The Cartesian God

“Archimedes,” writes René Descartes in 1641’s Meditations,

sought but one firm and immovable point in order to move the entire earth from one place to another. Just so, great things are also to be hoped for if I succeed in finding just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshaken (30).*

In the First Meditation, Descartes demolishes all opinions containing uncertainty in his search for a certain foundation, an Archimedean point. He first doubts the senses because they easily err “when it is a question of very small and distant things” (28), and proceeds further to doubt the senses under ideal, controlled circumstances based on the possibility that one is dreaming. Then perhaps, he wonders, at least the simple natures of things that compose the images we perceive (dreaming or not) can be said with certainty to exist.

On the contrary the suggestion of a deceiver God removes certainty from these simple natures that may not exist at all but may just be conjured for the purposes of our deception. The deceiver God is introduced at this juncture with neither certainty of his existence nor a clear understanding of his essence. Indeed, that God could be a deceiver is later proven untrue but here is presented as an instrument for introducing doubt into the existence of simple natures.

Having thus called into doubt all the objects of his perception, Descartes is ready in the Second Meditation to identify the subject of his perception (that is, of his intellectual activity) as his Archimedean point. At this threshold he asks, “Is there not some God, or by whatever name I might call him, who instills these very thoughts in me? But why would I think that, since I myself could be the author of these thoughts?” (30). The as yet unidentified God is considered momentarily for the position of foundational certainty, but it is the self, the mind, that is the indubitable subject of the present inquiries and therefore the immovable point upon which all knowledge relies.

God thus far has only been a hazy image without definition or certainty. It is rather to one’s own mind that one has direct access, and thus the existence of the mind is first established and from that, the essence of the mind. The Archimedean point is one’s own mind, or cogito.

By this heading is meant that the cogito, which is the Archimedean point, is not God. In the Third Meditation, having established the existence and essence of the cogito, Descartes investigates the idea of God found in it. What before was merely a hazy suggestion is now attended to outright. In the course of twice proving the existence of God, Descartes establishes the imperfection and finitude of the cogito and thus its non-identification with God.

The basis of Descartes’ perception of his imperfection is his prior experience of his propensity for error and his resultant lack of knowledge. When examining the idea of God found in his cogito, he concludes using the material and efficient causality of Aristotelian philosophy that the idea of a perfect, infinite God could not be caused by himself, nor be caused by anything else, but only by an actual, existing God. The objective reality, the reasoning goes, contained within the idea of an infinite God could not be caused by any substance containing less objective reality (such as the cogito, which is finite in knowledge), and therefore such objective reality could only find cause in such an infinite God existing in formal reality.

One of the more convincing objections to this proof is raised and countered by Descartes himself. The crux of the argument questions whether the cogito can be distinguished from God. Noting his gradual increase in knowledge, Descartes asks if he could not continue increasing knowledge unto infinity and thereby acquire the perfection of God. Perhaps this potential perfection is from where the idea of God is derived? To the contrary, the divergence between the potential perfection and the actual perfection further underlines the stark difference between man and God. “Moreover,” Descartes writes,

although my knowledge may always increase more and more, nevertheless I understand that this knowledge will never by this means be actually infinite, because it will never reach a point where it is incapable of further increase. On the contrary, I judge God to be actually infinite, so that nothing can be added to his perfection (39).

Descartes then reasserts his first proof of God’s existence saying that “…the objective being of an idea cannot be produced by a merely potential being” (39). Something potentially infinite is infinitely potential; something potentially perfect can never attain nor produce actual perfection.

The second proof of God, also in the Third Meditation, like the first proof incidentally makes the point that the cogito, though the Archimedean point, falls short of God. The first proof claims that the innate idea of God belonging to the cogito must come from an existing God; the second proof claims that the very existence of the cogito must likewise come from a God who exists.

