Critique on Descartes' Idea of God

Descartes, a French mathematician and philosopher, born in Touraine in 1596 embarked on a programme of radical intellectual reform that resulted in a shift in philosophical perspective so great that scholasticism fell into lasting disrepute. He applied himself, without recourse to an external aid, to seeking out a non-referential piece of knowledge (self-evident) upon which the whole edifice of knowledge can be built upon, by meditating on self. This bold attempt was informed by both the realization that certain of his erstwhile beliefs were erroneously held to be true; that no single thing is found in philosophy which is not subject of disrepute and in consequence which is not dubious , and an unflagging faith in the ability of the natural light of reason to discover truths about man and nature.

This attempt, partly borne of a certain reliance on the principles of mathematics and Geometry has come to be widely known as 'Cartesian methodic doubt". In the 'meditations', Descartes puts forward two arguments in a bid to raise doubt as to the credibility of the beliefs given to us by the senses. The basic arguments can be summarily put as (i) Dream argument (ii) Evil genius argument. We do not intend to give a detailed analysis of these arguments; we shall treat of them to the extent that they led Descartes' to a consideration of the existence of God. The overriding aim of this essay therefore is to critically examine Descartes' idea of God.

Against the central problems of uncertainty and deception raised by the Dream and Evil genius arguments, Descartes averred that there was one thing which he could not doubt, that he was thinking and thus, the popular saying cogito ergo sum ( I think, therefore I am). To be deceived, he had to exist and this existence is predicated on the fact that he was thinking- a fact that doubt serves only to confirm- for, the very act of doubting is itself an act of thinking. This appeared to him clear and distinct and as such, only beliefs which bear these characteristics can be said to be true knowledge. But, having established the fact of his own existence and nature, there remained for him to topple the corrosive doubt that had earlier beset him about the external world- a doubt which if not properly dealt with would enthrone absolute skepticism about the external world. The problem raised by this doubt is set against the backdrop that there is a possibility that all that he intuits about the external world is the architect of an evil genius bent on deceiving him. Descartes thus had to develop an argument to prove the existence of a benign God who cannot deceive. A fact that casts doubt on Descartes project of refraining from any recourse to authority and that also suggests that Descartes did not entirely shake off the medieval spirit.

Descartes developed two proofs for the existence of God, the ontological and the cosmological. In his fifth meditation, he gave his own version of the ontological argument. His basic argument is given in this form: Existence can no more be taken away from the divine essence than the magnitude of its three angles...can be taken away from the essence of a triangle...so it is less absurd to think of God (that is, a supremely perfect being) lacking existence...

Prima facie, one's first reaction to this argument is that it is a simple begging of the question of God's existence, but it is not. Descartes clearly thought that theorems about God could be stated in abstraction from the question whether there exists such a being. One of such theorems, as given by Descartes, is that he has an idea of God that is a totally perfect being. But, existence is perfection, hence God who contains all perfections must exist. It is good to note that before Descartes published his meditations, he arranged for the manuscript to be circulated to a number of persons for their comments. One of his critics, the mathematician Pierre Gassendi, argued that "existence is neither a perfection in God nor in anything else; it is rather that in absence of which there is no perfection" . Descartes argument can be rendered as, 'if anything is perfect, then it exists'. Perfection as used by Descartes can not be predicated to other things like mountains but they nonetheless exist. If this argument is stretched further, one can