Descartes God As The Idea of Infinity

International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 10 Number 1 January 2008
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2007.00333.x
Descartes: God as the Idea of Infinity

MARY-ANN CRUMPLIN*
Abstract: This article returns to Descartes’ texts and correspondence and looks
to recent scholarship to reveal three key elements of Descartes’ distinctive
epistemological structure. It shows that because objectors ignore Descartes’
opposition to the ‘order of being’ they are led to a binary and incorrect reading
of his argument. However, by correctly following Descartes’ own logic, the
method of doubt can be used to prove the existence of an infinite God.
I do not comprehend the infinite . . . for the nature of the infinite is such that it
is not comprehended by a being such as I, who am finite.1
Reading Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy from a conventional, analogous

perspective, so that the infinity of God is a ‘more perfect being’2 in proportion or
ratio to the ‘not wholly perfect’3 human, means that the idea of infinity is reduced to
the status of a conceptual object within the finite mind of the human subject and
cogito ergo sum proves the existence of nothing but the human mind. But Descartes
also aims to demonstrate the existence of God. Acknowledging Descartes’ warning
against ‘prejudice’,4 this article will take his privately declared ambition to ‘destroy
the foundations of Aristotelian physics’5 seriously and, using recent Cartesian
scholarship, the textual evidence of Descartes’ correspondence, his Meditations on
First Philosophy and his Principles of Philosophy, it will argue that Descartes’ clear
* Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London W8 5HQ UK.

1 Descartes, Third Meditation, vol. VII, p. 46; vol. IX.1, p. 36 in Oeuvres, 12 vols.
(Paris: Adam & Tannery, 1910 – hereafter ‘AT’ with volume and page number, unless
indicated otherwise). All translations are from Descartes: Philosophical Essays and
Correspondence, ed. and intro. R. Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), here p. 119.
2 Descartes, Third Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 46; vol. IX.1, p. 36.
4 Descartes, Letter of Dedication, Meditations on First Philosophy, AT vol. VII, p. 4; vol.
IX.1, p. 7. Descartes writes that in order to draw the same conclusions which he has
drawn in his Meditations demands ‘a mind that is quite free from prejudices’.
5 Descartes, Letter to Mersenne, 28 January 1641, AT vol. III, p. 298. When Descartes
refers to Aristotle in this context, he should be understood to mean the interpretation of
Aristotle which he was taught at La Flèche.
© The author 2008. Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.
4 Mary-Ann Crumplin
intention was for the ‘idea of infinity’ to represent a radical transcendence which is
so alien to human comprehension that it cannot be reached by either via analogica
or via negativa because, in so far as these arguments make ‘infinite’ relative to
‘finite’, either as a ratio or as a positive–negative binary, they render transcendence
‘comprehensible’. Rejecting these structures, Descartes argues that it is the
phenomenon of doubt which appears in the act of deliberative thinking (i.e.
the thinking indicated by cogito, cogitare) which makes the existence of an infinite
God philosophically sound.
This article discusses the implicit limit which analogy or negativity place on
infinity; it then sets out three distinctive features of Descartes’ epistemological
structure by means of which he opposes the Scholastic philosophy of his schooldays
at La Flèche. Working from these principles, it will then be possible to show how
Descartes’ Method of Doubt functions on two discrete levels as an argument both for
the existence of finitude (the human self) and for the existence of the idea of infinity
(God).
Descartes’ challenge
If Descartes’ cogito ergo sum is to make sense, it must be read as an argument against
what he perceives to be the primacy given by some theologians to the ordo essendi,
the ‘order of being’, over the ordo cognoscendi, the ‘order of knowing’. Descartes
rejects any analogical structure6 which attempts to conceptualize the infinite because
the human perspective can only render infinity in relation to finitude. He also
explicitly rejects any conception of infinity derived from a negation of finitude,7
arguing instead for radical infinity: a phenomenon which is made manifest to man in
doubt or desire; in the kind of timeless8 questioning which initiates deliberative
thinking. The hazards of presenting the idea of infinity as beyond logos, in the sense
of beyond both words and human logical, cognitive sequence were noted by both
Descartes himself in his documented anxiety that, if misunderstood, his argument
appears to defend the ideas of the sceptics9 and by Mersenne and Arnauld in the
Second and Fourth Sets of Objections to his Meditations10 which, by failing to
grasp the extreme transcendence of Descartes’ idea of infinity and consistently
6 The thesis of Jorge Secada’s recent book Cartesian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000) is that an inversion of the essential and existential sequence,
which Descartes attributes to Aristotle through his reading of the Scholastics, is
fundamental to the ontological and epistemological structure which Descartes seeks to
set out.
8 ‘Timeless’ in the sense of without beginning and without end, outside of the sequence of
deliberation (cogitare) which it initiates.
9 Descartes, Letter to Silhon, March 1637, AT vol. I, pp. 353–4.
10 Descartes, Fourth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 214; vol. IX.1, p. 167; Descartes,
Second Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 124; vol. IX.1, p. 98.
© The author 2008
Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008
Descartes: God as the Idea of Infinity 5
applying the forms of conventional logic to it, fall into a reading of finitude and
infinity which becomes either a vicious circle or a dualism. For Descartes, infinity is
that which is essentially alien to human conception: man cannot claim to understand
a causal sequence in ontology, which would mean that it were from the perception of
his own existence that man deduces that God ‘already’ exists. Instead man knows
himself and God as essentially dis-ordered. In his book, Cogito and the Unconscious,
Slavoj Žižek describes the displacement of man which cogito effects, writing:
Modern subjectivity has nothing to do with the notion of man as the highest
creature in the ‘great chain of being’, as the final point of the evolution of the
universe: modern subjectivity emerges when the subject perceives himself as
‘out of joint’, as excluded from the ‘order of things’, from the positive order of
entities.11
By emphasizing the essential incomprehensibility of the idea of the infinite,
Descartes’ argument pre-emptively invalidates allegations of incoherence or
circularity as well as the solipsism inherent in subject–object dualism. His argument
is that if the infinite is indeed infinite then it cannot be placed into a chain or temporal
sequence so that, once thinking surrenders the concept of a ‘great chain of being’, the
essence of infinity and the essence of man can both become apparent in a new way. He
recognizes that thinking beyond the sequences of analogy or ‘chains of being’ is
challenging12 and warns that, if misunderstood, his rational method will not prove the
existence of God but will render man ‘atheist’.13 With this warning, Descartes predicts
the postmodern condition of atheistic subjectivity which, as Nietzsche will write later,
is the necessary result of a ‘logical’or rational approach to the Meditations. In his book
Postmodernity’s Transcending, Laurence Paul Hemming explains how rationality as
‘rational atheism’ finds its origin in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Hemming writes:
With the abolition of the unity of substance, comes the willed death of
God . . . What is the effect of Nietzsche’s interpretation of the self both in the
11 S. Žižek, ‘Introduction: Cogito as a Shibboleth’, in S. Žižek, ed., Cogito and the

