descartes and the problem of evil

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Descartes and the Problem of EvilAuthor(s): Brian CalvertSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Sep., 1972), pp. 117-126Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230379 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume II, Number 1, September 1972

Descartes and the Problem of Evil

BRIAN CALVERT, University of Guelph

Introduction

The main aim of this paper is to revive interest among philosophers, and particularly philosophers of religion, in Descartes' Fourth Meditation. Two recent works on Descartes1 make virtually no mention of it, and this omission seems to reflect a fairly general feeling that it is of relatively little philosophical significance. In philosophy of religion textbooks, the Fifth Meditation is often discussed in connection with the ontological proof, but in sections devoted to the problem of evil, no reference is made to the Fourth. Even in John Hick's admirable study of the problem,2 Descartes' contribution is relegated to a single sentence in a single footnote.

In what follows, I want to maintain that the Fourth Meditation should be regarded as an important and original contribution to the history of the problem of evil, and to enter a plea that Descartes' place should be more widely recognised. I shall also argue that the solution with which Descartes is usually credited (the free will defence) is not the solution he adopts, that he gives a specific reason why it should not be adopted, and that this reason antici- pates what a number of contemporary philosophers have recently thought to be a fatal objection to that defence.

The Fourth Meditation as a version of the problem of evil

That the Fourth Meditation can be regarded, without undue distortion, as dealing with a limited version of the problem of evil is not, it seems to me, a contentious proposition. In its most general form, the question posed by the problem of evil is whether

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1 A. Kenny, Descartes, Random House, 1968, and W. Doney (ed.) Descartes, Doubleday Anchor, 1967. 2 J. Hick, Evil and the Cod of Love, MacMillan, 1966.



Brian Calvert Descartes and the Problem of Evil

certain features of the world as we experience it can be recon- ciled with the existence of God. Descartes selects one of these features (error), and discusses whether this particular feature is consistent with the existence of an all powerful, perfect, non- deceiving Deity. This limitation in treatment is confirmed by his remarks in the Synopsis of the Meditations, where Descartes tells us that he does not intend to deal with "error committed in the pursuit of good and evil - but only of that which occurs in the judgement and discernment of the true and the false; and that I do not intend to speak of beliefs which belong to faith or to the conduct of life, but of those which pertain to speculative truth "3 That is to say, Descartes proposes to consider the problem of evil, but only in so far as it has implications for his theory of knowledge.

On the other hand, as I hope to make clear, though Descartes' main treatment is confined to one example of evil, the manner in which he conducts his discussion leads him to consider arguments and solutions which can easily be applied to the more general problem. Despite his claim in the Synopsis that he will not be concerned with "error committed in the pursuit of good and evil", when we come to the Fourth Meditation itself, we find him re- cognizing that his account will also cover moral evil. On p. 56 he writes "And thus it happens that I make mistakes and that I sin"; on p. 58 he talks of the "formal cause of error and sin". Then again, when Descartes asks what sort of world (from the epistemological point of view) we should expect a priori to have been created by God, and points out how such an expectation differs from the world we actually experience - such a mode of expression is strikingly similar to the language used by Hume in the Eleventh Dialogue, when the more general question of evil is under consideration.

Descartes' treatment of error

It seems to be the contention of most commentators who deal with this Meditation, that Descartes tries to effect a reconciliation between the existence of error and the existence of God, by arguing that man misuses the faculties which God has given him, and so the responsibility for the occurrence of error is attributable to man and not to God. L. J. Beck, for example, writes:

3 Descartes Meditations (trans. L. J. Lafleur), Library of Liberal Arts, 1960. Subsequent references to the text of the Meditations will give the page number of this edition.

