MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

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1 MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT René Descartes Introduction, Donald M. Borchert DESCARTES WAS BORN IN FRANCE in 1596 and died in Sweden in His formal education from eight to sixteen was received at the Jesuit college of La Flêche. Before he turned seventeen he put aside his books and settled in Paris for about five years of fun, games, and quiet meditation. In 1618 he left Paris and became a soldier, serving in three different European armies, in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, and in Hungary. The life of a soldier during the months of idleness in winter quarters provided Descartes with time for more reflection. He stuck to soldiering for three or four years, then continued his European travels for five or six years more. In 1629, his mind crowded with ideas demanding to be written down, he settled in Holland and engaged in two decades of fruitful writing. Book followed book. His reputation spread. He had the intellectuals of his generation for his readers, and its rulers for his patrons and friends. In rapid succession he wrote Quest for Truth, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy, Passions of the Soul, and many other volumes that soon became stock-in-trade for the philosophically minded of his day. In 1649 he was invited by Queen Christina of Sweden to visit her at Stockholm and to expound the principles of the new philosophy. After much hesitation, and against the advice of his friends, he agreed to go. It cost him his life, for he caught a cold in his lungs that brought about his death. Descartes was deeply troubled by skepticism, which called into question all claims to knowledge. He decided to combat skepticism by using the method of hyperbolic (that is, exaggerated) doubt. He resolved to doubt systematically all knowledge claims until he could reach, if possible, a claim that was indubitable, a claim that the acid of doubt could not corrode. Then on the basis of that indubitable claim, he would build a system of beliefs that were completely justified and would constitute a convincing response to skepticism. He rejected his senses as a source of reliable knowledge about the world and retreated into his mind to discover there, if possible, a bit of knowledge that was beyond doubt. Within his own thinking he discovered his indubitandum (that which was indubitable), which he expressed in the famous

2 MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT statement Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.) Having retreated from the external world of the senses into his mind to find certainty, Descartes now faced the challenge of returning to the world of the senses and generating beliefs about the world that were certain and reliable because they were rooted in his indubitandum. To accomplish this task, Descartes needed a bridge from the certainty of his own existence (Cogito ergo sum) to the certainty about stuff in the world. For that bridge, he turned to God, who could serve as the guarantor of the reliability of Descartes s basic beliefs about the world. To use God, however, for this purpose, Descartes first of all needed to prove the existence of God. One of the proofs he presented was a formulation of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Whether or not he knew about Anselm s earlier formulation of the argument is uncertain. Can I really conceive of the supremely perfect being, and deny this perfect being the attribute of existence? Is existence one of God s perfections? Is existence a feature of the divine essence? Clearly, I can conceive of a unicorn, but that does not require that the unicorn be an existing entity. Existence is not part of the essence of a unicorn. Existence is not part of the definition of a unicorn. But is existence part of the definition of the supremely perfect being, God? Is existence an attribute of God? Let us see what Descartes has to say. And going perhaps a step beyond Descartes, let us ask whether existence can be an attribute (a logical predicate) of anything, a legitimate part of the essence of anything. FIFTH MEDITATION OF THE ESSENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS; AND, ONCE MORE OF GOD, THAT HE EXISTS And now, if from the fact alone that I can draw from my thought the idea of a thing, it follows that all that I recognize clearly and distinctly as belonging to that thing does indeed belong to it, cannot I derive from this an argument and a proof demonstrating the existence of God? It is certain that I no less find the idea of God in me, that is to say, the idea of a supremely perfect being, than that of any figure or number whatsoever. And I know no less Excerpt from Meditations on the First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Real Distinction Between the Soul and the Body of Man are Demonstrated, reprinted from Discourse on Methods and The Meditations, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe, 1968, Penguin Books, pp

