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The unity of philosophy according to Descartes is approached here in terms of the metaphor of a tree of philosophy whose analysis raises two kinds of problems: on the one hand, the tree is rootless, which leads one to question its source of subsistence. The position of the moral branch is quite equally ambiguous. The Cartesian ambition of a (re)foundation for knowledge is that of a self-grounding within the cogito, which is a metaphysical no-where. However, Descartes never wrote this ethics which is supposed to be "the highest and most perfect ethics". The only complete ethics ever written by him is that of the Discours de la méthode, since this very provisional moral code is in fact a final one. It is indeed there that "the first principle of philosophy" constituting the only root of the tree may appear.