Unconscious (London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 4.
12 Descartes, Letter to Silhon, March 1637, AT vol. I, pp. 353–4:
I am thinking to prove that there is nothing in the world which is more evident and
more certain than the existence of God and of the human soul . . . but I am frightened
that, especially if I were to write in common language, this project would trouble
weaker intellects by seeming at first to introduce the opinions of the sceptics . . . As
for you, and your peers, sir, who are more intelligent, I hope that if you took the
trouble, not just to read but also to meditate in order on the things upon which I have
said I have meditated, stopping for long enough on each point to see if I have made
a mistake or not, you would reach the same conclusions as I have. [my translation]
13 Descartes, Letter to Regius, 24 May 1640, AT vol. III, p. 63. Descartes’ use of the word
‘atheist’ differs from ours. For Descartes, an atheist is someone who cannot grasp the
foundational nature of the idea of the infinite, and not, as we would use the term today,
someone who rejects the notion of a highest being.
© The author 2008
6 Mary-Ann Crumplin
light of and against Descartes? He describes it . . . as ‘the refuting of God,

particularly only the moral God is refuted’. God, as the most stable, permanent,
highest being, thus as highest value . . . is the ‘error’ most to be overcome: the
death of God is therefore to be proclaimed for the sake of undoing the stability
of being for the sake of becoming, for the sake of the ‘ego volo’, ‘ich will’ as the
genuine expression of ego cogito. This is the devaluing of God.14
This evaluation is correct: Descartes does refute the understanding of God which
places him as ‘highest value’ so that Descartes’ use of the term ‘atheist’ refers
specifically to those who do not apprehend the foundational nature of the idea of
infinity. On his view, atheists are subject to a form of idolatry which permits drawing
a comparison between mathematical truths and infinite truth,15 replacing true divinity
with a structure of means and ends analogous to worldly structures. In Cartesian
Theodicy, Zbigniew Janowski explains Descartes’ definition of ‘atheism’, writing:
‘In other words, an atheist mistakenly considers the self-evidence of mathematics
(“convictions”) as a sign of its indubitability, without ever investigating possible
reasons that might shake it.’16 Janowski shows how Descartes’ ‘quest for certitude’
led the authors of the Sixth Set of Objections to suspect him of atheism, and of
establishing mathematics as certain in itself. Janowski concedes:
On Scholastic premises, the theologians’ reasoning was sound. Because
Descartes nowhere in the Meditations explains in what way the necessary truths
depend on God, the theologians had reason to suspect that Descartes was
establishing the criterion of clarity and distinctness as the criterion of Truth.
Descartes never suggested, let alone said, anything to this effect. On the
contrary, his whole effort was to make the eternal truths even more dependent on
God than anyone had previously imagined. In his response, Descartes insists that
unless we assume that God exists, the criterion of clearness and distinctness is
not sufficient for determining that something is certain. That is why, as he
explains to the Objectors, the atheist cannot have ‘true knowledge’ (scientia) but
merely ‘conviction’ (pervasio).17
In fact, Janowski argues, Descartes’ ‘Doctrine of Eternal Truths’ represents ‘an
entirely new conception of God’,18 adding:
The fundamental point of this doctrine is the following: not only is God the
creator of the existence of things but also He is the creator of their essences.
Accordingly if 2 + 3 = 5, or, if all the radii of a circle are equal, it is not because
14 L.P. Hemming, Postmodernity’s Transcending: Devaluing God (London: SCM Press,

2005), pp. 203–4, my emphasis.
15 Descartes, Letter to Plempius, 23 March 1638, AT vol. II, p. 63; Descartes, Letter to
Regius, 24 May 1640, AT vol. III, p. 63.
16 Zbiginiew Janowski, Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes’ Quest for Certitude (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2000), p. 76.
17 Janowski, Cartesian Theodicy, p. 83.
© The author 2008
there is something intrinsically or absolutely necessary in the nature of

