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Critically examine the proof Descartes gives for the existence of God in the Third Meditation.
The proof that Descartes posits for the existence of God in the third of his Meditations (Descartes, 1968) must be understood within the wider context of his ontological schema.
After all, the imperative to prove the existence of God arises not so much out of a need to establish the certainty of a beneficent being but to negate the hypothesis that some deceiving demon, no less cunning and deceiving than powerfulhas used all his artifice to deceive (him) (Descartes, 1968: 100).
For Descartes, the existence of God was inextricably linked to the concept of knowledge and the possibility of knowing (Dicker, 1993: 893) and in this paper I would like to examine his discussion, place it within the context of his thoughts on ontology and perception and assess its validity both in terms of conclusions and methodology. I will firstly outline the basic concepts that provide the third Meditation's foundation, then move on from this to look at the specific arguments he offers for God's existence before drawing conclusions as to their validity and robustness as metaphysical notions via the critique offered by the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.
Some of the sense of the place of God within Descartes' system is given in the author's correspondence with his editor Mersenne: the discussion (in the Meditations) is not confined to God and the soul, but treats in general of all the first things to be discovered by philosophising. (Descartes, cited Cottingham, 1998: 6) The skeptical regime of the first two Meditations so successfully question the validity of perception, of Nature and of knowledge that, by the third, we are left with only two areas of clear and distinct (Descartes, 1968: 113) thought: simple mathematical equations such as two and three make five and the axiomatic notion that Descartes is himself a res cogitans (Descartes, 1968: 114-116).
However, Descartes also recognises that there is a possibility, however slight, that these truths could, themselves, be merely the product of a deceiving being and, thus in order to be able to remove this doubt completely (Descartes, 1968: 115) he needs to first prove His existence and then prove that He is not deceiving:
I must inquire whether there is a God, as soon as the opportunity presents itself; and if I find that there is one, I must also inquire whether He can be deceitful; for without the knowledge of these two truths, I do not see that I can ever be certain of anything. (Descartes, 1968: 115)
The proof of God qua absolute perfection, as John Marshall states (1998) can be seen to be related to the Medieval theological notion of the Great Chain of Being that postulated the relationship between degrees of reality and corresponding degrees of perfection (or value) (Marshall, 1998: 98n). Under this system, God as ultimate perfection commands also infinite value and infinite reality.
Descartes notes, for instance, that there must be at least the same amount of reality in a cause as its effect and from this it follows that, as Descartes' knowledge is constantly evolving, there must be some higher force, a God, creating it:
Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its causeAnd hence it follows, not only that nothingness cannot produce anything, but that also that the more perfect, that is to say that which contains in itself more reality, cannot be a consequence and dependance of the less perfect. (Descartes, 1968: 119)
A corollary to this notion, of course, is that no matter how perfect a corporeal substance might seem, it must always have been created by something more perfect, more real; the chain, obviously, stretching back towards God qua perfection and immutability. This assertion also removes the doubt that clouded the natural light of axiomatic Reason and questioned the validity of the Cogito (Hatfield, 2002: 169).
Descartes sees his own knowledge as journeying from unknowing to knowing, from darkness to light and thus represents perfection merely in potential; God's knowledge however exists as perfection in actuality, proving not that it exists but that it is infinite.
Interestingly, Descartes follows this line of inquiry by anticipating the objections of his critics. Why can I not, he asks, know of perfection through its opposite, in the same way that light can be conceived of by its lack? (Descartes, 1968: 124) He answers this, again, through recourse to the Great Chain of Being:
I see manifestly that there is more reality in the infinite substance than in the finite, and hence that I have in me in some way the notion of the infinite, before that of the finite, that is to say the notion of God (Descartes, 1968: 124)
For Descartes, then, God is axiomatic and inextricably linked to the way that we perceive and think about the world; He is the overriding cause of all things and, in many ways, is the antidote to the nihilism of sceptical doubt, his proof arises out of man's imperfection and also provides surety for the Cogito.
