The Emergence of New Philosophy

Metaphysical Reflections of Descartes

In the "Metaphysical Reflections," Descartes addresses the question of how mathematics presents examples of entirely true statements. For instance, the assertion "a bear is a mammal" is indeed true, yet it requires a host of qualifications: we must clarify that we are not referring to a toy bear, that the bear’s cubs are nourished with milk, and that while every bear is a mammal, not every mammal is a bear. Thus, this connection serves to define rather than to equate two concepts as if they were two distinct entities. Furthermore, the essence of a bear cannot be reduced merely to its classification as a mammal, and the manner in which we delineate a bear’s membership in the mammalian category does not belong to that judgment. These inquiries were also explored within the classical metaphysics of Aristotle, which examined how concepts are formed and why engaging with concepts differs from engaging with the things they represent. However, unlike Aristotle, who sought to differentiate concepts, Descartes aspires to self-evidence, permitting perfect truth only for mathematical statements such as "two plus two equals four." These statements remain invariably true, irrespective of who utters them. Later, Kant would similarly assert that, in contrast to truths dependent on the conditions of human cognition (since we do not know how non-human entities perceive), such truths as those found in mathematics hold significance for all rational beings: if a monkey learns to count or if an angel or extraterrestrial begins to calculate, two plus two will still equal four. Thus, mathematics alone can furnish genuine certainty.

Aristotle meticulously distinguished between the "true" (actual) and the "probable" (likely), asserting that while logic pertains to the former, rhetoric addresses the latter. In the modern era, this distinction has persisted in aesthetics, albeit slightly transformed; for instance, "probable" in an aesthetic sense now encompasses what is improbable in a common context, yet likely in a moral context, as in the realm of fiction, which may be moral even as it pertains to that which is impossible in our experience. In antiquity, fiction would have been wholly relegated to the "imaginary," assessed not in terms of truth but solely in terms of its effects, including moral ones: deities and poets were permitted to indulge in fantasy, and to perform fictitious roles in theater. Moreover, such effects could arise without an author: the imaginary could appear as a dream or as a specter. In contrast, in science and philosophy, Descartes focuses exclusively on the truthful, no less reliable than mathematical solutions.

According to Descartes, all that is probable, plausible, resembling the truth, or merely imitating it is false. From this emerges a significant ethical conclusion: since doubt can also simulate itself, producing a semblance of doubt, one must also question doubt itself. We need to scrutinize the reliability of our doubts: can they truly lead us to reliable knowledge, or can they only be recognized as a certain reliable experience, or are they, for now, uncertain and merely belong to the realm of our moods? After all, if it is possible that everything we once perceived as real could be merely a dream, why not also entertain the possibility that our doubt, too, is but a dream?

Yet, in the first of his metaphysical reflections, the argument from dreaming turns against mathematics. If what we perceive through our senses may be an illusion—merely seen as if in a dream—then so too might mathematics be an illusion: who can assert that we do not see "two plus two equals four" in a dream, while in the world of things, reality unfolds differently? Suppose there exists a malicious spirit bent on deceiving us, instilling in us the belief that two plus two equals four every time we count, substituting four apples or plates or any conceptual item, while in reality, he produces three or five apples. Grasping the mental image of these four plates leads us to believe that two plus two always equals four.

Here, Descartes calls into question the entire preceding doctrine concerning concepts. Medieval philosophy debated whether concepts are realities or mere constructs of our minds. Some, the realists, contended that concepts are always real, with individual entities arising as a further practical application of that reality. Others, the nominalists, held a different view: there are indeed things we grasp through our minds or senses, but to comprehend these things better, it is advantageous to memorize and work with concepts. Certain philosophers attempted to occupy a middle ground, such as Peter Abelard (1079—1142), a "conceptualist," who maintained that concepts exist in our minds not merely to facilitate our lives but to allow reality the possibility of being known by us. Abelard was unpopular with many of his contemporaries, as he articulated in his "History of My Misfortunes," where he depicted how he was regarded as a frivolous seducer. This perception led to the notion that if one possesses a perfectly clear concept of sin, then the sin one commits is not truly a sin, but merely a concept or exemplar of sin. Nevertheless, the dispute between nominalists and realists persisted throughout the Middle Ages, ultimately favoring the nominalists, for the acknowledgment of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice implies that it pertains to individuals capable of receiving that sacrifice personally, rather than merely to those who can be known in the abstract. Descartes decisively severs ties with this entire cultural context: for him, individual entities and operations can be called into question just as readily as individual concepts concerning those entities.

