God’s Value in Descartes’ Thought

The philosophical goal of Descartes was to seek for a real confirmed foundation for the first philosophy, so in his first meditation, he strictly excluded any unsure factors out of his own thoughts. His skeptical objections were including ego, feelings and imagination, as well as conceptions abstracted from mathematics and geometry. After Descartes proved that “I think therefore I am”, he considered whether there were other cognitions in my feelings in the third meditation. This was likely to solve the contradictory in feelings to abundant world, and the result was to prove the existence of God. In the last three meditations, the foundations were “I think” and “the absolute existence of God”.

The existence of god was deduced from “I think”, and it was the guarantee for human beings’ every second existence. That is to say, god made me exist in the world, and it was god to create me and any other things, but god was confirmed by my clear cognition to his existence. My conception about a perfect, endless and permanent god could not be merely from an incomplete person, therefore the ego and my feelings were relying on the god. If we kept asking and seeking until we found the final reason, and it would absolutely be god.

In the fourth meditation, Descartes talked about that “god provided ego limited rationality and limitless willingness”, and in fifth and sixth meditation, he discussed about the existence of material things as well as the relationship between my body and soul. All of these discussions were relying on the existence of god, because god could not lie to me, god created me and the whole world, and gave me partly rationality as well as whole willingness.

Descartes carried out common doubt in the first meditation, the fundamental principle was to lay up the unsure incidents, not confirming them as absolute reality, and the goal was to obtain the certainty with a denying or doubt in formation. In his second meditation, he declared the only conception that could not be doubted was “I think”---- I am a thinking creature in the world.

However, if there was merely a thinking ego, it was hard to prove the creativity, limitlessness and variety of ego feelings. So when Descartes confirmed the spiritual ego, he made the strict discrimination between ego and the world, which resulted in the dilemma for realizing the world. The supporting point of Descartes philosophy was pure ego cogito, which was independent from the world, so this internality rejected all the cognitions out of awareness.

Therefore, Descartes proved the existence of god in the third section in meditations. God was a decisive exit towards external world for ego cogito. The perfection of god made me away from his deception and away from doubts to my clear conception.

Although in Descartes philosophy, god was the one who created ego and the whole world, the existence of god must be deduced by “I think”, therefore the value of god was the tool for “I realizing the world”.

The result of Descartes philosophy was to regard god as the guarantee of the world existence. 
However how to surpass the gap between the “thinking ego” and the objective world was not be solved by him, which challenged modern Descartes philosophy.