for we
apply the word attribute to anything we recognise as belonging to a thing
naturally, whether a variable mode or the very essence of the thing, which
is obviously immutable). So: God contains many attributes, but no modes.
Again, one of the attributes of every substance is its self-subsistence. Again,
the extension of a given body can indeed admit of various modes, since
its mode is dierent if the body is spherical from what it is if it is square;
but the extension itself, which is the subject of those modes, considered
in itself, is not a mode of corporeal substance, but the attribute which
constitutes its essential nature. Finally, there are various modes of thought,
since a rming is a dierent mode of thought from denying, and so on;
but thought itself, as the internal principle from which these modes arise
and in which they inhere, is not conceived as a mode, but as the attribute
which constitutes the nature of a certain substance; and the present ques-
tion is whether this substance is corporeal or incorporeal.
73
We have already seen that, as far as the last claim is concerned, Descartes argues
that attributes which constitute the natures of things cannot be said [to be] present
together in one and the same subject; for that would be equivalent to saying that
one and the same subject has two dierent naturesa statement that implies a
contradiction, at least when it is a question of a simple subject . . . rather than a
composite one. Two points are involved here: no one and the same simple subject
has two dierent natures; composite subjects, however, may do so. According to
Descartes, the dierence between simple entities and composite entities is the
following: a composite entity is one which is found to have two or more attributes,
each one of which can be distinctly understood apart from the other. Man is such
an entity: Tat which we regard as having at the same time both extension and
thought is a composite entity, namely a manan entity consisting of a soul and
a body.
74
Tis was exactly the thesis that Descartes had expressed in the Sixth
Meditation: Peter Strawsons two-subjects theory. Man is not his soul. Man is not
his mind. Man is a subject composed of two substances, mind and body, which
are the simple subjects, substantially dierent, of principal or essential attributes
that are in each case unique: thought and extension. Tus, there is no Cartesian
73
Trans. G. MacDonald Ross.
74
AT VIII/2, 35051; I, 299.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :o
subject in Descartes, both because the Cartesian theory of mind and thought lacks
a concept of subjectthis was the core of Hobbess criticismand, paradoxically,
because there are too many subjects in his philosophy: mind and body, the two
substances whose composition constitutes the composite entity called man.
VI.
On the basis of these conclusions, let us return to the question, When did
the subject emerge in its common, modern, psychological sense? I think that at
this point, we may safely answer: not with Descartes. If the question is to decide
whether Descartes contributed in a prominent way to the emergence of the term
subject in its contemporary sense, the answer has to be negative. Te modern idea
of the subject was not Descartess child. Even if we take Heideggers interpreta-
tion ad litteram, Descartes would not be the one who introduced the subject in
dealing with thought, will, or desire, but only the one who restricted subjectic-
ity to the mental, the human Mind becoming the only, the exclusive subject.
Yet even this thesis is at variance with the two-subjects interpretation, which I
consider much more convincing and supported by the texts. Now, if someone
should be celebrated as the one who introduced the subject into early modern
psychology, Hobbes would certainly be the best candidate. But, conversely, this
subject would certainly not be the I, the ego, or the pure consciousness of an
ego-based psychology, it would be a body subjectthe Nietzschean, anti-
Cartesian subject in Heideggers account of the history of subjecticity.
75
Now, if the question is to decide whether Descartes invented mental at-
tributivismwhich is quite another questionthe answer would have to be
negative as well. Mental attributivism was invented and immediately rejected by
a distinguished advocate of S2 centuries before Descartes: Augustine.
Augustine is unquestionably a substantialist. His substantialism, however,
bears very little resemblance to S1. Tis is because substance, as he understands
it, is not reducible either to Aristotles rst substance or to Heideggers Vorhan-
denes (present-at-hand),
76
in a word: to a subject. Augustines theory of mind,
75
See Heidegger, Nihilism, 132: does not Nietzsche argue against the concept of subject
as Descartes thinks it? At any rate, Nietzsche says that the concept of the I as subject is an inven-
tion of logic; ibid., 133: In Nietzsches thought, however, the argument against subjectivity in
the sense of the I-ness of conscious thought nonetheless accords with the absolute acceptance of
subjectivity in the metaphysical sense of subiectum, an acceptance that is of course unrecognized.
For Nietzsche, what underlies is not the I but the body: Belief in the body is more fundamental
than belief in the soul (WM, 491).
76
From Being and Time onward, Heidegger continually criticized Descartess account of res
cogitans and res extensa as present-at-hand entities, and Descartess understanding of the self as of
an object present-at-hand (Vorhandenes). From an Augustinian point of view one must underline
that Heidegger also expounds in terms of being-present-at-hand what he calls Sein in, the being-in,
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :o
following the perichoretic model
77
of mutual immanence or mutual indwelling
of the divine Persons, is borrowed from his Trinitarian theology and rmly based
on the rejection of the Aristotelian hypokeimenon. Tis point was completely
overlooked by Heidegger. Subjecthood is not the only pattern available in ancient
philosophy for dealing with the mental. Tere is a competing paradigm, born in
Trinitarian theology: Persons are not subjects, but hypostases. Te assumption of the
Aristotelian hypokeimenon-based model, mirrored in Heideggers subjecticity and
presence-at-hand, would lead us to reduce mental states, dispositions, or activities
to mere accidents of the mind, a viewmental attributivismthat Augustine
strongly opposed, just as he rejected the reduction of the three divine Persons or
hypostaseis to accidents of the one divine substance (ousia). Te Aristotelian idea
of subjecthood does not hold for God, because it presupposes the Aristotelian
concept of an ousia conceived as a hypokeimenon-subiectum taking on accidental
forms, that is to say, sub-jecting accidents or accidental properties or dispositions.
Tere is no inherent nor inherence in God. Just as it would be untting to say of
God that He stands beneath His own goodnesssee On the Trinity, III, v, 10:
It is forbidden to say that God subsists and stands under His own goodnessit
would be untting to say of the soul that it stands beneath its own acts or states.
In the same manner in which the three Persons mutually indwell each another
in the one being of God, the mental faculties, dispositions, and activitiesthat
is: mind or memory, knowledge, and lovemutually indwell in the one being
of the soul. If the structure of the soul parallels that of the triune God, there is
no room for an Aristotelian subject either in the Trinity or in the soul. Neither
the soul nor the mind can be conceived as subjects.