Yet our capacity for doubt remains undeniable; in other words, our existence (existence) is evident from which we cast doubt on essence (the "what," essence). Thus, the "I" emerges as a substance, wherein Descartes employs the term substance in a previously unrecognized sense: not as the foundation of existence or the basis of cognizability, but as the ground from which one can autonomously, without external assistance, question both cognizability and the essence of existence itself. In this respect, Descartes retains Aristotle’s notion of substance as that which possesses properties (accidents) but cannot itself be a property of anything else, albeit he modifies its scope: for Aristotle, this concept allowed for understanding how things are structured and how they can serve as signs; for Descartes, it solely addresses why our knowledge, belonging to us as a substance, is autonomous and will endure even if all things were to vanish or prove different from how they appear. However, since knowledge belongs to us as a substance, and its sole horizon becomes our substance—the "thinking substance"—philosophy after Descartes prefers to speak not of the "thinking substance" in a manner reminiscent of Aristotle, but of "consciousness" in a sense that was previously unknown to Aristotle. Certainly, even among the Roman Stoics, such as Seneca, some notion of "consciousness" as self-knowledge emerges, fulfilling the oracle's command to Socrates to "know thyself." Likewise, medieval culture's practice of confession establishes the concept of "conscience" as the ability to confess one's sins to oneself before confessing to a spiritual advisor (while the ancient culture was well-acquainted with the notion of moral "shame," it lacked the strict Christian interpretation of "conscience"). Yet only with Descartes does "consciousness" become not the execution of a predetermined script but the source of all cognitive scripts.

Prior to Descartes, any thinker would assert that "I am" pertains to both my soul and my body, while "I think" applies solely to my soul. Given that the body is mortal and the soul immortal, it followed that human existence exists through divine existence, dependent on God's will to connect soul and body; otherwise, why do we refer to both mortal and immortal entities with the same terms "I," "you," or "he/she"? Conversely, for Descartes, "I am" signifies pure substance, the point of being where your consciousness, including the consciousness of both soul and body, is realized, while "I think" implies that the body exists, relative to which one may discuss the specificities of thought—whence that thought is perceived. Ultimately, Descartes distinguishes between "extended substance," any inanimate material object, and "thinking substance," such a corporeal substance that can comprehend its own capacity to think.

Animals may grasp that they think, but this understanding immediately translates into some form of action; for instance, upon recognizing a danger, they will simply learn to perceive it better and respond more effectively, in contrast to humans, who can devise methods to evade danger. Thus, a human can avoid the peril of thought, such as illusion, whereas an animal that ceases to fear shadows and only fears actual threats acts as an "automaton," meaning a system trained to respond optimally within its functional parameters. The term "automaton" does not imply merely executing repetitive actions in response to stimuli, but rather refers to an entity capable of acting whenever a stimulus occurs; this is not about the repetitiveness of any algorithm, but about practical sensitivity to the stimulus. This concept of "automaton" was already present in ancient philosophy, where it denoted a self-learning system akin to our notion of "artificial intelligence." For instance, the biblical interpreter Philo of Alexandria referred to Sophia, divine wisdom, as an "automaton" because it is not taught how to act; it autonomously instructs all.

The human soul proves to be a perfect locus of intuition. By intuition, we refer to the capacity to focus not on the irritant as a source of irritation but on one's "mental consideration" (literally, "inspection of the mind"). For instance, if I am bitten by a dog and my knowledge includes the dog among other extended objects, then, in a situation of radical doubt, my understanding will not include the dog or even the bite itself, but rather the intuition of the bite—that is, something has happened to my body, and I perceive my body more clearly and distinctly than the bite. After all, the bite is a certain rupture in the body, a deformation or "fold," as Gilles Deleuze would refer to it in the 20th century. The body, in contrast, is what appears more explicit and comprehensible compared to this rupture—we can articulate the impact on the body from the bite, for example, that it hurts or that I now find it difficult to walk, more so than we can express any specific qualities of the bite itself. Initially, I contemplate whether I can walk after this bite and whether I urgently need to get vaccinated against rabies (which was unknown in Descartes' time), and only afterward do I assess how deep the bite is and what breed the dog might have been.