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"The quaestio which Descartes set himself at the beginning of this Meditation was how to reconcile the veracity of God with the fact of human error. The above analysis shows that as long as we employ the powers, or faculties, of understanding and will properly, we cannot err/'4

Or again, J. L. Evans presents what he calls the usual position of scholars who take Descartes as being "faced with the problem of explaining the origin of error without making God responsible. His general answer was that we make wrong use of the faculties which God has given us, and therefore the responsibility is ours."5

Such views as these see Descartes as offering a free will defence to the problem of error; and in that Descartes allows us to regard error as a subspecies of moral evil, he would be regarded as allying himself with that defence in relation to the wider issue of moral evil.

However, such an interpretation (and it certainly is the usual

interpretation) is quite mistaken. It oversimplifies the complexity of the Meditation, and ignores the fact that Descartes poses a number of different questions, and offers different answers to those

questions. If we distinguish these different questions, we will then be in a position to appreciate that the reconciliation between error and God is made in quite another way.

There are four different questions we may distinguish. Question 1: How is the possibility of error compatible with the nature of God? (We should expect the perfect workman to make a

perfect product- how, then, can God make a being who is even

capable of error, or imperfection?) Question 2: How is the actual occurrence of error compatible with the nature of God? (That men do make errors is a fact of

experience, as Descartes points out. It is this apparent conflict between a fact of experience and a theistic hypothesis which locates the most difficult part of the issue.) Quest/on 3: What is it in human nature that allows for the possibility of error? Question 4: What is it in human nature that accounts for the actual occurrence of error? For convenience's sake, I propose to call the first two question "theological questions", and the latter two "psychological questions". The answers Descartes gives to these latter two may be summarised as follows:

4 L. J. Beck, The Metaphysics of Descartes, Oxford 1965, p. 211.

5 J. L. Evans, "Error and the Will', Philosophy Vol. XXXVIII, April 1963, p. 137.

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Answer to Question 3: The will and the understanding are not co- extensive in range. Answer to Question 4: If we make a judgement (use our free will) in the absence of clear and distinct ideas, we misuse our freedom; errors are liable to occur, and often do.

The reason I make this distinction is that the psychological questions and answers can be considered independently of any theological presuppositions or requirements. In fact, S. V. Keeling suggests that if such a distinction is made, the psychological answers provide us with a "hypothesis still deserving of serious consideration."6 It is not, however, my purpose to assess here the

adequacy of Descartes' psychological answers. Sections of Keeling's book and Evans' paper contain interesting discussions of them. What I intend to do is to consider whether Descartes thought the

psychological answers will also serve as adequate answers to the

theological questions. In that he makes the occurrence of error dependent upon our

misuse of free will, we might expect, as the usual accounts hold, that he would also utilise the answers he has given in response to Question 4 to deal with Question 2. Now Descartes does say that it is better for man to have free will than not to have it. In his own words. ". . . there is somehow more perfection in my nature because I can perform them [i.e., mistaken judgements] than there would be if I could not", (p. 58) In this way, he seeks to establish the initial premises of the free will defence, viz., that it is better for man to have free will than to be a puppet, and that the possession of free will entails the possibility of falling into error. But the possession of free will does not account, of itself, for the actuality of error (or, in the wider context, of moral

evil). That is, there is a gap between free will entailing the possibility of error (evil), and the actual occurrence of error (evil).

Some have tried to close this gap, by adopting a principle to the effect that "What can fail sometimes does",7 or by urging, as J. L. Mackie puts it, that "The making of some wrong choices is

logically necessary for freedom."8

Such a principle has, of course, come under attack from Mackie and A. G. N. Flew. In Mackie's version:

6 S. V. Keeling, Descartes, Oxford 1968, p. 298. 7 Hick, op. cit., p. 198, quotes this principle from Aquinas. 8 J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence", Mind, 1955, reprinted in Philosophy of Religion (ed. 5. M. Cahn),

Harper and Row, 1970, p. 18. The longer quotation from Mackie which follows is to be found on pp. 17-8.

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". . . if God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good? If there is no logical impossibility in a man's freely choosing the good on one, or several, occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omni- potent and wholly good".