mathematical objects, but only because God created them to be such . . . if there
is nothing intrinsically necessary in the nature of mathematical objects, God is
not bound by any norms of rationality and morality as we know them.
Consequently His nature is entirely unintelligible to the human mind.19
Emmanuel Levinas also understands the Cartesian method to secure the self on
the basis of radical transcendence so that infinity is absolutely foreign and literally
beyond comprehension. In his book, Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes:
The non-constitution of infinity in Descartes leaves a door open; the reference of
the finite cogito to the infinity of God does not consist in a simple thematisation
of God. I of myself account for every object; I contain them. The idea of infinity
is not for me an object. The ontological argument lies in the mutation of this
‘object’ into being, into independence with regard to me; God is the Other.20
This reading is not merely interpretive: Descartes unambiguously refers to God
as radically transcendent to man throughout his work; so, for instance, in his letter to
Mersenne of 6 May 1630, he writes:
The existence of God is the first and the most eternal of all the truths there can
be, and the only one from which all the others flow. But what makes it easy
to be mistaken about this, is that most people do not consider God as an infinite
and incomprehensible being, who is the sole author on whom all other things
depend. Instead they stop at the syllables of his name, and think that it is enough
to know him if one knows that Dieu means the same thing in French as Deus in
Latin and that he is worshipped by men. Those who have no higher thoughts
than this can easily become atheists, and since they understand mathematical
truths perfectly, and not the truth of the existence of God, it is no wonder that
they do not believe that the former truths depend on the latter. But they ought to
judge, on the contrary, that since God is a cause whose power exceeds the limits
of the human understanding, and the necessity of those [mathematical] truths by
no means exceeds our knowledge, they are something lesser and subject to that
incomprehensible power.21
The epistemological foundations of Cartesian rationality
Descartes’ method seeks to validate an epistemological proof of the idea of infinity

based on human experience and in order to do this within philosophical discourse

20 E. Levinas, Totalité et infini (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, [1971] 1978; Paris:
Livredepoche, 1990), p. 232; ET Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, [1969] 2000), p. 211.
21 Descartes, Letter to Mersenne, 6 May 1630, AT vol. I, p. 150.
© The author 2008
8 Mary-Ann Crumplin
he must articulate an alternative rationality to the Scholastic one, so that the ratio
between finitude and infinity is not a comprehensible structure of substantial
comparisons but an asymmetric ratio of comprehension to incomprehension. In order
for Descartes’ revision of logical structure to be sound it is important to recognize his
preliminary amendments to prevailing contemporary epistemological procedures.
Firstly, as Jorge Secada argues in his book Cartesian Metaphysics, Descartes inverts
the scholastic essential and existential order in order to dispute the unity of theories
of substance; secondly, Descartes radicalizes the separation between the two kinds of
thinking (intellect and will) in order to account for human error – which will be
crucial if he is to substantiate his claim to rationality despite the refusal of any
comprehension between divinity and humanity22 – and, thirdly, he will discuss the
nature of limit and reveal the difference between infinite and indefinite.
Essence precedes existence
Jorge Secada writes on the ‘relationship between Descartes and the Scholastics
through the contrast between essentialism and existentialism’23 and shows how, for
Descartes, knowledge of essence precedes knowledge of existence: the thinker begins
with an idea of the nature of the thing in question and proceeds from there either to a
discovery of the existence of that thing or to an acknowledgement that no such thing
exists. This method opposes the view that a seeker begins with knowledge that a
thing is and then proceeds to discover what that thing is. Descartes defends this
position in his reply to Caterus’ First Set of Objections, when he writes, ‘according to
the rules of true logic, one may never ask whether something exists without already
knowing what it is’24: entities which we do not know simply do not exist for us.
It is this emphasis on the primary necessity of knowledge of essence which raises
the question of essence becoming the object of a subjective cognition. Arnauld’s
Fourth Set of Objections to Descartes’ Meditations 25 shows how, considered through
the optic of conventional logic, and particularly if ‘knowledge’ is conflated, as in
conventional usage, with ‘comprehension’, Descartes’ ‘proof’ of the existence of
God is in fact just his affirmation of the a priori truth upon which metaphysics
builds the ratios of scientific knowledge. Martin Heidegger’s extensive discussion of
a mathematical understanding of the structure of Cartesian metaphysics26 offers a
22 Descartes, Principia 32, AT vol. VIIIa, p. 17; vol. IX.2, p. 39; Principia 35, AT vol. VIIIa,
p. 18; vol. IX.2, p. 40.
23 J. Secada, Cartesian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 2.
24 Descartes, Reply to First Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 109; vol. IX.1, p. 86.
25 Descartes, Fourth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 214; vol. IX.1, p. 166.
26 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, [1927] 2001), pp.
89–101; Gesamtausgabe vol. 17, Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, ed.
F.-W. von Hermann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994), pp. 109–246; Gesamtausgabe vol.
41, Die Frage nach dem Ding, ed. F.-W. von Hermann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1984),
pp. 65–107.
© The author 2008
similar critique, arguing that Descartes’ deliberate orientation towards a known ideal
reveals the kind of analytic construction which demands that its goal of a priori truth
must be subjective (‘known’or defined in advance by the subject) rather than revealing
anything objectively true. In response, both Descartes’ reply to Arnauld’s charge of
circularity27 and his acknowledgement of circularity in his covering letter to the
University of Paris28 refer to Descartes’ assertion that it is impossible for ‘atheists’ to
maintain knowledge because, since cogito ergo sum has no temporal extension,29
extended knowledge can only be founded on the idea of infinity. A ‘known’ a priori, as
for example, the idea of ‘Deus’ who is ‘worshipped by men’ is explicitly rejected by
Descartes as the insubstantial and rationally unfounded claim of ‘atheists’. This
response shows that Cartesian subjectivity does not, in fact, lead back to an a
priori articulation of known or subjective truth but rather to the a priori idea of
incomprehensible infinity which necessarily underwrites all deliberative thought
(cogitation). His challenge is to show how this a priori idea of infinity can be actualized
within the thought of the thinker without becoming a conceptual object.
Using the example of a piece of wax, Descartes invites us to consider how the
world appears to us, illustrating the priority of essence by showing that knowledge of
a body’s essence allows us to recognize its existence as the same thing that it was
despite substantial change and that it is from the consideration of what wax is that we
may know whether this is wax. Descartes writes: ‘The perception of the wax is
neither a seeing, nor a touching nor an imagining. Nor has it ever been, even though
it previously seemed so; rather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone.’30
Applied to the question of divine existence, Descartes’ epistemological sequence
enables man to know God exists because he knows God’s essence, although
crucially, as we shall see, this ‘knowledge’ is not synonymous with comprehension
as this would clearly reduce his argument to merely a defence of idealism. On the
contrary, applied to the concept of radical infinity, Descartes’ inversion supports
the ‘method of doubt’ and shows how man is able to know that God exists. It is no
longer because God wills being that being is, but rather, it is because man knows,
imperfectly, and so is, that he knows that knowledge could be perfect (God) and so
perfection, although transcendent to humanity, exists.
Knowing as either perception or volition
If Descartes is to make knowing the condition for existence it is important that he is

