Descartes the Metaphysician

Introduction

The aim is to ask whether Descartes is a metaphysician, whether he therefore developed a metaphysics, and what kind of metaphysics. This first requires defining metaphysics. We will stick to a simple definition, even if it may seem too narrow. It is a branch of philosophy that aims to arrive at a truth concerning beings or concepts that lie beyond sensory experience—that is, metaphysical in the sense of “beyond the physical world perceptible by our sense organs.”

From this simple perspective, Descartes is a metaphysician, insofar as his goal is indeed to discover something true with , a goal that is evident from Rule I of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (circa 1628):

The object of study must be to direct the mind so as to make it capable of forming sound and true judgments about everything that presents itself to it.

And on the other hand, he emphasizes the questions he will address in the Metaphysical Meditations (1641) in his Preface to the Deans and Doctors of the Sacred Faculty of Theology in Paris:

I have always held that these two questions, concerning God and the soul, are the principal ones that must be demonstrated by the reasons of philosophy rather than those of theology.

He thus contrasts beliefs rooted in faith with truths that can be discovered philosophically regarding metaphysical realities, namely God and the soul.

The method defines the nature of Cartesian metaphysics. The difference between certainty and evidence

The method by which Descartes believes he can attain the truth is fundamental to understanding the nature of the metaphysics he unfolds in The Meditations. The method employed from the very beginning of the First Meditation and throughout it is doubt taken to the extreme: doubt regarding the existence of the external world, doubt concerning mathematical truths as distinct from the experimental sciences, doubt about the goodness of God since he might be deceiving me when I believe I am in the right. It is on this point that my entire thesis on evidence, developed in my book Descartes in the Light of Evidence (2018) and subsequently used to critique numerous interpretations of Cartesian thought in the other book, Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist? (2018), rests. Indeed, when Descartes evokes this ultimate doubt regarding mathematical truths, he asserts:

And indeed, since I sometimes judge that others are mistaken, even in matters they believe they know with the greatest certainty, it may be that He (God) has willed that I be mistaken whenever I add two and three (AT IX, 16, emphasis added).

In fact, Descartes is not conducting a thought experiment on his own here, but is comparing himself to what he observes from the outside: people who are mistaken even as they believe themselves to be right. Thus, he does not doubt the self-evidence that he will only experience as a thought experiment in the Second Meditation regarding the Cogito, but he does doubt certainty. Evidence, on the contrary, will be experienced as indubitable, as that which necessarily imposes itself on the mind that is inhabited by it, such that it cannot doubt it, and thus as that which is absolutely true. What Descartes can doubt in this First Meditation—and what, to my knowledge, has never been emphasized—is certainty not experienced by oneself based on evidence, since this refers to the certainty one observes in others and which therefore does not correspond to a personal thought experiment. Thus, while evidence leads to certainty, certainty alone does not imply that one is in the truth. Evidence imposes itself on the mind and subjugates it, whereas certainty is a subjective adherence to something one merely believes to be true, if it does not follow from evidence. If Descartes allowed himself this doubt about the perfect God from the very first Meditation based on the thought experiment he would conduct himself, it would be entirely contradictory for him to revisit this doubt in the other Meditations. The “deceptive God” is also an opinion imported from outside and not a genuine thought attentive to its object. This remark makes it possible, in particular, to refute the vicious circle argument, for which he has often been criticized.

On the First Evidence: the Cogito

The way Descartes approaches metaphysical realities becomes evident from the very start with the Cogito in the Second Meditation. Indeed, this is the discovery of the first evidence for Descartes, which retrospectively allows us to distinguish it from mere certainty. To understand this, one must follow the steps of this discovery step by step, which requires a critique of the French translation by the Duke of Luynes (1647). After employing the hypothesis of the evil genius in a psychological and meditative manner, Descartes arrived at the conclusion that everything he had believed up to that point must be considered not merely doubtful, but false. Indeed, declaring it false prevents one from falling back into old patterns of thought, into which one would slip if one were content merely to say that it is doubtful.

This raises the question: “Nunquid ergo saltem ego aliquid sum?”, “Am I, at the very least, something as ‘I’?” (AT IX, 19). This inquiry into the ego is obscured in the French translation by the Duke of Luynes: “Am I, at the very least, not something?” Yet one cannot grasp the self-evidence of the Cogito without distinguishing between the “I” and the “self.” The first answer to this question is as follows: “imo certe eram, si quid mihi persuasi,” “certainly I was, if I had persuaded myself of something.” ” The Duke of Luynes’s translation adds, incongruously: “or only if I have thought something.” Indeed, this addition at this stage would imply that the experience of the Cogito has already been attained. Yet this is not the case. What I am is not approached as an “I” (ego) but as an entity (mihi) upon which an action (persuading) is exerted, with a general line of reasoning: to persuade someone, one must assume ( ) that that someone exists. This reasoning can be invalidated by the hypothesis of the evil genius, which raises a new question: “haud dubie igitur ego sum, si me fallit,” “there is no doubt that I am if he deceives me.” We find the same general reasoning as before and the same invalidation. The “mihi” is simply replaced by “me.” Thus, contrary to many interpretations, this reference to the deceiving God does not provide access to the Cogito. The true experience of the Cogito arises only following the preceding sentence:

and let him deceive me as much as he will, yet he can never make me nothing, as long as I think I am something.

