Descartes et Arnauld Les quatriemes objections Andre Sarrazin
Descartes and Arnauld: the Fourth Objections by Andre Sarrazin (2015)
NOTE: Translated from French to English by Google Translate. Everything in bold not in original.
Table of contents
I. Philosophical objections.
- I.1 Exclude the body from the essence of the thing that thinks.
- Objections:
- Answers and analysis:
- I.2 Some problems of the union of substances.
- Objections:
- Answers and analysis:
II. Theological objections.
- II.1The materially false idea.
- Objections:
- Answers and analysis:
- II.2 Being by oneself.
- Objections:
- Answers and analysis:
Conclusion.
Bibliography.
The Meditations of Prima Philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae humanae immortalitas demonstrantur usually known as Meditations were completed in the first half of 1640, and Descartes, concerned about the reception that would be given to his work, circulated a manuscript through Father Mersenne, to be able to attach the objections that would be made to him and the answers he would have provided. In fact, the first edition completed on August 28, 1641 has only six series of objections and answers. The history of successive editions reveals additions and limits, so during the publication of the French translation of 1647, the fifth objections (those of Gassendi) are placed after the sixth, while the seventh are absent. These variations are, for the study of the fourth objections, unimportant. However, it should be noted that their author, Father Arnauld, also knew the text of the first, which Descartes, via Mersenne, had communicated to him. They are due to J. de Kater, a Dutch Catholic priest, and are based on the positions defended by Suarez and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Descartes responds in particular to the problem posed by the proposal to consider God as a cause of himself, because any cause can be considered as a limitation. The second objections are probably due to Mersenne himself and the third are from Hobbes. The two did not strongly attract Descartes' attention. It is only with those of Arnauld that he "then thinks he can present everything to the doctors of Sorbonne" (MM, p 15), after introducing in his text some changes relating to theology. The current editions, respecting the chronological order, first present the text of the objections and then that of the answers. We have the possibility, probably more didactic, to analyze separately each of the objections and the corresponding answer(s), even if in conclusion it means drawing a common thread of the whole and highlighting the coherence of the thinking of the two interlocutors. Arnauld himself ordered his objections according to his role as a philosopher or theologian, it is this presentation that we will keep.
I. Philosophical objections.
The commentary on a text is better for those who can consult it, there will be a wide call for quotations. Arnauld's objections begin with a reference to Saint Augustine who had already noticed in "the second book of free will chap 3" that, even if there is a je ne sais quoi that always deceives you, "it is probably that I am, if he deceives me", thus anticipating the discovery of the certainty of the Cartesian cogito. Arnauld does not explain any more before "let's continue" he writes to reach the first objection: "How from this principle we can conclude that our mind is distinct and separated from the body". Pascal, later, in a geometric spirit, will emphasize that "I think so I am" is not the same in the spirit of Saint Augustine and Descartes, this being "a word for adventure" for one, and a "firm and sustained principle for the other" carrying "an admirable sequence of consequences".
I.1 Exclude the body from the essence of the thing that thinks.
- Objections:
Arnauld uses the terms of the second meditation, He agrees that we can doubt the existence of bodies and even his own and yet convince ourselves to be something: "this truth always remains: I am something, and therefore I am not a body" (MM, p323), indeed if I were one I would doubt myself. He agrees that this does not prove that there is no body, but reaches a first difficulty: Descartes by looking for who he is thinks that "this notion and knowledge of myself, thus precisely taken, does not depend on things whose existence is not yet known to me" (MM, p322). It is certain, but it is only a reason to exclude 'these things' according to the march of reasoning, not yet according to the "truth of the thing" (MM, p323).
Arnauld then used the Discourse of the Method, published four years earlier, to mount that Descartes was already reasoning in this way and that "the dispute is still in the same terms". How, from the fact that Descartes does not know anything else that belongs to his essence, "it follows that there is also nothing else that indeed belongs to him" (MM, p 324). He explains that he did not find in the second meditation an answer to his question because "he has a heavy and rude mind", but he thinks he found it in the sixth where the notion of a clear and distinct idea appears. He quotes, for example, "we must always get back to this, that there are only the things that I conceive clearly and distinctly (clear and distinct percipio) that have the strength to persuade me entirely" (MM, p 165). Arnauld shows that Descartes' thought is built according to the following syllogism:
- I have a clear and distinct idea of what I am a thing that thinks and not extended
- I have a clear and distinct idea of what the body is an extended thing and that does not think
- Ergo, my soul is entirely and truly distinct from the body and it can exist without it.
