display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
17 ideas
| 2269 | God the creator is an intelligent, infinite, powerful substance [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I understand by the name "God" a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful, and created me along with everything that exists. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.45) |
| 2289 | Nothing apart from God could have essential existence, and such a being must be unique and eternal [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I cannot think of anything aside from God alone to whose essence existence belongs, and I cannot conceive of two or more such Gods. I also perceive that God must be eternal, and have other perfect qualities. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.68) |
| 2275 | It is self-evident that deception is a natural defect, so God could not be a deceiver [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is quite obvious that a perfect God cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.52) |
| 3637 | Ideas in God's mind only have value if he makes it so [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to imagine that anything is thought of in the divine intellect as good or true, or worthy of belief or action or omission, prior to the decision of the divine will to make it so. | |
| From: René Descartes (Reply to Sixth Objections [1641], 432) |
| 2287 | Existence and God's essence are inseparable, like a valley and a mountain, or a triangle and its properties [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Existence can no more be separated from God's essence than its having three angles equal to two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle, or than the idea of a valley can be separated from the idea of a mountain. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.66) |
| 2274 | The idea of God in my mind is like the mark a craftsman puts on his work [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: In creating me, God has endowed me with the idea of God, so that it would be like the mark of the craftsman impressed upon his work, although this mark need not be something distinct from the work itself. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.51) |
| 3639 | Necessary existence is a property which is uniquely part of God's essence [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: In the case of God necessary existence is in fact a property in the strictest sense of the term, since it applies to him alone and forms a part of his essence as it does of no other thing | |
| From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 383) |
| 2288 | I cannot think of a supremely perfect being without the supreme perfection of existence [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I am not free to think of God without existence, that is, a supremely perfect being without a supreme perfection. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) |
| 2268 | One idea leads to another, but there must be an initial idea that contains the reality of all the others [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here; eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.42) |
| 3640 | Possible existence is a perfection in the idea of a triangle [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Possible existence is a perfection in the idea of a triangle, just as necessary existence is a perfection in the idea of God. | |
| From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 383) |
| 3632 | We mustn't worship God as an image because we have no idea of him [Hobbes on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: We are forbidden to worship God in the form of an image, for otherwise we might think that we were conceiving of him who is incapable of being conceived. It seems, then, that there is no idea of God in us. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.65) by Thomas Hobbes - Objections to 'Meditations' (Third) 180 |
| 3633 | We can never conceive of an infinite being [Gassendi on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The human intellect is not capable of conceiving of infinity, and hence it neither has nor can contemplate any idea representing an infinite thing. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.65) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 286 |
| 5036 | Descartes cannot assume that a most perfect being exists without contradictions [Leibniz on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes' error is in assuming without proof that a most perfect being does not involve a contradiction. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) by Gottfried Leibniz - A Specimen of Discoveries p.76 | |
| A reaction: Certainly Descartes seems obliged to grasp the concept of God 'clearly and distinctly', so there must be an absence of contradictions. But does Descartes have to prove that there are no contradictions in his concept of a triangle? Is self-evidence enough? |
| 3638 | Existence is not a perfection; it is what makes perfection possible [Gassendi on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Existence is not a perfection in God or in anything else; it is that without which no perfections can be present. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 323 |
| 3634 | We can't prove a first cause from our inability to grasp infinity [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: My inability to grasp an infinite chain of successive causes without a first cause does not entail that there must be a first cause, just as my inability to grasp infinite divisibility of finite things does not make that impossible. | |
| From: René Descartes (Reply to First Objections [1641], 106) |
| 16712 | Atheism is an atrocious and intolerable crime in any country [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Atheism is the most atrocious crime, and should be tolerated in no republic, however free. | |
| From: René Descartes (Letters to Voetius [1640], VIIIB:174), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 3660 | Atheism arises from empiricism, because God is intangible [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The existence of God has been doubted by some, because they attributed too much to the perceptions of the senses, and God can be neither seen nor touched. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |