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Descartes and the Problem of Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 1971

Brian Calvert
Brian Calvert*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

The main aim of this paper is to revive interest among philosophers, and particularly philosophers of religion, in Descartes’ Fourth Meditation. Two recent works on Descartes1 make virtually no mention of it, and this omission seems to reflect a fairly general feeling that it is of relatively little philosophical significance. In philosophy of religion textbooks, the Fifth Meditation is often discussed in connection with the ontological proof, but in sections devoted to the problem of evil, no reference is made to the Fourth. Even in John Hick’s admirable study of the problem,2 Descartes’ contribution is relegated to a single sentence in a single footnote.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , September 1972 , pp. 117 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 A. Kenny, Descartes, Random House, 1968. and W. Doney (ed.) Descarte. Doubleday Anchor, 1967.

2 J. Hick, Evil and the Cod of Love, MacMillan, 1966.

3 Descartes Meditations (trans. L. J. Lafleur), Library of Liberal Arts, 1960. Subsequent References to the text of the Meditations will give the page number of this edition.

4 L. I. Beck. The Metaphysics of Deseartes. Oxford 1965, p. 211.

5 Evans, J. L.. “Error and the Will’, Philosophy Vol. XXXVIII, April 1963. p. 137Google Scholar.

6 S. V. Keeling, Deseartes, Oxford 1968. p. 298.

7 Hick, op. cit., p. 198, quotes this principle from Aquinas.

8 J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence”, Mind, 1955, reprinted in Philosophy of Religion (ed. S. M. Cahn), Harper and Row, 1970. p. 18. The longer quotation from Mackie which follows is to be found on pp. 17-8.

9 A. G. N. Flew, “Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom”, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, S.C.M., 1963,p. 149.

10 Though the passages quoted from p. 58 appear, as I say, to be an unambiguous statement of the free will defence, Descartes seems to falter in the middle of his formulation of it, when he writes:—

“As for privation, in which alone is found the formal cause of error and sin, it has no need of any concurrence on the part of God, since it is not a thing [or a being] and since, if it is referred to God as to its cause, it should not be called privation but only negation [according to the significance attached to these words in the schools].”

A move such as this seeks to avoid the problem by denying the reality of error, and so denying the position assumed in Question 2. (This would be equivalent, in the broader situation, to answering the problem of evil by denying that evil exists). However, to deny that error is a “thing or a being” is inconsistent with the contention required by the free will defence that makes the very opposite claim, namely that error is real, but not the fault of God. Moreover, it is also inconsistent with Descartes’ own words on p. 52, in which he says that “error is not a pure negation . . . but rather a privation”; these words come at the conclusion of an argument in which he seeks to show that the attempt to avoid the problem by asserting the unreality of error is unsatisfactory.

The explanation may be that, in the context of the free will defence, Descartes is concerned to demonstrate that the occurrence of error is not due to God, and that he tries (without noticing the inconsistency) to reinforce this contention that God cannot be faulted, by adding that error is a negation. On the other hand, it may be that he was aware of the inconsistency, and that he intends it to reflect a hesitancy felt about the value of the free will defence—a hesitancy which, I go on to argue, he proceeds to develop immediately after this passage.

11 It is a sign of this general oversight that Flew’s claim to have made a “new, or at least unusual” challenge has never been questioned.

12 As Hick points out, Augustine, who also held the aesthetic model, contended that “in the sight of God all things, including even sin and its punishment, combine to form a wonderful harmony which is not only good but very good” (Hick, op. cit., p. 44).

13 Beck, op. cit., p. 212.

14 More varieties could, of course, be introduced by conceiving a world which contains men who can err, and who sometimes do and sometimes don’t, and then combining this possibility with the formulations I have just given: however the simple contrast I have drawn, will, I think, suffice for the point that is to follow.