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Descartes Showed There Was No Need for God in Philosophy.” “Descartes showed there was no need for God in philosophy.” With reference to Descartes' key philosophical ideas and with particular reference to Descartes' Discourse on the Method and related metaphysical works, discuss and critically assess this statement. Descartes marked a pivotal moment in Western philosophy with respect to the role of reason in both philosophy and theology. The controversy surrounding Descartes’ application of his “first principle of philosophy”1, the cognito (“I am thinking, therefore I am”), resulted in his work being put on the Catholic Index of the Inquisition shortly after his death. To Catholic apologists and theologians today, it is still a strongly emotive subject: “[In] response to a question about the pervasive ideologies that had swept Europe during the past couple of centuries, and which had resulted in the slaughter of millions, [Pope John Paul II] contended that in order to explain all this, we have to go back to the …revolution brought about by the philosophical thought of Descartes.”2 Pope John-Paul II’s dialogue referred to above is found in his book “Memory and Identity” which divided philosophy at Descartes: “The cognito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) radically changed the way of doing philosophy. In the pre-Cartesian period, philosophy, that is to say the cognito, or rather the cognosco, was subordinate to esse, which was considered prior…it marked the decisive abandonment of what philosophy had been hitherto, particularly the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and namely the philosophy of esse [being].”3 1 René Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, Ian Maclean (trans), (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p28 2 James Matthew Wilson, ‘The Treasonous Clerk: “See, I Am Doing Something New”: John Paul II’s Summons to Secular Being’, http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1394, 6th Jan 2013 3 James Matthew Wilson, ‘The Treasonous Clerk: “See, I Am Doing Something New”: John Paul II’s Summons to Secular Being’, http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1394, 6th Jan 2013 Page 1 of 20 The controversy was also found within Protestant Holland where Descartes had lived for a large portion of his working life. At the height of disputations in the 1640s, his philosophy was described as “blasphemous and atheistic”4 by Leiden professor of theology Jacob Trigland. This essay examines whether it really was Descartes’ intention to facilitate the “removal of God from philosophy”5 by “[setting] up reason, everyone’s own rational faculty, as the sole authority and criterion of truth”6. The approach of this essay is first to set his personal context and those of his seminal Discourses to his other metaphysical writings. In the author’s view, only then can Descartes’ thought be interpreted and a realistic assessment of the charge against him made. The following words of Descartes in his Meditations are immediately pertinent to establishing the place of the Discourse in Descartes’ metaphysics: “I have already briefly discussed questions about God and the human mind in the Discourse…I did not intend to discuss them in detail in that book..but…to learn from readers’ reactions how they should be presented thoroughly”7 (emphasis added). In the commentaries of Cottingham8 and Sorell, similar thoughts are found on the brevity of the Discourse “as part of [a maturing] integrated system of knowledge”9. There is also fragmentary evidence from his early writings that suggest the core of 4 Gary Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations (London: Routledge, 2003),pp27-29 5 Peter A. Schouls, Descartes and the Enlightenment (Edinburgh: McGill-Queens Press, 1989), pp60- 61 6 Marcus Weigelt, ‘Introductory Essay’ in Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Marcus Weigelt (trans) (London: Penguin, 2007), p.xxix 7 René Descartes, Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings, Michael Clarke(trans), (London: Penguin, 2003), p12 8 John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume 1) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p4nn 9 Tom Sorell, Descartes – A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p1 Page 2 of 20 the metaphysical component was ready for publishing as early as 162010. It has been the subject of much scholarly discussion11 as to how truthful Descartes is in his representation of the development and in the presentation of his thought within the Discourse. What seems to be the consensus is that, though the Discourse has a final tone and autobiographical form, it is an abridged and idealised account12 of the development of his thought to reinforce the integrity of the thesis he wishes his readers to consider elsewhere, “it was…a fable13 that Descartes presented the book to his readers”14. One popular thesis for his unusual publication pattern and his self- imposed exile in Protestant Holland was to avoid the possibility of suffering the recent fate of Galileo who in 1633 had been