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Reason, Nature, and God in Descartes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Gary Hatfield
Gary Hatfield
Affiliation:
Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

The present paper argues that the metaphysical doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths constituted a philosophical response to what Descartes considered to be the overly close relationship between philosophy and theology.

The paper examines Descartes' “metaphysical turn,” focusing on the radical doubt and the creation of the eternal truths. The radical doubt, it is argued, was most important not as a device for defeating skepticism or attaining certainty, but as a means to practice the proper use of the intellectual faculty. God and the soul were the first objects of this practice, but the ultimate aim was contemplation of pure extension, the essence of matter. The doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths provided a metaphysical context within which Descartes could claim that the human mind completely comprehends the essences of natural things without thereby having to adopt either a scholastic Aristotelian or a Neoplatonic conception of such comprehension, both of which tended toward the theologically objectionable position that in grasping the essences of created things, the human mind comprehends God (either his absolute power or ideas in his mind).

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989 , pp. 175 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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