So I was thoroughly dissappointed when I read Meditation 5. I was under the impression that he was going to go deep into the analyzation of the existence of God, but he simply stayed on the surface with basic obvious conclusions while repeating himself over and over again. "But once I perceived that there is a God, and also understood at the same time that everything else depends on him, and that he is not a deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distincly perceive is necessarily true." I'm going to break this into pieces, so first I'll go over "But once... that he is not a deceiver." First of all, he doesn't know this for a fact. No one knows this for a fact because no one has actually had an interaction with or has seen god. He bases the existence off God off of the mechanics of nature and a few ideas he has in his head. There is no real hard evidence that God exists so he can't be so sure of that statement. Now I'll go over "I then concluded... is necessarily true." What he's saying there is one of the most obvious things I've ever heard. What he is saying is things that I know are true, are true. Thats like looking at a tree outside and saying, "That's a tree," and in turn feeling smart since you came to that conclusion.
I was hoping for him to look deeper into the existence of God and question it and analyze it for what it's worth. Instead, he went over how his own thoughts ideas deem that God exists. Not impressed Descartes, not impressed.
3 comments:
You are so right. When you read the Meditations you expect to be enlightened with proof for God's existence, however, Descartes provides no proof. He basically just states his biases and uses complex wording to try to support them. He should have just wrote a book about the truths involving mathematics instead of trying to proof something that cannot be proven.
I think Descartes reasoning for incorporating mathematics and sciences is so he could disprove God, to a point.
I've read it multiple times now, and I must say I appreciate his thoughts and how he derived them, but I still come up with the same opinion. As a phylosopher, he should have questioned the existence and then examined the proof of the existence.
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