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Notes
As has been suggested by A. Koyré,Essai sur l'idée de Dieu et les preuves de son existence chez Desartes (Paris: Leroux, 1922), pp. 19–21.
I quote from the standard English translation of Descartes' philosphically relevant correspondence: Anthony Kenny (trans. and ed.),Descartes Philosophical Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 11. Henceforth, this work is cited as K.
K, pp. 240–241.
For a useful survey, see J.-L. Marion,Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), pp. 270–271.
Of course, many of Descartes' eternal truths can hardly be considered as analytical in the modern sense; but Descartes, being a heir of Scholasticism in this respect, was not an exception in lacking a clear view on the distinction between “truths of reason” and “truths of fact.” Cf. on this point Amos Funkenstein, “Descartes, Eternal Truths, and the Divine Omnipotence,”Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 6 (1975): 185–199, especially 196–197 (re-edited in id.,Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], pp. 179–192, pp. 190–191); and Lilli Alanen, “Descartes, Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility,”Franciscan Studies 45 (1985): 186–188. Both authors argue convincingly that Descartes' eternal truths are best interpreted not as analytical but as intuitive, i.e., as “clearly and distinctly” perceived ideas.
Descartes adduces these examples in respectively another letter to Mersenne (27 May 1630; K, p. 15); a letter to Mesland (2 May 1644; K, p. 151), to Arnauld (29 July 1648; K, p. 236), and to More (5 February 1649; K, p. 241); and theReply to Objections VI against theMeditations. The latter text is now available in the new English translation of John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch,The Philosophical Writings of Descartes II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 285–301. For reasons of easier comparability with most of the existing secondary literature on our theme, however, where possible I quote from the older translation by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross,The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 2 vols. (1911; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973–76); see Vol. 2, p. 251. I will subsequently refer to this work as HR, and abbreviate the first mentioned translation as CSM.
As Harry G. Frankfurt put it in his seminal article “Descartes and the Creation of the Eternal Truths,”Philosophical Review 86 (1977): 44. This essay, along with some of the other ones we will discuss subsequently, has recently been included in a useful anthology: W. Doney (ed.),Eternal Truths and the Cartesian Circle (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), pp. 222–243.
Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644; K, p. 151.
See Lilli Alanen, “Descartes, Omnipotence, and Kinds of Modality,” inDoing Philosophy Historically, ed. P.H. Hare (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 185. It is not clear to Alanen who the proponents of this interpretation are (p. 194, n. 16). But her argument in exonerating Harry Frankfurt from adopting this position (p. 195, n. 32), is too subtle to be convincing. What else could the claim that necessary truths do not limit God's omnipotence mean than that they are not necessary in an absolute sense, so that their denials are possible? Some other commentators who at least have not explicitly or implicitly distanced themselves from the extreme reading are summed up by Alanen herself (p. 192, n. 1). Alanen is right, however, if she means that this interpretation is seldomexplicitly defended over against alternative readings. See also the shorter version of her article in L. Alanen and S. Knuuttila, “The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and his Predecessors,” inModern Modalities. Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, ed. S. Knuuttila (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 11–17. See for Frankfurt's position also his earlier paper “The Logic of Omnipotence,”Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 262–263, where he suggests that the Cartesian God is able to perform self-contradictory tasks, to the extent that he e.g. “can handle situations which he cannot handle” (p. 263).
Alvin Plantinga,Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), p. 112.
Meditations V; HR 1, p. 180. Cf. E.M. Curley, “Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths,”Philosophical Review 93 (1984): 572.
Letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630; K, p. 11. Cf. Anthony Kenny, “The Cartesian Circle and the Eternal Truths,”Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 698; id.,The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 21.
In his unpublishedLe Monde, see Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (eds.),Oeuvres de Descartes XI (Paris: Leopold Cerf, 1911), p. 47 (now translated in CSM I, p. 97); and in hisDiscourse on Method, HR 1, p. 108; Both texts are quoted by Curley, “Descartes on the Creation,” p. 573, who points to the fact that Descartes is anticipating here Leibniz' definition of “necessary” as “true in all possible worlds.”
See for a rather extensive list of those M. Gueroult,Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons (Paris: Aubier, 1953), II, pp. 26–29. Gueroult has been criticized on this point by Frankfurt, “Descartes on the Creation,” pp. 47–50, and more recently by J. Bouveresse, “La théorie du possible chez Descartes,”Revue Internationale de Philosophie 37 (1983): 304–309. For a richly documented discussion of the issue, to a large extent validating Frankfurt's point of view, see J.-L. Marion,Sur la théologie blanche, pp. 296–303.
See the letter to Arnauld, K, pp. 236–237; and remember our previous quotation from the letter to More, K, p. 240: “For my part, I know that my intellect is finite and God's power is infinite, and so I set no bounds to it.” Given this statement, it would seem that any attempt to single out some uncreated truths would be experienced by Descartes as doing just that: setting bounds to the omnipotence of God. Cf. alsoReply to Objections VI, HR 2, p. 250: “⋯it is clear that nothing at all can exist which does not depend on him. This is true not only of everything that subsists, but of all order, of every law, and of every reason of truth and goodness.”
