Descartes: God as the Idea of Infinity (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
The Giants of Doubt: A Comparison between Epistemological Aspects of Descartes and Pascal
Open Journal of Philosophy, 2012
The essay is a comparative look at Descartes' and Pascal's epistemology. For such vast a topic, I shall confine myself to comparing three crucial epistemological topics, through which I hope to evince Descartes' and Pascal's differences and points of contact. Firstly, I will concentrate on the philosophers' engagement with skepticism, which, for each, had different functions and motivations. Secondly, the thinkers' relation to Reason shall be examined, since it is the fulcrum of their thought—and the main aspect that separates them. Lastly, I will examine each philosopher's theist epistemology; this section, of course, will focus on how and by what means Descartes and Pascal set out to prove God's existence. The latter aspect shall take us back to each philosopher's relationship to Doubt: the title, " The Giants of Doubt ", in fact, implies a fundamental link between Descartes and Pascal through Doubt. In addition, and most importantly, the contrast between the two thinkers' epistemology inaugurates a decisive scission in modern thought of enormous repercussion: Descartes' sturdy rationalism initiated the great branch of modern scientific inquiry, while Pascal's appeal to the power of intuition and feelings would eventually be the precursor of the reaction to the enlightenment that invested Europe by the second half of the eighteenth century. This departure of thought, which in my view may be traced back to them, has not been the common conceit of the history of philosophy: the reaction to the enlightenment has customarily been regarded as stemming from its internal contradictions or at best from its more radical doctrines. The essay shall show that these strands of thought were both parallel and born out of the antithetical epistemologies of Descartes and Pascal.