At the very moment I am attentive to the fact that I think, I cannot possibly doubt that I exist, and this remains true as long as I am attentive to it. This truth cannot be proven but is experienced as indubitable.

Adeo ut, omnibus satis superque pensitatis, denique statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum, ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. ” [which I translate as follows:] “in such a way that, having thought all this through sufficiently and even beyond, it must be established that this proposition—I am, I exist—is necessarily true whenever it is uttered or conceived by my mind.”

We therefore do not adopt the Duke of Luynes’s translation of the Latin term “statuendum” as “one must conclude.” Indeed, the Cogito cannot be deduced from anything other than itself. It is self-sufficient. In the Meditations, Descartes carefully avoided the phrase “I think, therefore I am” from the fourth part of the Discourse on Method (1637). Similarly, we do not subscribe to Martial Guéroult’s interpretation in his *Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons* (1953), which derives the *Cogito* * * from the general principle “to think, one must be” (vol. II, p. 31). This general proposition is also subject to the doubt raised by the hypothesis of the evil genius. And we can even less agree with Jean-Luc Marion’s thesis, which he asserts in *Questions Cartésiennes II* (1996):

The ego existing in the nominative case itself results from the mihi in the dative case, whose privilege consists solely in passively yielding to persuasion, and thus to a quid distinct from itself—without solipsism. (p. 27).

Yet the discovery of the Cogito can concern only the “I” that thinks it, and for Descartes this occurs within a context of solipsism, since the hypothesis of the evil genius—which has not yet been dispelled—places me in a situation where nothing currently exists except this “I” that I am. I describe this evidence as follows in my book Descartes in the Light of Evidence:

evidence in the etymological sense of the term, the presence of something that presents itself to the eye, that emerges into view under the effect of what Descartes calls “natural light” and which the mind receives as necessarily true or indubitable. (p. 29).

Descartes thus insists in his Letter to Newcastle or Silhon in March–April 1648 on the intuitive, non-demonstrative nature of this first evidence despite its deductive appearance:

The truth of this proposition “I think, therefore I am” is not a product of our reasoning, nor an instruction your teachers have given you; your mind sees it, feels it, and handles it… (Alquié III, 848).

This feeling must not be understood as an objectifying act that would attempt to discover the self that I am by placing it under my gaze as if opposite this feeling “I.” It is not a matter of self-knowledge with its qualities, its flaws, its psychological characteristics. It is the immediate sensing of the “I” in the act of thinking and, in a certain sense, unknown to “ ” itself, since it precisely eludes all objectifying concepts that would attempt to define it.

The Evidence of God’s Existence

Following this initial discovery of an evident truth in the experience of the Cogito, a new methodological step is required. Indeed, this evident truth manifests itself only when the subject is attentive to it. As soon as the mind turns away from it, it finds itself in doubt. Only the present evident truth prevails, unlike past evident truths of which we have only a memory. This is why the Meditations will seek to discover a means of guaranteeing the truth of the latter. Correlated with this search is the troubling problem of solipsism, since with the hypothesis of the deceiving God and the fiction of the evil genius, Descartes has arrived at the hypothesis that it is possible that nothing exists outside of this “I” whose existence he has just ascertained.

This is why, in the Third Meditation, Descartes turns to the study of another metaphysical reality of the utmost importance: God himself. Yet he discovers in his mind a particular idea—the idea of God,

a certain supreme God, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and the creator of all things outside of himself (AT XIX, 32).

This idea itself is not a mere opinion; it is evident insofar as it necessarily imposes itself on the mind. If I remove one of these characteristics from the idea of God, it is no longer the idea of God. If I add to this intuition of the idea of God the common notion that is also self-evident, namely, “there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect,” it becomes evident that the cause of this idea of God in me is God himself. Since “I” do not possess all these perfections, I cannot be the cause of this idea.

One might object that this appears to be a line of reasoning that uses this axiom regarding the relationship between cause and effect, and conclude that there is a vicious circle: one would “prove” the existence of God by using principles whose truth itself could be grounded only in God, if He exists. But we shall see that beneath these appearances of reasoning there is only a preparatory and methodical step toward what will subsequently present itself as self-evident, without any mediation that would make it a deductive conclusion.

Critique of the Interpretation of Cartesian Metaphysics as Ontotheology

Another critique has emerged on this subject. It is that of Jean-Luc Marion in his work The Metaphysical Prism of Descartes (1986), who interprets, following Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, Descartes’s metaphysical thought as an onto-theology in which God, subjected to the category of cause, would become “a being of common law ” (p. 114), insofar as “the causa here determines the existence of every being, without exception” (p. 113). But let us return to this passage from the Responses to the First Objections:

Certainly, natural light dictates to us that there is no thing of which it is not permissible to ask why it exists, or for which one cannot seek the efficient cause, or, if it has none, to ask why it does not need one (Alquié TII, p. 527).

