A Metaphysical Element in Descartes and the First Cartesians: Non-Univocal Predication

ABSTRACT

Descartes’ physics is dependent on his metaphysics, which is to say, on knowledge of the nature of God and of the human soul. This is clear throughout Descartes’ work, but it is especially so in the Principles of Philosophy, where Descartes devotes the first part of the treatise to the Principles of Human Knowledge, including God, the soul, and such common notions as substance (that is, the elements of metaphysics he initially discussed in Discourse on Method Part IV and elaborated in the Meditations). But here it is also possible to see a problem with those foundations. Descartes judges that what is said of substance is not said “univocally” of God and of his creatures. However, the negation of univocal predication is ambiguous as to whether it entails analogical or equivocal predication. Descartes is normally considered as holding for analogy, yet with the evidence for this construal being weak (and the Meditations not being definitive in this respect), I investigate how some of the first Cartesians, Antoine Le Grand and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, among others, interpreted Descartes’ view, to see whether the scales might be tipped in favor of analogy or of equivocation.

KEYWORDS:

• Descartes
• first Cartesians
• analogy
• equivocity
• substance
• univocity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, I, 144. Hereafter all references cited in the text are to the second edition of the Oeuvres, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, abbreviated as AT, followed by volume and page number.

2. For more on the genesis of the Principles from a commentary on Eustachius’ Summa to a stand-alone treatise, see Ariew, Descartes Among the Scholastics, chap. 1.

3. The French version of the text modifies “univocally” with “as they say in the Schools” (AT IX, 108).

4. See Ashworth, “Medieval Theories of Analogy,” or Ashworth, “Signification and Modes of Signifying,” 39–67.

5. See Boulnois, Métaphysiques rebelles.

6. Goudin, juxta inconcussa tutissimaque Divi Thomae dogmata, 200.

7. Goudin, Philosophia, Metaphysica, 203.

8. Ibid., 207.

9. Ibid., 200.

10. Scotus, Opera Omnia, Opus Oxoniense I, dist. 3, quaest. 3.

11. Aquinas Summa Theologiae, I, quaest. 84, art. 7.

12. Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, II, dist. 3, quaest. 2.

13. Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, disp. 28, sec. 3, no. 2.

14. Ibid., disp. 2, sec. 3, no. 7.

15. Ibid., disp. 2, sec. 1, no. 9.

16. Eustachius, Summa Philosophiae Quadripartita, Metaphysica, Praef. quaest, 2, 1.

17. Ibid., Pars II, disp. II, quaest. 4, 24.

18. Ibid., Pars IV, disp. III, quaest. 1, 71.

19. Ibid., Pars IV, disp. III, quaest. 2, 73–74.

20. Ibid., Pars IV, disp. III, 15.

21. Scipion Dupleix, La métaphysique, 745.

22. Dupleix, La métaphysique, 765. See also 767.

23. Ibid., 706.

24. Bouju, Corps de toute la philosophie, 912.

25. Ceriziers, Le philosophe français, III, 6–7.

26. “Being is analogous by attribution to God and his creation, for who does not see that God is first and of himself and creatures dependent of his power and his goodness. … And since being in God is the source and principle of all other beings, which are in some way only copies of this primitive and original being, we must conclude that being belongs to other beings by an analogy of proportion.” De Ceriziers, Le philosophe français, III, 6–7.

27. “ratio entis in Deo est perfectissima, in creatura vero non sic: ex quibus pariter sequitur univocationem entis esse analogam.” Claude Frassen, Philosophia Academica, Pars II, 17–18.

28. See, for example, Beyssade, “La théorie cartésienne de la substance,” 51–72; Marion holds the contrary: Questions cartésiennes II, 221–82, and elsewhere.

29. There is also the discussion of God as causa sui, in Replies IV, where Descartes talks about “using the analogy of an efficient cause in order to explain those things that pertain to a formal cause, that is, to the very essence of God” (AT VII, 241). The full context talks about “all these modes of speaking, which are taken from the analogy of an efficient cause, are particularly necessary in order to direct the light of nature in such wise that we pay particular attention to them.” But using efficient causation analogically for formal causation in God does not say very much about an analogy holding between God and creatures; the analogy between efficient causation and formal causation does not tell us that formal causation is itself appropriate, whether univocally, equivocally, or analogically for God’s activity.

30. Descartes continues, however, by asserting that the faculty of willing is incomparably greater in God than in him. Schmaltz argues that because of the creation of the eternal truths, there is a dis-analogy between God’s will and that of creatures, that the difference is more a difference of kind than of degree. In this he attempts to support a thesis of Jean-Luc Marion’s “that Descartes’ views on the eternal truths lead to ‘the disappearance of analogy,’ and especially to the disappearance of the scholastic view that there is an analogical resemblance between God’s mind and our own.” Schmaltz, “The Disappearance of Analogy,” 86.

31. The context of the sentence occurs when Descartes denies that we can form the idea of God “de la consideration des choses corporelles.” Descartes says: “Qu’elle [l’idée de Dieu] peut être formée de la considération des choses corporelles, cela ne me semble pas plus vraisemblable que si vous disiez que nous n’avons aucune faculté pour ouïr, mais que, par la seule vue des couleurs, nous parvenons à la connaissance des sons.”

32. Spinoza, Complete Works, Ethics I, Prop. 17, scholium. The statement is hypothetical; still, Spinoza’s proof concludes that “God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived as constituting the divine essence, differs from man’s intellect both in respect of essence and existence, and cannot agree with it in any respect other than name—which is what I sought to prove. In the matter of will, the proof is the same, as anyone can readily see.”

33. Spinoza, Complete Works, 207.

34. Jacques Du Roure, the first Cartesian to offer a complete Cartesian philosophy, maintains the ambiguity and adds little to the debate. He simply says that, because substance is properly suitable only for God, “in order to extend substance to creatures one can say that substance, whether spiritual or not, does not depend on any created thing.” La Philosophie divisée en toutes ses parties, vol. I, 219–20.

35. Le Grand, Entire Body of Philosophy, 17 col. b.

36. Ibid. These are standard examples of analogical predication.

37. Ibid., 18 col. a. Again, these are standard examples of equivocal predication.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Following Descartes, Principles I, art. 52.

41. Le Grand, Entire Body of Philosophy, 18 col. a. “S. Denys” in Le Grand’s text refers to Pseudo-Dionysius and his work On the Divine Names.

42. Régis, Cours entier de philosophie, 88.

43. Ibid., 89.

44. Ibid., 92. According to Tad Schmaltz, “By the time of the Use of Reason, Régis settled on the view that since God is related only in an equivocal manner to created substances, He is not properly taken to be a substance.” Schmaltz, “The Disappearance of Analogy,” 108.

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Notes on contributors

Roger Ariew

Roger Ariew is Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida, USA, and the author of numerous books, editions, and translations, including Descartes and the First Cartesians (Oxford, 2014), Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Cornell, 1999), with a second expanded edition, and Descartes among the Scholastics (Brill, 2011). He is currently working on The Correspondence of René Descartes: New Critical Edition and Complete English Translation, with Erik-Jan Bos and Theo Verbeek, 8 vols. (Oxford University Press).