attentive to the kind of knowing which is able to render existence certain. As is clear
from his Principia, Descartes has a particularly nuanced understanding of thinking
27 Descartes, Reply to the Fourth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 246; vol. IX.1, p. 190.
28 Descartes, Letter of Dedication in Meditations on First Philosophy, AT vol. VII, p. 2; vol.
IX.1, p. 4.
29 Descartes, Second Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 27; vol. IX.1, p. 21.
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10 Mary-Ann Crumplin
which conceives of clear and distinct thinking as either the operation of the intellect
or the operation of the will. In Principia 32, Descartes writes:
All the modes of thinking that we observe in ourselves may be related to two
general modes: perception, or the operation of the intellect, and volition, or the
operation of the will. Thus sense-perception, imagining and conceiving purely
intelligible things are just different methods of perceiving: but desiring,
aversion, affirming, denying, doubting: all these are different modes of willing.31
The operation of these two is not identical. In Principia 35, Descartes describes
how although human intellect is finite, human will is not, writing:
Further, the perception of the intellect extends only to the few objects presented
to it, and is always very limited. The will, on the other hand, may in some sense
be called infinite, because we perceive nothing that may be the object of some
other will, even of the immeasurable will of God, to which our will cannot also
extend, so that we easily extend it beyond what we clearly perceive.32
In his search for certitude, Descartes is able to use either the operation of the
intellect or the operation of the will as means of knowing because either can provide
clear and distinct knowledge, but he cannot be certain about the knowledge which
results from applying these two forms of thinking together because human error is
the result of an attempt to deliberate on (cogitare) the truth or falsehood of the
evidence of senses, imagination or intuition. It is important to recognize that
Descartes does not make a claim for clarity and distinctness in human judgement,
which would be a claim for comprehension or correspondence between intellect and
will, between finite and infinite knowing. Because the truth of the idea of infinity
cannot be judged by man it cannot be an idea produced by human thinking: the
difference between intellect and will presents the scope for errors of judgement and
allows for man’s experience of finitude.
The operation of the human intellect (sensual, imaginative or intuitive knowing)
can be relied upon to provide clear and distinct knowledge of ideas or entities which
are ‘present and apparent to an attentive mind’,33 but even though the existence of the
world as ‘the idea of the world in me’ is certain,34 human error (the application of
the will to the evidence of the intellect) means that man can never be certain of his
independent attempts to judge the truth of a real external source. In order to illustrate
that this is in fact how human beings experience the use of their own judgement,
31 Descartes, Principia 32, AT vol. VIIIa, p. 17; vol. IX.2, p. 39.

34 Descartes, Third Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 34; vol. IX.1, p. 26: ‘even bodies are not,
properly speaking, perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the
intellect alone’ so that ‘even though these things that I sense or imagine may perhaps be
nothing at all outside me, nevertheless I am certain that these modes of thinking, which
are all cases of what I call sensing and imagining, insofar as they are merely modes of
thinking, do exist within me’.
© The author 2008
Descartes gives the example of the size of the sun, which can, on the sensual
evidence of sight be ‘impulsively believed’ to be very small and, because of such
errors of judgement, Descartes thinks that ‘up to this point it was not a well-founded
judgement, but only a blind impulse that formed the basis of my belief’.35 This means
that the existence of the entities of the world are not, of themselves (and so, equally,
the world as a whole, is not, of itself) indubitable enough to provide ontological
security for a human being who is not at this very moment perceiving them. Although
the world can be clearly and distinctly known by a thinker, temporal duration or
sequence cannot be perceived of itself (without either the idea of infinity or the
world) and this means that it is impossible to be certain of the extension of either
the world or the self. It is this manifest need for an external perspective from which
to ground sequence which leads Descartes to make his repeated claim that ‘atheists’
cannot know anything.36
As Hemming has noted,37 some identity between God and man is necessary if
man is to know God, so that Descartes must show how man is like God without being
God. The human will, as we have seen, is perfect and it is in human will ‘that I bear
a certain image and likeness of God’.38 Thus man is like God in the infinite extent of
his will,39 but is limited and so unlike God in the operation of his intellect. It is this
structural ambiguity which limits man to an imperfect grasp of existence and leads
to human error. The naming of this difference between intellect and will not only
defines Cartesian man; it also explains the dynamic force of the phenomenon of
doubt in Descartes’ method.
Infinity
In his reply to Caterus’ First Set of Objections, Descartes explains that, for him, God
is radically transcendent to man, writing that what is clear to him is that his intellect
cannot grasp the idea of infinity. He writes:
I have not based my argument on my having observed a certain order or
succession of efficient causes in the realm of sensible things. For one thing, I
thought it much more evident that God exists than that any sensible things exist;
for another thing, the only conclusion I seemed able to arrive at was that I ought
to acknowledge the imperfection of my intellect, given that admittedly I could
not comprehend how an infinite number of such causes succeeded one another

