Descartes: A Biography

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Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) 

on Method. Such a Latin text – which made theDiscourseavailable to Dutch

theologians, many of whom did not read French – revivied the kind of

objections that Part IV had provoked when it was first published. Descartes

had acknowledged the inadequacy of his discussion of metaphysics in the

Discourse, and the need for a more extended discussion.

As regards your second objection – that I have not explained sufficiently how I know

that the soul is a substance that is distinct from the body and that its nature is only

to think, which is the only thing that obscures the proof of God’s existence – I admit

that what you say is very true and also that it makes my proof of God’s existence

difficult to understand. However, I had no better way of dealing with this question

than by explaining at length the falsehood or uncertainty that is found in all judgments

that depend on the senses or the imagination, in order to show subsequently which

judgments depend only on pure understanding and the extent to which they are evident

and certain. I omitted this intentionally, after due consideration, mainly because I wrote

in the vernacular and was afraid that, if weak minds avidly embraced the doubts and

scruples that I would have had to propose, they might not be able to understand as

fully the arguments by which I tried to remove them.

This implies that an adequate discussion of metaphysics would have to

include a comparison between the kind of certainty available in empiri-

cal studies and the apparently greater certainty available in metaphysical

arguments that rely on ‘pure understanding’. For Descartes, the viability

of metaphysics as a distinct enterprise presupposes a discussion of related

questions in theory of knowledge.

Descartes repeated another version of this argument in a letter (May

)toanunnamed correspondent who is assumed to have been Jean

Silhon.

Iagree...that I have not adequately presented the arguments by which I think I prove

that there is nothing that, in itself, is more evident and certain than the existence of

God and of the human soul. However, I did not dare to attempt this, because I would

have had to explain at length the strongest arguments of the sceptics to show that there

is no material thing of whose existence one is certain. At the same time, I would have

accustomed the reader to detach their thoughts from things that are perceived by the

senses, and then I would have shown that if anyone doubts everything material, they

still cannot have any doubt about their own existence. It follows from this that the

person – that is, the soul – is a being or substance that is not at all corporeal...and

also that it is the first thing that one can know with certainty. Indeed, if one spends

enough time on this meditation, one acquires gradually a very clear and, dare I say,

intuitive notion of intellectual nature in general. This idea is the one that, if considered

without limitation, represents God....I was afraid that this introduction, which could

have appeared as if it were designed to introduce the views of sceptics, would disturb