We see from the redundancy of the terms “ask” and “seek” that the cause here is considered not in a role constitutive of its object but simply as a heuristic. Descartes also emphasizes this point: that there may be a being that is precisely not subject to an efficient cause, that does not need one to exist, and this can only be God. Thus, in the “proof” mentioned above, the axiom “there must be at lea ly as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect” plays a (merely) heuristic role, allowing us to seek the core, the reason for what we observe to exist. It prepares the mind through preliminary reasoning for what will subsequently present itself as immediate evidence. This axiom is part of what Descartes calls “simple natures” which, under the influence of natural light, impose themselves on the mind. Created by God, the mind cannot be subject to them. They are a means of guiding the mind in its search for truth, and, when used well, of opening oneself to that which, as “proof” of God’s existence, is never the conclusion of a line of reasoning but a revelation as immediate as it is fleeting.

Regarding this notion of cause that would reduce God to a being subject to a category of a transcendental “I,” we must mention here the other controversy concerning the notion of “cause of itself” used by Descartes in reference to God in the First Responses to the Objections. Jean-Luc Marion makes this a major argument in his interpretation of Cartesian metaphysics as onto-theology. God would be circumscribed by this recourse to the notion of cause that would be imposed on him in order to conceive of him as an object among others. However, Descartes immediately subverts the notion of cause as we use it to think about the temporal cause-and-effect relationships between objects:

natural light does not dictate that it is the proper nature of the efficient cause to precede its effect in time: for, on the contrary, strictly speaking, it does not have the name or nature of an efficient cause unless it produces its effect, and therefore it does not precede it (AT IX, 86).

It is therefore not necessary that anything should precede God of which it would be merely the effect. And he specifies regarding the eternity of God’s existence:

it should be noted that I do not mean here a preservation effected by any real and positive influence of the efficient cause, but that I mean only that the essence of God is such that it is impossible for Him not to be or not to exist always (AT IX, 87).

Thus, there is in God an incomprehensible power of effectuation that surpasses the capacities of human reason.

The Platonic model of analogical thought

We can explore in greater depth the characteristics of Descartes’ metaphysical thought, which, in our view, brings him closer to Plato’s metaphysics—a thesis we defended in our book *Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist?*—by examining his remarks in the *First Replies to the Objections* regarding this cause of itself, this *causa sui*, which God is said to be and which distinguishes him from all other beings. This causa sui must be conceived as “another kind of cause, which bears a relation and analogy to the efficient cause” (ibid. AT). This recourse to analogy is not an identity that would once again equate the causa sui with the efficient cause as it relates to objects, but rather leads us to consider the use of analogy in Plato’s metaphysics. An analogy, if we take the mathematical model, involves four terms, the first two of which are known, as is the third. The relationship between the first two is (also) known, which is the same as that of the last two, and the unknown is the fourth term that needs to be discovered. There is therefore not an identity of the terms but an identity of the relationship between the terms. The essence of God as the cause of his existence remains an incomprehensible unknown in its efficacy, which can only be conceived analogically as a cause preceding its effect, as we observe them in the sensible world. Similarly, as we summarize in *Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist?*,

for Plato, analogy serves to develop a discourse by making use of sensible and finite models, and then, based on the relationship they manifest with respect to one another, to transpose them into a realm that belongs to the intelligible, in relation to which any direct discourse would be impossible. (p.116)

This use of analogy is particularly evident in the Allegory of the Cave (Republic, Book VII, 514a1, 517a7), where, for example, the idea of the Good is analogous to the sun, insofar as it is a light that makes intelligible essences visible to the mind, just as the sun is a light that makes sensible things visible to the eyes.  There is a pedagogical virtue to analogy, which, far from reducing the intelligible to the sensible, serves as a tangible foothold for turning one’s mind toward an intelligible that remains incomprehensible in any case, insofar as it cannot be circumscribed by thought, even if it may manifest itself to the mind in an evident way.

The infinite “in potential” and the infinite “in actuality”

Finally, it must be emphasized that this first “proof” in the Third Meditation does not really rest on the notion of cause but much more on the finite/infinite relationship. This is why Descartes, in presenting this proof, emphasizes several aspects of this notion of the infinite. This idea cannot possess “material falsity” as a mere negation of the finite, just as if one conceives of darkness as the negation of light, that darkness in fact has no reality. Indeed, it is impossible to think that the infinite has less reality than the finite. Thus, it is not the infinite that is conceived from the finite as its negation, but the finite that is conceived as a privation of the infinite.

I clearly see that the perception, the intuition of the infinite, is primary in me with respect to that of the finite—that is to sa , that of God with respect to that of myself (AT IX, 36).

If I did not have within me a priori the idea of God, of the infinite within me, I could not perceive myself as a finite being, one who doubts, who seeks the truth, who hopes to discover it. We may conclude:

it is not the ego that defines God based on a cogitatio that would have mastery over its own determinations, but rather it is God who defines it in the strict sense as an ego, by making it feel what limits it (Descartes in the Light of Evidence, 2018, p. 51).

In a certain sense, the evidence of the Cogito and that of the idea of God are one and the same. Even if one is first discovered in Descartes’s metaphysical journey, it implicitly presupposes the existence of the other.

This idea of infinity cannot be created by the mind through the infinite perfection of its own qualities—for example, by realizing that it can always know more and imagining that it could extend that knowledge to infinity. In fact, in this case, it is a mere “potential” infinity—an infinity to which one can always add something, and thus one that is always lacking something—whereas the idea of God corresponds to an “actual” infinity, to which nothing is lacking, and thus a perfect infinity. Thus, as we shall see later, all “proofs” of God’s existence cannot separate infinity from perfection.

