Descartes And Spinoza On Nature Of God

Descartes wonders what else that he can know by using this same logic, but first must establish the idea of God and that God is not deceiving him. He reasons that God exists because he as a mortal could not create the idea of such a powerful being, and only a being as powerful as God could have caused an idea of a God that is perfect. Descartes goes on to reason that because God is perfect, then God would not deceive him about anything. It’s not that Descartes is being deceived, but rather his lack of knowledge or understanding about the matters at hand is causing the problem he is facing.

Humans are finite substances so they cannot come up with the ideas of infinite substances unless it were given to them by an infinite substance. Descartes continues that while we advance gradually each day these attributes could never exist within us because we are only potentially perfect whereas God is actually perfect. Furthermore, Descartes argues that only God could be the author of his being because if it were he or his parent’s other finite substances that authored his being then he would not have wants or doubts because he would have bestowed upon himself every perfection imaginable to a finite being. Therefore, God exists because Descartes could not have thought of God because he is a finite substance thus the idea of God must have come from an infinite substance.

I have an idea of a perfect being; it must contain in reality all the

Descartes believes that God's existence is clear and distinct. God exists because the thought of God is derived from a "completely clear and distinct" idea from within his being (which he concedes is a thinking being). Having come from distinct thoughts, the idea of God can therefore never be considered a falsity. From this very distinct idea of God comes everything else that one grasps distinctly and clearly.

His belief in God even affected his theories on reality. One of his theories was that he was being deceived by a conniving and mischievous demon that was hell-bent on distorting his reality. The demon could be comparable to the evil dictator and the memory replacing machine in Total Recall. Despite the evil demon, Descartes did manage to reveal one very true thing and that is that he must exist if he truly is being deceived by the evil demon because he needs to exist in order to be deceived. He later summarizes this into his famous phrase “I think, therefore, I am.”(Descartes 136).

The existence of God has always been an arguable topic. Descartes’ however, believed that he had proof of God’s existence through an intense analysis of the mind. Throughout this paper I will discuss what he has provided as proof and some of the complications that arise throughout his argument.

After giving his first proof for the existence of God Descartes concludes by mentioning that this proof is not always self-evident. When he is absorbed in the world of sensory illusions it is not quite obvious to him that God’s existence can be derived from the idea of God. So to further cement God’s existence Descartes begins his second proof by posing the question of whether he could exist (a thinking thing that possesses the idea of an infinite and perfect god) if God itself did not exist.

While the above steps demonstrate Spinoza’s substance monism, they also show that the overarching factor in his philosophy is the argument for the existence of God and God’s attributes which necessarily follow.

A standout amongst the most questionable, disputable topics has been the presence of god. There are various regular arguments for the presence of God. Descartes is one of many, he trusted in himself that he had affirmation of God's quality through an extraordinary examination of the mind. Descartes has more than one of many thoughts. To start Descartes ask "how would I know that I exist? As covered in my presentation Descartes wants to demonstrate that there is no evil spirit that is always deceiving him. Remembering the true objective to do this; he leaves to show that he has the unmistakable and a particular thought that God is incredible and can't along these lines mislead him. This is done by recommending the considerations can have more prominent reality. For Descartes Existence is conventional and those things that exist are more flawless or all the more awesome then those things that don't. Descartes suggests that there are three sorts of thoughts: Innate, Invented, and Adventitious. Innate thoughts are and have reliably been inside us, Fictitious or imagined contemplations begin from our imaginative energy , and Adventitious considerations start from experiences of the world. He contends that the possibility of God is Innate and set in us by God and he dismissed the likelihood that the possibility of God is Invented or Adventitious.

He wanted to figure out how they functioned together. Spinoza accepted Descartes mathematical model for deducing knowledge. He defends, outside the intellect; there is nothing but substance and its modes or affections. Spinoza establishes the "Fact and manner of [a] divine causality" through careful mathematical deduction. Consequently, God's essence exists through His own active power and necessity. For this Spinoza was considered an atheist (Collins, 1967, p.83).

In Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes is seeking to find a system of stable, lasting and certain knowledge, which he can ultimately regard as the Truth. In his methodical quest to carry out his task, Descartes eventually arrives at the proverbial fork in the road: how to bridge the knowledge of self with that of the rest of the world. Descartes’ answer to this is to prove the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to state and explain Descartes' Third Meditation: Proof of God's Existence by identifying relevant concepts and terminology and their relationship to each other and examining each premise as well as the conclusion of the proof and finally

Secondly, to come up with the second proof of Gods existence, Descartes thought that the power and action that is needed to preserve something is capable of creating something new. He argued that there must be as much power in the cause just as it is in the effect. According to the philosophical writings of Descartes, upon knowing that he did not have power to preserve his own existence because he was just a thinking thing; Descartes concluded that the power must have come from outside him (Descartes, Cottingham and Murdoch 26) And since he is a thinking thing, he claims that the one who created him must also be a thinking thing, possessing all the ideas and attributes of god. In addition, he observed that his parents could not be responsible for creating and preserving his life. Descartes therefore concludes that the one who created him and gave him ideas of a perfect God must be God, therefore God exists.

Given the above arguments one can begin to understand the nature of the God Descartes is endeavoring to prove. For Descartes, God is infinite and perfect existence. God is “eternal, immutable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and [the creator of] everything else". (Descartes 20) Not only does God possess this nature but it is necessary that He does so. If God is not infinite or perfect God could not exist as these attributes are essential to God's existence. Furthermore, if God is not the ultimate creator the innate idea of God we experience would cease to be innate but adventitious (externally caused) or imaginative (caused by the mind) which is again impossible given its content. Given these qualities one can draw a connection to the

Both philosophers agree that God is the only infinite substance that does not depend on anything else. Spinoza sees God as the only infinite substance with several substances while Descartes indicates that God is the substance, in which we comprehend to be completely ideal, and fully independent. He also illustrates God as the substance that we conceive to be absolutely without any defect in its perfection.

From this definite foundation Descartes tries to prove that there is something external to the mind. So he states the law of casualty. This basically says that nothing can be created from nothing, and that the less perfect can not create something more perfect or better than itself. Then if there is an idea in our minds that we didn’t create, something else created it. If God is more perfect than us, then we could not have created God but God created us. Descartes then wrote about the idea of God. He said that God is infinite and could not have been created by us because God is more perfect than us thus undoubtable and certain. The idea that God exists disproves the Evil Genius theory therefore proves the existence of an external world.