Descartes: on God's existence

by John Mackay 493 words

In Chapter III of his 1641 treatise: Meditationes de prima philosophia Rene Descartes understanding of God translates as follows:

By the name of God I understand a certain infinite substance, independent, highly intelligent, highly powerful, and from which both I myself and everything else, if anything else exists, whatever exists, was created. (Descartes, R. 1641)

Here, Descartes avoids anthropomorphising God, but by using the term substantiam: ‘substance’ declares God as existing. Unfortunately, Descartes does not provide any qualification to support the claim of God's substance. But I think this deliberate if only because later in Chapter V, Descartes declares:

For since I am accustomed in all other things to distinguish existence from essence, I easily convince myself that it can also be separated from the essence of God, and thus God can be thought of as not actually existing. (Descartes, R. 1641)

And here we have it—the smoking gun—the probable reason why Descarte's publications were banned by the Church, not because they conflicted with the narrative of the Eucharist per-se but because they introduced the paradox of God's existence itself. The Church avoids attributing the ban to the paradox itself for doing so would drive attention and thus discussion towards it.

Any other contradictions in Descartes Meditations I'm inclined to believe are in the service of plausible deniability including the very long intro that reads much like a personal diary revealing angst about his own intelligence, propensity for mistakes etc. In other words if the Church ever came after him he could leverage lots of plausible material to counter charges that he was fomenting heresy by questioning God's existence.

Thus whilst many are inclined to see Descartes ontological argument as confirming God's existence I am inclined to think the opposite by virtue of the above sentence from Chapter V. For it suppports the long-held position of Descartes which viewed essence as separate from existence. By including that once sentence in his Meditations, I think that Descartes achieved his aim which was to convey the paradox of God's existence without signing his own death warrant.

My book, the Gospel of Being addresses this paradox by constructing God as the constant expression of existence and thus Principal to it not of it i.e. God is but does not exist.

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