With reference to the 3rd and 5th Meditations, describe the role God plays in Descartes’ philosophy and evaluate the arguments for His existence.

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

This essay will discuss the various ways in which Descartes tries to prove the existence of God. I also hope to explain why Descartes tries to do this and why it is so central to his later arguments.

Descartes first argument for God’s existence is the “Trademark” Argument. This relies on the Causal Adequacy Principle, which states that there must be at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect of something. Descartes argues that in your mind you find the idea of “some infinite substance, which is independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful”. According to the Causal Adequacy Principle the idea of a perfect being must have a perfect cause. Any human being is not perfect and therefore the idea of a perfect being must have come from a perfect being (God).

This argument is open to many objections – one of which is to question whether Descartes does actually have the idea of a perfect being. Descartes cannot claim to understand the entirety of God’s nature due to it being infinite so this makes it difficult for Descartes to have the idea of a prefect being. Evolution is another fault to this argument because theoretically a perfect bird’s wing, for example, could evolve from imperfect wings and so the prefect idea of God could come about without God’s aid. The final objection to this argument is Descartes’ use of the Causal Adequacy Principle. He claims that this is evident “to the natural light of reason” yet Descartes is trying to prove the most basic of things, including those things, which are “self-evident”.

Likewise Descartes’ second argument can easily be disproved. The causal argument claims that there must be a self-existent being in order to sustain everything else in existence. This is open to a couple of objections. Firstly, Descartes assumes that there must be a cause for everything but he has nothing to support this view. Secondly, is it not possible to have an unending sequence of causes with no beginning and no end?

However, Descartes’ final argument is much harder to bring in to doubt as it is much cleverer but is not original to Descartes. It was originally thought up ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

However, Descartes’ final argument is much harder to bring in to doubt as it is much cleverer but is not original to Descartes. It was originally thought up in the 11th Century by St. Anselm. A simple form of this argument is that God is perfect and therefore must possess all perfections. Descartes claims that existence must be perfection and as God is prefect he must possess this perfection and so God must exist, “from the fact I cannot think of God except as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from God, and hence that he really exists.”

There are well-known objections to this argument – one of which is Kant’s. He claims that existence is not a predicate (a word which “asserts something about a proposition”) and that ascribing existence as a property to God is wrong, as it cannot be considered to be a property. As existence is not a property, it is not contradictory to state that “God is perfect” and “God does not exist”. The objection is that existence does not contribute to the concept of something but a property does. This doubt about the argument is popular as it is much more effective than the other arguments. However, Gaunilo’s objection is much less effective. It maintains that by the same argument we can prove the existence of the perfect desert island. Yet this requires that we have a clear and distinct perception of the prefect desert island like we have a clear and distinct perception of God so this objection can be ignored. This “clear and distinct” perception of God Descartes claims to have can be called in to doubt though.

A final objection to the proof of God is completely different and claims that, by proving God, you prove that he does not exist, “God says, ‘I refuse to prove I exist, for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing.’ ‘But’ says man ‘the Babel fish is a dead give away, it proves you exist (nothing so amazing could have evolved by chance) and so therefore, by your own argument, you don’t QED.’ ‘Oh dear’ says God ‘I hadn’t thought of that’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”

God plays an important role in Descartes’ philosophy. Descartes succeeds in removing doubt about certain things such as his own existence but he has not yet proved the existence of the physical world. Descartes believes that by proving God’s existence then he will be able to prove the existence of the physical world. Descartes claims that he sees the physical world as clear and distinct but this does not necessarily mean that it is true. He also claims that God is good and therefore, if He existed then He would not allow Descartes to be deceived. In this way Descartes tries to persuade us that anything we see as clear and distinct must be true as long as God exists. Unfortunately, Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God can be doubted and so Descartes fails in proving one of the most essential things.

In conclusion, God plays a fundamental role in Descartes’ philosophy, helping to prove almost everything that was formerly called in to doubt. However, Descartes’ proofs for the existence of God are not conclusive and do not solve Descartes’ main problems in the Meditations.