The Will to Reason: Theodicy and Freedom in Descartes
C.P. Ragland
Abstract
In his Meditations, Descartes faces the possibility that our faculty of Reason may not be consistent with itself. This problem animates not only the famous skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, but also the dialectic of the Third and Fourth: in the Third Meditation, Descartes proves that an all-perfect God exists, but in the Fourth, the existence of error seems to rule out such a God. Reason seems to speak decisively both for and against God. To vindicate the consistency of Reason, Descartes develops a free will theodicy reconciling God’s perfection with our errors. At first glance, howeve ... More
In his Meditations, Descartes faces the possibility that our faculty of Reason may not be consistent with itself. This problem animates not only the famous skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, but also the dialectic of the Third and Fourth: in the Third Meditation, Descartes proves that an all-perfect God exists, but in the Fourth, the existence of error seems to rule out such a God. Reason seems to speak decisively both for and against God. To vindicate the consistency of Reason, Descartes develops a free will theodicy reconciling God’s perfection with our errors. At first glance, however, the theodicy’s prospects seem dim, because Descartes does not appear to have a consistent or coherent understanding of human freedom. In an in-depth analysis spanning four chapters, The Will to Reason argues that for Descartes, freedom is most fundamentally the ability to do the right thing; this view of freedom is both consistent and suitable for his purposes. However, when Descartes attempts to reconcile such freedom with divine providence (in an effort to solve yet another apparent antinomy of Reason), his strategy runs afoul of his infamous doctrine that God created the eternal truths.
Keywords:
Descartes,
Cartesian Circle,
free will,
theodicy,
providence,
skepticism,
Reason,
compatibilism,
incompatibilism,
creation of eternal truths
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190264451 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190264451.001.0001 |