As Augustine writes in On the Trinity, IX, iv: love and knowledge are not
contained in the mind as in a subject (non amor et cognitio tanquam in subiecto
insunt menti), but these also exist substantially, or better said essentially, as the
mind itself does (sunt, sicut ipsa mens). Love and knowledge are by no means
accidents of the soul, because accidens non excedit subiectum in quo est, that is,
accidents cannot go beyond their subjects (whereas all mental acts are intentional,
that is: tran-scendental):
traditionally understood as being in something. Tis kind of Being which an entity has when it
is in another one is obviously the kind of being ascribed by Aristotle to the accidents, in Catego-
ries, 2, 1 a 201 b 10, namely, inherence, n pokeimnJ enai, esse in subiecto (vs. kaq pokeimnou
lgesqai, dici de subiecto). Vorhandenheit thus characterizes both substances and accidents.
77
Te term perichoresis goes back to John of Damascus. For a survey of the patristic sources
and Damascenes own use, see G. L. Prestige, Perichoreo and Perichoresis in the Fathers, Journal
of Teological Studies 29 (1928): 24252. Te most substantial study is the one by R. Cross, Peri-
choresis, Deication, and Christological Predi cation in John of Damascus, Mediaeval Studies 62
(2000): 69124. For the meaning of the terms circumincessio and circumsessio in Latin theology,
see A. Denee, Perichoresis, circumincessio, circuminsessio, Zeitschrift fur katholische Teologie
47 (1923): 497532.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :o
Similar reasoning suggests to us, if indeed we can in any way understand
the matter, that these things [i.e. love and knowledge] exist in the soul,
and that, being as it were involved in it, they are so evolved from it as to
be perceived and reckoned up substantially, or, so to say, essentially. Not
as though in a subject; as color, or shape, or any other quality or quantity,
are in the body. For anything of this [material] kind does not go beyond
the subject in which it is; for the color or shape of this particular body can-
not be also those of another body. But the mind can also love something
beside itself, with that love with which it loves itself. And further, the
mind does not know itself only, but also many other things. Wherefore
love and knowledge are not contained in the mind as in a subject, but
these also exist substantially, as the mind itself does.
In book XII of the Confessions (xi, 12), Augustine uses the perichoretic model
in his outline of what might be termed the psychic or mental life by invoking
the triad of esse, nosse, and velle. In this model, Trinitarian relations permit a
formal description of the interacting equalities that dene the incomprehensible
unity of the ego:
I am, I know and I will. I am a being which knows and wills; I know
both that I am and that I will . . . In these threebeing, knowledge and
willthere is one inseparable life, one life, one mind, one essence; and
therefore, although they are distinct from one another, this distinction
does not separate them.
In the description of the mens-notitia-amor triad (On the Trinity IX, v, 8) the
doctrine of the circumincession of the Persons of the Trinity is evoked even more
directly in order to conceptualize the mutual indwelling of mens and its acts:
Te mind, love and knowledge . . . each is a substance in itself, and all are
found mutually in all, or each two in each one, consequently all are in all . . .
Tese three, therefore, are in a marvelous manner inseparable from one an-
other; and yet each of them is a substance, and all together are one substance
or essence, while the terms themselves express a mutual relationship.
Tis is exactly what the Aristotelian hupokeimenon pattern would and could not
allow. Yet in the Middle Ages, the two conicting patternsthe perichoretic and
the Aristotelianmerged into a single one, giving rise to the concept of a mental
subject, mentally active, in a modern sense.
78
What made such a change possible
in these two conceptions? Time has come to summon our medieval witnesses.
78
Paradoxically enough, this is conrmed by the fact that Brentanos invention of inten-
tionality was also based on a perichoretic interpretation of Aristotle. See de Libera, Naissance du
sujet, 13354, and F. Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. A. C. Rancurello,
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :oo
VII.
Although it is always dangerous to give a date for the appearance of new
theories in the Middle Ages, we can advance the hypothesis that one of the rst
thinkers to attest to the subjective mutation of subjecthood was the somewhat
unorthodox Augustinian Peter Olivi (Petrus de Olivi).
79
Tis controversial Franciscan was reacting to a specic situation: the re-
formulation of the peripatetic doctrine, which had become standard in the late
thirteenth century, according to which the intellect knows itself in the same way
in which it knows other things, and that it does so on the basis of its knowledge
of those other things. Tis view was already at variance with the Augustinian
principle stating that the mens cannot be regarded as the subject of its own acts.
Moreover, according to it, man was assumed to arrive at an understanding of his
own mind (mens) and of the nature of his own ability to think (natura potentiae
intellectivae) on the basis of his acts (per actus eius) and the objects of those acts
(per cognitionem objectorum). Such a knowledge was reputed to be merely conjec-
tural: it was supposed to be the product of a process of reasoning which, taking
objects as its starting point, would work back to acts by postulating (a) that these
acts subsist (manant) only because of a power that supplies their substrate (ab
aliqua potentia et substantia), (b) that they therefore exist in a subject (sunt in
aliqui subjecto), (c) which would allow us to conclude that we have a faculty that
ensures the subsistence of those acts (Unde et auctores huius positionis dicunt
quod nos devenimus in cognitionem nostre mentis et nostre potentie intellective
D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 88: Every mental
phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional
(or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously,
reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning
a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within
itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in
judgment something is a rmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.
In a footnote that Brentano added to the second edition, he argues that Aristotle himself spoke of
this psychical indwelling (psychische Einwohnung), that St. Augustine in his doctrine of the Verbum
mentis and of its inner origin touches upon the same fact, and that, in the same manner, St. Tomas
Aquinas teaches that the object which is thought is intentionally in the thinking subject, the object
which is loved in the person who loves, the object which is desired in the person desiring (88).
79
See S. Piron, Petrus Johannis Olivi. Impugnatio quorundam articulorum Arnaldi Galliardi,
articulus 19, Oliviana (http://oliviana.revues.org/document52.html), consulted March 28, 2008.
