Philosophy essay #3: Descartes’ Meditations
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The debate as to whether or not God exists is a crucial question in philosophy. René Descartes formulates the idea of the all good being, God, in Meditation Three of his essay entitled, Meditations on First Philosophy. The philosopher begins his essay doubting everything that is around him, his senses, his thoughts, and even basic arithmetic. The reason he wrote the essay was to find truth to his existence. It seems logical that Descartes introduced the evil demon, one that tries to instill doubt into the simplest of things, but the introduction of God being an all perfect being that does not let him be deceived, is not logically adequate. Descartes begins criticizing everything around him, essentially being a skeptic, but he ends up introducing an explanation, God, in order to answer the questions of doubt. I strongly disagree with Descartes’ introduction of God in Meditation Three because he is not being consistent with the methods of the first two meditations therefore not achieving his goal of solving questions of doubt. In Meditation One, Descartes begins to doubt everything he has experienced to date. He asks himself whether he exists, whether has past experiences actually happened and whether his senses are true to him. He finds senses to be deceptive sometimes and therefore believes that he cannot completely trust them. He even states the most obvious truths, such as arithmetic and geometry, could be false. Descartes supposes that everything he sees is false; that he has no senses whatever and that his body, shape, extension, movement, and place are all unknown (p). Judging by his doubtful approach, one could label Descartes a skeptic. Near the end of the meditation, Descartes introduces the “evil demon”, a being whose mission is to deceive him. In Meditation Two Descartes concludes “I am, I exist”. He defines himself as a thinking thing; it is the only thing that he can be sure of. He supports his argument by stating “I” does not depend on whether or not other things exist in the world around him. After convincing himself he is a thinking thing, he ponders what that entails. He answers stating that a thinking thing is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses and also imagines and senses. Still, Descartes admits that his mind is still prone to errors and still faces the problem of certainty when it comes to matters other than defining who he is. In Meditation Three Descartes attempts to prove that there is an all good being that is all perfect and who cannot be a deceiver, God. After defining himself as a thinking thing, Descartes tries to remove doubt from the picture. First, the philosopher begins by asking whether or not anything from the idea of God came from something other than himself. He concludes that that is not the case and that the supreme all knowing being must exist as Descartes attempts to find the root of his existence. He believes that God is the truest, clearest and the most distinct idea. Descartes believes that the idea of God was innate and that only God himself could have planted the idea of God into his head. Descartes concludes that God must exist, that he is all perfect and all powerful and that he is a good God that cannot be a deceiver. I strongly disagree with Descartes’ statements involving God and there are many different points on which to question him in order to disprove his theory. First, one must briefly look back to Meditation One where he states “There is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I have been created (p51)”. If Descartes doubts everything, as he does in Meditation One, he has no grounds for such claims. As a skeptic, he cannot jump from doubting everything, to being sure of the existence of a God. In Meditation Three, he makes a similar mistake. Secondly, Descartes argues that he himself came up with the idea of God. But, the reader and critic must look at the 1600’s, the time period in which Descartes wrote. At the time, almost everyone believed in God. One must ask oneself if Descartes would have thought of the existence of God if he had not been immersed in a religious society. One could argue that the idea of God did not come from Descartes himself, but from the society in which he was a part of. It seems as if Descartes fell into his own trap by introducing the evil demon because he cannot seem to find a rational explanation while avoiding doubt. There is no explanation other than God that can argue against the doubt Descartes faces when looking at the world around him. Finally, one could argue that the evil demon could instill doubt into God’s powers and existence. It is easy for Descartes to ignore this fact and simply state that God is an all good being that would not deceive but, the fact remains that the evil demon could still be the cause of doubt, with or without the presence of God. I truly believe that given the evil demon, God’s existence can be doubted. In conclusion, I strongly disagree with Descartes’ introduction of God in Meditation Three because he is not being consistent with the methods of the first meditation, therefore not achieving his goal of solving questions of doubt. Perhaps the question about the evil demon remains unanswered because one can still doubt the existence of God. Had Descartes maintained his skeptical approach from the beginning of his essay, he would have no grounds on which to introduce God.