In order to explain away this problem, Descartes first establishes the reality of free will appealing to clear and distinct idea as well as to infinity. Through his clear and distinct perception, he possesses free will. Provided that God is not a deceiver, this sense of having the ability to freely choose is real (51 (54) [43] Descartes). A perfect being must not lack free will. Humans may be imperfect; but they still receive freewill from God (55 (58) [46]). Then Descartes continues to expose that “understanding” and the “faculty of choice, or rather, free will” are the basis of human errors (54 (57) [55]). Because the will is “more ample and far-reaching than the understanding”, humans make errors and they sin (56 (59) [47]). The reason humans commit errors, is not that God has erred and made them imperfect, but because humans are using their free will, which is more powerful than the intellect, incorrectly to judge things they know they do not understand.
The road of seeking knowledge with modern scientific methods is lined with errors. Newer findings always have a chance to disprove older theories. An example would be our understanding of atomic structure. According to Descartes, if we refrain from making absolute certain judgment/conclusions, we can avoid errors. This is a helpful approach to science. In this way, Science is less likely to make medieval churches’ errors such as witch-hunting – judgment made without complete understanding.
Descarte’s free will works with science, but how about with moral actions? Let’s say killing innocent moviegoers was an error, the killer was using free will to voluntarily err; for Descartes, this was just an instance that the killer used his free will wrong. The problem arises: why would God allow free will for such heinous actions?
If God so chooses, He could have made the killer perfect in his will, or in a sense deprive him of his free will in order to prevent him from making such errors. However, this is not the case. By allowing people to use free will to eliminate other people’s lives and therefore freedom would make God either bad or an incapable, both of which incompatible with Descartes’ idea of infinity. To take the error to a lesser scale; we can refrain from judgment, but we can’t refrain from making choices. It seems a bit awkward for the (perfect) infinity to create a creature that not only has to face choices in her life in order to live but at the meantime is also constantly baffled and tormented in choosing between error and correctness, a choice that most of the time is not clear and distinct to her. It is not of her free will to choose; nor of her free will to be correct in her choice.
We seem to have free will, which allows us to err both in claims of truth and in actions because we are just less perfect then God is, our intellect does not contain our will. However, we can refrain from making claims but not from acting. It seems on one hand, if we loose free will, we will fall into despair; on the other hand, if we have free will, we will still fall into despair. Is there no hope?
Descartes, René, and Laurence Julien Lafleur. Meditations on First Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1997. Print.
I agree with the majority of this post, but disagree with certain points made. I believe that we can, in fact, refrain from acting; Buddhist monks serve as prime examples, living their lives in silence and prayer. The monks have free will to speak or do what they choose, but instead serve God through silence. I do not believe that free will destines us for evil. Free will allows us to commit evil, but does not encourage it. We always have the choice between committing crimes and not committing crimes, hence the definition of free will. I also believe that it is hard to analyze God's will or intent. Because we know that he is not a deceiver, and that he created us, we must conclude that he did so with a reason. However, as we have learned through the Bible, he is too great to understand; he is infinity. We cannot possibly comprehend his will or being. Therefore, to attempt to determine why he chose to ingrain free will within us is beyond our scope. Perhaps he did not create it for the purpose of creating evil. Free will is something that furthers our finiteness, and differs us from God.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. You mean perhaps having free will is a sort of limitation; so God doesn't have free will (or has a different kind of free will)? Descartes argues that we get freewill because God has it in infinite amount. If he denies that and instead take the position that having free will is a kind of disability, then god doesn't have the objective reality of freewill, he cannot have given us the objective reality of freewill. From where, then, did we get our humanly free will? Maybe it's a kind of deprivation in itself: a lack of infinite knowledge. I wonder why Descartes did not take on this position. Maybe free will just so intuitively seem like a good thing, it seems to give us power and make us feel good about ourselves: we built it! (:P) Saying a perfect, infinite being such as God lacks it seemed to be contradictory to its infinity at Descartes' time.
ReplyDeleteIf God hadn't given humans free will, it doesn't seem like there would be much point in creating us at all. We would be puppets--and really, if everything were perfect, would anything actually be perfect? Though God may be infinite, perhaps taking away our free will was a way of creating something different, something new. If we lacked free will, would we not be merely extensions of God, being infinite ourselves? With nothing to separate us from God, we would simply be God, wouldn't we? In the same way an imaginary friend is merely an extension of a preschooler's consciousness, we wouldn't be real, either. I think the fact of our flawed,finite nature is what makes humanity so terribly beautiful--without error, we wouldn't have purpose.
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