In The Meditations, Descartes’s establishment and subsequent use of the existence of god is integral to his argument for the existence of everything external to the self. It is the purpose of this essay to discuss whether Descartes is justified in his use of God’s existence in his process of dispelling doubt. In order to asses Descartes use of god’s existence in The Meditations it is necessary to first explain both the role it plays in his argument and his method in concluding that god exists . I will then assess the logic of Descartes’s proof for the existence of god and come to a conclusion regarding whether this idea of god can be reasonably used as a foundation for Descartes’s following arguments. It is my position that Descartes’s proof …show more content…
He attempts this by the ontological argument which is as follows.(REFERENCE MAYBE, LECTURES??) Descartes thinks that god, by definition perfect, must also exist as a direct implication of that perfection; that is to say that existence is in itself a perfection: ‘I am not free to think of god without existence (that is, a supremely perfect being without a supreme perfection) (REFERENCE DESCARTES). If Descartes provides a rationally persuasive argument for his definition of god then we could accept his conclusion that god exists; however we find his argument left wanting (WILSON 162). Descartes has failed to establish god as a perfect being in any way other than utilising his ‘clear and distinct rule’, which in itself has been called in to doubt previously. As a final note, another problem with Descartes definition of god is that nowhere does he provide any reason to believe that, even if god were ‘perfect’, it would not allow the meditator to be deceived. Descartes assumes that deception of the meditator is incompatible with a perfect being, an assumption with no grounds in reasonable