Similarly, Flew sets out to challenge what he calls "the key position of the whole Free-Will Defence: the idea that there is a contradiction involved in saying that God might have made people so that they always in fact freely choose the right. If there is no contradiction here then omnipotence might have made a world inhabited by wholly virtuous people: the Free-Will Defence is broken backed; and we are back again with the original intractable antinomy."9

What is more, Flew describes his challenge as "new, or at least unusual/' while Hick, in his assessment of the Flew-Mackie thesis, refers to it as a "recent critique" of the free will defence.

Our next task, therefore, is to consider whether Descartes himself thought that the gap between the possibility and actuality of error (or moral evil) can be closed, with the result that he could then use the free will defence to answer Question 2. A relevant, but difficult passage is to be found near the beginning of the Meditation, where he writes: -

"Certainly there is no doubt but that God could have created me such that I would never be mistaken; it is also certain that he always wills that which is best. Is it therefore a better thing to [be able to] make a mistake than not to [be able to] do so?" (p. 53)

To say that God could have created beings who never made mistakes is not necessarily to say that this is the best alternative. If the choice open to God is simply that between making innocent automata and making free beings, and if, as we have seen, Descartes argues that it is better to create beings who are free than beings who are not, God's creation would exclude the making of innocent automata "if he always wills that which is best." But this is not yet to decide whether a free being can be someone who never actually commits an error.

9 A. C. N. Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom", in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, S.C.M., 1963, p. 149.

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A decision might be easier if we could be sure of the text; but it is no simple matter to know with confidence whether the bracketed words "be able to" should be included. They occur for the first time in the second French translation by Clerselier which appeared eleven years after Descartes' death. However if they are included, the advantage would be that Descartes is not committing himself to the principle that what can err sometimes does; he is merely spelling out, if an affirmative answer is

given to the question, what are the implications of the possession of freedom, and of God's willing what is best. No position would

yet be taken on whether the notion of a free being and that of a

being who never makes mistakes are inconsistent. The dis-

advantages would be that we are still left without an answer to

Question 2.

On the other hand, if the words "be able to" are excluded, the usual account, which sees Descartes as an exponent of the free will defence, gains strength. An affirmative answer to the

question would mean that he is claiming it is better to make a mistake than not to. Moreover, since God wills what is the better of any two alternatives, God wills a state of affairs in which errors are made as preferable to one in which errors are never made. But Descartes also says that it is better to create beings who are free than beings who are not; and if he thought that freedom entails the possibility of error but not its actuality, then God would will a situation as better in which no actual error need ever occur. The consequence would then be that God wills as best two states of affairs which are inconsistent with each other. However, the inconsistency may easily be avoided if we suppose that Descartes is assuming here that freedom entails not only the

possibility of error, but also its actuality. In which case, he would be appealing, at least implicitly, to the principle that what can err sometimes does, and would regard the notion of free beings who never make mistakes as self contradictory. While the advantage of this interpretation would be that we immediately find an answer to Question 2, the disadvantage, of course, would be that Descartes would be subject to attack from Mackie and Flew.

The view that he does use the free will defence appears to

gain more strength, when we find him saying later: -

". . . it is not an imperfection in God that he has given me the liberty of

[judging or not judging,] or [giving or withholding my assent,] on certain matters of which he has given me no clear and distinct knowledge. It is, without doubt, an imperfection in myself not to make proper use of this

liberty . . ." (p. 58)

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It would certainly seem that we have here an unambiguous statement of the free will defence.10 The responsibility for the occurrence of error does not lie with God but with man. However, Descartes quickly counters this train of thought, when he continues: -

I perceive, nevertheless, that it would have been easy for God to contrive that I would never make mistakes, even though I remained free and with limited knowledge. He might, for example, have given my understanding a clear and distinct comprehension of all the things about which I should ever deliberate, or he might simply have engraved so deeply in my memory the resolution never to pass judgement on anything without conceiving it clearly and distinctly that I could never forget this rule." (pp. 58-9)

It is surely difficult to exaggerate the importance of this passage, which, so far as I am aware, has been completely overlooked by commentators.11 It is made quite clear that Descartes came to reject the use of the free will defence in response to Question 2, and that the rejection was made for exactly the same reasons cited by Mackie and Flew. He suggests that it would have been perfectly possible for Cod to have created beings who were free, and yet who did not actually commit errors; what is more, he provides a couple of examples to show what God might have done instead.

