Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

philosophical tutor to explain the role of human choice in a world in which,

according to Descartes, everything that occurs is ultimately an expression

of God’s will.

God’s Providence and Human Choice

Elizabeth identified genuine philosophical problems in almost every sug-

gestion made by Descartes in his latest letter (September). The

most obvious one was his bland suggestion that we accept whatever mis-

fortunes we experience as, in some sense, caused or approved by God. She

reminded him of a familiar distinction between natural evils and moral

evils, and of the Calvinist belief in God’s predetermination of the fate of

each individual.

Knowledge of God’s existence and of his attributes can provide consolation for the

misfortunes that befall us from the ordinary course of nature and the order that he

established in it, such as losing one’s goods in a storm, losing one’s health because

of infection from the air, or losing one’s friends through death. But it cannot con-

sole us for the misfortunes that are inflicted by other people, whose choice seems

completely free. Only faith can convince us that God takes care to rule human

wills, and that he has determined the fate of each person before the creation of

the world. (iv.)

Elizabeth did not need to spell out the problem, since it was already familiar

within Christian theology, both Calvinist and Roman Catholic. Apart from

the general Providence that God exercises over the whole of creation, there

remained a contentious question about whether He exercised a ‘special

Providence’ over individuals.

Elizabeth also pointed to a problem that subsequently became a stan-

dard issue in utilitarianism in the nineteenth century. When Descartes

recommended that she should prefer the interests of the community to

those of the individual, he failed to provide any agreed measure of the rel-

ativeweights of each set of interests. Elizabeth claimed, reasonably, that

individuals are likely to give a much greater weight to their own immediate

needs, of which they have a clear knowledge, than to the less well-known

interests of others in the community to which they belong.She wanted

to know, therefore, why any individual should be impartial between his or

her own interests and the interests of others.

Descartes’ reply to the query about human choice and God’s compre-

hensive causality was unsatisfactory, as it was bound to be. One reason