M.D. Wilson,Descartes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 124.
Apart from Gueroult, the thesis that there are theological absolute necessities in Descartes is supported by Curley (“Descartes,” pp. 592–594), Alanen (“Descartes, Scotus and Ockham,” p. 164), and with some reservations by J.-M. Beyssade, “Création des vérités éternelles et doute métaphysique,’ inStudia Cartesiana 2 (1981): 104–105, and by J. Bouveresse, “La théorie,” p. 309 (“Il est probable que Descartes, sous peine de mettre en péril son propre système, a dû soustraire certaines vérités éternelles à la doctrine de la libre création, en particulier certaines vérités concernant Dieu lui-même.”)
Peter Geach,Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 9–10; Plantinga,Does God Have a Nature?, pp. 103–114; Curley, “Descartes on the Creation,” pp. 576–583, 597.
For a slightly different version of this example, see Plantinga,Does God Have a Nature?, p. 112. Instead of his “he could only have made it the case that he could have made it false” I prefer to read: “he could only have made it the case that it is possibly false.”
Such as the one proposed by Hide Ishiguro, “The Status of Necessity and Impossibility in Descartes,” inEssays on Descartes' Meditations, ed. A.O. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 459–471, hinging on an alleged asymmetry between necessary truths (which God could make untrue) and necessary falsehoods, i.e. contradictions (which God could not make true) in Descartes. For a useful evaluation of the pros and cons of this reading, see Alanen, “Descartes, Omnipotence,” pp. 186–189.
Letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630; K, p. 11. Valuable discussions of this section are in J.-M. Beyssade,La philosophie première de Descartes (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), p. 112, and David E. Schrader, “Frankfurt and Descartes: God and Logical Truth,”Sophia 25 (1986): 6–7.
See on this my paper “De absolute en geordineerde macht van God. Opmerkingen bij de ontwikkeling van een onderscheid,”Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 45 (1991): 204–222.
This point is not sufficiently taken into account by Alanen, who claims that Descartes “says, repeatedly, that God can make contradictories true together” (“Descartes, Omnipotence,” p. 184). In all of the three texts she quotes for support Descartes uses double negations. Cf. R.R. La Croix, “Descartes on God's Ability to do the Logically Impossible,”Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1984): 471: “In fact, the claim that God can violate the law of contradiction or do what human reason judges to be logically impossible or contradictory is conspicuous by its very absence.”
In this vein, Marion,Sur la théologie, p. 302 concludes from the letter to More that whether or not everything is possible to God is undecidable to us.
Frankfurt, “Descartes on the Creation,” p. 44; cf. Alanen, “Descartes, Omnipotence,” p. 189.
Reply to Objections V; HR 2, p. 226. “⋯yet I think because God so wished it and brought it to pass, theyare immutable and eternal” (Descartes seems to emphasize the wordesse indeed). Cf. id., p. 250 (“It is because he willed the three angles of a triangle to be necessarily equal to two right angles that this is trueand cannot be otherwise,” italics added), and the interesting dialogue in theConversation with Burman on the Ockhamist issue of theodium Dei, where Burman asks: “But does it follow from this that God could have commanded a creature to hate him, and thereby made this a good thing to do?” Reply of Descartes: “God could not now do this: but we simply do not know what he could have done. In any case, why should he not have been able to give this command to one of his creatures?”; AT 5, p. 160; the translation is of John Cottingham,Descartes' Conversation with Burman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 22.
See the Letter to Mersenne from 27 May 1630, theConversation with Burman (Cottingham,Descartes' Conversation, pp. 15–16), and La Croix, “Descartes,” p. 462. In general, the papers of La Croix and Schrader (“Frankfurt”), though hardly noticed up to now, are convincing in emphasizing this point. Apart from them, the interpretation we propound is also shared by Bouveresse, “La théorie,” esp. pp. 305–306.
See on this special Cartesian concept of creation theMeditations 3 (HR 1, p. 168); Alanen, “Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham,” p. 167; and Curley, “Descartes on the Creation,” pp. 577–579, who claims that we should not take Descartes' temporal expressions at face value, since Descartes conceives God's creative act as timelessly eternal. But since he does not provide any textual evidence on this point, this remains to be seen.
Reply to Objections VI; HR 2, p. 250.
Ibid., p. 577.
T.V. Morris, “Properties, Modalities, and God,”Philosophical Review 93 (1984): 35–36. Morris expounds his modal distinctions in terms of properties which can be exemplified by individuals or objects, but this feature can easily be left out.
Ibid., p. 40.
For this argument I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer of theInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
Discourse on Method, HR 1, p. 108.
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Van Den Brink, G. Descartes, modalities, and God. Int J Philos Relig 33, 1–15 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01314313
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01314313