Having realised, therefore, that the free will defence will not do, Descartes appeals to another traditional defence (which Hick, using A. O. Lovejoy's term, calls the "principle of plenitude"), and makes this, and not the free will defence, his answer to Question 2, as well as to Question 1. He tells us that if he were the only person in the world, God should have created him a free being

10 Though the passages quoted from p. 58 appear, as I say, to be an unambiguous statement of the free will defence, Descartes seems to falter in the middle of his formulation of it, when he writes:-

"As for privation, in which alone is found the formal cause of error and sin, it has no need of

any concurrence on the part of God, since it is not a thing (or a being] and since, if it is referred to God as to its cause, it should not be called privation but only negation [according to the significance attached to these words in the schools]." A move such as this seeks to avoid the problem by denying the reality of error, and so denying the

position assumed in Question 2. (This would be equivalent, in the broader situation, to answering the

problem of evil by denying that evil exists). However, to deny that error is a "thing or a being" is inconsistent with the contention required by the free will defence that makes the very opposite claim,

namely that error is real, but not the fault of God. Moreover, it is also inconsistent with Descartes' own words on p. 52, in which he says that "error is not a pure negation ... but rather a privation"; these words come at the conclusion of an argument in which he seeks to show that the attempt to avoid the problem by asserting the unreality of error is unsatisfactory.

The explanation may be that, in the context of the free will defence, Descartes is concerned to demonstrate that the occurrence of error is not due to God, and that he tries (without noticing the

inconsistency) to reinforce this contention that God cannot be faulted, by adding that error is a negation. On the other hand, it may be that he was aware of the inconsistency, and that he intends it to reflect a hesitancy felt about the value of the free will defence- a hesitancy which, I go on to argue, he

proceeds to develop immediately after this passage. 11 It is a sign of this general oversight that Flew's claim to have made a "new, or at least unusual"

challenge has never been questioned.

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who never made mistakes. But if he considers himself as part of a vast universe, another set of possibilities opens up, namely, (a) God could have created a world in which everything was alike and free from imperfection, or (b) God could have created a world in which there was variety and not uniformity; where "variety" means that some of the parts considered in isolation are imperfect, but considered as contributing parts of the whole of creation, help to make that creation more perfect than it would have been if all had been made alike.

The second alternative, Descartes claims, is better than the first, and on this model of aesthetic variety he rests his case, using it to answer both theological questions. It enables him, moreover, to find a response to the Flew-Mackie attack. While, of course, he agrees with them that there is no contradiction in God's making a free being who does not actually err, he contends that God would only have availed himself of this possibility in a world inhabited by a solitary Adam.

Question 1, then, is answered not on what we might call moral grounds, but on metaphysical grounds. It is not so much that a free being is morally superior to an automaton that it is better to be able to err. Rather, a fuller understanding of what is meant by "perfect" reveals that to fill a world with beings who can make mistakes is to create a more varied, and so better, world than one which does not contain such beings. Similarly in answer to Question 2. A world which contains beings who can and do err (as well as, perhaps, beings who can but do not err) is more varied, and so better, than a world which only contains beings who can but do not actually make mistakes.12

Consequently, as far as the difficulty of the earlier passage is concerned ("is it a better thing to [be able to] make a mistake than not to [be able to] do so?"), it doesn't really matter which reading we follow. Descartes would answer affirmatively to both questions, and for the same reason in each case. He can afford to be indifferent about the difference in the text because his defence does not rest on free will.