Te Impugnatio quorundam articulorum Arnaldi Galliardi was written in 1282, as an answer to
Arnaud Gaillards question An scientia evacuetur in patria, which was based on Aquinass claim that
modus scientie huius vite est quod at mediante fantasmate et cum successione et tempore. Te
peripatetic doctrine rebuked by Peter is thus linked to Tomism. On this text, see O. Boulnois,
tre et reprsentation. Une gnalogie de la mtaphysique moderne lpoque de Duns Scot (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 151221.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :o;
per actus eius, et in cognitionem actuum per cognitionem obiectorum). Arguing
against Augustine, the Peripatetics posited the existence of a potentia subjectiva
in order to demonstrate the existence of a subject of knowledge acts that are
oriented toward objects. According to Olivi, this conjecture, which certainly
would look to moderns like a decisive step toward subjectivity, lacked what the
Augustinian model was meant to supply: self-certainty, certitudo infallibilis sui
esse (Coniicimus enim ratiocinando quod actus illi quibus obiecta cognoscimus
manant ab aliqua potentia et substantia et sunt in aliquo subiecto, et sic per
hunc modum deprehendimus nos habere aliquam potentiam a qua manant).
Indeed, it actually says nothing about the ego or the I; it makes it possible to
posit that my acts have a subject, but it does not establish that I am that subject.
In Nietzschean terms, it posits that it is thinking, without supplying evidence
that I am the one who does the thinking. Nothing in the peripatetic argument
allows me to be certain that I am, that I am alive, and that I am thinking; on
the contrary, it merely posits that my acts subsist thanks to a certain power and
that they are inherent in a certain subject.
If we carefully examine this way of thinking, we will see not only that it
cannot be beyond doubt, but also that no one can use it to arrive at any
certainty that he is what he is, that he is living, and that he is thinking,
even though he can therefore be certain that these acts subsist by virtue
of a certain power and that they reside in a certain subject.
80
In order to arrive at the self-certainty of the moderns, one would have to take
one more step: assume that I can directly intuit that I myself am the subject of
my acts. One should, in a word, go back to Augustines perichoretic concep-
tion of the soul and adapt the peripatetic language of subjecthood to it. Tis
twofold maneuver would of course bring about a forced synthesis and betray
both parties, the resulting thesis being, at bottom, neither Augustinian nor Ar-
istotelian. But that would precisely mark the beginnings of subjectivity, or at
least one of the preconditions for those beginnings. I think that this is the step
taken by Peter Olivi when he expressly makes the perception of my acts depend
upon my prior perception of myself as subject of those acts. Tis leads him to
formulate the theorem that in the perception of my acts, the perception of the
subject itself [that is to say, of me as the suppositum of my own acts] comes rst
according to the natural order of things (Nullus enim est certus scientialiter
de aliquo nisi sciat se scire illud, hoc est nisi sciat quod ipse est ille quod hoc
80
Impugnatio quorundam articulorum, art. 19, fol. 47ra: Si quis autem bene inspexerit
istum modum, reperiet quod non solum potest in eo contingere aliqua dubietas, sed etiam quod
nunquam per hanc viam possumus esse certi nos esse et nos vivere et intelligere. Licet enim certi
simus quod illi actus manant ab aliqua potentia et sunt in aliquo subiecto, unde per hoc sciemus
quod illud subiectum sumus nos et quod illa potentia est nostra?
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :o8
scit. Et hec certitudo de supposito currit universaliter in omni apprehensione
actuum nostrorum. Nunquam enim apprehendo actus meos, actus scilicet vi-
dendi et loquendi et sic de aliis, nisi per hoc quod apprehendo me videre, audire,
cogitare et sic de aliis). In my view, expressions such as certituo qua sumus certi
de supposito omnis actus scientialis, or in hac apprehensione videtur naturali ordine
praerire apprehensio ipsius suppositi signal the encounter between certainty and
subjecthood, or, to use a better (Scotistic and Leibnizian) term, suppositality,
which gives rise to the modern notions of subjectivity and subjective certainty.
Tey also introduce one last basic feature: acts are compared in every respect to
attributes or predicates of the subject-ego.
In a way that I nd amazing Olivi answers the key question raised by Peter
Strawson in Individuals: Why are ones states of consciousness ascribed to any-
thing at all? His answer is among the clearest formulations of mental attributivism
ever devised. Te main thesis is: Our acts are perceived by us only as predicates
or attributes (actus nostris non apprehenduntur a nobis nisi tamquam praedicata
vel attributa). According to Olivi, the subject is perceived rst because accord-
ing to the natural order of things, the subject is perceived before the predicate
is attributed to it as such (Et certe naturali ordine prius apprehenditur subiectum
quam predicatum ei attributum in quantum tale)a psycholinguistic fact. With
this claim, the subjectivation of the mind is now complete in every dimension,
including the assumption of the linguistic or logical form of predication, which
is backed up by the introduction of the word ego into the analysis of linguistic
communication. As a matter of fact, although the term is unnecessary in Latin,
Olivi stresses that, when we wish to signal the existence within us of some mental
state, we put the subject rst by saying I think that or I see that (quando
volumus hoc aliis annunciare praemittimus ipsum suppositum dicentes: ego hoc cogito,
vel ego hoc video). We may safely describe this as a rst medieval theorization
of subjectivity. We are authorized to do so, because Peter Olivis theory clearly
merges substantialism and mental attributivism. Indeed, it entails the idea of
immediate self-intuition, intuition of I or me as a substance, which is at the
same time subject and principle (subjectum et principium), as well as the idea
of an experiential and almost tactile sensation (sensus experimentalis et quasi
tactualis) in the inner sense that I am a permanent subject. According to Olivi,
we can further intuit, thanks to the same inner sense, that my acts are so many
attributes that are distinct from my substance, without being mere accidents
of what I am when I am acting. Tey subsist thanks to this inner sense that is
mine and/or me, and exist within me in a becoming mode:
When we apprehend our acts through inner sensation, and make so to
say an experiential distinction between the substance whence they derive
their subsistence and in which they exist, and the senses or sensations
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :o,
themselves, this means that we perceive through [inner] sense that those
acts subsist by virtue of that substance and depend on that substance,
and that it does not depend on them, and that this substance is some-
thing stable that subsists in itself, whilst its acts are in a permanent state
of becoming.
81
From a modern point of view, Olivis subject satises all the requirements set
forth in ego-based psychology. It meets the requirement of a doer for every deed.
Olivis theory states that if there is thinking, there must be something that thinks.
But it also establishes that I am this something. Tere is a grammatical move, a
logical move, and a theological move.