Cartesian Critique of “A Posteriori” Proofs of God’s Existence

Descartes extends this first “proof” with a second one in the Third Meditation by asking whether there could be any other cause of my being than God. But once again, the reasoning is based on the fact that I have this idea of God as “ ” in my mind—an idea of infinite perfection or a perfect infinity. “I wish to go beyond this and consider whether I myself, who have this idea of God, could exist if there were no God” (AT IX, 38). First of all, I cannot have created myself, for in that case I would not feel imperfect and I would have endowed myself with all those perfections of which I have the idea. By this consideration I can also rule out that my parents are the cause of my being, even if empirically this does indeed seem to be the case.

This hypothesis already suffers from the fact that this entire meditation is still taking place within the context of solipsism, where I doubt the very existence of my parents, who might be nothing more than images in my mind. On the other hand, this use of the cause—to be distinguished from the causa sui, which we mentioned earlier—has the major flaw of being an infinite regression that can never come to an end within the realm of what is given in the sensible world. These parents would themselves have in their minds the idea of God, and their parents likewise, and so on to infinity, which would refer back to infinity the same question of what is their cause. This confirms that any a posteriori “proof,” starting from the sensible world to trace back to God, is not effective for Descartes. In this, he opposes Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Finally, one cannot suppose either that several causes, each possessing its own perfection, could together have produced in me this idea of God as their effect. For it is the unity and inseparability of all possible perfections that correspond to the idea of God within me. Each of these perfections would be imperfect since it would lack the other perfections. Thus, nothing can be the cause of this idea of God that is in my mind except God himself, and therefore he exists.

Once again, we emphasize that these “proofs,” which seem to follow from reasoning, arise in an immediate intuition that intimately links the discovery of my “ ” in the Cogito with the discovery of God’s necessary existence, from the moment I recognize myself as finite and imperfect. The rest consists of various approaches to open the mind to this discovery.

The difference between evidence and “true science.” The different types of ideas

This “evidence” allows me to distinguish between different types of ideas that I find in my mind. The first, called “accidental,” seem to arise from the external world as if through my sense organs; they impose themselves on me, whether I want them to or not, unlike the second, “fictitious” ones, which depend on my will and which I can transform as I wish. Finally, the third type is not given to me by my senses and imposes itself on me by necessity, provided that I turn my mind attentively toward them. Thus, the idea of God, like that of myself, is neither adventitious nor fictitious. It “was born and produced with me, from the moment I was created” (AT IX, 41). It is “innate.” Descartes adds that it is “like the craftsman’s mark imprinted in his own image” (ibid.). This imprint is a hollow mark on what I am, allowing me to recognize my own imperfection, and to trace back from this mark to its author, God himself.

This infinite and perfect God cannot be deceptive, insofar as deception is an imperfection. What does this quality of God add to the search for what can be considered true? Do we need this divine legitimation to affirm that something is true? Many interpreters of Cartesian thought have considered that the discovery of the non-deceptive God allows for the validation of the evident, which would necessarily lead to a vicious circle. In fact, Descartes emphasizes in his letter to Régius dated May 24, 1640:

But once we have understood the reasons that clearly demonstrate the existence of God, and that He is not a deceiver, even if we no longer pay attention to these evident principles, provided that we remember this conclusion, God is not a deceiver, one will have not only the conviction but also the true knowledge of this conclusion, and of all the others for which one remembers having once perceived very clear reasons (Alquié II, 245, emphasis added).

Thus, the discovery of God’s necessary existence merely allows one to regard past evidences, of which one has a memory, as eternally true, without needing to renew at that very moment the very experience of their evidence, whereas evidence as such imposes itself without needing any external guarantee. God thus enables us to move from evidence to “science,” for science is constituted from multiple evidences, whereas the mind cannot be attentive in the moment to a multiplicity of ideas, although attention can nevertheless extend in deduction to at least two ideas at the same time.

The discovery of God’s necessary existence allows Descartes to assert in the Fourth Meditation that evidence loses its ephemeral and momentary aspect and attains an objective truth that is recognized when my mind is confronted with clear and distinct ideas. Even when the mind is no longer turned toward it, it remains true since it has its origin in God, who is its ultimate foundation. These innate ideas, unlike fictitious ideas, I have not forged myself, although I have the freedom to turn toward them or not. In this regard, the clarity and distinction of these ideas cannot be considered equivalent. Clarity refers to the relationship between the mind and the idea to which it is attentive, under the influence of natural light that leads the mind to perceive the obvious, whereas distinction is an objective quality of the idea that allows it to be distinguished from all others.

The “ontological argument”

Inspired by Plato, Descartes takes the triangle as an example of these innate ideas in the Fifth Meditation. Like Plato, whose motto at the entrance to his philosophical school, the Academy, was “Let no one enter here who is not a geometer,” he recognizes the pedagogical role of mathematics. Indeed, for Descartes, the idea of the triangle is similar to Plato’s Ideas. Geometric figures “have their true and immutable nature.” Even if the idea of the triangle in its perfection corresponds to no sensory perception, the mind can access its true essence and discover the properties it necessarily possesses. Unlike with fictitious ideas, the mind cannot imagine just any characteristic concerning the triangle but must submit to what it discovers within it in an evident manner. By understanding through mathematics what an innate idea is, it becomes possible to better grasp how the idea of God is also an innate idea, which allows Descartes to develop a new “proof” of God’s existence traditionally known as the “ontological argument.”

