Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

mysteries of Christianity. If Descartes requires everything that we believe

to be intelligible, then he would reject all the central dogmas of the

Christian tradition, such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the res-

urrection of the body, and that would make him equivalent to a Socinian.

If however Descartes were a genuine Christian, he should acknowledge

that revelation is much more certain than anything one learns in medicine

and that it would be a fundamental mistake to confuse the type of cer-

tainty that is available, in principle, in one context with that available in

the other. In pressing this argument, Schoock makes a point that is similar

to Descartes’ response to Morin in:‘Just as it would be a mistake to

demand of medicine a degree of certainty that is comparable to the dogmas

of theology, so likewise one could not excuse those who would demand, for

all the dogmas of physics, that their demonstrations achieve the exactitude

that is found only in mathematics.’

This challenge reflects a debate within Calvinism between those who

put their trust in reason and then adjusted the teachings of the church so

that they were ‘reasonable’, and those who trusted religious faith so much

that, if necessary, it could be used to override conclusions based on ration-

al argument. Moise Amyraut (–) was a prominent proponent,

within the French Huguenot community, of the first option. He published

a book in the same year that Descartes’Meditationsappeared, under the

title:The Elevation of Faith and the Lowering of Reason when Believing the

Mysteries of Religion(). Amyraut argued that faith and reason were

compatible and complementary, and that it was never necessary to reject

reason – as in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation – in order

to retain genuine religious faith. Descartes was being accused by Schoock

of joining the Amyraut side of the debate and using reason as a touchstone

of what may be accepted on faith.

Schoock also claims that, despite his explicit statements to the contrary,

Descartes is unduly influenced by the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus, that

he wishes to undermine proofs of God’s existence by offering manifestly

ineffective arguments, and that his invitation to readers of theMeditations

to clear their minds of all previously held beliefs is a mere disguise for

deluding them into accepting Cartesianism.The image of Descartes

portrayed here is not that of a philosopher who is grappling with gen-

uine metaphysical questions, but rather that of a shrewd manipulator of

credulous followers whose primary interest is to found a new ‘sect’ and to

control its members by the authority of his word.