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Descartes on God's Ability to Do the Logically Impossible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard R. La Croix
Richard R. La Croix*
Affiliation:
State University College at Buffalo
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Extract

With very few exceptions philosophers believe that no account of the doctrine of divine omnipotence is adequate if it entails that God can do what is logically impossible. Descartes is credited with believing otherwise. In his article ‘Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths’ (The Philosophical Review, 86, 1977) Harry Frankfurt attributes to Descartes the belief that God is ‘a being for whom the logically impossible is possible’ (44). In addition, Frankfurt claims that because of this belief Descartes’ account of God's omnipotence is open to the charge of being incoherent. I will argue that it is wrong to attribute this belief to Descartes and that if his account of divine omnipotence is incoherent, it is incoherent for reasons other than that it entails the possibility of what is logically impossible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 455 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1984

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References

1 There are others who attribute such a belief to Descartes. In his article ‘Descartes, Mathematics, and God’ (The Philosophical Review, 66, 1957) Leonard G. Miller holds it to be a consequence of Descartes’ account of omnipotence that · … the denial of an allegedly necessary truth really is not inconceivable and really is not self-contradictory’ (463). Peter Geach in an article titled ‘Omnipotence’ (Philosophy. 48, 1973) credits Descartes with deliberately adopting and defending the doctrine that’ … God can do everything absolutely: everything that can be expressed in a string of words that makes sense; even if that sense can be shown to be self-contradictory. God is not bound in action, as we are in thought, by the laws of logic’ (9). More recently in Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 1980) Alvin Plantinga credits Descartes with teaching that · … there are no necessary truths at all; every truth is contingent’ (102). The account of Descartes’ doctrine of divine omnipotence given by these commentators is not as detailed as the account given by Frankfurt, but these commentators make some of the same crucial errors of interpretation made by Frankfurt.

2 Descartes - Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. by Kenny, Anthony (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1970) 11–12.Google Scholar In what follows, this book is referred to as K.

3 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. by Haldane, Elizabeth S. and Ross, G.R T.. Vol. II (New York: Dover Publications 1955) 250.Google Scholar In what follows, this book is referred to as HR II.

4 Descartes to Hyperaspistes, August 1641, K 115.

5 Descartes to Mersenne, 27 May 1630, K 15; and Reply Six, HR II, 248.

6 See Reply Five. HR II. 226; Reply Five, HR II. 227; Reply Six. HR II. 248; Letter to Mersenne, 15 April1630, K 11; and Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, K 151.

7 To be sure the propositions asserting the negations of the eternal truths are among the constituents of reality for God. but the negations of the eternal truths are not themselves among the constituents of reality for God, i.e.. the negations of the eternal truths are not themselves truths or even possible truths.

8 See again Reply Six, HR II, 250.

9 For Descartes’ remarks on the incomprehensibility of God and his power see the letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630, K 12; the letter to Mersenne, 27 May 1630, K 15; and Reply Five, HR II, 218.