Te most outstanding feature of Olivis criticism of the peripatetic model
of indirect, conjectural, inferential knowledge of the I or the ego consists in
equating the Aristotelian ontological subiectum with the so-called suppositum
as the immediate subject of self-certainty. Of course, suppositum is a key word
in medieval grammar, referring both to the term that is the logical subject in a
sentence or a phrase, suppositum locutionis, and to that about which one speaks,
the subject matter of discourse, that which is subjected to the locutio: suppositum
locutioni. Moreover, it is clear that subiectum and suppositum, praedicatum and
appositum correspond to the terms subject and predicate in modern logic and
grammar. But suppositum, the Latin rendering of the Greek hypostasis, is also a key
word in Trinitarian theology: hypostasis, subsistentia, persona, and suppositum are
synonyms.
82
In order to grasp the full import of this equationsubiectum equals
suppositum equals personfor the genealogy of subjectivity a last step is necessary:
an archaeological inquiry into the principle which has been labeled a mere gram-
matical custom by Nietzsche. Professor Rosemanns study of the principle omne
agens agit sibi simile, every agent causes something similar to itself, is a paragon
of such an approach.
83
Te same kind of study is required for the subject, in order
81
Ibid., fol. 50ra: Quando etiam nos apprehendimus nostros actus quoddam interno
sensu et quasi experimentaliter distinguimus inter substantiam a qua manant et in qua exis-
tunt et inter ipsos actus; unde et sensibiliter percipimus quod ipsi manant et dependent ab ea,
non ipsa ab eis et quod ipsa est quoddam xum et in se manens, ipsi vero actus in quodam
continuo eri.
82
Contrary to M. McCord Adams I am not convinced that in writing his short treatises on
Trinity and Incarnation, Boethius drew easily and readily on Aristotelian conceptualities (M. McCord
Adams, Aristotelian Substance and Supposits. I. Whats Metaphysically Special about Supposits?
Some Medieval Variations on Aristotelian Substance, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79:1
[2005]: 1552, at 22). Boethius denition of person as an individual substance or subsistence
of a rational nature is certainly not Aristotelian. Te question remains whether medieval denitions
of the person as an intellectual supposit (Adams, 38) are rooted in the Categories scheme (ibid.,
39) or already presuppose the merging of the two conicting models of substantiality.
83
See P. W. Rosemann, Omne Agens Agit Sibi Simile: A Repetition of Scholastic Metaphysics
(Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1996).
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :1o
to trace the historical roots of the principles used by modern philosophers who
have made our common understanding of the subject possible.
VIII.
Tere are many principles that enshrine Nietzsches grammatical custom.
84

One is of particular relevance here. Leibniz calls it the widely received axiom
that actions belong to subjects.
85
It has several forms in Aquinas:
(1) Actiones sunt suppositorum et individuorum (ST III, qu. 7, art. 13, resp.)
(2) Actiones sunt suppositorum singularium (In III Sent., dist. 18, qu. 1, art.
1, arg. 2 and ad 2m)
(3) Actiones sunt singularium (De unione Verbi incarnati, art. 1, arg. 16)
(4) Actus sunt suppositorum (ST I, qu. 39, art. 5, ad 1m; I, qu. 40, art. 1, ad 3m)
(5) Actus sunt suppositorum et singularium (ST III, qu. 20, art. 1, ad 2m)
(6) Actus sunt singularium (In III Sent., dist. 1, qu. 1, art. 2, ad 6m; Contra
gentiles II, cap. 72, 3; ST I, qu. 57, art. 2, resp.; De veritate, qu. 16,
art. 2, arg. 2; Sententia libri Metaphysicae, V, lect. 3, 18)
(7) Actus sunt individuorum (In II Sent., dist. 32, qu. 1, art. 2, resp.; In IV
Sent., dist. 4, qu. 2, art. 1, qc. 3, ad 2m).
Te principle plays a pivotal role in the denition of person. As a matter of fact,
if the equivalence of hypostasis, suppositum, and individua substantia (a Tomistic
commonplace) is granted, the principle that actions belong to subjects brings
about everything required for a concept of person or personality. It makes pos-
sible the interpretation of man as subiectum which Heidegger considered to be
the exclusive trademark of Cartesianism. Such a concept includes three main
elements: subsistence, individuality, and rationality.
86
Tey are combined by
Tomas in the following way: every substance is a suppositum, every suppositum
is an individual (an individual substance), but it is not the case that every indi-
vidual (individual substance) which is a suppositum is a person: only the supposita
having dominion over their own actions, which can act of themselves (that is,
rational individuals) are persons. Te core of the argument is the principle ac-
84
For example: Illud quo primo aliquid operatur est forma operantis, Eius est potentia sicut
subiecti, cuius est operatio, Cuius est potentia, eius est actio, accidens non excedit subiectum in
quo est, denominationes sunt suppositorum, omne accidens denominat subiectum, accidens
denominat proprium subiectum, subiectum denominatur a propria actione.
85
G. W. Leibniz, Annotated Excerpts from Cordemoys Treatise (A VI, iv, 1799), in Te
Labyrinth of the Continuum. Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672 to 1686, ed. and trans. R. T.
W. Arthur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 277.
86
See Tomas Aquinas, Super II Sent., dist. 3, qu. 1, art. 2.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :11
tions belong to singulars. Nothing can act or be acted upon but a singular. Among
the singulars, only those quae habent dominium sui actus, et non solum aguntur,
sicut alia, sed per se agunt deserve a special name. Tat is the reason why human
beings are called persons. Tere can be no persons but subjects which can act of
themselves, that is to say, which can both be considered and consider themselves
as subjects-agents of their own actions.
87
What is the subject in man? It is certainly not his own soul. Soul is not
even the subject of mans thought. One may of course say in a loose sense that
the soul understands, as the eye sees; but it is more correct to say that man
understands through the soulthe body being necessary for the action of
the intellect, not as its origin of action, but on the part of the object; for the
phantasm is to the intellect what color is to sight.
88
To this extent, mens actions,
including thought, must be ascribed to persons, not to their souls. Man is not
his soul. Tus Aquinass doctrine is immune to the criticism expressed by the
French Cartesian Pierre-Sylvain Rgis:
Cest une maxime communment reue parmy les philosophes que les
Actions procdent des suppots: cependant, quand il sagit des actions de
lhomme, au lieu de les attribuer la personne, la plupart les attribuent
lme qui nen est quune partie; ce qui est la source dun grand nombre
de di cults, qui procdent visiblement de ce quon na quune notion
obscure et confuse de ce quon appelle personne dans lhomme.
