A atitude metodológica de base da antropologia moderna remonta a Descartes. Porque é que a questão do ser é negligenciada aqui e, portanto, em todas as análises subsequentes da consciência? Poder-se-ia pensar que, com uma proposição fundamental como “cogito, sum”, o ser do ego teria de ser interpretado. Mas o sentido do ser na afirmação “sum” não é de modo algum examinado ou questionado. A questão do ser é completamente negligenciada. Porquê? Porque esta questão não pode ser colocada na abordagem que Descartes faz da res cogitans. Este fato torna-se evidente pela forma como a “consciência” é abordada. Descartes está à procura de uma cognitio certa et evidens para fazer da filosofia uma ciência fundamental. Uma vez que o seu ideal para uma tal ciência é a matemática, Descartes quer um fundamentum absolutum et simplex para a prima philosophia. Este deve ser dado num intuitus (experientia) para estabelecer a base de toda a dedução posterior.
The basic methodological attitude of modern anthropology goes back to Descartes. Why is the question of being neglected here and thus in all subsequent analyses of consciousness? One would think that with a fundamental proposition like “cogito, sum,” the being of the ego would have to be interpreted. But the sense of being in the statement “sum” is in no way examined or questioned. The question of being is completely neglected. Why? Because this question cannot be raised in the approach that Descartes takes to the res cogitans. This becomes evident from the way “consciousness” comes to the fore. Descartes is in search of a cognitio certa et evidens to make philosophy into a basic science. Since his ideal for such a science is mathematics, Descartes wants a fundamentum absolutum et simplex for prima philosophia. This must be given in an intuitus (experientia) to lay the basis for all further deductio. All of Descartes’s efforts to found knowledge are guided by the concern for certainty and universal binding force. To know is to judge. But judgment itself is an act of will and will means propensio in bonum. The good of judgment is the true. The true is whatever meets the regula generalis of being apprehended in a clara et distincta perceptio. The true in such a perception is thus an ens certum et inconcussum. Along his path of doubt, Descartes comes to a point where there is nothing left which satisfies the predesignated rule. But he persists in his search for the predetermined certum and thus encounters the dubitare itself. And it implies me dubitare, which is aliquid, something: the res cogitans is: sum. A certum has been found. But it is not the doubting nor the being of the me, but rather “ ‘me dubitare’ est me ‘esse’ ” — “ ‘To doubt myself is ‘to be’ myself” — a proposition! The certum is to be found in propositional validity. This shows that Descartes does not want to disclose a particular being, the consciousness, with regard to its being and to define that categorially. He merely wants a foundation for certainty. The ego does not lie within the horizon of an ontological interrogation. On the contrary: the being of the res cogitans is understood in terms of medieval ontology. The sense of ens is explicitly or implicitly that of an ens creatum. Being here is producedness, having been (355) produced, which in turn defines the being of God as the Unproduced. But this is really the concept of being in Greek ontology; only now it has become uprooted and free-floating, and so “self-evident.”