The Silence of Descartes

Philosophy and Theology 8 (3):199-212 (1994)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Certain passages in the Meditations indicate a silence of Descartes before the mystery of God. These passages underscore the inadequacy of reason to penetrate God’s attributes. Descartes underlines the incomprehensibility of God’s infinity and God’s purposes. He evokes an intuitive knowledge of God which transcends the conceptual. Relevant passages in the correspondence of Descartes indicate Descartes’s repeated concern with the limits of philosophical theology and support a deconstruction of the Medítations which privileges its recurrent theologia negativa. Such an interpretation of the religious theory in public and private Cartesian texts contests the persistent “rationalist” interpretation of Descartes, which reduces the theology of the Meditations to a series of deductive proofs.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Descartes, the cartesian circle, and epistemology without God.Michael Della Rocca - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1):1–33.
Meditations on first philosophy: with selections from the Objections and Replies.René Descartes - 1960 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by John Cottingham & Bernard Williams.
Routledge philosophy guidebook to Descartes and the meditations.Gary C. Hatfield - 2002 - New York: Routledge. Edited by René Descartes.
Individualism and Descartes.William Ferraiolo - 1996 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 16 (1):71-86.
Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations.Tom Vinci - 2011 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (4):497-498.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-01-09

Downloads
61 (#237,812)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

John J. Conley
Loyola University Maryland

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references