89
One last point. (1) Te various versions of the principle mentioned by Aquinas
are generally ascribed by him as well as by the schoolmen to Aristotle. (2) Yet the
actiones sunt suppositorum version has a theological use and purpose that could
hardly be regarded as Aristotelian. Let us take a closer look at the theological
import of the principle that actions belong to subjects. Te principle often serves
as a justication of monothelism, the doctrine maintaining that, although there
87
See Tomas Aquinas, ST I, qu. 29, art. 1. See also In I Sent., dist. 25, qu. 1, art. 1; dist.
23, qu. 1, art. 1; In II Sent., dist. 3, qu. 1, art. 2, ad 4m; Contra gentiles, Book III, chaps. 128 and
130; IV, chaps. 26 and 52; De potentia, 9, 2 and 8, 4, ad 5m.
88
See Tomas Aquinas, ST I, qu. 75 art. 2, ad 3m. Latin Averroists made the same claim.
See Siger of Brabant, De anima intellectiva, ed. B. Bazn, in Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in ter-
tium De anima, De anima intellectiva, De aeternitate mundi (Louvain: Publications universitaires;
Paris: BatriceNauwelaerts, 1972), 70112, at 845: cum intellectus dependeat ex corpore quia
dependet ex phantasmate in intelligendo, non dependet ex eo sicut ex subiecto in quo sit intelligere,
sed sicut ex obiecto, cum phantasmata sint intellectui sicut sensibilia sensui; M. Giele, Trois com-
mentaires anonymes sur le Trait de lme dAristote (Louvain: Publications universitaires; Paris:
Batrice-Nauwelaerts, 1971), 75: [intelligere] eget . . . materiali corpore ut obiecto, non ut subiecto
suo; et pro tanto est dicere hominem intelligere. Of course, the claim has a dierent import in a
doctrine in which the intellect is only virtually part of the soul.
89
P.-S. Rgis, Lusage de la raison et de la foy (Paris: J. Cusson, 1704), 17.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :1:
were two natures in Christ, there was but one will, namely, the divine. I do not
want to consider here either the long and di cult history of monothelism, or
Aquinass specic account of the Catholic doctrine of the two wills in Christ.
90

I only want to substantiate my claim.
An argument introduced in In III Sent., dist. 18, qu. 1, art. 1, arg. 2, il-
lustrates my two points:
Praeterea, actiones, ut dicit philosophus, suppositorum singularium sunt.
Sed in Christo est tantum unum suppositum. Ergo tantum una actio.
It should be considered in conjunction with another principle (In III Sent., dist.
18, qu. 1, art. 1, arg. 3):
Praeterea, cujus est esse, ejus est agere. Sed in Christo propter unitatem
hypostasis est tantum unum esse. Ergo tantum una actio.
Te same principle is mentioned in the Disputed Question concerning the Union
of the Word Incarnate (De unione Verbi, art. 5, arg. 5):
Praeterea, suppositorum est agere. In Christo autem non est aliud supposi-
tum nisi suppositum aeternum, de quo non potest dici quod agat virtute
naturae humanae; quia sic acciperet aliquid ab humana natura, et haberet
esse et actualitatem per humanam naturam. Quia unumquodque agit in
90
A standardanti-Lockeanview is summed up in Charles Coppens, S.J., A Brief Text-Book
of Logic and Mental Philosophy (New York: Schwartz, Kirwin, & Fauss, 1891), Mental Philosophy,
Book I, chap. 3, art. 1: 55. A complete substance is called a supposit; a supposit endowed with
intellect is a person. As a human soul is not a complete substance, it is not a person. . . . Since
accidents exist in their substance, actions, which are accidents, belong to their supposit; the
supposit it is which acts, actiones sunt suppositorum; the parts and powers of the supposit are not
so properly said to act as to be the instruments by which the supposit acts. Tus we say A man
walks, not His feet walk; I am thinking, rather than My mind is thinking; We see with our
eyes, feel with our hands, etc. 56. Since actions properly belong to the person, and the person
who assumed human nature in the mystery of the Redemption is the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity, all the acts which He performed in His assumed human nature are really the acts of a
Divine person, of God; they are Divine, and therefore of innite merit. In becoming man He
took upon Himself a complete individual human nature, i.e., a soul and a body like ours, but
not a human personality; He is not a human person, for person is the ultimate substratum of an
intellectual nature. If, therefore, the ultimate substratum or person in Christ were human, then
we could not say with truth what all Christians profess who recite the Apostles Creed, viz., that
the only Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary, suered, . . . was crucied; died, and was
buried, etc., nor could St. John have written in his Gospel, Te Word was made esh and dwelt
amongst us. 57. Personal identity consists in the permanence of the intellectual supposit, not
in the continuity of his consciousness; for even when we are totally unconscious we are still the
same individual persons. Mankind has never believed that a man on losing consciousness ceases
to be a person or becomes another person. On this point Locke, like many other philosophers,
has written much that common sense does not support.
quantum est ens actu. Ergo nulla actio est in Christo nisi quae t virtute
divinae naturae. Non sunt ergo duae actiones in Christo secundum duas
naturas, scilicet divinam et humanam.
Tere, it is linked to another philosophical Aristotelian principle, actions belong
to the composite (art. 5, arg. 7):
Praeterea, operationes sunt coniuncti; unde philosophus dicit in I de anima,
quod qui dixerit animam intelligere, simile est ac si dixerit eam texere vel
aedicare.
91
Sed Christi est una persona, in qua coniuncta est humanitas
divinitati. Ergo in Christo est una tantum operatio.
Te principle is also put forward to deal with the question whether the union
of the Word incarnate was brought about in the person or in the nature (art.
1, arg. 16):
Praeterea, actio attribuitur supposito vel personae: quia actiones singularium
sunt, secundum Philosophum. Sed in Christo sunt duae actiones, ut
Damascenus probat in libro iii. Ergo sunt ibi duae personae. Non ergo
facta est unio in persona.
I will not consider Aquinass response to the arguments, but insist on the fact
that, as the De de catholica nicely puts it: authority has a wax nose that can be
molded into dierent meanings.
