Abstract

The totality of Cartesian science is based on metaphysics, and two fundamental principles intersect within this metaphysics or first philosophy: one is called the cogito ; the other is called the divine veracity This chapter visits what it considers as the most constant thesis in Descartes' metaphysics. The thesis is that the entire methodical structure of scientific knowledge depends on an assured knowledge of God. Descartes believes that he has found how one can demonstrate metaphysical truths in a manner that is more evident than the demonstrations of geometry, how one can demonstrate the existence of God in the same manner as one demonstrates a property of the triangle. The thesis however is a paradox in that it claims that God is asserted to be incomprehensible. It is because God is incomprehensible that the idea of him is also incomprehensible; and it is not even though this idea is incomprehensible, but rather because it is incomprehensible that it is the most clear and the most distinct of all.