It is noteworthy that such an understanding of intuition became possible with the discovery of cyclical processes within the body, such as blood circulation or nerve activity. This allowed for an understanding of the organism not as a model of other natural phenomena—such as a cosmos, a plant, or a combination of elements—but as a certain maintenance of its functioning, primary relative to external influences. For Renaissance thought, which valued magic, astrology, music, and other ways the cosmos affects the organism or the organism affects the cosmos, this would have been incomprehensible. The last Renaissance thinker, Giordano Bruno (1548—1600), a great scientist and a great magician, understood that it is impossible to connect everything in a chain of causalities; there will always be conceptual and material contradictions within this closed system. Thus, he proposed an open infinity of worlds, each of which is not merely autonomous but animated and can, if necessary, receive and transmit the requisite influences—if not physical, due to the autonomy of worlds, then intellectual. Yet Bruno was executed, and his teachings were recalled only by German idealist philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743—1819) and Schelling. Consequently, the 17th century, represented by Descartes, followed a different path: rather than asserting the infinity of animated worlds (whatever they may be, if they "frighten," as Blaise Pascal, another great Frenchman of this era, expressed), the focus shifted to the capacity of influences, including intellectual ones, to reside within a single body—not as an intellectual (intelligible) apparatus of the world but as conjectures and illuminations of the mind.

In his third metaphysical meditation, Descartes investigates how it is possible to acknowledge the existence of God without suspecting Him of deception, that He creates some illusions that we take for reality. Descartes reasons thus: it is clear that "I" am a "thinking thing," and thus everything I conceive, everything I imagine, constitutes certain representations with their content. The manner in which I think about the external world in relation to my self may differ in circumstances and details, but, broadly speaking, it remains consistent. Of course, we will consider a dog differently than a division sign, and the division sign differently than God, yet the dissimilarity of procedures does not negate the fact that we possess the same intellectual conjecture, the same illumination, the same naming, whereby we call a dog a dog, and honor or sorrow—honor or sorrow. All these will equally be instantaneous and equally delivered or equally not delivered to self-awareness in these procedures.

Therefore, if all ideas are equal, like catalog cards or dictionary entries, how do they differ? In their actual content: different ideas correspond to different things. This assertion is not as trivial as it may initially appear. Essentially, Descartes uncovered "facticity," that is, the capacity of thought to indicate the veracity of a fact, despite the fact that the structure of thought does not correspond to the structure of the fact. Debates about "facticity" persisted into the early 20th century, for example, regarding how to interpret miracles and the resurrection of Christ—as a fact or as a beautiful parable conveying important ideas but lacking historical existence. Ultimately, 20th-century German phenomenology, represented by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, concluded that even miracles can be deemed factual, but only under the condition that their interpretation is possible—"the hermeneutics of facticity," in other words, a method to demonstrate how the acknowledgment of a given thing as a fact operates as part of our historical experience, how it enriches it or renders it more intelligible.

Yet Descartes speaks of facticity only as a horizon of our knowledge, not of its content, for the content comprises the things themselves. Nevertheless, Descartes distinguishes things according to degrees of reality: for instance, we may also call properties "things," but these "things" are less real than the things possessing such properties. While we require a single term to denote a property, just as we do to name a thing, we nonetheless understand that a property is not yet a thing. This ability of things to indicate their own reality is what Descartes termed "objective reality," not in the sense of things existing "objectively" in our everyday understanding, separate from us, but in the philosophical sense of things existing as objects of our mind. Objective reality stands in contrast to formal reality, that is, the relation of things outside of thought—for example, a thing's ability to exist independently of its properties. For instance, the formal reality may be that I am bald, and there are no hairs on my head, but the objective reality is that I had hair, even if it has fallen out. Descartes refers to the initial meaning of "objective"—literally, "standing in the way," serving as an obstacle to vision, and thus accepted as it ought to be, not as an object of actual knowledge but as a subject of acknowledgment, as a problem, rather than as the current state of a thing. My being bald is my current state, but the notion that any person is hairy is an objectivity, a problem from which I can reason, including about baldness.