3 MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT clearly and distinctly that an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature, than that all I can demonstrate of any figure or number truly belongs to the nature of that figure or number. And consequently, even though everything I have concluded in the preceding Meditations were shown to be untrue, the existence of God must pass in my mind for at least as certain as I have until now judged all the truths of mathematics to be, which concern only numbers and figures, although indeed this may not appear at first entirely manifest, and may seem to have the appearance of a sophism. For being accustomed in all other matters to distinguish between existence and essence, I am easily persuaded that the existence of God can be separated from his essence and that, thus, God may be conceived as not actually existing. But, nevertheless, when I think about it more attentively, it becomes manifest that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the fact that the sum of its three angles is equal to two right-angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle or than the idea of a mountain can be separated from the idea of a valley; so that there is no less contradiction in conceiving a God, that is to say, a supremely perfect being, who lacks existence, that is to say, who lacks some particular perfection, than in conceiving a mountain without a valley. But although, in truth, I cannot conceive a God without existence, any more than I can a mountain without a valley, yet, just as it does not follow that merely because I conceive a mountain with a valley, there is any mountain in the world, so similarly, although I conceive God as having existence, it does not follow from that, that there is a God who actually exists, for my thought imposes no necessity on things; and as I can well imagine a winged horse, although there is no such horse, so could I perhaps attribute existence to God, even though no God existed. But this is fallacious and there is here a sophism under this seeming objection: for, because I cannot conceive a mountain without valley, it does not follow that there is any mountain in the world, or any valley, but only that the mountain and the valley, whether they exist or not, cannot in any way be separated from one another; whereas, because I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that existence is inseparable from him, and hence that he truly exists; not that my thought can make this be so, or that it imposes any necessity on things, but, on the contrary, because the necessity of the thing itself namely, the necessity of the existence of God, determines my thought to conceive in this way. For I am not free to conceive a God without existence, that is to say, a supremely perfect being devoid of a supreme perfection, as I am free to imagine a horse with or without wings.

4 MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT Nor must it be alleged here that it is in truth necessary to admit that God exists, after having supposed that he possesses all perfection, since existence is one of them, but that my first supposition was itself unnecessary; in the same way that it is not necessary to think that all four-sided figures can be inscribed in the circle, for if I supposed this, I must perforce admit that the rhombus can be inscribed in the circle, since this is a four-sided figure; and thus I would be constrained to assert something false. But this argument is not valid: for although it may not be necessary that I ever have any thought of God, nevertheless, every time I happen to think of it first and sovereign being, and, so to speak, to draw the idea of him from the treasure-house of my mind, I must necessarily attribute to him sorts of perfections, although I cannot manage to enumerate them all or apply my mind to each one individually. And this necessity is sufficient, after I have recognized that existence is a perfection, to make me conclude that this first and sovereign being truly exists in the same way that it is not necessary ever to imagine any triangle, but every time I wish to consider a rectilineal figure composed of only three angles, it is absolutely necessary that I should attribute to it all those properties which lead one to conclude that its throe angles are not greater than two right-angles, although perhaps I may not then consider that fact in particular. But, when I consider which figures am capable of being inscribed in the circle, it is not necessary in any way for me to think that all four-sided figures are of this number; on the contrary, I cannot even pretend that it is so, so long as I am unwilling to accept anything into my thought except what I can conceive clearly and distinctly. And consequently, there is a big difference between false suppositions, like this one, and true ideas which are born with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God. For, indeed, I recognize in several ways that this idea is not something factitious, depending only on my thought, but that it is the representation of a true and immutable nature: firstly, because I cannot conceive of anything other than God alone, to whose essence existence belongs of necessity; secondly, because it is impossible to conceive of two or several Gods of the same kind. And, given that there is one now who exists, I see clearly that he must necessarily have existed from all eternity, and must exist eternally in the future. And finally, because I know an infinity of other attributes in God, none of which I can diminish or change. Moreover, whatever proof and argument I use, it must always come back to this, that only the things I conceive clearly and distinctly have the power to convince me completely. And although, among the things I con-

5 MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT ceive in this way, there are indeed some which are obvious to everyone, while others reveal themselves only to those who consider them more closely and examine them more precisely, nevertheless, after they have once been discovered, the latter are not considered less certain than the former. Thus, for example, in every right-angled triangle, although it is not at first so easily perceived that the square of the base is equal to the squares of the other two sides, as that this base is opposite to the greatest angle, nevertheless, once this is recognized, we are equally persuaded of the truth of the former as of the latter. And, as regards God, if my mind were not already obscured by prejudices, and my thought distracted by the continual presence of the images of sensible objects, there would be nothing that I should know sooner or more easily than him. For is there anything of itself clearer and more manifest than the existence of a God, that is to say a supreme and perfect being, in the idea of whom alone is contained necessary or eternal existence, and who, consequently, exists?

Descartes' Ontological Argument

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