Infimus gradus libertatis? Descartes on indifference and divine freedom

Religious Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 391-406

  Kaufman, Dan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950255075     PISSN: 00344125     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034412503006656     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. In this paper, I employ the following abbreviations: AT Descartes, René Oeuvres de Descartes, C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1996) (cited by volume and page number).
2. CSM Descartes, René The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols 1 and 2, J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch (transl.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) (cited by volume and page number).
3. CSMK Descartes, René The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, A. Kenny (transl.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) (cited by page number).
4. Lilli Alanen 'Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on omnipotence and possibility', Franciscan Studies, 45 (1985), 157-188
5. idem 'Descartes, omnipotence, and kinds of modality', in P. H. Hare (ed.) Doing Philosophy Historically (Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books, 1988), 182-196
6. Jonathan Bennett 'Descartes's theory of modality', Philosophical Review, 103 (1994), 639-667
7. Timothy Cronin 'Eternal truths in the thought of Descartes and of his adversary', Journal of the History of Ideas, 4 (1960), 553-559
8. idem Objective Being in Descartes and Suarez (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1966)
9. Edwin Curley 'Descartes on the creation of the eternal truths', Philosophical Review, 93 (1984), 569-597
10. idem 'A God who can do all things', unpublished manuscript (1998)
11. Harry Frankfurt 'Descartes on the creation of the eternal truths', Philosophical Review, 86 (1977), 36-57
12. Hide Ishiguro 'The status of necessity and impossibility in Descartes', in A. Rorty (ed.) Essays on Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley and Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 1986), 459-471
13. Dan Kaufman 'Descartes's creation doctrine and modality', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 80 (2002), 24-41
14. Richard LaCroix, 'Descartes on God's ability to do the logically impossible', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 14 (1984), 455-475
15. Calvin Normore 'Descartes' possibilities', in G. Moyal (ed.) Descartes: Critical Assessments (New York NY: Routledge, 1991), 68-83
16. James Petrik 'Descartes on divine indifference and the transworld validity of the eternal truths', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 36 (1998), 417-432
17. James van Cleve 'Descartes and the destruction of the eternal truths', Ratio, 7 (1994), 58-62
18. Gijsbert van den Brink 'Descartes, modalities, and God', International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, 33 (1993), 1-15
19. Norman Wells 'Descartes and the Scholastics briefly revisited', New Scholasticism, 35 (1961), 172-190
20. idem 'Descartes' uncreated eternal truths', New Scholasticism, 56 (1982), 185-199.
21. Frankfurt and Curley make some attempt to investigate Descartes' reasons for the Creation Doctrine.
22. Dan Kaufman 'Divine simplicity and the eternal truths in Descartes', British Journal for the History of Philosophy (forthcoming).
23. See AT, vol. 3, 360
24. CSMK, 179
25. AT, vol. 4, 118
26. AT, vol. 7, 431-433
27. CSM, vol. 2, 291-292.
28. Tad Schmaltz Malebranche's Theory of the Soul (New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 207-209.
29. Of course, anything false should be considered premature.
30. and Vere Chappell 'Descartes's compatibilism', in J. Cottingham (ed.) Reason, Will, and Sensation: Studies in Descartes' Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 181.
31. In an earlier version of this, Leibniz writes, 'by the Molinists' instead of 'by later Scholastics'. See Robert Sleigh 'Leibniz on divine foreknowledge', Faith and Philosophy, 11 (1994), 560
32. and Robert Sleigh, Vere Chappell, and Michael Della Rocca 'Determinism and human freedom', in D. Garber and M. Ayers (eds) The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1259.
33. Cf. AT, vol. 8A, 20
34. CSM, vol. 1, 206
35. See Chappell 'Descartes's compatibilism', 181-182
36. Anthony Kenny 'Descartes on the will', in R. J. Butler (ed.) Cartesian Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 1-31
37. Joseph Keim Campbell 'Descartes on spontaneity, indifference and alternative', in R. Gennaro and C. Huenemann (eds) New Essays on the Rationalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 179-199.
38. Cf. Robert Imlay 'Descartes and indifference', Studia Leibnitiana, 14 (1982), 87-97.
39. Michelle Beyssade 'Descartes's doctrine of freedom: differences between the French and Latin texts of the Fourth Meditation', in Cottingham Reason, Will and Sensation, 191-206. It must be noted that Beyssade is here limiting the discussion to human freedom and indifference. As we'll see, God is C-indifferent without being ignorant or lacking sufficient knowledge.
40. See Campbell 'Descartes on spontaneity', 184.
41. This does not entail that they are equivocal. It may perhaps be open to Descartes to take a moderate path similar to Aquinas's analogical predication. See Summa Theologiae, Ia, 13
42. and Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 34.
43. This may not be obvious until we examine the conditions under which an agent would be C-indifferent. (4) is a difficult sentence to interpret, especially in light of (5). Prima facie, Descartes appears hold that the indifference discussed in (4) is the same as the 'indifference which belongs to human freedom' in (5). I believe, however, that the indifference in (4) is C-indifference and that in (5) Descartes is saying that because of (4), which discusses an indifference which is a deficiency or privation (C-indifference, as will become clear), the indifference that belongs to human freedom is not of this kind.
44. See Lex Newman 'The fourth Meditation', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59 (1999), 559-591.
45. (AT, vol. 9, 43-44
46. See Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 6: 'Thus, if a man has no wings, that is not an evil for him, because he was born to have them; even if a man does not have blond hair, that is not an evil, for, though he may have such hair, it is not something that is necessarily due him. But it is an evil if he has no hands, for these he is born to and should have - if he is to be perfect. Yet this defect is not an evil for a bird. Every privation, if taken properly and strictly, is of that which one is born to have, and should have.'
47. Dan Kaufman 'Descartes on the objective reality of materially false ideas', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 81 (2000), 385-408.
48. This is evidence that Descartes does not think that divine and human predicates are equivocal, but simply non-univocal.
49. AT, vol. 1, 152
50. An objection: how can you say this? Earlier, you said that Descartes held that nothing could be said univocally of God and creatures. Now you say that God's freedom requires something like S-indifference. But S-indifference is sometimes present in free human actions. How can this be? Reply: I think that that way to address this issue is to point out the following. Although God requires something very much like the positive power of S-indifference, this does not entail that divine S-indifference is the same kind of thing as human S-indifference. One salient difference, as we'll see shortly, is that divine S-indifference requires C-indifference. Human S-indifference does not require C-indifference.
51. Although the last line of this text refers to goodness, the context makes it clear that the same holds for truth.
52. I wish to thank Vere Chappell, Eileen O'Neill, Susan Peppers, and Robert Sleigh for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper was presented at the 2000 Southeastern Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at Wake Forest University, Texas Tech University, and the University of Florida. Thanks to those audiences for helpful discussion, especially Tad Schmaltz (who will certainly disagree with my take on Descartes' account of human freedom), John Biro, Kirk Ludwig, Aaron Meskin, Rob Rupert, and Mark O. Webb. I also wish to thank Scott Ragland for discussions on this topic and for making some of his excellent work on Descartes' theory of freedom available to me. Unfortunately, I have been unable to address Ragland's work in the present paper.