From the concept of objectivity, Descartes begins to reason about causality. If we recognize any thing, at least one, as self-evident, we must acknowledge that the thing has a cause that substantiates it, given that it is not reinforced by special proofs, but is, as it were, axiomatic for our minds. This means that either the thing is its own cause or there is some other thing that serves as its cause. Moreover, the cause must be no less real or universal than the thing that is the effect. It is noteworthy that, in contrast to medieval philosophy, where the cause was positioned above the effect, representing a universal event determining the particular history of a thing, in Descartes' philosophy, cause and effect exist on the same level.

We can ascertain that one thing is the cause of another simply based on the correspondence between the content of objective reality and formal reality. For instance, we may doubt the existence of birds. However, we cannot doubt that birds formally possess feathers, regardless of whether they exist or not. Since birds with feathers have greater objective reality than birds without feathers (we are not currently considering penguins and continue with our hypothetical example), the content of objective reality, our capacity to know birds with feathers, corresponds to formal reality; in other words, a bird with feathers is more real than feathers without a bird.

It is precisely from this reasoning that the existence of God is derived. If I can conceive of perfection, if only because I know it is better than individual things, then I must also conceive of God as the cause of this perfection. Even if any perfect thing is imaginary, God cannot be merely imaginary, for He will be both the cause of things and the cause of our ability to conceive perfection.

This capacity for imagination—as, in essence, the ability for intellectual modeling—was elucidated by Descartes in his treatise "Man," in which the formation and education of our sensibility is derived from the paradoxical nature of our physical and even physiological condition in the world. We, corporeal and intellectual beings, repeatedly witness the boiling of elements, the clash of various principles in the surrounding nature, and suddenly realize that the same grand battles unfold within us.

For instance, we discover that just as hay dries upon compression due to heat, so too does the organism thrive on heat derived from food. Descartes would not be satisfied with the neatness of simple connections; instead, he found vivid labels, astonishing concepts that must strike at the very core of natural phenomena. Of course, Descartes exists in a world of experiments, in a world where crafting automata is the quickest way to traverse from point A to point B while comprehending the entirety of the world's composition. However, once Descartes begins to speak of the structure of sensory organs, we immediately enter a realm of intense dialogue with the most tangible reality.

Here is a literary English translation of the provided text, preserving its structure and flow while maintaining its philosophical depth:

Thus, according to Descartes, hearing interprets words simply because it can arrange sounds in order, possessing a particular sensitivity to when to emit them (we might liken this to a DJ's mixing console rather than an equalizer). At first glance, this explanation may seem reminiscent of a mechanical regulation, yet we sense that the material world is imbued not only with warmth and the movement of particles but also with a unique intuition that emerged before the particles set in motion.

Similarly, with impeccable yet hasty delight, Descartes spoke of taste—citing simple water as an example of “sweet” flavor—since its particles gently and tenderly envelop the tongue. We cannot glance at this without acknowledging that the philosopher implies not only the suffering state of the senses within the world, their passions, but also a particular mercy of things that bestows sweetness. Descartes’ anthropology is by no means an anthropology of hopeless suffering, nor an anthropology of a trembling thinking reed, as in Pascal's portrayal, but rather the anthropology of a melodious reed that knows how to respond to the breeze with the best possible reaction, one that could not even be imagined as better.

Vision, for Descartes, is profoundly tremulous. The eye is not merely pliable in the face of the image presented before it; it undergoes a genuine metamorphosis. For, being a vessel filled with liquid, it must tremble before the visible, entering into a transformative agreement with it. In such a change, which rocks the original nature of the vessel to its core, lies the entire subtlety of visual impressions, finer than any hair, as well as the intricacies of the meanings to be perceived by the brain along with its memory.

As soon as Descartes begins to ponder this very memory, mechanics are already set to serve meaning: between the memories lodged in the brain, there exists such empathy (an uncontrollable sympathy), such associative similarity, that it becomes impossible to enumerate all the fibers through which impressions were absorbed—memory operates faster than a rapier, faster than a sting (in dreams, he writes, the sting of a fly is perceived in memory like the thrust of a rapier), and thus memory itself begins to act more swiftly than our habits can grasp it. It turns out to be a book that reads itself, thoughtfully considering each word, while we, at best, can only ponder it occasionally.

