To be sure...

To be sure, other views of Descartes could be argued at great length, but such an examination would be outside the scope of the present study..

The First Division of Science The first division of knowledge to be considered is that between (1) the knowledge which is known directly of the essence ( dhāt )1 of the known object, in which the real and genuine existence of the object of knowledge is disclosed to the knowing subject or the percipient, and (2) the knowledge in which the external existence of its object is not observed and witnessed by the knower; rather he becomes aware of it by the mediation of something which represents it, which is termed its ‘form’ ( ṣūrat ) or ‘mental concept’ ( mafhūm dhihnī ).

The first kind is called ‘presentational knowledge’ or ‘knowledge by presence’ ( ‘ilm ḥuḍūrī ) and the second kind is called ‘acquired knowledge’ ( ‘ilm ḥuṣūlī ), [that is, knowledge acquired by conceptual representation]. The division of knowledge into these two kinds is rational, comprehensive and exclusive, and in this regard no third state can be supposed besides these two; that is, there is no knowledge other than knowledge which is of these two kinds.

Either there is an intermediary between the person who knows and the essence of the known object, by means of which the awareness is obtained, in which case the knowledge is called ‘acquired,’ or such an intermediary does not exit, and in that case there will be ‘knowledge by presence.’ However, the existence of these two kinds of knowledge in man needs to be explained.

Knowledge by Presence The knowledge and awareness that every one has of himself as a perceiving existent is a knowledge which cannot be denied. Even the sophists who considered man to be the measure of all things did not deny the existence of man himself and the knowledge man has of himself.

Of course, this means that man himself, his very ego, is a perceiver, a thinker, who by internal witnessing ( shuhūd ) is aware of himself, not by means of sensation or experience nor by forms or mental concepts. In other words, he himself is the knowledge, and in this knowledge and awareness there is no plurality or otherness between knowledge, the knower, and the known object.

As was previously mentioned, ‘the unity of the knower and the known’ is the most perfect instance of ‘the presence of the known object to the knower’.