However, the majority of the syllogism can be revoked, the knowledge must not only be clear and distinct but still full and complete, "that is, which includes everything that must be known about the thing" (MM, p 325). Arnauld goes on to show that when Descartes, later in his text, presents his knowledge of the body and mind as full and complete, these assertions can also be revoked in doubt. He specifies by showing that it is not necessary to go so far as to think that "every body was spirit" (MM, p 325), the genre that can be heard without the species. He concludes his first objection with; "it only results (from meditations) that I can acquire some knowledge of myself without knowledge of the body, but that this knowledge is complete and complete, so that I am assured that I am not mistaken, when I exclude the body from my essence, it is not yet manifest to me." (p 326).
Arnauld will continue his demonstration with a geometric argument. Anyone who thinks that the triangle inscribed in a circle and whose base is a diameter of the circle necessarily has a right angle, will say that he has a clear and distinct vision of this triangle, but he could deny that the square of its base is equal to the sum of the squares on its sides by calling on the omnipotence of God to make such a rectangular triangle. This one would make the same mistake as Descartes by considering that a clear and distinct idea implies full and complete knowledge.
Arnauld continuing the analysis of the triangle inscribed in the semicircle poses the problem of knowing what makes it possible to consider as different substances two substances that can only be conceived clearly and distinctly existing one without the other. It is indeed possible to distinguish the rectangular triangle and theorem of Pythagoras by refusing the latter to be in the essence of the first, but nevertheless having a clear and precise idea of the two objects. How can we say that we know the nature of the mind better than that of the triangle? Sticking to the clear and precise vision seems too much to prove and lead to the body being presented only as the vehicle of the mind, man becoming "a living spirit or using the body". (p328)
Arnauld then warns a response to the objection that would say that the body is not absolutely excluded from the essence of being, but only as it is a thing that thinks, because it would lead to presenting "the idea I have of myself as incomplete and imperfectly conceived"
Arnauld illustrates his thinking with a geometric example of rather complex use: The line for surveyors is a length without width, although there is no length without width. Some might think that the thing that thinks has the common properties of extended things plus the particular property of thinking, which means that by abstraction we could only retain this last property, (as we have removed by abstraction the width of the line).
In addition, thought always seems attached to a body and there are variations in the way of thinking combined with variations in the body, asleep in children, extinguished in fools.
- Answers and analysis:
The first response to Arnaud's objection is simple, "none of the things without which a thing can be, is understood in its essence" (MM, p 345), and to make a real distinction between two things it is enough that "each of them is conceived without the other fully, or as a complete thing" (MM, p346). Full and complete knowledge is not possible, because this knowledge belongs only to God, and even if we had it on an object, we would have no way of knowing that our knowledge is complete if God did not reveal it to us.
- To make a distinction between two things, it is simply necessary for a knowledge that is such that "we do not make it imperfect and criminal" (MM, p 347).
Descartes specifies that, when he said that it was necessary to fully conceive a thing, he heard a knowledge distinct enough to conceive this thing as complete.
The complete thing is defined as a substance, "covered with forms or attributes that are enough to let me know that it is a substance" (MM, p347). If we strip the substance of the attributes that make it known to us, we destroy all the knowledge we have of it, Descartes then conducts a distinction between complete and incomplete substance according to whether or not it can survive without being supported by anything else or whether it is a whole or a part of a whole. In the first sense there is only God who is complete substance, for the second he gives the example of the hand which alone is complete substance, but which reported to the body is incomplete substance.
- The attributes by which we know the substance called the body make it possible to consider it as a complete substance.
Arnauld's proposal, "the body is to the mind what the genus is to the species", is fought because the mind can be thought without the body and the species cannot be thought without the genus.
