In his “Meditation IV Of The True And False”, Descartes brings up a very intriguing question. According to Descartes, God is all-powerful and all of his faculties are perfect, therefore it would be within his capabilities to create other perfect beings. So if God created us, the question becomes why did he make us imperfect?
Descartes first rationalizes that it is an impossibility that God is a ‘great deceiver’ because any form of deception implies ‘malice or feebleness’ and therefore cannot be present in a perfect God. If God does not deceive, then the faculties that have been given to Descartes must be sufficient if they are being used correctly. However, Descartes is certain that he does make errors sometimes. But if he makes errors and the faculties given to him are adequate (not imperfect), what exactly is the cause of his imperfection?
According to Descartes, on the spectrum of being there are two extremes, the supreme (God) and non-being (state of non-existence). Descartes decides that he is in fact in between these two extremes. Because he is not the Supreme Being himself, he reckons that it then makes sense that he falls into error. But the error has nothing to do with God; Descartes errs because he is not God so his capabilities are not infinite.
This logic is shaky, and that is even apparent to Descartes himself so he attempts to go further and strengthen his argument in removing the blame for his imperfections from his Creator. Since God is Supreme, Descartes is certain of two things: that He could have created everything completely and utterly perfect and that God knows what’s best. If those two things are true wouldn’t that mean that God made the RIGHT choice in making Descartes imperfect?
To answer this question, Descartes takes a cop out route. After using his intelligence for four whole Meditations, he decides that it is ridiculous for him to even think that his intelligence could comprehend the infinite and perfect reasoning of a Supreme Being. So after all of that, the answer that Descartes really gives us as to why God made us imperfect is…”Don’t worry about it, he made you incapable of understanding anyway.” Not too strong I think.
Descartes tries to fortify this by saying that in this grand universe which is perfect, one must not look at a singular thing that God has created and call it imperfect, you must look at the whole. I think this is another cop out; it would make more sense for a supreme being to a universe in which everything within the universe was perfect as well as the whole. Wouldn’t something that is perfect in parts as well as a whole be MORE perfect than something that is only perfect when viewed in certain instances? I think so. What about you?