92
My point is the following: the axiom actio-
nes sunt suppositorum cannot be found in Aristotle. It is an adage formulated in
the Middle Ages on the basis of the only genuine Aristotelian axiom, stated in
Metaphysics, Book I, chap. 1 (981a1617):
actions and generations are all concerned with the individual (a d prxeij
ka a genseij psai per t kaq kastn esin).
It is explained and justied there by the fact that the physician does not cure
man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or some other called
by some such individual name, who happens to be a man (981a1820: o
gr nqrwpon gizei atrewn ll kat sumbebhkj, ll Kallan
Swkrthn tn llwn tin tn otw legomnwn sumbbhken nqrvpJ
91
See Aristotle, De anima, I, 4, 408b11., trans. M. Durrant, in Aristotles De Anima in
Focus, ed. M. Durrant (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 19: Yet, even then, to speak
of the soul as angry is as if one should say that the soul weaves or builds. Doubtless it would be
better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but that the man does so with the soul:
and this, too, not in the sense that the movement occurs in the soul, but in the sense that the
movement sometimes reaches to, sometimes starts from the soul.
92
R. Dragonetti, Le mirage des sources. Lart du faux dans le roman mdival (Paris: Seuil,
1987), 458, quoting Alain de Lille, De de catholica, 1.30.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :1
enai). Te Translatio Iacobi reads at 981a1617: actus autem, et generationes
omnes circa unumquodque sunt;
93
the Translatio media: actus autem et omnes
generationes circa singulare sunt.
94
Te obvious meaning of the principle (which
is also mentioned in Politics, 1267b231269a29, esp. for what is written must
be universal [in nature], whereas actions are concerned with individuals) is
that actions and generations bear on individuals, or that what results from an
action or a generation can only be an individual. In the statement that every
action is of an individual, of must be read as an objective genitive, meaning
about, peri, circa. As Charles Bennett puts it: an objective genitive denotes
the object of an action or feeling as in metus deorum, the fear of the gods, or
amor libertatis, love of liberty.
95
Te medieval adage, however, states just the opposite. Actiones sunt sup-
positorum means actions are of individuals in the sense of subjective genitive,
which denotes the person who makes or produces something or who has a
feeling, as in dicta Platonis, the utterances of Plato, or timores liberorum, the
fears of the children.
96
Surez was perfectly aware of this dierence:
Ad Aristotelem, dicendum est illum nunquam tractasse hanc quaestio-
nem quam nos modo disputamus; nam, si alicubi, maxime in dicto loco
VII Metaph., c. 6, vel 11; ibi autem non tractat hanc quaestionem, ut
statim explicabo. Non habuit autem Aristoteles, ut ergo opinor, princi-
pium aliquod ad distinguendum suppositum a natura singulari; nec nos
haberemus illud, nisi, mysteriis dei edocti, occasionem habuissemus
investigandi illud, et ideo Aristoteles ubique eodem modo loquitur de
individua substantia, quidditate ac natura, et de supposito. Nam quae
ex illo adduci solent, actiones esse suppositorum, non naturarum, et quod
humanitas non net aut ambulat, sed homo; aut quod alia substantia est
quidditas, alia hypostasis; haec (inquam) et similia non reperiuntur apud
Aristotelem his modis, sed I Metaph., c. 1, dixit actiones versari circa
singularia, quod exponit quia medicus non curat hominem nisi per ac-
cidens, per se autem Calliam aut Socratem.
97
93
Aristoteles Latinus, vol. XXV.11a: Metaphysica, lib. IIV.4. Translatio Iacobi sive Vetustis-
sima cum Scholiis et Translatio Composita sive Vetus, ed. G. Vuillemin-Diem (Brussels and Paris:
Descle De Brouwer, 1970), p. 6, ll. 910.
94
Aristoteles Latinus, vol. XXV.2: Metaphysica, lib. IX, XIIXIV. Translatio Anonyma sive
Media, ed. G. Vuillemin-Diem (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), p. 8, ll. 67.
95
C. Bennett, New Latin Grammar, 200 (available online at http://www. thelatinlibrary
.com/bennett.html; accessed on March 28, 2008).
96
Ibid., 199.
97
F. Surez, Disputatio XXXIV, sectio III, 18: An distinctio suppositi a natura at per accidentia
vel principia individuantia (available online at http://www.telefonica.net/web2/salcascu/d34.htm;
accessed on March 28, 2008).
How could such an incredible change from objective to subjective genitive oc-
cur? My guess is that the passage in Metaphysics, Book I, was conated with the
quotation from De anima, I, 4, 408b11, cited in Aquinas, De unione Verbi, art.
5 arg. 7. Surez gives us a clue when he explains that, just as Aristotle says that
the physician does not cure man, a universal, but Callias, a singular, so he does
not refer to humanity, a universal, but to the soul, an individual, when he denies
the power of weaving webs or building houses:
Et I de Anima, text. 64, non de humanitate, sed de anima dicit quod
non net aut ambulat.
98
Tis is not about molding a wax nose. Tis is rhinoplasty. Vsquez rejected
the Aristotelian paternity of the principle. John Poinsot mentions it in his Phi-
losophia naturalis:
Ex dictis colliges veritatem illius axiomatis apud philosophos communis:
Actiones sunt suppositorum, quod negat P. Vasquez a. p. 1. tom. disp.
21 cap. 3, eo quod Philosophus 1. Metaph. cap. 1 solum dixit, quod
actiones sunt singularium, id est non versantur circa universalia, sed
circa singularia.
99
So does Juan de Lugo in his Disputationes scholasticae de Incarnatione dominica:
P. Vazquez in praesenti cap. 3 late impugnat hanc communem ratio-
nem, negatque illud commune axioma, Actiones sunt suppositorum esse
Aristotelis.
100
As for Surez, he further explains that whatever Aristotle actually said or might
have said, it is irrelevant, since he knew nothing of the theological distinction
between nature and hypostasis, which pertains to faith:
Denique, V Metaph., c. 8, dividit substantiam prout signicat quiddita-
tem, cuius ratio est denitio, vel prout signicat substantialia supposita
seu individua; inter signicationem autem individuae naturae vel suppositi
nunquam distinxit. Quidquid vero ipse in hoc senserit, non refert, quia
mysteria dei, ex quibus haec disputatio maxime pendet, ignoravit.