36 Descartes, Letter to Regius, 24 May 1640, AT vol. III, p. 65; Fifth Meditation, AT vol. VII,
p. 71; vol. IX.1, p. 56.
37 This point was made by Laurence Paul Hemming in a series of lectures given at Heythrop
College, University of London in 2006, in which he explained the distinction and
relationship between the will and the intellect in Descartes’ texts.
38 Descartes, Fourth Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 57; vol. IX.1, p. 45.
39 Descartes, Principia 35, AT vol. VIIIa, p. 18; AT vol. IX.2, p. 40.
© The author 2008
in such a way that none of them was first. For certainly from the fact that I could
not comprehend this it does not follow that one of them ought to be first
cause . . . All that follows in that my intellect, which is finite, does not grasp the
infinite.40
God, understood in this way, is so incomprehensible to man as not to be a
comparative or analogous ‘higher being’ whose existence is relative to that of man
such that he is a comprehensible ‘first cause’. Yet the Objections to Cartesian
metaphysics to which Descartes himself replied read Descartes’ Meditations as if his
aim were, indeed, to comprehend the first cause of being, proving it by logic.41
For example, Caterus talks of ‘knowing’ God ‘under a general rubric’.42 It is this
application of rubrics which Descartes opposes when he writes that ‘most people do
not consider God as an infinite and incomprehensible being’.43
In his Objection Hobbes also makes a demand for etymological clarity,
essentially asking for a definition of the infinite, when he writes that ‘it is from this
thesis (namely, that we have an idea of God in our soul) that M. Descartes proceeds
to prove this theorem (namely, that God – that is, the supremely powerful, wise
creator of the world – exists), he ought to have given a better explanation of this idea
of God’.44 In reply, Descartes writes:
The philosopher wants the word ‘idea’ to be understood to refer exclusively to
images that are of material things . . . I take the word ‘idea’ to refer to whatever
is immediately perceived by the mind . . . I think I have given a sufficient
explanation of the idea of God to take care of those wishing to pay attention to
my meaning; but I could never fully satisfy those preferring to understand my
words otherwise than I intend.45
In his replies to the objectors Descartes explains the radical infinity of his idea
of infinity – contrasting it with the indefinite or apparently limitless things which
man can comprehend. To Caterus, he writes:
I will declare here that the infinite qua infinite is in no way comprehended;
nonetheless it is still understood, insofar as understanding clearly and distinctly
that a thing is such that plainly no limits can be found in it is tantamount to
understanding clearly that it is infinite. And indeed I do distinguish here between
‘indefinite’ and ‘infinite’ strictly speaking, I designate only that thing to be
‘infinite’ in which no limits of any kind are found. In this sense God alone is
infinite. However there are things in which I discern no limit, but only in a
certain respect (such as the extension of a imaginary space, a series of numbers,
40 Descartes, Reply to the First Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 106; vol. IX.1, p. 84.
41 Descartes, First Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 98; vol. IX.1, p. 78.
42 Descartes, First Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 97; vol. IX.1, p. 77.
44 Descartes, Third Set of Objections and Replies, AT vol. VII, p. 180; vol. IX.1, p. 140.
45 Descartes, Third Set of Objections and Replies, AT vol. VII, p. 181; vol. IX.1, p. 141.
© The author 2008
the divisibility of the parts of a quantity and the like). These I call ‘indefinite’ but
not ‘infinite’ since such things do not lack a limit in every respect.46
Similarly in Principia 26, Descartes is clear about his distinction of these two
terms, writing:
We must not try to dispute about the infinite, but just consider that everything in
which we find no limits is indefinite, such as the extension of the world, the
divisibility of its parts, the number of the stars, etc. We will thus never hamper
ourselves with disputes about the infinite, since it would be absurd that we who
are finite should undertake to determine anything regarding it, and by this means
in trying to comprehend it, regard it, so to speak, as finite. That is why we do not
care to reply to those who ask whether half of an infinite line is infinite, and
whether an infinite number is even or odd, and so on, because it is only those
who imagine their mind to be infinite who appear to find it necessary to
investigate such questions.47
It is apparent from Descartes’ discussion that the term ‘indefinite’ must be used
when we are speaking of anything with dimensions despite an apparent implication
of infinity in the concept of ‘limitless’, so for instance the physical dimensions of a
so-called ‘infinite’ line demand that, as a line, it has spatial definition and is therefore
not truly infinite. In Principia 27 Descartes continues to discuss the difference
between the indefinite and the infinite, writing:
We call these things indefinite rather than infinite in order to reserve for God
alone the name of infinite, first because in Him alone we observe no limitation
whatever, and because we are quite certain that He can have none; second
because, in regard to other things, we do not in the same way positively
understand them to be in every respect unlimited, but merely negatively admit
that their limits, if they exist, cannot be discovered by us.48
Because Descartes has recognized in the Principia that the human will ‘may in
some sense be called infinite’,49 he is able to present the experience of doubt, which
is an action of the will, as proof of the idea of infinity. But in his replies to the Second
and Fourth Sets of Objections, Descartes also defends the certainty of the idea of
infinity using the experience of temporal finitude, so that it is because of man’s
experience of temporal duration as a finitude that he is able to refer to an
incomprehensible but existent temporal infinity as a time which my time does not
comprehend. Descartes tells us that without the idea of the infinite it is impossible for
man to have any knowledge beyond the immediate present in the form of attentive,
48 Descartes, Principia 27, AT vol. VIIIa, p. 15; vol. IX.2, p. 37; also Letter to Chanut, 6
June 1647, AT vol. V, p. 50.
© The author 2008
intellectual focus,50 and it is in this way that he links temporal duration to human
finitude. In reply to the First Set of Objections, Descartes writes of our understanding
of infinity:
As far as infinity is concerned, even if we understand that it is positive in the
highest degree, nevertheless we understand it only in a certain negative fashion,
because it depends on our not noticing any limitation in the thing. But as to the
thing itself which is infinite, although our understanding of the thing is surely
positive, still it is not adequate, that is, we do not comprehend all that is capable
of being understood in it. But were we to turn our eyes toward the sea, even
though we neither grasp the whole thing in our sight nor traverse its great
vastness, nevertheless we are said to ‘see’ it . . . by a similar line of reasoning, I
grant, as do all the theologians, that God cannot be grasped by the human
intellect.51
Descartes’ answers to the objectors on the contrast between infinite and
indefinite show why it is inappropriate to apply comprehensible rational logic to the
idea of infinity. In contrasting the temporal and physical limits of ‘indefinite’ with
the limitless infinite, they also show that Descartes does not defend the absolute
necessity of mathematical truths. Rather than use an ‘Aristotelian’ rationality which,
for Descartes, carries the danger of ‘atheism’ in its order and ratios, Descartes builds
his rationality on his own experience of the indubitable fact of his own errancy and
he thinks that his Meditations, carefully reproduced, will reveal the truth of the idea
and existence of infinity to any serious thinker.
The method of doubt
Building on this specific epistemological framework, Descartes will use his ‘method
of doubt’ to establish the essence and existence of himself and of God. Because the
human being and God are substantially different in that the human is finite and
the divine is infinite, Descartes does not apply the method of doubt in the same way
in each case nor, despite misconceptions accrued from retaining a logical prejudice,
does the sequence of the Meditations imply an essential logical sequence to
Descartes’ argument. Although he establishes his own existence first in the
Meditations, Descartes does not anticipate that this could be construed as man’s
existential priority in relation to God: man does not exist ‘before’ God. A formal
logical structure reads the cogito to establish human existence prior to divine
existence but the perspective of this logic is dictated by the necessity of sequence to
human cogitation so that it appears that the divine ‘already is’. However this
limitation in human judgement does not, according to Cartesian rationality, imply
that the divine is temporally conditional upon or relative to the human. On Descartes’
50 Descartes, Reply to the Fourth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 246; vol. IX.1, p. 190.
© The author 2008
view that the divine is ‘infinite and incomprehensible’, it is impossible to place the
divine in a sequence with the human. Instead he establishes the existence of man by
means of the circular form of the ontological argument (existence is given in
essence): man is certain of his essence because of his existence as a thing which
thinks but derives his existence from his essential character as a thinking thing.
Because Descartes has brought both the intellect and the will under the heading of
deliberation (cogitare), the existence of the idea of the infinite can be derived in two
ways: it is possible to be certain of God’s existence intellectually (intelligere) as the
idea whose incomprehensible essence exceeds the intellectual capacity of man and
also by the method of doubt (cogitare as dubitare) which perceives the idea of
infinity as the unattainable towards which human doubt or desire is directed.
Human existence
Because the rationale of his method is as an orientation towards certitude, Descartes