One of the most obvious critiques of Descartes, of course, arises not out of his conclusions so much as his method, especially when deconstructed by either Derrida or Foucault. As Hugh Silverman (1989) details, the roots of both critiques are contained within Descartes' First Meditation, where he dismisses madness from the realm of reason and philosophy:
How could I deny that these hands and this body belong to me, unless perhaps I were to assimilate myself to those insane persons whose minds are so troubled and clouded by the black vapours of the bile that they constantly assert that they are kings, when they are very pooror that they have a body of glass. (Descartes, 1968: 96)
For Foucault, in Madness and Civilization (2004), this was indicative of a process of exclusion and a testament to the power the sane had over the mad, but for Derrida, in his essay Cogito and the History of Madness (2004) (itself a rebuttal to Foucault) the passage is indicative of larger the logocentricism inherent in much of Descartes' work and (we could assert) also in his proof of God:
If the cogito is valid even for the madman, to be mad - if, once more, this expression has a singular philosophical meaning, which I do not believe: it simply says the other od each determined for of the logosFrom the moment when [sic] Descartes pronounces the Cogito, he inscribes it in a system of deductions and protections that betray its wellspring (Derrida, 2004: 71)
For Derrida, the simple act of declaring oneself not like a madman involves a whole gamut of psychosocial, psychological, philosophical and linguistic assumptions that will, by their very nature, shape his conclusions. Descartes, in other words, privileges rationality in the very modes of thought and linguistic structures he uses and the same could be said for other binaries: internal over external, God over man, infinite over finite etc. For Derrida, despite Descartes' assertions to the contrary, he could never successfully rid himself of the learning and assumptions that shaped his knowledge and thus his conclusions, there is an inherent hierarchy in the language his uses and the modes of thought he adopts.
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Conclusion
Viewed in this way, Descartes' proof of God becomes self fulfilling: Derrida seems to suggest that Descartes' method could have no other outcome than to prove His existence because by its very nature it is transcendent. In other words, the very fact that Descartes tacitly assumes a hierarchy (by attempting strip it down in the first two Meditations) means that his efforts would only ever result in the assumption of either an ultimate archia or a foundational cause.
Descartes' assertions on the existence of God, as we have seen, are not merely concerned with metaphysics and theology but with ontology and the nature of perception and, in many ways, they can be seen as the extension of his method. Given the philosophical framework of the Discourse (1968) and the first two Meditations, it is almost inevitable, as Derrida suggests, that God is seen as a necessary prerequisite for human thought. It is easy to see how in an anti-hierarchical philosophical schema like Derrida's, or perhaps even Nietzsche's eternal return, this imperative, for an originary notion like God, would be unnecessary.
References
Cottingham, J (1998), Descartes, Oxford: Oxford.
Derrida, J (2004), Cogito and the History of Madness, published in Writing and Difference (trans. Alan Bass), London: Routledge, pp. 36-76
Descartes, R. (1968), Discourse on Method and Other Writings, (trans. F.E. Sutcliffe), London: Penguin.
Dicker, G (1993), Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foucault, M. (2004), Madness and Civilization, (trans. Richard Howard), London: Routledge.
Hatfield, G (2002), Descartes and the Meditations, London: Routledge.
Marshall, J (1998), Descartes' Moral Theory, London: Cornell University
Marshall, P (1994), Nature's Web: Rethinking our Place on Earth, New York: Paragon House.
Silverman, H. (1989), Derrida and Deconstruction, London: Routledge.
Bibliography
Byrne, J (1997), Religion and Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant, London: Westminster.
Cohen, T (2001), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dauler Wilson, M (1991), Descartes, London: Routledge.
Katz, J (1986), Cogitations, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marion, J (1999), Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics, Chicago: University of Chicago.
Norris, C (1992), Deconstruction and the Interests of Theory, Leicester: University of Leicester.
Wolf-Devine, C (1993), Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology, Illinois: Southern Illinois University.
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