The example of the triangle inscribed in a semi-circle is not relevant for three reasons;
- The Pythagoras theorem is not a substance or even a thing
- We obviously go from the relationship between the square of the sides and the fact that the triangle is rectangular, more difficult from the existence of a right angle to the relationship, so it is enough to clearly distinguish the mind without the body so that the reciprocal is true
- We may have no idea of the Pythagoras theorem but we cannot a priori deny that this relationship exists, because we conceive that there must be a certain proportion, however "in the concept of the mind nothing is understood of what belongs to the body" (MM, p 350)
Descartes refutes the idea that his argument would prove too much. He recalls the sixth meditation where he had taken care to mention that "I am not only housed in my body, as well as a pilot in his ship, but in addition to that, that I am very closely partner with him... that I compose as one whole with him" (MM p 191). Arnaud's concern here was probably also theological because he did not want to see Descartes' arguments used to support dualistic heresies.
The geometric image of the line seems to him to differ too much from the problem. As for fools and children, the ability to think is prevented by the organs of the body, and it does not follow that it is produced by them, but the close connection of mind and body, "which we experience every day" (MM, p 353) can cause confusion.
Descartes' answer may seem insufficient in the face of Arnaud's requirement of full and complete knowledge. But the latter is impossible by definition. If we had by chance a full and complete knowledge of a thing, we would not know that we have this knowledge, which is only possible to God. We must be satisfied, as Saint Thomas says, with 'evening' knowledge, the 'morning' knowledge being reserved for the creator. Descartes does not specify in his answer that his definition of the body as a substance appeared only in the sixth meditation, he uses an ambiguous formulation: "As I think I have demonstrated enough in the second meditation" (MM, p349) which can be applied in context to the mind conceived as a distinct and complete thing and to the body conceived as a substance, but also to apply only to the mind. Yet he had to go through the demonstration of God's existence to "be sure that one (of the two things) is distinct or different from the other, because they can be posed separately at least by the omnipotence of God" (MM, p185).
Descartes also defends here his physics based on clear and distinct ideas. When he says that by stripping the substance of his attributes we would move away from knowledge, he seems to go against his analysis of the piece of wax in the second meditation and the stone in Article XI of the principles of philosophy. In these two moments he strips a substance of its accidental attributes to discover the substantial attributes, those that make the thing what it is, in the case of the body, figure and extent. The resulting certainty "is only obtained by abstraction, which leaves of the thing only what the intuitus can assume for its object". The clear and distinct vision combined with methodical reasoning is enough to build a physics. Arnauld's requirement would make it impossible.
Can we then be satisfied with the Cartesian response? Judging it in the light of the objections that Husserl and Ryle will bring to cite two modern critics would be inappropriate here. We will focus on Leibniz's thought, which refutes the Cartesian assimilation of the body to the extent simply by the obligation of the Cartesians to give movement to matter, which shows "that they tacitly admit that scope is not enough". In this case, the incompleteness of the clear and distinct notion becomes flagrant and reopens the field of properties that can be attributed to the body.
I.2 Some problems of the union of substances.
- Objections:
Arnauld indicates that he found in a summary of Descartes' six meditations the reasoning he thought he should produce to demonstrate the immortality of the soul in the case of the real distinction of mind and body. However, he adds that the Cartesian theory of the absence of soul in animals will come up against, for example, the observation of the flight of sheep who see a wolf, difficult to explain by animal spirits alone. He concludes this part by recalling the agreement of Saint Augustine and Descartes on the proposal that the things we see through the mind are more certain than those we see through the eyes.
- Answers and analysis:
Bodies have in them everything that is necessary for movements. Our soul provokes them by "determining the course of this very subtle liquor called animal spirits" (MM, p354). For animals, a shaking such that the reflected light of the wolf's body in the sheep's eyes can have the same strength.
