Insofar as the prime image of everything is written in the mind, like truth reflected
in its image, the mind, when judging what lies exterior to it, possesses in itself what
it is looking at and what it conforms with...
The human mind comprises in advance all that it is able to discover in the
outside world, and everything the mindfinds in itself stands true–provided that it
is a genuine mind, that is, a realization of man’s ability to gain similarity to the
rolled-up basis of the world, its Nothing.^59
Although he found each individual perception limited by partial aware-
ness, Nicholas of Cusa saw humans as images in God’s mind, the oneness
of which secured the possibility of human subjectivity. In this, his thought
differed considerably from that of ibn Arabi, who reserved full subjectivity
for God.^60 Yet both mystical systems, inspired by a monotheistic inter-
pretation of Platonic thought, offered parallel solutions to the problem of
individual subjectivity rooted not in pure reason but in the necessary
relationship with God. The similarity of their concerns may not be coin-
cidental: Nicholas of Cusa may have encountered the thought of ibn Arabi
while studying Islam, spending a year in Constantinople, in the interest of
ending religious wars.^61
Although Descartes’thought resonates with the optical tradition of ibn
al-Haytham and the Catholic tradition of Nicolas of Cusa (which may have
some inspiration from ibn Arabi), he cites only one source: his own
dreams.^62 This foundation asserts his agency as an independent subject,
so skeptical that he can even doubt the boundary between physical reality
and dreaming as a potential trick of God. As if this origin were not
unempirical enough, the only surviving source for the dreams is Baillet’s
1691 biography of Descartes.^63 Gofigure: the basis of Cartesian reason lies
in the lost transcript of a dream experienced half a millennium ago.
Why does this matter? While credence in dreams shocks our contem-
porary sensibilities, Karsten Harries points out that a Baroque audience
would have found such a source unremarkable. It may be that the modern
interest in producing Descartes as a father of something we call“Western
reason”has refashioned him anachronistically, in the image of the modern.
Acknowledging this does not change the power or effects of Descartes’
arguments, but it does suggest that Western reason is, like all ideologies,
born in hindsight through its narrations, and nowhere as purely“Western”
or modern as its teleologies might want it to have been.(^59) Smirnov, 1993 : 72. (^60) Smirnov, 1993 : 80. (^61) Costigliolo, 2011. (^62) Harries, 1973 : 28.
(^63) Browne, 1977.
324 Perspectives on Perspective