Descartes: God as the Idea of Infinity (original) (raw)
The Infinity of God in Descartes (Orpheus Noster, Year V (2013), No 1, pp. 26-34)
In contemporary phenomenology we find a new interpretation of Descartes’s theology, in particular in the thinkers of the theological turn. Émmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Luc Marion consider Descartes’s concept of God as a possibility for speaking about the transcendence of God in a philosophical context. In this paper I would like to start from his considerations and show how the infinity of God guarantees the transcendence of God in Descartes’s thinking. The “infinite” and the “perfect” seem to be the most important names for God in Descartes. Firstly, I analyse the concept of the infinite, secondly, I present contemporary criticisms against the concept of the infinite, especially by Gassendi and Hobbes, and finally I show how Descartes responds to the objections and how he describes an authentic mental relation with God.
God as the Efficient Cause of This Idea. "…How does Descartes know that the knowledge that he has of himself as a thinking thing is true knowledge? Because it is clearly and distinctly perceived. '…It seems to me that I may now take as a general rule, that all that is very clearly and distinctly apprehended (conceived) is true.' 1 But how, from this little but true knowledge that Descartes has of himself, can he proceed to establish a proof for the actual existence of God? First, by discovering that there is within him an idea of God; secondly, by seeing that he himself could not be the origin of this idea; thirdly, and finally, by concluding that the only adequate source of the idea of an infinitely perfect being, that is to say, of our idea of God, is an actually existing infinitely perfect God. "Here is how Descartes himself describes these three steps: 'But, among these my ideas, besides that which represents myself, respecting which there can be no difficulty, there is one that represents God; others that represent corporeal and inanimate things; others angels; others animals; and finally, there are some that represent men like myself. But with respect to the ideas that represent men, or animals, or angels, I can easily suppose that they were formed by the mingling and composition of the other ideas which I have of myself, of corporeal things, and of God, although there were, apart from myself, neither men, animals, nor angels. And with regard to the ideas of corporeal objects, I never discover in them anything so great or excellent which I myself did not appear capable of originating.' "But what about my idea of God? Descartes continues: 'There only remains, therefore, the idea of God, in which I must consider whether there is anything that cannot be supposed to originate with myself. By the name God, I understand a substance infinite (eternal, immutable), independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were created. But these properties are so great and excellent, that the more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone. And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists; for though the idea of substance be in my mind owing to this, that I myself am a substance, I should not, however, have the idea of an infinite substance, seeing I am a finite being, unless it were given me by some substance in reality infinite.' 3
Cartesian Idea of God as Infinite
Cartesian Idea of God as the Infinite
This paper discusses presuppositions of the so-called trademark argument for the existence of God presented by René Descartes
The Paradox of Foundation: Descartes’ Eternal Truths and the Evil Genius
P. Allen, F. Marcacci (eds.) Divined Explanations. The Theological and Philosophical Context for the Development of the Sciences (1600-2000), Brill, 2024
In light of a specific reading of Descartes’ theory of the creation of the eternal truths, this chapter analyzes and interprets the figure of the evil genius in the Meditations. In sections 1 and 2, I reconstruct Descartes’s theory of eternal truths, highlighting its relationship with Suárez’s and Mersenne’s ideas, and setting out what I call Descartes’ “instituted innatism,” i.e. the theory that God was not only absolutely free in creating the essences of the world, but also instituted their truths by endowing all his intelligent creatures with the same notions about them. In section 3, I argue that Descartes’s First Meditation is wholly built upon “instituted innatism” as a fundamental and self-evident assumption, and that Descartes’s text is structured as a reductio ad absurdum argument; indeed, here he accepts the possibility of a world not created by an absolutely good and omnipotent God, which is for him a plain contradiction, given that God necessarily exists. Here I stress the role played by the evil genius in Descartes’s argument. In section 4, I dwell more specifically on the character of the evil genius, arguing that Descartes draws from medieval and early modern angelological and demonological debates, and contending that he especially plays with the topic of the ordered/disordered thought of separate substances.
