Descartes’ Basic Understanding of Wax
Grasping wax’s essence:
“extended, flexible and mutable”
at first, appears to have color, scent, shape, size, hardness, and coldness.
Look dude, you can heat it up and it’ll still be wax.
You can make it soft and it’ll still be wax.
You understand?
But if you can change it
and it’s still wax,
how do you understand?
There are no clear and distinct ideas here,
get with it.
How we know opposed to What we know
perception of categories [i.e., what the wax is]
through mind alone,
not through senses, because wax melts
like cheese,
and hardens again.
When we know it’s wax we’re just seeing what our mind knows directly,
Looking at the contents, in the eye of the mind, as it were:
Striping it of all aesthetics.
But “as if stripping it of its clothing”
the as if intentionality
grasped either by sense
or by mind alone
What if we don’t even know what wax is? In the first place?
I always have to wrap around to the fact that I do know
Its wax melting and hardening on my skin