Just as with any innate idea, what I perceive to belong to it in an evident way truly belongs to it, so too what I discover to belong to the idea of God truly belongs to it. Now, the idea of God cannot be conceived of otherwise than as a being possessing, as we have seen previously, the infinity of all possible perfections in their infinity; otherwise, it would not be God. If He lacked existence, He could not be perfect, which implies with immediate clarity that He necessarily exists.

Jean-Luc Marion’s Critique of the “Ontological Argument”

Many interpretations have criticized this new “proof” of God’s existence. We will begin with Jean-Luc Marion’s interpretation in section 4 of his book *The Metaphysical Prism of Descartes* (1986). The stakes of this interpretation are high, as it concerns whether Descartes proposed here an onto-theology that would make the “proof” of God’s existence a demonstration obeying the conceptual logic of the human mind, thereby transforming God into a being among others.  Jean-Luc Marion distinguishes between the different “proofs” by arguing that the first proof in the Third Meditation rests on the notion of the infinite, whereas the ontological argument rests on that of perfection. While the first “proof” would allow Descartes to escape Mathesis Universalis, the ontological argument would submit to it:

God thus makes himself accessible to thought in a new way: his idea, and therefore also his existence, do not impose themselves immediately, as the idea of the infinite previously imposed itself, but allow themselves to be constructed by the human understanding, which identifies perfections, reconciles them together, and attributes them to God (p. 253, emphasis added).

Now, in God, as we have shown, infinity cannot be separated from perfection, since the entire argument of the Third Meditation consists in distinguishing between an imperfect infinity—potentially infinite—and a perfect infinity or infinity in act. In the same way, perfection cannot be separated from infinity, since God’s perfection implies perfect infinity in its unity of the infinity of all possible perfections. Thus, it is difficult to see how the human mind could enumerate all of God’s perfections, since there are an infinite number of them. The intellect does not “construct” the idea of God but submits to what is revealed of it in self-evidence.

Nor can one say, as Jean-Luc Marion does, that Descartes in the Fifth Meditation produces “an establishment of equality between the idea of God and the idea of a simple mathematical ‘ ’ of nature” (Le Prisme métaphysique de Descartes,p. 277), in this case that of the triangle. Indeed, even though these are in all cases innate ideas that are true insofar as they impose themselves on the mind with evident clarity, and even though evident clarity as such has no degrees—for either the idea imposes itself on the mind or it does not— the idea of God obviously has, for Descartes, a greater dignity than that of a triangle, precisely because of its infinite perfection. And this characteristic means that the idea of God, even if it is perfectly clear to the mind and allows one to recognize its existence, remains nonetheless completely incomprehensible and infinitely exceeds the capacities of the human mind.

Kant’s Critique of the “Ontological Argument”

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant also rejects the validity of what he first calls Descartes’ “ontological argument.”

It is true that it is very easy to give a nominal definition of this concept (God), by saying that it is something whose non-existence is impossible” (trans. Traimesaygues Pacaud, p. 426).

But, precisely, for Descartes this argument does not rest on a nominal definition, which would correspond to a concept that one would deliberately construct by giving it a definition. Descartes clearly emphasizes that this is not a fictional idea whose characteristics one invents at will, but an innate idea that necessarily imposes itself on the mind “as the image of a true and immutable nature” (AT VII, 68). Returning to the example of the triangle, Kant asserts that one cannot say that “three angles exist in an absolutely necessary manner, but that, if one posits that a triangle exists (is given), there are also necessarily three angles in it” (emphasis added). According to him, the internal logical necessity of the r e between the concept and what can be deduced from it cannot correspond to a necessity of existence. The necessity regarding the triangle rests on what is a first assumption, namely, positing the concept of a triangle.

First of all, we must acknowledge that the concept of a triangle as such does not necessarily imply its existence. Indeed, as we have seen, it is because Descartes discovered that God cannot be a deceiver that the idea of a triangle can be considered an innate idea corresponding to an immutable and eternal essence. But what Descartes asserts with the “ontological argument” is that only the idea of God itself contains within it the necessity of its existence, insofar as it necessarily implies infinity and perfection. This is not merely an internal logical necessity, like the relationship of a triangle’s angles to its sides, but a recognition of a necessary existence that imposes itself on the mind. The “ontological argument” does not start from a supposition to derive a necessity from it, but is situated from the outset within a context of necessity—a necessity always established as self-evident, as that which cannot be conceived otherwise than it is conceived.

Taking up the famous example of the hundred thalers, Kant asserts that “a hundred real thalers add nothing more than a hundred possible thalers” as far as the concept itself is concerned. To move from the one (possible) to the other (real), one must make a synthetic judgment by adding to the concept its existence, which can only be ascertained through sensory experience.

Whatever the nature and scope of our concept of an object, we must nevertheless step outside this concept to attribute existence to the object. (trans. Traimesaygues Pacaud, p. 430).