We will not analyze at length either the objection or the answer. The real objections will come later, from Princess Elisabeth's requests for clarification. From her first letter of May 16, 1643, she questioned him by asking him to say "how the soul of man can determine the spirits of the body to do voluntary actions, being only a thinking substance". He will have to answer that it is indeed "the question...that I can be asked with more reason then of the writings I have published" and after trying an analogy with gravity he will conclude that "it is by using only life and ordinary conversations... and by refraining from meditating... that we learn to conceive the union of soul and body"
II. Theological objections.
As they will focus on the third meditation whose title is "From God, that he exists", let us briefly recall the Cartesian approach. It begins with the consideration of ideas. Properly these are like the "images of things" (MM, p99), if we consider them in themselves they cannot be false. It is only "in judgments that true and formal falsity can be encountered" (MM, p113). But appears immediately after the notion of material falsity for certain ideas, "namely that they represent what is nothing as if it were something". The ideas we have of the cold are so unclear and so indistinct that we do not know if the cold is a deprivation of heat or a real quality. If the cold is a deprivation of heat and if I have an idea of the cold as a real quality, then it is a misconception, that is to say, insists Descartes, that it represents things that are not. If they are still in me, it is because something is missing from my nature that is imperfect. As for the clear and distinct ideas of bodily things, it seems that they can be contained in me, formally or eminently despite this imperfection.
Descartes then approaches a first proof of God's existence: The more we consider his idea, he argues, the more we are convinced that the idea we have of it cannot come from us. We can have in us the idea of substance, not that of an infinite substance, so it was put in us by an infinite being.
Descartes rejects three objections at this stage:
- - Infinity could be perceived as a negation of the finite, but it is impossible because I "obviously see that there is more reality in the infinite substance than in the finite substance" (MM, p117)
- - The idea of God could be materially false, impossible also because it is very clear and very distinct and contains more objective reality than any other. The idea of a sovereignly perfect being cannot represent something unreal like the idea of the cold that was neither clear nor distinct, so it is true. However, my finite and limited nature forbids me to understand infinity, so its knowledge may not be clear and distinct. To this we can answer that it is enough to conceive this impossibility well and to judge that the things in which there is some perfection "are in God, formally or eminently" (MM, p119).
- - But perhaps all the perfections I lend to God are in me, at least in power and that they will develop in such a way that I cannot "acquire... all the other perfections of divine nature" (MM P 119). However, I can see that my knowledge is increasing by degree, while there is nothing to add to divine perfection where everything is in action.
Descartes admits that all this reasoning can be easily forgotten, he then builds a second proof that will allow him to validate the previous one.
If there were no God, who would I have my existence? If I am the author of my being, I will have given myself all the perfections, which is easier than coming out of nothingness, I do not possess them, so I am not God. In addition, my being is in time and all the time can be divided into infinity of independent parts, so some cause must keep me. By going up the causal chain, we must reach a primary cause that owes its existence to itself. Progression to infinity is impossible because this first cause must also serve our maintenance in existence. There is a "last cause that will be God" (MM, p 127).
But there must be as much reality in the cause as in its effect, in the effect that I am there is the idea of God so it was in my cause. This consideration allows us to return to the previous reasoning, and since I have the idea of "a sovereignly perfect being, in me" (MM, p127) the existence of God is obviously demonstrated, the second proof confirming the first.
II.1The materially false idea.
- Objections:
Arnauld recalls the parts of the proof of God's existence contained in the third meditation. The first is "that God exists, because his idea is in me; and the second, that I, who have such an idea, can only come from God" (MM, p330). In the first part the only thing he cannot approve is that there are ideas that can, "not to the truth formally, but materially be false" (MM, p330). He still quotes Descartes by taking his example of the cold. "If he says the cold is only a deprivation of heat, the idea that represents it to me as a positive thing will be materially false" (MM, p331).
Arnauld thinks that such an expression confuses idea and judgment, the idea of cold is the cold even in "as long as it is objectively in the understanding" If the cold is a deprivation there will never be a positive idea of the cold.
The same is true of an infinite being, we can "pretend that he does not exist", however, we cannot pretend that his idea does not represent something real.
