Abstract

This paper deals with the question of whether the arguments Descartes put forward in his fourth Meditation can be used to refute the proof of the existence of God given in the third one. For in the third Meditation the core of the proof consists in saying that I myself, as a limited and finite being, cannot be the source of the infinite idea of God. But in the fourth Meditation Descartes discovers in this finite being an infinite faculty: my will to assent to ideas and propositions is infinite. So one is provoked to ask whether this infinite will, being the source of the all-powerful deceiver of the first and second Meditations, cannot be the cause of the idea of God in the third one, too. I shall argue that this question must be answered in the negative if one follows the Cartesian argument of the priority of actual infinity, but in the affirmative if one looks at the further development of philosophy, in which this supposition is given up