begins his Meditations by establishing radical doubt.52 Having thought about whether
the evidence of his senses and imaginary things are composites of other, more
fundamental things and, if so, what these could be, Descartes decides that the simpler
something is, the more likely it is to be true. Therefore he writes that:
Physics, astronomy, medicine and all the other disciplines that are dependent
upon the consideration of composite things are doubtful, and that, on the other
hand, arithmetic, geometry and all other such things, which treat of nothing but
the simplest and most general things and which are indifferent as to whether
these things do or do not in fact exist, contain something certain and
indubitable.53
The indubitability of mathematics fails, however, when Descartes remembers
that ‘there is fixed in my mind a certain old opinion of long standing, namely that
there exists a God who is able to do anything . . . how do I know that he did not bring
it about that I . . . be deceived every time I add two and three or count the sides of a
square?’54 The existence of such a powerful God would mean that ‘there is nothing
among the things I once believed to be true that it is not permissible to doubt’.55
The Second Meditation presents a breakthrough, and Descartes’ insistence on
establishing an essential a priori leads him to his Archimedian point and he writes:
I have persuaded myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world: no sky, no
earth, no minds, no bodies. Is it then the case that I too do not exist? But
doubtless I did exist if I persuaded myself of something. But there is some
52 Descartes, First Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 17; vol. IX.1, p. 13.