In general, Descartes’ conception of man is composed of mechanical elements, but not of "influences" in the everyday or humanitarian sense, such as "what influenced him." On the contrary, the organic formations, the impressions that enter a person are so intermingled that, having revealed themselves from all angles, they cannot fail to thin the subsequent elements, the following impressions that enter the human body, transforming them into sensitive perceptions (traps) for understanding all that lies beyond humanity.

In this regard, but not in metaphysics, Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679) emerged as Descartes’ true heir, laying the foundation of Descartes’ anthropology in political theory. It was sufficient for him to posit that politics is achieved through the ultimate strain of human nature, that this overexertion and rupture of human existence underlie the monumental state. Hobbes’ leader becomes a pure appearance, an illusion of propaganda, while politics represents a pure, albeit more real, striving to see one’s own desire as the desire to be even more visible—thus arises the readiness of people to support their leaders. Desires and passions, foremost the desire to be acknowledged, cease only with the death of a person, and thus can the memory of death prevent the destructive tyranny that befalls all.

Descartes too spoke of man's readiness to become visible, but not in the sense of political sanction for the flickering of dictatorial decisions, rather in the sense of a wholly different sanction, one allowing the infinite to be present in the finite, which infinite, due to its boundlessness, cannot establish any dictatorship. Descartes notes that to properly understand why I can think of God as truth and not merely as an exemplar of truth or a model of a truth-subject, I must look not at the cause of the idea of infinity within me—none of these causes will ultimately become axiomatic—but at the cause that allows the idea of “me” to be adequately correlated with the idea of “the infinite.” Here, Descartes reasons: I can move from one degree of being to another, and in this sense, however distant finite objects may be from infinity as an object of thought, they remain on the same ladder, albeit with the steps set apart at the utmost distance. Yet from non-being to being, I cannot transition; for by thinking of myself, including as one transitioning somewhere, I already possess being. Moreover, within me exists the idea of God, transitioning things from non-being to being; thus, if I am to be honest with my own ideas, I must acknowledge God’s existence.

To this, the atheist might respond: if I reason honestly, I can only conclude that I am self-sufficient (at least in thought), but I am not the author of my being. Yet continuing honestly, one might encounter not God, but merely some proximate cause, such as parents, which in turn will also rest against a closer cause, and so forth ad infinitum. Pierre Gassendi (1592—1655) argued in this manner, believing that any representation we have of infinity is merely a distraction of our experience of finitude from the idea of finitude, whereby we, by compiling the finite, acquire a fictitious representation of the infinite. For Gassendi, a new Epicurean, the world consisted solely of finite things, while the very concept of infinity proved to be a malfunction in the use of these finite things.

However, Descartes preemptively addressed this objection with an intriguing maneuver. For him, the cause in time, as a cause that is in becoming and therefore unstable, always ranks beneath the cause that directly touches my being. Here, Descartes quite fully inherits the positions of medieval philosophy, for which causality is a matter of qualities of being rather than processes or effects; rather, any processes follow not from the cause itself, but from its actualization or realizability. Thus, if I hold in mind the idea of infinity and recognize it as directly related to my being—say, by feeling the transience of the body and the inevitability of thought—then we may contemplate God.

Descartes explained that first, we recognize our imperfection, and only thereafter do we discern God’s perfection. We look at ourselves and immediately notice our limitations, that we are far from capable of everything. Therefore, we understand that God is infinite if He, as our cause, can do more than we can. In such a case, if we speak not of the sequence of our thoughts but of their structure, then God’s infinite perfection precedes our imperfection, since structurally we can only comprehend our imperfection as a lack of perfection and not as something positive. The grasp of structure must exactly precede the lack, while perfection must precede imperfection.

From this, Descartes draws an intriguing conclusion: that all our ideas—be they the idea of time, that of some material object, or the idea of number—are merely limitations, restricted manifestations of this initial idea of infinity. For instance, a number represents a limitation of the idea of infinity toward formal computability, while the idea of a tree restricts itself to those properties that belong solely to trees. It follows that our mind possesses ideas even before it manages to clothe them in concepts; rather, concepts become merely a more succinct way of naming the properties that are more expansively present in the idea.

