Descartes and the Tower of Babel

Platonic vs Cartesian Rationalism

In Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor argues that the central difference between Platonic and Cartesian rationalism is that the former considers the Ideas to be self-revealing realities which stand above the individual subject (so that the activity of reason is participation within this higher order, a true “ascent” beyond the cave of self-relational appearances) while the latter “internalizes” the ideas to render them mere “psychic contents.” With Descartes, the “measure” of truth shifts from something which transcends the subject (e.g. “the Good”) to something within it: “[I am] certain that I can have no knowledge of what is outside me except by means of the ideas I have within me.”¹

Within the Cartesian framework, to know reality is to “represent” it correctly in the mind, to form a picture that corresponds most adequately to the world. Plato’s view (which is also Christian), on the other hand, is not that of representation but participation. For Plato, the world is not divided into the “thinking thing” and a mechanistic universe, rather, man participates within and expresses the same teleological order of things in the world (namely, the order of self-transcendence towards the Good). Thus, for Descartes, the “order of ideas” is not something we discover but something we create: “A representation of reality now has to be constructed. As the notion of ‘idea’ migrates from its ontic sense to apply henceforth to intra-psychic contents, to things ‘in the mind’, so the order of ideas ceases to be something we find and becomes something we build.”²

Not only, for Descartes, does true knowledge of the world consist of accurately representing it in one’s individual mind, but in order for this knowledge to really be “true,” it must be certain. Famously, Descartes grounds the certainty of knowledge within the certainty of the thinking subject: “I think, therefore I am.” Once again, this means that the “measure” of truth ceases to be something which transcends subjectivity, such as the Platonic Good, and becomes “internalized.” If Socratic doubt consists of skepticism of every one-sided conception of reality, Cartesian doubt is the precise opposite; skepticism of reality on the basis of a “one-sided” perspective: “The order of representations must thus meet standards which derive from the thinking activity of the knower. It is an order collected and brought together to meet, inter alia, certain subjective demands.”³

The problem with Descartes’ attempt to ground certainty within the subject is that subjective certitude is impossible. It is impossible because the truth of selfhood is not some self-positing act, rather, selfhood only ever comes to be through relations with others (ultimately God), and these relations evidently are not “deduced” or even “proven” by the subject. Since relations with others are constitutive of the being of the self, self-knowledge is inextricably bound up with knowledge of the other, the latter requiring an act of “faith.” Faith is the humility of rationality in the face of the other, a recognition that the otherness which it (rationality) depends upon is truly “beyond” it and, therefore, can only be known through an “openness” which we, again, call faith:

In reality, subjective certitude cannot be secured, not because the world is nothing but the aleatory play of signifiers, but because subjective certitude is an irreparably defective model of knowledge; it cannot correspond to or “adequate” a world that is gratuity rather than ground, poetry rather than necessity, rhetoric rather than dialectic. Every act of knowledge is, simultaneously, an act of faith (to draw on Hamann’s delightful subversion of Hume); we trust in the world, and so we know it, only by entrusting ourselves to what is more than ourselves; our primordial act of faith meets a covenant that has already been made with us, before we could seek it, in the giving of the light.⁴

The world created in Genesis 1 and 2 is given to Adam and Eve as a gift, and their task was to accept and work with this gift, continuing God’s work of cultivating/glorifying creation. Adam and Eve's fall is quite “Cartesian”: instead of having faith in their Creator and waiting to receive knowledge, they attempted to seize knowledge for themselves. Instead of participating in knowledge through faith, they attempted to “construct it” through their own wills. 

The fall continues and deepens with Cain, who murders his brother and then goes on to “build” a city where he himself is king. Notably, the last time this word “built” is used is in Genesis 2, when Adam faithfully allows God to “build” Eve from his side. Eve is, therefore, symbolically both a city and a bride (and this symbolism is fulfilled in the final chapters of the Bible with the “Heavenly Jerusalem,” the fully glorified city-bride). In the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, we already see St. Augustine’s famous dichotomy between the “City of God” and the “City of Man.” The City of God begins with God acting in, through and with faithful Adam, while the City of Man begins with Cain’s lack of faith and rebellion against God. Despite receiving a mark from God, which guarantees his security, Cain is distrustful, so he amasses as much power as he can in order to truly (in his mind) guarantee his safety. 

With Lamech, we see this fall away from God and toward the self go even further: 

 Lamech said to his wives,

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;

wives of Lamech, hear my words.

I have killed a man for wounding me,

a young man for injuring me.

If Cain is avenged seven times,

then Lamech seventy-seven times.”⁵

While God is the one who pronounces a curse against anyone who harms Cain, Lamech pronounces his own curse on those who harm him, thereby putting himself in the place of God, declaring himself the “measure” of justice. Nate, perceptive as always, notes that the fall of man in Adam, Cain and Lamech is a fall into deeper and deeper self-relation: Adam receives garments of protection from God after his sin and goes on to live faithfully; Cain receives a mark of protection from God after his sin and goes on to live unfaithfully; Lamech doesn’t even communicate with God after his sin and announces his own protection. 

We see a repetition of the fall at a much larger scale in Genesis 11 with the construction of the Tower of Babel: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Out of pride, the Babelians wish to build up to heaven, to place themselves in the position of kingly rule (as, according to the Bible, heavenly powers rule the earth, which is why Christ “ascends” to heaven as king) – they wished to create or, we may say, “posit” their own identity; “make a name for themselves.” There are very direct, almost comically so, modern parallels to this creating of a name for oneself out of pride.

Cartesian rationalism is thoroughly Babelian. As Taylor explains, Plato conceives of knowledge as the participation in/discovery of reality, while Descartes conceives of it as mere “representation.” With Plato, we “find” reality, with Descartes, we “build” a conception of reality and measure it against the standard of subjective certitude. This is quite clearly a philosophical articulation of pride, and specifically Cain’s lack of trust in God: instead of receiving reality as a “gift,” Descartes only feels satisfied if this gift meets the standard of absolute certainty, which is firstly his own subjectivity. Similarly, instead of trusting the gift of God’s protection, Cain only feels satisfied after he builds a city where he has absolute authority and thereby grounds his security within himself. In Genesis 11:5, there is a joke: while the Babelians attempted to build up to heaven, the God of Heaven had to “come down” to even see their puny tower. And when He does come down, the Babelians are scattered across the earth, exactly what they feared would happen if they didn’t make the Tower. I cannot help but draw a parallel between this story and Descartes’ search for certainty ultimately leading to the confusion and chaos of postmodern philosophy.

The narrative of Abram immediately follows and directly contrasts with the story of the Tower of Babel. While the Babelians pridefully attempt to “make a name” for themselves and are scattered across the earth, Abram has faith in God and receives a new name and a promise that the divided nations will be re-gathered in his Seed (this promise is fulfilled at Pentecost). Abraham receives a new name “from above,” while the Babelians attempt to build up to heaven from below. This is a rebellion against the very ontology of creation, which is always in a “receptive” mode in relation to God. Therefore, any non-receptive (i.e. self-relational/sinful) activities can only separate oneself from true being, causing division and confusion. The full realization of this separation is Gehenna. Hence, there’s a direct line from Descartes’ subject to Zizek’s; from Babel to hell itself. 

1. Descartes, Letter to Guillaume Gibieuf (19 January 1642).

2. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self.

3. Ibid.

4. David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite.

5. (Genesis 4:23-24)