101
98
Ibid.
99
J. Poinsot, Philosophia naturalis, I
a
Pars, qu. 7, art. 2 (Rome: Marietti, 19311965), vol. I, 123.
100
Juan de Lugo, Disputationes scholasticae de Incarnatione dominica (De meritis praecedentibus
mysterium Incarnationis), sectio 1, 2 (Lyons, 1633), 139b: Utrum humanitas Christi mereri
potuerit unionem ad Verbum.
101
F. Surez, Disputatio XXXIV, sectio III, 18: An distinctio suppositi a natura at per accidentia
vel principia individuantia (available online at http://www.telefonica.net/web2/salcascu/d34.htm;
accessed on March 28, 2008).
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :1o
Genuine or not, the Aristotelian axiom became what Leibniz called the widely
received axiom that actions belong to subjects, and played a conclusive role in
the emergence of the modern subject. How? Why? When?
IX.
Te modern subject emerged through the combination of two conicting
models of subjecticity (Subiectitt) that had been steadily proposed, opposed, and
eventually combined in late scholasticism: the Aristotelian (peripatetic) concep-
tion of subjecthood, based on the hypokeimenon-accidents relationship; and the
Augustinian perichoretic conception, based on the ousia-hypostases relationship,
the mutual indwelling of the three hypostases, their mutual immanence, and the
hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ. Heideggers Subiectitt is histori-
cally valuable only if it is interpreted as involving the two competing components
inherited from late ancient philosophy and theologyhypokeimenon and hypos-
tasisthus enabling us to grasp the modern subject as a bridging entity. It is
a compromise notion, combining the two conceptual schemes of inherence and
attribution. It determines what it takes to be a subject in terms of subjecthood, but
conceives what it takes for an I or an ego to be an agent of thought and volition in
terms of the idea of the person as a unied center of choice and action, that is to
say, as characterized by intentionality and spontateinity. Descartes did not bring
about a comprehensive concept unifying subjecthood, personality, identity, egoity,
agency, and causality under the single word subject. Such a concept had been
delineated in the Middle Ages. My guess is that it was formulated in full-edged
form by Bayles most talented opponent: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.
Leibnizs discussion of Pierre Bayles philosophical anthropology has received
little attention. Yet it is an important event in the history of modern subjectivity.
Bayles two major claims were (1) that human beings are not the e cient cause
of either their thoughts or their wills or their actions (nous ne sommes la cause
e ciente ni de nos penses ni de nos volitions ni de nos actions), and (2) that
man is only a passive subject (lhomme nest quun sujet passif ).
102
Leibniz
maintained just the opposite. In order to do so, he made extensive use of the
theological notion of suppositum borrowed from Aquinas and the schoolmen:
suppositum intelligens, suppositum agens. He also elevated the principle actions
belong to the subjects (supposita) to a prominent, unexpected rank.
Jappelle Substance un tant subsistant par soi. Un tant subsistant
par soi, de laccord unanime des Scolastiques, est la mme chose quun
102
G. W. Leibniz, Essais de thodice, III, 300, in Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W.
Leibniz, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 18751890), vol. VI, 2956, and see de Libera,
Naissance du sujet, 122.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :1;
Suppt. Car le Suppt est individu substantiel (tout comme la Personne
est individu substantiel raisonnable), ou une Substance individuelle-
ment. Or lcole a rme communment que le propre du Suppt est
dtre lui-mme dnomm par laction; do la Rgle: les actions sont
actions des Suppts. Do il est manifeste que Suppt, Substance, tant
subsistant par soi, qui sont la mme chose, sont correctement dnis,
au sens mme des Scolastiques: ce qui a en soi un principe daction, car
autrement il nagira pas mais sera linstrument de lagent.
103
A suppositum is a subject and an agent, an individual substance, and a person
persisting as the same over time. A suppositum is the individual subject resulting
from the metaphysical union of a soul and a body according to the doctrine of
pre-established harmony:
Car quoyque je ne tienne point, que lame change les loix du corps, ny
que le corps change les loix de lame, et que jaye introduit lHarmonie
pretablie pour eviter ce derangement, je ne laisse pas dadmettre une
vraye union entre lame et le corps, qui en fait un suppt. Cette union va au
metaphysique, au lieu quune union dinuence iroit au physique.
104
In contemporary terms, Leibnizs suppositum resembles Strawsons person con-
ceived as the unique subject of both M-predicates and P-predicates.
105
But this
is by far not the whole picture. As a substantial individual, as a subject that is a
person, the suppositum owns a whole set of predicates or attributes, which con-
stitutes its complete notion in Gods thought, mind, or foreknowledge. Te
Leibnizian suppositum is some one who has a biographical denition.
106
I am not
103
G. W. Leibniz, Smtliche Schriften und Briefe (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1962),
vol. VI/1, 511. On this text see M. Fichant, Actiones sunt suppositorum. Lontologie leibnizienne
de laction, Philosophie 53 (1997): 13548.
104
Leibniz, Essais de Todice I, 55 (vol. VI, 81); also see 59 (vol. VI, 135): Plusieurs
modernes ont reconnu quil ny a aucune communication physique entre lame et le corps, quoyque
la communication metaphysique subsiste tousjours, qui fait, que lame et le corps composent un mme
suppt, ou ce quon appelle une personne.
105
See Strawson, Individuals, 102: Te concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity,
such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness [= P-predicates] and predicates ascrib-
ing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation & co [= M-predicates] are equally applicable to
a single individual of that single type.
106
Tus, although he still speaks the language of the doctrines of medieval scholasticism,
Leibnizs denition meets the ultimate requirement for selfsameness posited against Descartes by
E. F. Kaelin in Heideggers Being and Time: A Reading for Readers (Tallahassee: University Press
of Florida, 1988), 91: as that which was thought to underlie the contingent experiences of the
human animal, the soul-substance was considered as subjacent to those experiences and as con-
stituting the basis for our being subjects. But a subject is not necessarily a self. Tat notion came
from another property of substancesthat of maintaining selfsameness (identity through change),
however great the changes might be. But the selfsameness of the thinking substance was likewise
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ :18
a thinking thing outtted with the quality of thinking. I am not even the one
thinking that I am I. I am an I, this I, a singular I: a subject including a set of
action-attributes that make him/her an individual episode in the (best possible)
world story. Leibnizs new conception of the subject does not merely consist
in equating suppositum, substance, and individually subsisting being. It is also
rmly grounded in a set of agency principles. One is the principle stating that
actions belong to the suppositum. Another is the principle maintaining that
subjects are denominated by their actions, acts or activities: subiectum denomi-
natur a propria actione. Tis is Leibnizs praxeological answer to the Hobbesian
ontological principle according to which an essence is that accident for which
we give the thingthe subjectits name, the scholastic Accidens denominat
proprium subiectum. Te third principle states what one could call metaphysical
attributivism: Praedicatum inest subiecto.