But we can object that the idea that we have of the cold is false in that it is not the idea of the cold. It is the judgment we make of this idea that is false, the idea it "it is certain that it is very true" (MM, p331). This is very important because the same applies to the idea of God, it must not be materially able to be called false, although that of idolaters can relate to something that is not God. There is another vice in Descartes' demonstration, the positive objective being of some idea can come from nothingness, which is contrary to the foundations highlighted by Descartes
- Answers and analysis:
Descartes' answer is quite long and presents difficulties. Ideas are not composed of matter, and "how many times they are considered as representing something, they are not taken materially, but formally" (MM p 357). To say that an idea is materially false is an idea that "gives material or opportunity for error" (MM, p 357). This can happen for ideas that are not clear and distinct, this cannot be the case with the idea of God. Idolaters have confused ideas that can be called materially false "as long as they serve as material for their false judgments" (MM, p 358).
But there are ideas that give great opportunities for error to judgment, for example the idea of thirst in a hydropic.
Descartes agrees with the correctness of Arnauld's reasoning on the idea of cold which is not an idea of cold if it represents it as a positive being when it is a deprivation. However, Descartes persists in calling it false because it is confused and obscure. It does not come from nothingness but from the imperfection of our nature. Descartes finally appeals to the authority of Suarez for whom the same word, "materially", has the same meaning (MM, p 359).
In his answer Descartes does not expressly take up his theory of the third meditation, he reverses the vocabulary as noted by Ms. Scribano, she recalls the notion of simplex apprehensio in Suarez, the falsity of a representation is a meaningless notion and the opportunity for error given by an idea is the only case where the idea could be said to be false. It is in agreement with the answer but this is not what is in meditation where the falsity of the idea is in the representation of a false object. In meditations "darkness prevented us from establishing whether an idea was true or false" while in answers darkness is born from the falsity of the idea. However, there is in Suarez, about the entia rationis a material falsity of the idea, it is limited to ideas that represent pure nothingness, negations or deprivation, "as the object of the understanding is the ens, what is nothing is necessarily represented as something". The idea of the cold is well regarded by Suarez as a misconception. But this theory has two disadvantages, that of risking placing the idea of God among the false ideas, a pitfall pointed out by Descartes who has already affirmed its veracity because it is clear and distinct, and that of placing error "in the nature of ideas", which would have directly contradicted the fourth meditation, because the "power to conceive" given by God is such that "everything I conceive, I conceive it properly, and it is not possible that in this I am wrong" (MM, p 145). However, the conclusions of this meditation are necessary to base the truth of all things on the obvious, therefore to be able to base one's physics. Descartes' subsequent abandonment of the theory of the materially false idea of the third meditation therefore has theological and physical reasons. Arnauld did not weigh on the tension that resulted from the two affirmations of the third meditation, "the idea (of God), that I have is the truest, clearest and most distinct of all those that are in my mind" and "there is an infinity of things in God that I cannot understand". The clear and distinct idea is therefore that of the existence of an incomprehensible God who we only know contains all the perfections. But how can we then judge the ideas of idolaters as false? Especially since the fourth meditation will show that the cause of the error comes from the fact that "the will being much broader and more extensive than understanding, I do not contain within the same limits, but that I also extend it to things I do not hear. (MM, p 145), As soon as the will will turn to the knowledge of God, is not the understanding likely to make the same mistakes as idolaters? The theologian only objected to a notion that does not call into question the demonstration of God's existence.
II.2 Being by oneself.
- Objections:
Arnauld notes that Descartes says that you cannot be by yourself. He quotes the author of the first objections who considered that being by oneself must be taken not positively but negatively in the sense of not being by others. If you are by yourself, it is not possible, before being, to predict and choose what you will be, to give yourself all things, so being by yourself is negative. Arnauld takes up Descartes' answer: "the way of speaking, being by oneself must not be taken negatively, but positively with regard to the existence of God" (MM, p 332). God does the same to himself as the effective cause to his effect. Arnauld shares his reservations, being by oneself is positive, but it is not possible to be as a cause. After the analysis of Descartes' response to the first objections he builds his own objection: "we cannot conceive of a thing under the notion of cause as giving the being if we do not conceive that it has it, because no one can give what he does not have" (MM, p 334), but if it already has it why would it give it to itself? This becomes even more obvious if we go from the thing to God, he takes up Descartes' argument saying that if the thing is by itself it can only be positively because being in time it must ensure not only its creation but also its conservation. But in the idea of God is contained the idea of infinity, of its duration, indivisible. If an infinite being exists a moment it always exists. He quotes the continuous present in God of Saint Augustine, God cannot be a cause of oneself because it would have been before only to be.
