I Think I'm Falling in Love

I think I'm finally falling in love. With myself. It's been a long time coming, to be sure. There've been many, many twists and turns along the way, but I'm clearly getting there. I'm falling in love with myself. I'm 32 years old - I mean, I'm neither too old nor too young to begin falling in love with myself. When do people actually begin to do this, to fall in love with themselves? And surely, how hard can it be (laughs)? How does it happen? Do you just wake up one morning and hey presto, you're in love with yourself? I mean, what could you have seen in that mirror: a handsome, smiley face? Is that enough? How many very handsome people do we know that have absolutely hated themselves? Plenty, I dare say. So it has to be more than that.

There's this guy we're reading in class this semester. His name is Rene Descartes. And the more I read from Descartes, the more I love him. This is not the first semester I've gotten to read from Descartes. I read him last fall, when I took Philosophy of Human Nature. I read him again in Epistemology, when we dealt with rationalism as an epistemological school; and now, we're meeting Descartes once more - splendid fellow. Like me, he had a difficult childhood and youth. He lost his mom very early, and his father married again, and so he was raised by his old grandpa and grandma, and a nanny whom he valued greatly. 

Because of his difficult background, he was kind of a loner. He loved to be by himself and think, and read. The early death of his mom, and his distance from his father and his nuclear family made him crave a sense of stability within himself. He knew he could not rely completely on the support of even those closest to him, for they like his mom could be taken from him. Indeed, later in his life his own daughter - his only child - was taken from him at merely five or so years old. In his search for certainty from within himself therefore Descartes crafted a philosophy that restrained him from believing anything in this material world; anything imaginative; anything emotional. He started from complete doubt, also known as Cartesianism. He began by doubting everything he hitherto believed to be true. 

He doubted all the things he thought he knew about the universe, about himself and about God. He doubted all the experiences humans ordinarily gather when they perceive themselves to be awake, seeing these experiences as irretrievable from the ones humans get when asleep. He doubted even the goodness of God. Doubt, doubt, doubt, until he reached one point he could not doubt, and that was the fact that he was doubting. And if he was doubting, he was thinking, and if he was thinking, then he was. And so, "Dubito, ergo cogito. Cogito, ergo sum." Which means: I am doubting, therefore I am thinking; I am thinking, therefore I am. And so he was. But who was he? He was that thing that was thinking. He was the thinking thing. And the thinking thing is the mind. So he was his mind. Not his body; not the composite of mind and body, neither. Just mind. Only mind. He was very simply a res cogitans (a thinking thing).

I admire Descartes' philosophy. Descartes is in many ways like Socrates, Plato, and Augustine. Even though they use different words, they pretty much are saying the same thing. All these great philosophers believe in the dualism of mind and body, as opposed to the hylomorphism of Aristotle and the materialism of Locke. They deny that knowledge can be truly derived from sense perception. They do not subscribe to the abstraction principle of Aristotle that claims that nothing exists in the intellect without first existing in the mind. They believe that the mind alone is the instrument of knowledge. For Plato, through the alignment of the mind with the extramental world of forms, individuals may come to know; for Augustine, the inner teacher gives us true knowledge, and through contemplation and focusing within, we connect with this inner teacher. Recall his famous declaration: "And who is so foolish as to send his son to school to learn what the teacher thinks? When teachers have professed all they claim to know, then students properly see if what the teacher says corresponds with the truth sourced from within." Descartes in turn believes in the existence of innate ideas. And so, whether it be Plato's extramental world of forms, Augustine's inner teacher or Descartes' innate ideas, human beings do not get truth from the perceptions of everyday living, but only from immaterial reality that can be tapped into solely by means of the application of the mind. 

Descrates died too early to say how the mind and the body coordinate with one another, but he left us a cool way of thinking about ourselves: as thinking things. And so when I say I'm falling in love with myself, I don't mean I'm falling with the image I see when I look in the mirror. I'm not ugly - don't get me wrong. But what I think I'm falling in love with even more than my body is my mind. I'm falling in love with my mind. And why? Why am I falling in love with my mind? Because I'm thinking and learning and developing everyday. I did have a rough life growing up. I lost my dad when I was five years old. I lost my mom when I was 11. I quarreled with my uncles for a long time, and was frustrated about very many things. Like Descartes, I needed some certainty on which to build my life, realizing early enough that there was no entity in this world that could not be taken from me; that there was no entity I could absolutely rely on. I did not want to depend on any physical or material reality that could easily disappoint me. I did not want my happiness to depend on a love for a human being that could die like my parents, or could fall out of love, like many people do; or could simply go far away and desert me. I did not want my happiness to depend on an institution, or state of living, or society, or anything in this world. I wanted my happiness to depend on the inner teacher; my innate truths; the world of forms that were unchanging and everlasting; indestructible; perfect. I wanted to love my mind.

And so I sought after practical knowledge (epistemology), and I applied what I gathered to my daily life (ethics), and through sacrifices and the progressive mastery of the emotions of life (the river of the soul), I became happier and happier each day. And the happiness became a reward for my conduct of epistemology and ethics, inspiring me to do even more epistemology and ethics; inspiring me to maintain a philosophical or contemplative posture; inspiring me to be a man of virtue. And this is why I love myself. Because, even though I am not perfect by any means, through my conduct of epistemology and ethics, and through my consequently being happy, I find that I am indeed a man of virtue. And a man of virtue is loved by God. And since we live to ape God, I should similarly love myself when I know for sure that God loves me. Yes indeed. C'est vrai, as the French would say, and Descartes was French, and I love Descrates. But more importantly - please listen to this - I love myself. Glad I can at last say this.