Since God’s existence cannot be ascertained in this way, such a synthetic judgment regarding Him is impossible. This critical “ ” of the “ontological argument” by Kant completely misrepresents Descartes’s thought, which demonstrates precisely, contrary to all the criticisms leveled against him, that God cannot be approached as an object of knowledge like any other, that his metaphysical dimension precludes a constitutive use of the understanding suited to the objects of sensory experience but demands a mind that has detached itself from it and is capable, through its attention, of opening itself to the necessity of certain ideas it discovers within itself. 

Critique of the Thesis of Descartes as a Pre-Critical Thinker

After having developed Descartes’ metaphysical thought regarding the Cogito and God, particularly in the Metaphysical Meditations, we can return to our initial question addressed in our book Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist? Should we view Descartes as a precursor to Kant’s critical thought or as a thinker ultimately close to Platonic thought?

It is Jean-Luc Marion who supports the first thesis in *Cartesian Questions II*, § VIII “Constants of Critical Reason, Descartes and Kant” (1996). By bringing Descartes and Kant together in this way, he unites them in a critique of what would be their shared conception of metaphysics, accusing them of a “disqualification of ontology.” To summarize this, he quotes Kant: the transcendental philosophy he advocates “considers only the understanding and reason itself within a system of all concepts and all principles, without admitting objects that would be given (ontologia)” (KrV, A845). Yet what constitutes for us one of the essential characteristics of Cartesian thought is the fundamental role he reserves for evidence. But through evidence, the mind is unable to constitute its object, which presents itself to it in all its necessity. Descartes’ method consists precisely in distrusting all hazardous intellectual constructions ( ) so as to be guided only by what immediately appears to the mind as absolutely indubitable. The mind attentively turned toward Descartes’ clear and distinct idea is in no way Kant’s transcendental I, which constructs its object grasped through the forms of sensibility by subjecting it to its own categories.

Considering next the trajectory of the Meditations, which according to Descartes deals “with all the first things that can be known by philosophizing in order” (AT III, 239), Jean-Luc Marion asserts: “the primacy of the ‘first things’ belongs exclusively to the ordo cognoscendi, owing nothing to an ontic order that is explicitly subordinated or contradicted ” (p. 289). We believe, on the contrary, that the entire progression of the Meditations unfolds—if one abstracts all its pedagogical stages—as a deepening of an experience that pertains to a properly ontological reality, within a necessary relationship between the finite and imperfect being of the “I” and the infinite and perfect being of God. The order of thought is not an order constructed by the mind but the order of a discovery linked to the relationship between beings themselves.

Should we also agree with Jean-Luc Marion that, for Descartes, behind every known entity lies a radically unknowable essence, just as, for Kant, we can only access phenomena, while the thing-in-itself, the Ding an sich, eludes all possible knowledge? On the contrary, as we have seen previously, Descartes considers that all clear and distinct ideas correspond to something real and true. They present themselves to the mind as truth and are not notions constructed by it and therefore relative to it. While Kant prohibits any knowledge of what does not belong to sensory experience, Descartes distinguishes between knowledge derived from innate ideas not derived from sensory experience—knowledge that opens the possibility of accessing entities that are absolutely true in the —and knowledge concerning sensory experience, for example, physics, and which, drawing on certain innate ideas such as “simple natures,” proceed through hypotheses constructed by the mind, which then attempts to verify their validity by comparing them with what it can perceive.   Of course, one must not conclude from this that, for Descartes, it is possible to know everything about things themselves, insofar as they reveal themselves to the mind that receives them passively. The clarity and distinction of ideas do not preclude the possibility that something incomprehensible may remain within them. This is particularly true of God, insofar as our finite mind cannot encompass the infinite. And in the same way, the “I,” although it clearly knows its own existence, cannot know itself as an “I” but only superficially as a “self” objectified in relation to itself. Even regarding objects given by the senses, we can know certain truths about them through “simple natures” that reveal a part of their reality, although we cannot know the totality of their nature.

Finally, for Descartes, “simple natures” cannot be equated with Kant’s categories of the understanding. Indeed, while categories, such as that of substance, are for Kant the intellectual framework that allows the understanding to construct its objects of thought by limiting itself to phenomena, the innate “simple natures” have their origin in God for Descartes, which gives them an ontological significance revealing something of the being of what is thought. While Jean-Luc Marion invokes the categories conceived by Aristotle to criticize Descartes on this point, one could instead attribute what he says to Descartes himself: “the ‘soul’ remains the worker of the categories in charge of the being of the thing, far from claiming them as its own.” (p. 300).

Thus it seems of little relevance to draw parallels between Descartes’s thought and that of Kant and to deny him the recognition— —in his Meditations of a metaphysics that consists of a true ontology, one that does not fall into the pitfalls of onto-theology, does not transform God into a mere being, but reveals his existence through evidence with all clarity and distinction while preserving his infinite mystery.

