.png)
By Laura Hinkle
In “Meditations on First Philosophy”, the French philosopher René Descartes uses a series of meditations to philosophically prove the existence of God, discuss the nature of human imperfection, and form a distinction between the soul and the body. In his fourth meditation, Descartes begins by reviewing his observations from his last three meditations. At this point, he has concluded that God exists by using intellect, rather than the imagination or senses. He knows God exists because it is a clear and distinct idea he has had, perhaps the most important idea he can ever have. Descartes also points out that since he has a clear and distinct idea of God, and he exists, God must also exist and be the most important thing in his life. However, Descartes begins to question how it is that he is imperfect and capable of error. In his last meditation, he concluded that God is incapable of imperfection, and thus would not ever deceive him. Why is it then that he can still be deceived and make errors?
Descartes begins to address this question by claiming that God, as a perfect entity, would not give him a brain that is capable of error, when used correctly. In order to understand why errors in judgment can still occur, Descartes points out that humans exist somewhere between God (perfection) and nothingness (imperfection). Humans are capable of acting like both God and nothingness, thus, human error results from a participation in nothingness. Because humans are finite beings, we can never completely participate in God’s perfection, meaning we are bound to be erroneous from time to time. Still, Descartes is not pleased with this conclusion because a perfect God should be able to create perfect humans. However, he soon realizes that as a finite being, he will never be able to fully comprehend God’s will. Instead of focusing on the imperfection of individual humans he decides to take a macroscopic approach and realizes that although individuals are imperfect, they have a perfect role to play in a perfect universe.
Laura Hinkle is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2022. She is studying political science, philosophy, and history at the University of Louisville.