censured by the Inquisition and imprisoned. He had lamented, ‘truth by itself is so little respected’15. However, although Descartes was concerned about the judgment16, it is probably an over- simplification. In his own commentary on the move, all that is suggested is that he enjoyed Holland itself beyond anywhere in Europe and felt the intellectual climate to be of “total freedom”17. He had deliberately withdrawn from the French bourgeoisie to develop his work18 and not to hide from the Church. This interpretation is reinforced by his friendship and lifelong working relationship with Mersenne. Mersenne was 10 John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume 1), pp2-5 11 Gary Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations (London: Routledge, 2003), p45, pp66-67 12 There is some recent scholarly dispute of this asserting it was strongly autobiographical, see Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations, p34 13 René Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, Ian Maclean (trans), (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p6 14 Sorell, Descartes – A Very Short Introduction, p22 15 Maclean (trans), A Discourse on the Method, p.xxiii 16 Cottingham, Descartes, p21 n18 17 John Cottingham et al (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Volume III – The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp31-32 18 Cottingham, Descartes, pp11,21 Page 3 of 20 based in Paris, his publicist, fellow scientist and priest of substantial standing within the French Catholic church: “[he] was…a well published author on theology and its relation to natural philosophy, an implacable enemy of [the atheist] free-thinkers”19. Descartes’ philosophical project famously started with his “dreams” in the night of 10th November 1619 which he interpreted as a divine commission to introduce a completely new scientific and mathematical system20. In his words it was to “destroy”21 first the Aristotelian Scholasticism (Thomism22) of the Roman church which defined objects in terms of their function rather than speculating about their real nature.23 It was to propose Copernican heliocentricity rather than geocentric Neo-Platonic metaphysics that had made man and his abode the locus of Creation about which all else revolves. However, it was also to sweep away the atheism of the “free-thinkers” for at the very advent of his project he had written on his notebook “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”24. He also rejected the radical empiricism of the sceptic philosophers who had been heavily influence by Montaigne at the opening of the 17th century25. He did not accept their sceptical conclusion that it was impossible to be certain about any truth and passionately rejected the resulting proposition that knowledge of reality was to be limited to what could be discerned from sensory information26. In contrast, absolute certainty in natural philosophy was the goal of his entire philosophical project. This required 19 Maclean (trans), A Discourse on the Method (2008), p.ix 20 John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume 1), p4, p4n 21 John Cottingham et al (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Volume III – The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p173 22 Stephen Law, Philosophy (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2007), pp248-9 23 Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations, p67 24 John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (trans), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume 1), p1 25 Law, Philosophy, p35 26 Sorell, Descartes – A Very Short Introduction, p3 Page 4 of 20 metaphysics and in particular God, to be at the centre of the foundations of Descartes’ philosophy. Thus, the Discourse was added as the metaphysical component of his first major publication of 1637 with treatises on geometry, meteorology and optics but at a very late stage (after the publication run had begun), probably because of the complications resulting from the Galileo affair. This is supported by his correspondence with Mersenne who was intimately aware of the details of the censure of Galileo, having published a detailed report and analysis of the Inquisitional judgment, its implications and possible mitigation for loyal Catholic scientists27. Descartes himself had been critical of Galileo’s lack of metaphysical underpinnings for his theory “he built without a foundation…without considering the primary cause of nature, he has sought only the reasons for some particular effect”28. Descartes refers to the Discourse as the fulfilment of a promise to him and his fellow Parisian intellectuals to not repeat Galileo’s epistemological error and to not publish without the metaphysical components of his theory. The most elaborate and nuanced development of his metaphysical arguments found in the Discourse was in the Meditations. It was in the scholarly language of Latin rather than his vernacular French of the Discourse and included by the second Utrecht edition of 164229, Objections and Replies to the Discourse.
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