But does this mean that we have a clear concept of the infinite God from the very beginning? Descartes answers this question in the negative: our soul possesses a series of properties of limitation, such as limitations of familiar space or the accustomed flow of time, which preclude the possibility of fully knowing God, save for sensing His grandeur. Here, Descartes intertwines two themes of medieval philosophy: the theme of human createdness, that he is created by God and therefore inherently limited in his ability to know Him, and the theme of habitus, the properties that enable a person to navigate the surrounding world. Yet, as a result, he describes for the first time the phenomenology of thought, what it does when it encompasses, and when it merely penetrates. Descartes refers to theologians asserting that one cannot embrace the ungraspable God. But for theologians, this was not a phenomenology of thought but merely the dogma of created and uncreated (contingent and non-contingent). In Descartes, the same thought becomes an imagery that allows us to understand how precisely we examine something. Descartes even notes that it is not so much important to him whether infinity exists or not, since it is difficult to determine in its being, but rather that any assertion you make about finitude depends on the positing of infinity.

In stark contrast to the previous position, Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632—1677) asserted that both God and His attributes are knowable. Spinoza reasoned thus: we come to understand things by always progressing from the simple to the complex. However, this movement is not driven by an interest in complex things for their own sake, but by a deeper, more metaphysical interest: the desire to attain equilibrium, to comprehend the world for the sake of our own happiness, and to know divine love. This interest necessitates that we recognize substance not merely as a self-sufficient existence but as an existence that possesses purpose within itself, existing for its own sake. The God of Spinoza exists for Himself, and thus one cannot even say whether He is wise or not, or whether He exercises will or not. Yet, the attributes (constant qualities) of God as substance are indeed extension and thought, which unfold in the world and within us. Therefore, unlike Descartes, Spinoza did not regard things in the world as extended or thinking substances but only as attributes of the divine substance. To some extent, Spinoza was influenced by the Jewish theology he had absorbed since childhood, which taught about the "contraction" (tsimtsum) of God in the act of creation (in Christianity, this is referred to as "kenosis," literally, "emptiness" of attributes, relating to God's incarnation in humanity). However, Spinoza viewed this contraction not as the cause of the world, but as the reason for its knowability and our ability to know. While theology addresses narratives such as God's creation of the world, Spinoza explored affects and emotions, seeing them not as the impact of one substance on another but as the increase or decrease of the human mind's activity in mastering the surrounding world. Ultimately, love for God, as the highest affect, offers the greatest potential for knowledge.

However, Descartes distinguishes causality from conventional temporal causation, as "cause in being" has nothing to do with "cause in becoming." In scholasticism, any causality, at least concerning the world of created things, was regarded as becoming. Descartes opened a pathway to understanding causality, which ultimately leads to Kant. For Kant, the notion of causality is also unrelated to becoming, but rather connected to intuitions of space and time: it constitutes the "schematism" of our thought, in other words, a preliminary model that we apply before constructing models based on the things we know. Just as we first perceive space and then understand what objects exist within it and which do not, or as we sense time regardless of whether events occur within it (although this sensation can later be emotionally colored—say, we may feel bored in the absence of significant events), so too, according to Kant, we first sense that nothing occurs without a cause, and then we reflect on which cause proves sufficient over another. Yet, this does not imply that we understand the cause solely by virtue of its completeness; for Kant, it may remain merely the "thing as it is" ("thing-in-itself") or an "imperative" ("demand").

In the fifth of his Metaphysical Meditations, Descartes again turned to the distinction between "essence" and "existence." For the old theology, the essence of God transcended any attributes and qualities, and only existence could relate God to those attributes: for example, God the Father begets the Son, and therefore possesses such an attribute. For Descartes, essence is the foundation of existence, a certain rational quality that renders those properties we previously regarded as merely compulsory into something intelligible. For instance, we can imagine a chimera or a griffin, but we cannot reconcile that with the fact that we have never encountered one. However, to envision, say, a quadrilateral triangle or winged non-wingedness, we can no longer do. The absence of chimeras in our world is explained not by their impossibility in nature, but by the fact that they cannot even be imagined, no matter how much we strive or study nature. This implies that God created the law of non-contradiction, ensuring that two contradictory ideas cannot coexist simultaneously. Thus, from the recognition of existence and, moreover, the realization that existence is constrained by the rational essence of the Creator, we conclude that God is not only existence but also essence. Descartes might observe that it is simpler to conceive of a triangle as a quadrilateral or devoid of angles than to imagine God devoid of essence. If an atheist envisions God without existence and asserts "there is no God," this merely signifies that he considers existence more primordial than being, given that existence can be accompanied by the predicate of being, "is" or "is not"—he is an existentialist, for him existence is primary.

