Descartes and God Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Descartes and God - Essay Example Relying on the principle of clarity and distinctness, he argued that there were two things he could be sure about: the existence of himself and God. Being a devout Catholic, he wanted to make a contribution to understanding of Christianity. So in the opening statement to Meditations, Descartes claimed that there were two driving issues behind this work: proving the existence of God and the immortality of the soul through natural reason (Burnham and Fieser 2006). In fact, the necessary existence of God was the absolute truth for Descartes, perceived by him at the intuition level. Yet, he realized that it was necessary to provide clear logical arguments of this existence. Descartes provided three principal arguments of the existence of God: the causal, cosmological and ontological ones. The causal argument is most fully represented in Meditation III, it can also be found in the Discourse (Part I) and in the Principles (Part I  §Ã‚ § 17-18). Descartes distinguishes between the formal reality of an idea (its actual existence and degree of perfection as a mode of mind) and its objective reality (the degree of perfection it has with consideration of its content). Further the philosopher recognizes three degrees of perfection based on the capacity of a thing for an independent existence. God, being an infinite substance depending on nothing, is viewed as the highest degree of perfection. An individual body or mind (finite substances depending on God alone) is given the next degree. A property of a substance, that is a mode depending on the substance for existence, is considered as being of the lowest degree. Descartes states that â€Å"it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause†. Thus there should be as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the