THE HIGHLIGHTS OF DESCARTES' EPISTEMOLOGY (AN INTRODUCTION
Roczniki Filozoficzne / Annales de Philosophie / Annals of Philosophy, 2020
JOURNAL ARTICLE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF DESCARTES’ EPISTEMOLOGY (AN INTRODUCTION) PRZEMYSŁAW GUT and ARKADIUSZ GUT Roczniki Filozoficzne / Annales de Philosophie / Annals of Philosophy Vol. 68, No. 2, Descartes’ Epistemology Special Issue (2020)
Auslegang, 1997
My aim in this paper is to examine the nature of and the relation between Descartes' three proofs of God's existence in the Meditations. Within this aim I want to pursue and argue three interrelated theses: (I) that Descartes' three proofs of God's existence in the Meditations are in fact (or rather function as, were intended by Descartes as) deductive demonstrations, (II) that all three proofs are logically independent of each other, and (III) that the ordering of the three proofs in the Meditations was for psychological rather than logical or methodological reasons.
Divine Simplicity and the Eternal Truths: Descartes and the Scholastics
Philosophia, 2009
Descartes famously endorsed the view that (CD) God freely created the eternal truths, such that He could have done otherwise than He did. This controversial doctrine is much discussed in recent secondary literature, yet Descartes's actual arguments for CD have received very little attention. In this paper I focus on what many take to be a key Cartesian argument for CD: that divine simplicity entails the dependence of the eternal truths on the divine will. What makes this argument both important and interesting is that Descartes's scholastic predecessors share the premise of divine simplicity but reject the CD conclusion. To properly understand Descartes, then, we must determine precisely where he diverges from his predecessors on the path from simplicity to CD. And when we do so we obtain a very surprising result: that despite many dramatic prima facie differences, there is no substantive difference between the relevant doctrines of Descartes and the scholastics. Or so I argue.
Can an Atheist know that he exists? – Cogito and God in Descartes's philosophy
In the paper I tackle a long-discussed paragraph of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, considering the knowledge of God. There is an infamous passage in the Third Meditation, where Descartes states: “For if I do not know [the existence of God], it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else”. (AT VII, 36; CSM II, 25. Emphasis added.) This rather short quote has provided quite a bit of puzzlement for scholars, mainly because it seems to be in tension with the famous cogito-paragraph of the same text: “So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind”. (AT VII 25; CSM II, 17. Emphasis in the original.) If one can never be certain about anything before pertaining knowledge of God, how can one know his own existence? Put in other words, can an Atheist be certain that he exists? I examine this question on Atheist’s existence and what Descartes sees as the advantage point given by the knowledge of God. Even though the topic of Atheistic knowledge has seen its fair amount of discussion in the literature, it has almost only dealt with Atheist’s certainty of mathematics. Thus, the more interesting question of Atheist’s existence has been bypassed. I illuminate this matter by drawing from the discussion on ‘Atheist Mathematician’ in the Second Objections and Replies and by discussing the differences between Cartesian mathematical knowledge and self-knowledge. In the end, I challenge the long held cogito-foundationalist -reading of Descartes, in which the knowledge of ‘I exist’ is the first full and absolute philosophical certainty. I claim that even if knowledge of the self for Descartes is in some sense certain, it cannot yet be the starting point for lasting and stable science.
Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-More Controversy about the Universe as Indefinite
The correspondence between Descartes and More covers a diversity of each author’s fundamental philosophical views. Their polemics range over not only general aspects of physics, but also extend to cosmology and theology. On the one hand, we have God as infi nite and His creation as indefi nite for Descartes; on the other hand, God as extant, ubiquitous and omnipresent, and His creation as limited for Henry More. It is this last problem that constitutes the focus of my essay, strictly speaking – the problem of the universe as infi nite.