X.
Let us conclude. Up to a certain point, Heidegger did acknowledge Leibnizs
contribution to the emergence of the modern subject. Occasionally, still following
Schellings lead, he invites the reader to ponder the fact that the metaphysics of
subjectivity has its decisive beginning in the metaphysics of Leibniz. For Leibniz,
[e]very being is subiectum, a monad.
107
Trough Leibniz all being becomes
subjectivalthat is, in itself eager to represent, and thus eective.
108
Eager to
represent means that according to Leibniz all being is dened by perception
and appetites, by the representing urge which presses for the placing-before, the
representation, of the whole of beings, presses for their being rst of all and only
in such repraesentatio and as such repraesentatio.
109
Eective points to Aristotles
distinction between dynamis and energeia. Te essence of actuality is eectiveness
(vis); the essence of objectivity as representedness is visuality (idea). Leibniz brings
the interpretation of subiectum (substantia as monas) in the sense of the vis primitiva
a postulate of the cogito argument. Personal histories, which are likewise selves, oer little of the
necessary properties established in the Cartesian deduction because, tied to worldly events, their
only necessity is to be contingent.
107
Heidegger, Nihilism, 17980: Being means objectivity and at the same time actuality;
one stands for the other, and both belong together. Te essence of actuality is eectiveness (vis);
the essence of objectivity as representedness is visuality (idea). Leibniz brings the interpretation
of subiectum (substantia as monas) in the sense of the vis primitiva activa (eectiveness) into
contrapuntal relation with the medieval dierentiation of potentia and actus, in such a way of
course that vis is neither potentia nor actus, but is in an original way both at onceas the unity
of perceptio and appetitus. Te dierentiation of potentia and actus points back to Aristotles dis-
tinction between dynamis and energeia. Furthermore, Leibniz himself often explicitly indicates
the connection between the vis primitiva activa and the entelechy of Aristotle.
108
Ibid., 181.
109
Ibid., 65.
Wuix Dio rui Mooiix Sun;icr Exiici: :1,
activa (eectiveness) into contrapuntal relation with the medieval dierentiation of
potentia and actus, in such a way of course that vis is neither potentia nor actus, but
is in an original way both at onceas the unity of perceptio and appetites.
110
Contrary to Armstrong, whose interpretation reduces Leibnizianism to a
somewhat harsh sort of mentalism, treating all material objects as colonies of
rudimentary souls and the whole material world as really mental or spiritual
in nature,
111
Heideggers view singles out the new relation established by Leibniz
between representedness and eectiveness: Since Leibniz, beings appear to think-
ing in such a way that each and every ens, qua ens, is a res cogitans and in that sense
a subject.
112
But at the same time, the essence of energeia is transformed in
the direction of modern subjectivity, to the extent that eectiveness (actuality)
is conceived as knowing will (or willful knowing); that is to say, as reason and
spirit. Although he follows the Schellingian scheme linking Leibniz to Ger-
man Idealism, Heidegger has his own Ariadnes thread: the will to power. Tus,
it is in trying to determine the stages in a history of being attempting to think
power in its essence, that he reshapes the modern history of subjecticity, along
the sequence leading from Leibniz up to Nietzsche, and thence to the letting
loose of beings and devastation: Being as actuality. Actuality as Subjecticity.
Subjecticity as will to power. Will to power as being. Being as power. Power as
machination. Machination as letting beings loose on themselves.
113
In doing
so, after so many contrasting, if not contradictory, assessments of the role of the
two alleged fathers of modern metaphysics, Heidegger eventually identies two
stages in the emergence of the modern subject: the Cartesian one (Subjectivitt
a) and the Leibnizian-idealist one (Subjectivitt b).
perceptum Subjectivitt a
(Vor-gestelltheit, representedness)
obiectum
(Gegenstndlichkeit, objectivity)
Wirklichkeit Subjectivitt b
(nrgeiavis primitiva activa, Leibniz)
Wille und Vernunft (deutscher Idealismus)
114

110
Ibid., 180.
111
112
Heidegger, Hegels Concept of Experience, 32.
113
Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, ed. P. Trawny, Gesamtausgabe 69 (Frankfurt am
Main: Klostermann, 1998), 26, 26.
114
Ibid., 58, 723. Te sequence Seyn, fsij, da, oja, nrgeia, actus (Wirklichkeit)
precedes Subjectivity a. Subjectivity b is followed by Macht (Nietzsches Wille zur Macht), Ma-
chenschaft, Seinsverlassenheit.
Axiiicax Caruoiic Puiiosoiuicai Quairiii\ ::o
On my view, this reconstruction, how suggestive it might seem, has several major
shortcomings: Heidegger overlooks the quasi-absence of the subject in Descartes
(that is, the fact that Cartesian subjecticity should, at best, be characterized as
subjecticity without the subject); he does not acknowledge the distinction between
subject and hypostasis, thus leaving aside the conict between the Augustinian
and the Aristotelian patterns, which has shaped the various theories of mind,
soul, and person from late antiquity to the eighteenth century at least; he mis-
represents the role and the impact of the medieval contribution, and severely
underestimatesnot to say entirely ignoresthe import of theological debates
in the genealogy of the subject; last but not least, he pays no attention at all
to the Lockean and post-Lockean tradition, as well as to British early modern
philosophy and theology.
Like many French philosophers I have for decades been whirled between a
Cartesian Charybdis and a post-Nietzschean Scylla. Nevertheless, I hope to have
been able to give su cient proof that a history of subjectivity with the subject
cannot disregard authors like Olivi or Aquinas, and that here, as in many other
elds, one still has good reasons to penser au Moyen ge.
Universit de Genve
Geneva, Switzerland

Alain de Libera When Did The Modern Subject Emerge

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2008, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 82, No.

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