© The author 2008
deceiver or other . . . let him do his best at deception, he will never bring it about
that I am nothing, so long as I shall think that I am something. Thus after
everything has been most carefully weighed it must be finally established that
this pronouncement: ‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true, every time I utter it or
conceive it in my mind.56
The force of the verb cogitare is crucial to Descartes’ argument. On this reading,
cogitare does not translate as ‘willing’ but as ‘deliberating’, so that cogito ergo sum
cannot be paraphrased as ‘it is because I know it (or will it), I exist’ but rather ‘it is
because I am deliberating (experiencing the possibility of doubt) that I can be certain
that I am, I exist’. Descartes reiterates the cogito in Principia 7, writing: ‘We cannot
doubt our existence without existing while we doubt; and this is the first thing that we
can know when we philosophize in an orderly way.’57 Principia 7 reveals that circular
reasoning is constitutive of the cogito ergo sum even before the question of
knowledge of the existence of God depending on clear and distinct perception and
clear and distinct perception depending on the existence of God.58 The essence of
Descartes is, he writes, ‘a thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses and that also imagines and senses.’59
However, despite having an essence and so, according to Descartes’ essential-
existential formula, an existence, the essence of this ‘thinking thing’ is in fact, only
certain as an existence: the circular logic of this essential and existential self means
that it cannot be certain of extension beyond the act of thinking. If he ceases to think,
Descartes’ essence ceases to exist. He writes: ‘I am; I exist, this is certain. But for
how long? For as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that
if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist.’60 This contrast
between absolute rational security and the temporal/spatial insecurity of self allows
the cogito simultaneously to describe both the dubitability of world and the certainty
of the cogito ergo sum.
Existence of God
Although Descartes cannot evaluate the essence of infinity he is able to arrive at the
indubitable existence of the idea of the infinite in two ways because, as we have seen,
he has differentiated between the operation of the intellect and the operation of the
will. According to Descartes’ method of ‘hyperbolic doubt’, man is able to ‘think’
God by immediate perception of the idea of infinity. He writes:

58 Descartes, Fourth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 124; vol. IX.1, p. 167.
© The author 2008
for whether it is a she-goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is no less true that

I imagine one than the other. Moreover, we need not fear that there is falsity in
the will or in the affects, for although I can choose evil things or even things that
are utterly non-existent, I cannot conclude from this that it is untrue that I do
chose these things.61
He continues:
It is manifest by the natural light that here must be at a minimum just as much
[reality] in the efficient and total cause as there is in the effect of the same
cause . . . hence it follows that something cannot come into being from out of
nothing and also that what is more perfect (that is, what contains in itself more
reality) cannot come into being from what is less perfect.62
This is because ‘as imperfect a mode of being as this is by which a thing exists
in the intellect objectively through an idea, nevertheless it is plainly not nothing;
hence it cannot get its being from nothing’.63 For Descartes, who is aware of his own
fallible judgement, ‘I myself cannot be the cause of this idea’ because, if he were the
cause of it, he would comprehend it. He writes: ‘it necessarily follows therefore that
I am not alone in the world, but that something else, which is the cause of this first
idea, also exists’64 and realizes that ‘although the idea of substance is in me by virtue
of the fact that I am a substance, that fact is not sufficient to explain my having the
idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from
some substance which really was infinite’.65 It is impossible for Descartes to have
constructed the idea of infinity from his own intellect because, as his own intellect is
as temporally finite and as dubitable as mathematics is, his constructions cannot
endure: without the support of the idea of infinity beyond his own comprehension
man must reconstruct his idea anew each time he wishes to refer to it.
Descartes presents three perspectives on his own imperfections which he
understands to be arguments for the independent existence of transcendent
perfection. These three are: (1) on the basis of knowledge, if I were God, my
knowledge would not be increasing, for I would already have all knowledge: ‘indeed
this gradual increase is itself a most certain proof of imperfection’;66 (2) on the basis
of cause: ‘but if I got my being from myself, I would not doubt, nor would I desire,
nor would I lack anything at all, for I would have given myself all the perfections of
which I have some idea, in so doing, I myself would be God!’67 and (3) on the basis
of time (which is construed by Descartes to be duration) he argues that if he had
created himself, he should be able to ensure that he persists: Descartes concludes

© The author 2008
that, ‘I have no choice but to conclude that the mere fact of my existing and of there
being in me an idea of a most perfect being, that is God, demonstrates most evidently
that God too exists.’68
It is not possible for man to understand this ‘idea of infinity’: Descartes writes
that ‘God is a cause whose power surpasses the bounds of human understanding’69
and ‘nor am I speaking here of temporal priority; rather, there is not even a priority
of order or of nature or of a distinction of reason reasoned, as they say, as if this
idea of the good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another’.70 Janowski
describes Descartes’ God as: ‘a king and a supreme legislator at the same time’,71
writing:
The act of creation of eternal truths by imprinting the laws on the hearts of His
subjects is like the act of laying the foundations for a kingdom. Descartes’ God
is an absolute sovereign who, having laid down the laws in His realm, rules over
His subjects without any need to explain to them why He laid down such laws
rather than others. The God of St. Thomas, on the other hand, rules like a
constitutional monarch. The laws in the Scholastic kingdom are like traces that
the king left on purpose so that his subjects could know that He exists and that
they could also know something about their master.72
When Descartes applies his intellect attentively to the idea of the infinite he can
‘recognize’ it as incomprehensible and it is the ability to ‘name’ transcendence which
assures him of God’s existence as independent of himself.
In addition to the intellectual grasp of the idea of the infinite which Descartes’
human subject is able to make, it is also possible for him to ascertain the true
existence of God by the operation of the will. By applying the method of doubt and
the experience of human error, Descartes is able to provide evidence which proves
(although not to the ‘atheist’) the existence of the idea of infinity. Descartes
recognizes that man indubitably experiences his own will as incomprehensible and
essentially untameable in that his own immediate doubts and desires are without
limit; it is therefore because doubt is a mode of willing that it can be relied upon as
a means for man to approach infinity. Although man’s judgement is not sound, his
ability to doubt is perfect. A human being cannot know absolute truth but the act of
deliberating on the nature of truth attests to its existence.
The Fifth Meditation bases knowledge of the existence of God on knowledge of
what God is. Descartes writes: ‘I am not free to think of God without existence, that
is, a supremely perfect being without a supreme perfection, as I am to imagine a