“From what source, then,” Descartes asks, “do I derive my existence?” (39). He could not have created himself, he says, because if he had the power of self-existence he would have given himself in actuality the perfection he possesses potentially. Therefore he concludes, “I depend on some being other than myself” (39). This other being, moreover, that ultimately causes his existence must itself have the power of self-existence because, according to the principles of Aristotelian causality, one cannot bestow what one does not first have. If this being has the power of self-existence, it perforce must have all the actual perfection that a dependent creature such as Descartes cannot bestow on himself. It must have all the attributes of God; it must be God, and the cogito — that I exist and am a thinking thing — though it is the one firm and immovable point on which knowledge relies, is not God.

Like Kepler’s elliptical orbits, Descartes’ universe is an oval revolving around two points, for an ellipse is graphed such that the sum of the distances between its perimeter and its two foci is the same for any point on the perimeter. Those two points for Descartes are the cogito and God. The knowledge of all reality swings on these two hinges.

In establishing, as done above, the distinction between the cogito and God, one might be distinguishing something like, say, heat and cold. Descartes, however, expressly states that the difference between God and the cogito is wholly other than the difference between dialectical opposites. Heat and cold exist on a continuum, and when applying his mind to them, Descartes can distinctly perceive neither what distinguishes them nor if one is the negation of the other, which, he says, could be true for either heat or cold. The infinity of God and the finitude of the cogito are rather to be understood hierarchically — not dialectically as opposites, but hierarchically as something superior and something inferior separated incomparably. The very qualities that separate God and the cogito are those that establish the hierarchical superiority of God: infinity to finitude, perfection to imperfection, actuality to potentiality, self-existence to dependency.

Accordingly, the idea of a perfect God could not be arrived at by negating the imperfection of the cogito. The finitude of the cogito is due to a substantial lack of objective reality, a lack that the infinite God does not have. The objective reality lacking in the cogito cannot therefore be reproduced by negating its absence because the finitude of the cogito limits it not only from what it lacks, but also from knowing what it lacks.

Rather, it appears that the inferiority of the cogito is a negation of the qualities of God. At this point Descartes suggests something interesting. “Thus,” he writes,

the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite; that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? (38).

The First Meditation begins with recognition of error, so, according to this passage, the perception of God must have been present even prior to then.† Indeed, before establishing himself in the Second Meditation as the Archimedean point, he has cause momentarily to consider God — for before that, in the First Meditation, he observes the idea within himself of an omnipotent God when introducing the theory of a deceiver God.

Thus the cogito is not prior to God in perception, and neither is it prior to God in degree of perception. Descartes says of the idea of God that “[B]ecause it contains more objective reality than any other idea, no idea is in itself truer and has less of a basis for being suspected of falsehood” (38). In the Second Meditation Descartes proves that despite common sense the mind is better known than the body. In the Third Meditation, though not as explicit an aim, Descartes shows moreover that God is more clearly and distinctly perceived than the mind. Thus he summarizes in the beginning of the Fourth Meditation, “[V]ery few things are truly perceived regarding corporeal things, although a great many more things are known regarding the human mind, and still many more things regarding God” (41).‡

In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes offers a third proof of God’s existence — one not involving the cogito and Aristotelian causality — that existence is a perfection inseparable from God’s essence even as certain mathematical properties are inseparable from a triangle. Descartes then wonders,

However, as far as God is concerned, if I were not overwhelmed by prejudices and if the images of sensible things were not besieging my thought from all directions, I would certainly acknowledge nothing sooner and more easily than him. For what, in and of itself, is more manifest than that a supreme being exists, that is, that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists?
And although I needed to pay close attention in order to perceive this, nevertheless I now am just as certain about this as I am about everything else that seems most certain. Moreover, I observe also that certitude about other things is so dependent on this, so that without it nothing can ever be perfectly known (47).