I do not want to suggest, however, that Descartes' answer to the theological questions is without its faults. Beck regards it as a "feeble conclusion", and continues: -

"One might have expected him to have admitted that a whole is more perfect, the greater and richer the diversities which its systematic unity com-

12 As Hick points out, Augustine, who also held the aesthetic model, contended that "in the sight of Cod all things, including even sin and its punishment, combine to form a wonderful harmony which is not only good but very good" (Hick, op. cit., p. 44).

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bines. But it is not clear at all how a whole such as the universe is more perfect because its parts are not merely diverse, but some are perfect, others imperfect/'13

This is a fair point, and to Beck's criticisms may be added

many more from Hick. Nevertheless, Hick realises, as Beck does not appear to, that the principle of plenitude has had many dis-

tinguished adherents other than Descartes. But whatever objections may be raised against Descartes' de-

fence from the outside, as it were, there is an internal difficulty in his account which he does not seem to have noticed. The difficulty arises because Descartes both adopts the principle of plenitude to explain how the actuality of error is consistent with the existence of God, and at the same time offers advice on how to avoid error.

One of the implications of the principle of plenitude is that it would seem to give error (or evil) a permanent and necessary place in the world, and for this reason the aesthetic model has often been criticised as an answer to the problem of evil. In the

present context, a comparison can be made between (a) a world which contains men who can err but don't, and (b) a world which contains both men who can err but don't, and men who can err and do.14 Descartes would certainly appear to be committed to the position that, with the exception of a world inhabited by one

person only, the latter alternative is preferable to the former. The latter has greater variety, and so is "better". In which case, at least some actual error has to be found in a perfectly created world.

On the other hand, if his prescription for the avoidance of error is taken seriously, and is intended to be universally heeded, this would entail the possibility of there being a world in which no actual mistakes were ever made. That is to say, the ideal state of affairs, which Descartes is recommending as both possible and desirable, is a world in which no misuse of freedom occurs, and from which error has been eliminated. But such an ideal con- flicts with the aesthetic view of a perfect world, in which some misuse of freedom is essential, and from which error is necessarily non-eliminable. (The implicit contradiction may, perhaps, be more

sharply emphasised, if we say Descartes' recommendation should

" Beck, op. cit., p. 212. 14 More varieties could, of course, be introduced by conceiving a world which contains men who can

err, and who sometimes do and sometimes don't, and then combining this possibility with the formula- tions I have just given: however the simple contrast I have drawn, will, I think, suffice for the point that is to follow.

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Brian Ca/vert Descartes and the Problem of Evil

have taken a form such as: "This is the way all men can and

ought to follow to avoid error, but not everyone ought to follow

it ") Thus Descartes both appeals to and undermines the principle

of plenitude as an answer to the problem of error (or evil). When

he develops his psychological account of how error actually occurs,

and tells us how we might avoid it, this latter piece of advice, while

consistent with his psychology, in the end proves inconsistent

with the theological stand he has taken. Hence the main detect

of his position, it seems to me, is that at the conclusion of the

Meditation, we still have no clear idea of the sense in which this

world is perfect creation of a perfect deity. Descartes wavers on

the question of whether error (or evil) can and should be totally eradicated.

Summary I have argued that Descartes employs the principle of plenitude

(and not the free will defence) to explain how the possibility and

occurrence of error are consistent with the existence of God

(Questions 1 and 2). Once this consistency of error and God has

been established, he then claims that the possession and misuse

of free will accounts for how, as a matter of fact, error can and

does occur (Questions 3 and 4). He does not try to utilise his

psychological answers as replies to the theological questions. I have also claimed that the reasons why Descartes does not

appeal to the free will defence anticipate, in a startling way, what is, and has been for fifteen years, a crucial debate about a

challenge that strikes at one of the foundations of traditional

Christian apologetics. The fact that Descartes saw this challenge and that he brought it to our notice so long ago, surely entitles

his Fourth Meditation to more attention than it has recently received.

April, 1971

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descartes and the problem of evil

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