It seems that there is no philosophy more vulnerable to external, rational criticism, than the philosophy of Descartes. The literary form of his works is nothing short of doubt. For example, his main work "Discourse on Method” is rather a fiction than a philosophical treatise; or I’d rather say, it’s a kind of notes about his life: experience, thoughts, or feelings. Moreover, they are difficult to reconcile in a single work. However, Descartes manages to question absolutely everything in the world in dozens of pages under the same title, then to find a way out of this, so to speak, dubious circumstance, to prove the existence of God, and, in addition, to tell us something from ethics, mathematics, physiology, anatomy (and it seems to me that it’s not the whole list of interested issues.
But let’s talk about the issue of God as Descartes sees it.
The evidence of God existence provided by Descartes as follows.
" The ability to think of something more perfect than I am should come from something that is naturally really better This idea (of perfection) was put into my head from those whose nature is more perfect than mine and who combines all perfection - God" (Marxists.org).
This argument, perhaps, is the weakest link in the chain of his discourse. It’s weak not because it contains a false idea - the idea is all the same - the content of thought is equated with reality - but it’s presented in the most distorted form; the form, which embodies this thought, is so inadequate, so suppresses the idea the latter is almost completely lost. Therefore, the objections that are commonly brought against Descartes, just in this case appear to be the most reasonable. In fact, why don’t we tell Descartes, that his idea of perfection is only an exaggeration of the real perfection of the world? Why this exaggeration must objectively match anything? The question that interests Descartes is how to prove the reality of what is thought of and how to move from thinking to being? That is the central point of the ontological proof of God existence. Instead of at least formulate this question, Descartes, without further ado resolve it somewhere in the recesses of his mind, and then he voices the decision in a completely private, casual wording.
But here is his another argument for the existence of God:
The thing that doesn’t exist can’t be entirely perfect. That’s why the idea of absolute perfection must conclude the idea of existence that is to get the idea of (God) the same way as the idea of triangle - the equality of its angles to two right angles or the idea of the sphere - the same distance of all its parts from the center " (Marxists.org).
I think, this one is much convincing than the previous. Here Descartes is much closer to the essence. Because only here we’ve almost come to the actual problem of God existence, namely, only now we can understand how difficult is both to prove the existence of God and refute this evidence, i.e., how difficult is to be both a believer and an atheist.
"God exists because I see it" - that is the idea of Descartes’ arguments, and that is the ontological proof of God existence. Hence it’s clear how both compelling, irrefutable and unfounded, unproven this evidence is. By its logical nature, it’s not a proof, but testimony of a witness – “I see something – believe it or not.” However, the question is infinitely broad-ranging (Prevos.net).
"I see this, therefore, this exists" – I’d like to provide two murderous objections against this thesis. The first: do you really see this or you don’t actually see anything? In response, it refers to the experience of others: they see the same thing as I see, that’s why my words aren’t a froth. However, when talking about the proof of God existence, we have the situation where others don’t see anything, and it’s the only one person who sees it, for example, Descartes. How can he prove to others that he sees something that other people, being sane and ceteris paribus, don’t see? Why these people have to agree with Descartes, why not vice versa? Who and how can possibly prove anything in such situation?
If there is a God who doesn’t deceive us, the idea of "evil demon" loses its meaning. But if there is such God who disorients us, why do we make mistakes so often? According to Descartes, we make mistakes because of the fact that we don’t systematically and critically concern the content of our thoughts and perceptions. Therefore, we must consistently adhere to what is clear and distinct as the statement of cogito ergo sum. Moreover, we must use our intelligence to distinguish between genuine knowledge and what is not. By applying this criterion to the "candidate for the knowledge” tested by the methodical doubt, we, according to Descartes, conclude that we can have some confidence in our reasoning and sense-impressions, provided that critically and methodically treat them as sources of knowledge. With this in mind, Descartes returns to the kinds of knowledge that he had previously rejected as erroneous in general and said that, in practice, they can be useful (Marxists.org).
I can’t say that Descartes’ arguments are convincing to me. As mentioned above, I was trying to separate the ESSENCE of Descartes’ philosophy from that accidental form in which Descartes embodied it. Now I have to say that this very essence is a coincidence, but the real content of the philosophy of Descartes is its false form.
Works Cited
Rene Descartes 1639. Meditations on First Philosophy in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body. Marxists.org. Date of access 29 March 2016
˂https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/descartes/1639/meditations.htm˃
Does God Exist? A review of Descartes’ Ontological Argument by Peter Prevos. Prevos.net. Date of access 29 March 2016
˂http://prevos.net/humanities/philosophy/god/˃