A discrepancy appears in the First Meditation concerning what the deceiver God theory calls into doubt. Upon first raising the possibility that an omnipotent God is powerful enough to deceive him with the existence of simple natures, that is, earth, sky, extended things, shapes, sizes, places — things that can be imagined — Descartes also wonders if an omnipotent God could deceive him in matters of intellectual perception that are beyond the imagination, such as arithmetic and geometry, that two and three equal five and that a square has four sides. However, before settling on this doubt, Descartes takes a small detour to consider the atheist alternative and to discuss what it is he is doing. When, in the last paragraph of the Meditation, he returns to the deceiver God theory, he calls into doubt the certainty of simple natures within the realm of the imagination, but not the intellectual perception of things pure and abstract. Descartes then proceeds to the Second Meditation where he establishes that the cogito — that he is and is a thinking thing — is the Archimedean point and foundation of all certain knowledge.

He is not unaware of the discrepancy, however, for in the Third Meditation, before endeavoring to prove the existence of God, he backtracks and covers himself in this regard. Even before that, however, he establishes a rule based on the results of the Second Meditation. In the Second Meditation, Descartes became convinced that he is and that he is a thinking thing merely by clear and distinct perception. Therefore clear and distinct perception is a sufficient criterion for truth, based on the fact that it succeeded in convincing him of the truth of the cogito. This is, of course, circular reasoning — of which, again, Descartes is not unaware.

In questioning the validity of this rule, he returns to the question as to what the deceiver God theory calls into doubt. He first reasserts that the existence of corporeal things perceived through the senses must be called into doubt. Then he addresses the question as to whether the clear and distinct perceptions of his intellect could be the false products of a deceptive God. He replies as follows, in part restating the argument in the Second Meditation for the certitude of the cogito:

[W]henever I turn my attention to those very things that I think I perceive with such great clarity, I am so completely persuaded by them that I spontaneously blurt out the words: “let him who can deceive me; so long as I think that I am something, he will never bring it about that I am nothing. Nor will he one day make it true that I never existed, for it is true now that I do exist. Nor will he even bring it about that perhaps two plus three might equal more or less than five, or similar items in which I recognize an obvious contradiction.” And certainly, because I have no reason for thinking that there is a God who is a deceiver (and of course I do not yet sufficiently know whether there even is a God), the basis for doubting, depending as it does merely on the above hypothesis, is very tenuous… (34–35).

The existence of God and whether he is a deceiver, therefore, in no way affect the certitude of the cogito and its clear and distinct perceptions. Just in case, Descartes proceeds to prove the existence of God and that he is not a deceiver, at which time he proves for certain (after the third proof of God’s existence in the Fifth Meditation) that “everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive is necessarily true” (47).

This juncture at the end of the Fifth Meditation is important because it is also where Descartes describes God as the fullest certainty and says that the certainty of all other things depend on him. Is God then the Archimedean point? Descartes makes the comparison to geometry, that certain facts about a triangle are known more easily than others, but that the geometrical facts that require a longer process of intellection are no less true and, once established, are just as visible. The existence of God is such a fact, requiring a long process of intellection to be known, and it is according to his nature, Descartes says, to believe his intellection is true — that is, when such intellection occurs. Descartes admits that such intellection cannot be sustained by a finite mind such as his own, and when it ceases, he ceases to be convinced of its results. “[F]or example,” he writes,

when I consider the nature of a triangle, it appears most evident to me, steeped as I am in the principles of geometry, that its three angles are equal to two right angles. And so long as I attend to its demonstration I cannot help believing this to be true. But no sooner do I turn the mind’s eye away from the demonstration, than, however much I recall that I had observed it most clearly, nevertheless, it can easily happen that I entertain doubts about whether it is true, were I ignorant of God (47). [Emphasis added.]

But this knowledge of God, too, is arrived at by a process of intellection no different than that of a geometrical proof. When Descartes looks away from the Meditations, God will again be a hazy image without definition or certitude. In order to reacquire the knowledge of God, he will need to pick up his reasoning from the beginning — and his starting point will be the cogito, the foundation of all certainty, true whether God exists or not.