At Descartes' request, which authorized for everything, the search for an efficient cause, he answers that for God, the answer is that he does not need it because he is an infinite being whose existence is his essence. Only things for which existence is distinguishable from essence require an efficient cause.
He notes the logical circle of the proposal "we are assured that the things we conceive clearly and distinctly are true, that because God exists. (MM, p. 337) because we need the clear and distinct conception to prove the existence of God.
He also criticizes in passing the impossibility indicated by Descartes to have things in themselves that we do not know to make a catalog of "things that could stop theologians"
Under this heading there are three wishes:
- To evoke in the preface the temporary nature of systematic revocation in doubt, a dangerous path for weak minds.
- Warn that the error referred to in the fourth meditation is the error in the discernment of the true and the false, not that of good and evil
- Ensure that the credit given to the things we conceive clearly and distinctly is understood only from the sciences and not from the faith or actions of our lives
After summoning Saint Augustine on the distinction between hearing, believing and opining he ends with an ontological criticism since according to Descartes, the only accidents cannot remain without substance, his thesis is in contradiction with the church's teaching on the Eucharist.
- Answers and analysis:
In his answer Descartes immediately denies having maintained that God can be the efficient cause of himself. What God does to himself is only in some way what he does to his creation, the image being due only to the imperfection of the human mind and his inability to fully conceive a thing that does not need an efficient cause. "The power of God is the cause or reason why he does not need a cause" (MM, p 360). It is the formal cause of God that means that he does not need an efficient cause. Descartes notes that theologians prefer to talk about principle rather than use the word cause, but that this word is very useful to prove the existence of God by the argument of the first cause, and that we cannot exclude God from this research until we prove that he exists. One thing by other is for the efficient cause. This point being a "manifest thing", it was not addressed in the meditations.
Yet Descartes obliges himself to come to the definition of by oneself that had already been the subject of a remark in the first objections (MM, p 219), By oneself, positively means by oneself as by a cause, It is only God who corresponds to the definition. By oneself negatively, means no by others, by oneself. Thus the hot can be "hot by its internal and constituent principles" (MM, p 219), Such a meaning by itself would destroy the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God because his infinity would not be certain. Descartes then proposes to show that between the efficient cause in the strict sense and the absence of a cause, there is "the positive essence of a thing", an extension of the notion of efficient cause, which adds positivity to the latter. The efficient cause does not have to be prior to its effect since it is defined by him, and if we extend as he proposes the concept of efficient cause, to wonder if "a thing can give the being to oneself" is equivalent to asking, "if the nature or essence of this thing is such that it does not need an efficient cause to be or exist. " (MM, p 364).
These ways of speaking, "which have a relationship and analogy" (MM, p 365) with the efficient cause are legitimate, so Archimedes treats the sphere as an inscribed polyhedron with an infinity of the face, it is a reasoning by passage to the limit that makes it possible to establish the things that belong "to the very essence of God" (MM, p 365). Descartes adds that his reasoning does not make it possible to infer that God is an effect. He defends his idea of cause by recalling Aristotle for whom the first cause named in the analytical is the essence of the thing or formal cause.
If we abandon the notion of cause, as Arnauld proposes, we cannot prove the existence of God. Arnaud's objection that asking for the efficient cause of God's existence is illogical because it is the essence of God to exist, is itself illogical, because the confusion essence existence in God, amounts to asking the question for the essence. There follows a long criticism of Arnauld's refusal to adhere to the "analogy of the efficient cause" (MM, p 367) which according to Descartes is likely to blur the reader by the obligation to which it puts him to seek for each thing a cause different from the thing itself. This would be to refuse Aristotle to extend to the sphere what he demonstrated by a passage to the limit of polygons with an infinite number of sides, by refusing to take it as a limit of a rectilinear figure because it is indeed curvilinear.