70 Descartes, Reply to the Sixth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 432; vol. IX.1, p. 233.
71 Janowski, Cartesian Theodicy, p. 99, citing Descartes, Letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630,
AT vol. I, p. 23 and Descartes, Reply to Sixth Set of Objections, AT vol. VII, p. 436.
© The author 2008
horse with or without wings.’73 For Descartes, the existence of perfection is given in
its definition and its definition is given to man through his experience of perfect
doubt or perfect desire. Descartes writes:
for what, in and of itself, is more manifest than that a supreme being exists, that
is, that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists . . . I observe also
that certitude about other things is so dependent on this, that without it nothing
can ever be perfectly known.74
He has shown that only through doubt can anything be certain for man, so that
perfect knowledge is only available to man in his desire for it. If man orientates his
thinking in this way, towards the idea of the infinite, then infinity is the creator and
sustainer of all that is known. And, if in order for something to exist it must be
known, then the idea of the infinite is the cause and sustainer of all that is. Descartes
writes:
thus do I plainly see that the certainty and truth of every science depends
exclusively upon the knowledge of the true God, to the extent that, prior to
my becoming aware of him, I was incapable of achieving perfect knowledge
about anything else. But now it is possible for me to achieve full and certain
knowledge about countless things, both about God and other intellectual matters
as well as about the entirety of that corporeal nature which is the object of pure
mathematics.75
Conclusion
Descartes has proved the existence of God (ens perfectum) by structuring the
Meditations towards recognition of God as the idea of infinite perfection and
showing how man may identify this, or know God, by recognizing his own desire
for perfection. It is precisely because Descartes cannot secure his knowledge
independently of world and God that he knows that a divine foundation for
knowledge exists. Man’s essential nature as deliberating thing allows for his
‘knowing’ to be understood also as ‘not knowing’, and it is because man knows God
as infinite that he knows that God truly is.
Descartes’ proof depends on the radical infinity of God as absolutely beyond
human comprehension and he achieves his proof by defining the mode of perfect
human knowing not as intellection but as willing: the essence of truth is only
apparent to man in his ability to doubt it. Descartes’ inversion of the ontological
sequence so that essence precedes existence means that the proof of God’s existence
does not demand that man comprehend the idea of infinity intellectually: the
73 Descartes, Fifth Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 66; vol. IX.1, p. 53.

© The author 2008
asymmetric rationale which leads to proof starts with man’s perfect knowledge of
God expressed in his perfect doubting, and it is therefore from here that man can
know God exists. Descartes’ particular elucidation of modes of knowing has
included the possibility of not-knowing as a mode of rationality itself so that the
‘object’ of doubt is that which is most certain. At the heart of Descartes’ rational
metaphysics lie the hermeneutics to which George Heffernan alludes in his
introduction to Descartes’ Meditations,76 so that it is because of his failure to
understand that man is certain of the idea of an infinity beyond his comprehension.
Although, as Descartes argues in the Fifth Meditation, this ‘circle’ represents the
relationship between God and man to the believer, it utterly fails the ‘atheist’ who, by
inappropriately using doubt in the conventional way (as the imperfect obverse of
perfect intellect), mistakes the indefinite for the infinite and is therefore unable to
ground any knowledge at all.
Arguments against Descartes which aim to show why Cartesian metaphysics
fails as a kind of mathematical ratio between man and the divine are, in fact, not
arguments against Descartes but a defence of the cosmological argument: they are
based on a misinterpretation of Descartes’ method of doubt and seek to illustrate
why cosmological metaphysics fails. In order to demolish the method of doubt
and disprove Descartes’ idea of radical infinity, it would also be necessary to argue
against the experiences of temporal finitude or human error of judgement, and this
argument, taken to its logical conclusion, would indeed reveal the existence of
nothing but the human mind. However Descartes’ argument is that certainty depends
on the idea of infinity, revealing ultimately the existence of nothing if not God. As
Descartes writes: ‘perhaps there are some who would rather deny so powerful a God,
than believe that everything else is uncertain’.77
76 G. Heffernan, ‘Introduction’, in G. Heffernan, ed., Meditationes de prima Philosophia

(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 22–3.
© The author 2008

Descartes God As The Idea of Infinity

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International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 10 Number 1 January 2008

Descartes: God as the Idea of Infinity

Reading Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy from a conventional, analogous

* Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London W8 5HQ UK.

11 S. Žižek, ‘Introduction: Cogito as a Shibboleth’, in S. Žižek, ed., Cogito and the

light of and against Descartes? He describes it . . . as ‘the refuting of God,

14 L.P. Hemming, Postmodernity’s Transcending: Devaluing God (London: SCM Press,

there is something intrinsically or absolutely necessary in the nature of

The epistemological foundations of Cartesian rationality

Descartes’ method seeks to validate an epistemological proof of the idea of infinity

19 Janowski, Cartesian Theodicy, p. 41.

Essence precedes existence

Knowing as either perception or volition

If Descartes is to make knowing the condition for existence it is important that he is

31 Descartes, Principia 32, AT vol. VIIIa, p. 17; vol. IX.2, p. 39.

35 Descartes, Third Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 40; vol. IX.1, p. 31.

The method of doubt

Because the rationale of his method is as an orientation towards certitude, Descartes

52 Descartes, First Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 17; vol. IX.1, p. 13.

56 Descartes, Second Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 25; vol. IX.1, p. 19.

for whether it is a she-goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is no less true that

61 Descartes, Third Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 37; vol. IX.1, p. 29.

68 Descartes, Third Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 51; vol. IX.1, p. 40.

73 Descartes, Fifth Meditation, AT vol. VII, p. 66; vol. IX.1, p. 53.

76 G. Heffernan, ‘Introduction’, in G. Heffernan, ed., Meditationes de prima Philosophia

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