“Innate Ideas” and Platonic Ideas

Is it more legitimate to find in Cartesian metaphysics concepts akin to Plato’s philosophy? We have already mentioned above the importance of mathematics for both authors as a pedagogical step toward grasping metaphysical entities. Indeed, for Plato, mathematics allows us to understand what an Idea is. Thus, for example, we must distinguish the Circle in itself, which corresponds to an eternal essence in its perfection, from the circle drawn in the sensible world, which is merely an imperfect image of this Idea. This Circle in itself cannot be discovered in the sensible world, but is accessible through intellectual intuition, from which one can then work on the drawn circle. Thus, as the mind becomes accustomed to exercising this intellectual intuition on concepts that do not depend on sensory experience, it can discover the Ideas of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

In this regard, we may highlight the example of the slave in the Meno (82ff.), which illustrates the process of recollection. Socrates asserts that the slave, who has never received any instruction on the subject, is capable of solving a geometric problem by discovering what follows from the Idea he finds within himself—in this case, the Idea of the Square. To this end, through a dialectical exchange of questions and answers between Socrates and this slave, the latter begins with an initial phase of errors, which place him in a situation of aporia, of intellectual blockage, forcing him to abandon facile opinions in order to turn toward what he can discover a ly within his own mind and which cannot be derived from sensory experience. Descartes, in the Fifth Responses to the Objections (AT VII, 381), asserts something similar:

Thus, it is true that we could never know the geometric triangle through the one we have drawn on paper, if our mind had not already conceived of it (emphasis added).

The two thinkers agree on the assertion that the mind has access to ideas that cannot derive from sensory experience and that correspond to eternally true essences—ideas that it discovers by turning away from the world given by the senses and turning inward toward itself. For Plato, these are the Ideas recovered through reminiscence—through this rediscovery of what has been forgotten and resurfaces when one turns one’s gaze toward them. For Descartes, these are the “innate ideas” that have their origin in God, also obscured by the allure of the sensory world from which one must free oneself through doubt taken to the extreme, and which reveal themselves as absolutely indubitable and true in the light of evidence. This parallel is even explicitly stated by Descartes in his Epistle to Voetius of 1643:

This is why, according to Plato, Socrates, by questioning a child about the elements of geometry and thereby eliciting from the child’s own mind truths that he had not previously noticed within himself, sought to prove the theory of reminiscence. “And the knowledge of God is of the same kind (AT III, 30, emphasis added).

Is the Phaedo a precursor to the first proof of God’s existence in the Meditations?

We also believe it is possible to draw a parallel between the first “proof” of God’s existence in the Third Meditation and the text of Plato’s Phaedo on the Equal in itself. Socrates wonders whether one can form the idea of the Equal in itself by looking at equal pieces of wood. Yet he points out to Simmias ( ) that these pieces of wood, which appear equal, are unequal when compared to other pieces of wood. Thus they are both equal and unequal at the same time, which leads the mind into insurmountable contradictions if it remains at the level of sensory experience. To overcome this aporia—and if one is driven by the desire for truth—one must reflect in order to discover a new way of thinking and thus attain The Equal in itself, the perfectly and eternally equal. Socrates then asks the question:

Do these equalities manifest themselves to us in the same way as that Equal whose entire being is equality? – Is there something lacking in them, or is there nothing lacking in that reality for them to be like the Equal? (74d, emphasis added).

It is the awareness of this lack that allows us to affirm that the idea of the Equal in itself existed previously and implicitly in our minds, so that we might perceive the ontological imperfection of the pieces of wood given to our senses in relation to this Idea. As we emphasize in our book *Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist?*:

What enables recollection is the desire for perfection itself (here, that of the Equal in itself) confronted with the deficiency of what is given in perception (p. 216, emphasis added).

Socrates then generalizes this point by making it an essential characteristic of Platonic metaphysics:

It goes without saying that our present reasoning concerns the Equal no more than it concerns the Beautiful in itself, the Good in itself, or the Just or the Pious—in short, everything to which we apply the label “what it is,” both in our questions when we ask and in our answers when we respond (75 c-d).

Thus, for Plato, philosophy consists in questioning these eternal and perfect essences and, by bringing them out of oblivion, discovering what their characteristics are and how they relate to one another. Similarly, for Descartes in his first “proof” of God’s existence, it is the fact that I can perceive myself as an imperfect and finite being who doubts, who desires, who lacks something, that allows me to assert that this is possible only if this idea of a perfect being—and thus of God—already exists within me. To feel imperfection—and by implication, the desire for perfection—one must already possess within oneself, and thus, for Descartes, innately, the idea of this perfection. From this perspective, proving the existence of God does not consist in understanding God, but in understanding one’s own desire. For both Plato and Descartes, philosophy is philia, driven by desire and love.

The Cartesian Cogito and the Platonic “Know Thyself”

We finally see a possible connection between these two thinkers regarding self-knowledge, “the true self,” which for convenience we refer to as the soul. As we shall see for both of them, this soul cannot be grasped through conceptual discourse that inquires into what a soul is in general, but through an introspective turn toward oneself in an immediate intuition of its existence.