Descartes then refutes the logical circle objection that had been made to him by distinguishing things conceived clearly and things that we remember to have conceived clearly.
Descartes only sees thoughts in the mind, and therefore there can be nothing of which we are not aware. However, he notes that memory is fading.
For the things that can stop theologians, Descartes recognizes that his meditations are not specific to all kinds of minds, and that is why he chose not to print in vulgar language.
He agrees to have treated error only in terms of discernment of true and false and not in matters of good or evil.
It will be infinitely more prolific with regard to the possibility for accidents to be separated from the substance. If according to Arnauld, the accidents seen by Descartes are only modes of the substance, he never denied that "accidents were real" (MM, p 371). The problem posed is that of transsubstantiation. Descartes notes that it requires two miracles, that of changing the substance of bread into substance of the body of Christ, and that of keeping the accidents of bread in the sight of the faithful. He will respond by using the concept of surface that he will develop in the philosophical principles in paragraph 15. The surface of the bodies is their outer envelope, the one that is in contact with our senses, it is a permanent modality so it can be the same while the substance of the body changes. It is a contradiction with Aristotle for whom it is the quality of the body that is perceived by touching its periphery, but for Descartes the qualities have disappeared in favor of simple extension. It is therefore possible that this area is maintained in such a way as to preserve the appearance of the bread while its substance has disappeared. Transsubstantiation only requires a miracle.
It is impossible to reread this part of the fourth objections without having in the background the comments of J.L. Marion and E. Gilson on Cartesian thought whose analysis would go far beyond the purpose of this memory. However, the points that can be highlighted remain dependent on the problem they have identified.
The concept of causa sui applied to God is new in theology, it will only be discussed twice in Descartes's work in his answers to the first and fourth objections.
We have already noted the tension that existed between the clear and distinct notion of God and his incomprehensibility. Here the concept formed by "natural light" as a median between the efficient cause and the formal cause, may be, by Descartes presented as "a manifest thing of oneself" (MM p 362), it may not be as much as that. Calling it the positive essence of a thing is only understandable by using analogy. And in fact, the analogy is very present in Descartes' response. However, Descartes does not define the nature of its analogy out by a similarity with the passage to the limit drawn from geometry; we can attribute to the circle the properties of the polygon having an infinity of sides. But the example sins in that the circle retains the properties of the polygon (ratio of the perimeter to the unchanged radius, for example) while God is not an efficient cause of himself and things need an efficient cause. This analogy also has a limit in its non-reversibleness, what is said of the circle can be said of the polygon, but God cause of it, cannot be called its own effect. By considering God as an infinite Descartes makes any analogy of proportion invalid, it would therefore be an analogy of attribution, but the meaning of the word causality is not preserved.
Descartes was more precise in his response to the first objections, "Because, although it is not necessary to say that it is the efficient cause of oneself... nevertheless, because we see that what it does that it is by itself, or that it has no different cause from itself, does not come from nothingness, but from the real and true immensity of its power, it is quite possible for us to think, that it does in some way, the same thing with regard to itself, that the cause is efficient with regard to its effect, and therefore that it is by itself positive" p236
The theory of the creation of eternal truths poses the problem of the creation of logical truths. If for mathematical truths, their character of absolute dependence on the divine will is affirmed by Descartes before the writing of meditations, the debate remains open for 'logical' truths. If causality and non-contradiction come from a creative free act, then placing God as a cause of oneself makes little sense, and moreover we can only go back to a primary cause, that of an author of nature and it is not possible to identify him certainly with God. There is worse, if this act is free it could not be, and then nothingness could create the being. The principle of causality therefore seems to impose itself on creation it is logical not to see it as a limitation of God, to incorporate it into its very nature. The God causa sui then allows a relative continuity between physics and metaphysics. But then it pulls the analogy towards univocity and places God at the level of the existing, even if it is a supreme existing.