Descartes then poses the next question: if I am a creation of God, and God, being benevolent, does not wish to deceive me, why do I err? Descartes responds that this arises from the conflict between finite understanding and infinite will. For example, we may perceive a figure in the distance as a person, but it is actually a tree. Our understanding of distant objects is limited; we cannot discern them clearly, yet our will longs to encounter a person rather than merely a tree, stretching beyond its bounds and thus remaining unbridled. Alternatively, I may err in calculations because my memory proves limited, yet the will to continue calculating is boundless, hence I persist.

Building on Descartes' position, Spinoza developed the doctrine that human likeness to God consists in affirming and denying will—the capacity to respond to any assertion or impulse with "yes" or "no." It is precisely then that the will becomes limitless in comparison to our limited perception, wherein we never truly know whether it was worthwhile to say "yes" or "no," or whether the impetus was sufficient or insufficient. Our will operates similarly to the instinct of self-preservation in animals. Herein, modern philosophy breaks from preceding traditions: for scholasticism, instinct corresponded to "intention," the capacity to relate to objects yet unknown through experience, leaning more toward knowledge than will. In contrast, in modern philosophy, will allows for an explanation of why a person remains autonomous, even when there are insufficient grounds for that autonomy in their nature; for example, we are all dependent on our character to some extent.

Scholasticism, as exemplified by Duns Scotus (1266—1308), addressed this final question by distinguishing between "primary intentions" and "secondary intentions." Primary intentions pertain to our reason's ability to relate to things: for instance, upon seeing a running person, we comprehend that he is running rather than rolling downhill. Although we lack the complete requisite experience—having never rolled downhill ourselves—we would never confuse a running person with one rolling downhill. However, we may define running as such, saying that a rolling ball is also running. This would already be a secondary intention; we lack another experience, that of knowing all things capable of "running," yet we can still articulate what running entails. Thus, character pertains to primary intentions, while will relates to secondary ones, clarifying how, for instance, a person of poor character may still find salvation in the Kingdom of Heaven despite not fully overcoming it.

For Descartes, such a correlation is no longer feasible, as will does not merely relate to an infinite multitude of objects and situations, as it did in scholasticism, but pertains to things that are not yet entirely understood but are nonetheless desired—such as happiness, for instance. Consequently, will is no longer simply broader than reason or character; it can be associated with things that do not partake in any relations we know. The subjugation of will to reason may prove harmful: for reason regards the incomprehensible as equally indifferent, and thus it can direct will toward erroneous conclusions, such as equating happiness with wealth or fame. Conversely, freedom of will permits one to avoid making false decisions, recognizing that any identification is "characteristic," yet not "rational." Thus emerges the profound notion of free will, which in modern philosophy invariably carries a positive moral and political significance.

Finally, in the Fifth and Sixth Metaphysical Meditations, Descartes examines how material things exist. According to Descartes, the unity of soul and body cannot be derived from the properties of spiritual things or the properties of material things. Here, Descartes breaks from the entire preceding tradition, which derived this unity either from creatorship, as in theology, or from the similarity of the properties of the spiritual and the corporeal, as seen in various forms of atomism and secular philosophy dating back to antiquity. Thomas Aquinas could contest Averroes' trust in these similarities, which seem to turn properties into essential attributes, but he nevertheless explained how the property of createdness defines the limits and actions of the material and the boundaries of its understanding. In contrast, for Descartes, the order of the relationship between the material and the spiritual in man differs from both the order of thought and the order of extension. Thought seeks a foundation first and cannot connect anything before establishing this; yet, there are two distinct foundations upon which one cannot rely. The order of extension serves as the basis for the laws of existence and perception, but not for the laws governing the connection between two entirely dissimilar things. So what remains? Imagination, a property possessed solely by humans.