As for Descartes, as we have shown above, the Cogito is not discovered through reasoning of the type “to think, one must be” or “if the evil genius deceives me, it is because ‘I’ exist.” It is an indubitable experience, lived immediately, through which I become aware that at the very moment I think, it is indubitable that I exist. Plato, in the Alcibiades, seems to proceed in a rather similar manner. After general considerations of the sort: “man is therefore something other than his body ” (129e) and then that man is a soul, a principle recognized by the fact that it commands the body, Socrates considers that these arguments have neglected what was reall ly at stake: “We will be in the thick of it when we have discovered what we have left out, because it required a very careful look” (130c). This characteristic common to the human race has not allowed us to discover what it means to be a “self,” an “I.”  To change the way the problem is approached, Socrates proposes to examine the maxim inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know thyself”:

But by the gods, do we not hear the true words of the Delphic inscription, which we have just recalled? (132c)

This invocation of the gods or of inspired figures such as Diotima in the Symposium always occurs in Plato when addressing a type of metaphysical inquiry that can no longer be reduced to mere argumentative discourse but requires a psychic experience that is difficult to express other than through analogy, as we have emphasized above.

So how can we understand this divine message? The English translation can lead us straight into a misunderstanding. Indeed, it is not a matter of knowing oneself psychologically in an empirical sense, as a mere object of knowledge. Let us return to the Greek phrase “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν.” “Γνῶθι” (Gnôthi) is the imperative form of the verb “γιγνωσχω ” (gignṓskō), which does not denote objective knowledge, but rather familiarity, and “σεαυτον” (seautón) means the self “αυτον” (autón) of you “σε” (se) or the you in yourself, in what you essentially are. We comment on this in our book *Descartes: Pre-Critical Thinker or Platonist?*:

Recognize that you are a “self,” rediscover the lost familiarity with what makes you an “I,” that which is most you and yet which you are unaware of (p. 225).

To mark the stages of this discovery, he proceeds by analogy with an eye looking at another eye, within a context of romantic intersubjectivity, since this dialogue features Socrates declaring himself in love with Alcibiades. The eye here is the analogue of the soul. To discover who one is, one must use the other as a mirror. Here again, the misinterpretation is predictable. I might seek in the other, in a narcissistic way, recognition of the qualities of my objectified self. But Socrates clarifies:

You have noticed that, when we look into the eye of someone facing us, our face is reflected as in a mirror in that part which enables vision and which is also called the pupil (133a). [This pupil is] the best part of that eye (ibid.)

Thus, to discover what is best within oneself—and if we follow the metaphor—the pupil must be recognized as a pupil in the other’s eye. Now, what characterizes the pupil is that it is pure capacity for seeing, and that it is a simple black hole without qualification, unlike the iris, which is confirmed by the Greek term that designates it, κορη (koré), which also means “virgin girl,” and is thus still devoid of any distinctive mark. Thus, analogously, the soul can discover itself through the other as pure activity of thought, as a simple “I” that is unqualified and not objectively determined—a mystery of the black hole unto itself. This psychic experience does not correspond to a process of reasoning but to the discovery of an invisible “I,” a pure act of thought.

While this psychic experience is situated in a solipsistic context in Descartes, for Plato it is experienced in relation to the other, which we find it interesting to interpret as animated by ἔρως (érōs), the desire of love. Indeed, this is accompanied by an “other-self,” a collapse of the narcissistic demands of the desire for recognition. The “self,” the “I,” can be discovered in the “other-self” perceived in a mutually re al way in the other. This mutual revelation belongs to the divine for Plato:

This capacity of the soul is in the image of the divine, and the one who looks upon it, recognizing in it all that is divine, God, and thought—this one is the one most capable of knowing himself. (133c).

Indeed, the two souls, having shed their alienating objectifications, become open to that which imposes itself upon them by transcending them absolutely. Thus is accomplished the return of the many to the One, hailed by Apollo, Α-πολλων (A-póllōn), the non-many.

Conclusion

What can we conclude about Cartesian metaphysics? In our view, Descartes did not fall into the trap of onto-theology; he was able to resist the critique of the vicious circle, thanks to the fundamental status he accorded to the experience of evidence, which is a wholly unique psychic experience through which a thought-content imposes itself beyond doubt upon the one who turns toward it. This must be achieved in stages corresponding to the successive meditations that mark Descartes’s journey in his eponymous book. We can thus place him within the great tradition of true metaphysics, which finds its culmination in Platonic thought.

Bibliography

• Descartes, Oeuvres. Publiées par Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, nouv. présent, par J. Beaude, P. Costabel, A. Gabbey et B. Rochot, 12 vol., Paris : Vrin, 1964-1974.
• Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, Edition de Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vol. Garnier, 1963-1973.

Cartesian Studies

• Guéroult Martial, Descartes, selon l’ordre des raisons, 2 vol., Aubier, 1953.
• Marion Jean-Luc, Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, Paris, PUF, coll. Épiméthée. 1986
• Marion Jean-Luc, Questions cartésiennes II. Sur l’ego et sur Dieu, PUF, 1996.
• Pochon-Wesolek Françoise, Descartes à la lumière de l’évidence. Exercice spirituel et controverses ? L’Harmattan, 2018.
• Pochon-Wesolek Françoise, Descartes penseur pré-critique ou platonicien, L’Harmattan, 2018.

Other authors

• Kant, Critique de la raison pure, trad. Tremesaygues et Pacaud, PUF, 1963.
• Platon, Œuvres complètes,
• Alcibiade, t. I, trad. Alfred Croisset, Ed. Budé, 1926.
• Ménon, t. III, trad. Alfred Croisset, Ed. Budé, 1968.La République, t. VII-1^re partie, trad. E. Chambry, Paris : Ed. Budé, 1933.