We then understand Arnauld's remark who proposes to him to replace the expression "not knowing the author of my origin" with "pretenging not to know" to exclude God from doubt. She came from her fear of seeing the objects of faith put under the criterion of clarity and distinction. Perhaps he considers the idea of God as being obscure despite Descartes' remarks. For the latter, according to Etienne Gilson, God falls into the category of substance, its main attribute, infinity makes it possible to establish the identity of existence and essence, the being passes to existence while for a medieval thinker, infinity is not the essential attribute of God, it is a consequence of his being.
A last defense of Descartes about causality is found in his first answers, "any limitation is by a cause,... but,... strictly speaking,... limitation is only a negation of greater perfection, which negation is not by a cause, but the limited thing. " (MM, p 236). This argument is not included in the fourth answers, because the continuation of the argument goes back to the impossibility of conceiving it by oneself without external or "internal" causality. It should be noted that on occasion Descartes does not ask for the cause of the existence of things, but their reason.
Finally, it must be noted that it is the ancillary proof of the existence of God, the one that was brought when we do not remember the reasoning according to which the idea of a being more perfect than oneself must have been "necessarily put in itself by a being who is indeed more perfect" (MM, p 121), which caused a maximum of objections, while the first, in which Arnauld criticized only the notion of misconception, implies that the effect is greater than the cause, a complex scholastic notion accepted by the two interlocutors but easily criticized.
Arnauld's knowledge of the first answers also allows him not to emphasize the difficulty of not considering infinity as a negation of the finite, a difficulty to which Descartes responded by distinguishing indefinite and infinite, the first being negation, the second applying only to God.
Conclusion.
As a result of these objections, the theory of materially false ideas and the notion of God as causa sui, will no longer be taken up by Descartes. There were no answers from Arnauld to the answers.
What are the major concerns of the two interlocutors at the reading of the exchange? Arnauld answered as a philosopher and a theologian but his concern is mainly theological, his main philosophical concern, The distinction of soul and body into two distinct substances is not in harmony with the hylemorphism of Saint Thomas. Even if it makes it possible to better ensure the immortality of the soul, it may also not make the resurrection of bodies necessary.
Descartes in his letter to Mersenne of April 15, 1630, indicated that he had found how to "demonstrate metaphysical truths in a way that is more obvious than the demonstrations of geometry", but that he did not know "if he could persuade others". Shortly before the edition of the meditations in his letter to the same of September 30, 1640, he talks about the printing of twenty to thirty copies of the meditations to send them to a learned public in order to collect their objections, but also and longer, of a problem of pulleys, how to obtain a cubic root, the mascaret to Blaye, and notes at the turn of a sentence that "the main purpose of my metaphysics is to explain the things that can be conceived distinctly". This is why it seems difficult in his work to apply the distinction between physical and metaphysics. Her physics, based on the identity of matter and space reaching so much the foundations of reality that it is metaphysical. Its classification of sciences puts metaphysics at the root, physics as a trunk and notes that fruit can only be collected at the ends of the branches of medicine, morality and mechanics. Even if in his fourth answers Descartes' concern is to guarantee the bases of the future principles of philosophy, and in particular the use of deductive rationalism, he speaks as a metaphysicist. Moreover, his doubt is not that of a physicist who questions the adequacy of his scientific theories to reality, but that of a philosopher who questions the existence of a real outside his mind.
Bibliography
Descartes, Metaphysical Meditations, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1979.
Descartes, Treatise on Passions, followed by Correspondence with Princess Elizabeth, Presentation F Mizrachi, Paris, 10/18,1965.
Pascal, Complete works, Michel Le Guern edition, Paris, Gallimard, La pléiade, 2000.
J.L. Marion, On the grey ontology of Descartes, paris, Vrin, classical age, 1996
Kim sang Ong-Van-Cung, Descartes and the ambivalence of creation, Paris, Vrin, Philology and Mercury, 2000
Internet sources:
Scribano Emanuela, Descartes and false ideas, Archives of Philosophy 2/ 2001 (Tome 64), p. 259-278 URL: www.cairn.info/revue-archives-de-philosophie-2001-2-page- 259.htm
F. Crismareanu, anale.fssp.uaic.ro/.../causasuietsaposteritecritical reflexions