The Shadows of Totalization, Part XIX

Descartes founds his philosophy on a self which is self-evident.

Even though I think this is a correct statement, I am forced to pause before proceeding.

1) I don’t want to pull “Descartes” into my mess, my gold-tinged fog. What’d he ever do to me that I might in turn potentially abuse him?

2) I’m not capable of doing history of philosophy. This is the thing which has troubled me: am I free not to do history of philosophy?

3) To the extent to which I am able to track down the ideas which intrigue me to their sources within the history of philosophy, I am constantly amazed by how little they resemble my more naïve apprehension of them. They are so much more beautiful than I had realized.

4) Knowing this, why would I ever wish to rely on an idea in the “immediate” form which my terse and incomplete reading of the philosophy makes it available to me?

5) I can remove the above statement from its (explicit) association with the history of philosophy by personalizing it: “I have a concept of my self wherein I understand my self as self-evident.”

6) In letting myself off the hook in this way, do I accept a bowdlerization which will deactivate further progress, or do I, in this “definite”, autonomous, "self-sufficient" form, give myself a platform from which I can go anywhere, in any way (I might choose)?