Descartes Devil Demon Analysis

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The Existence of God and the Devil Demon

In Descartes’s piece of philosophical writing, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, he argues that he has the idea of God, therefore God exists. In my paper, I will contend that the same argument will not apply for the possibility of the Evil Demon.
In the beginning of the Meditations, Descartes claims if he want to establish the stability of anything in science, he must start over from the foundations. He set the standard for knowledge, which must be indubitable and certain. Descartes comes to the model of the cunning, malicious, powerful Evil Demon (p.3), who tries his best to deceive Descartes’s experiences by applying the method of doubt. On the contrary, Descartes also has the idea of God, who …show more content…
In proving the existence of God, Descartes make a claim that something can’t arise from nothing, and can’t arise from what is less perfect (p.12). Descartes brings out two concepts of reality. The “intrinsic reality” is a degree of perfection where the God has the highest scale because of his unlimited and supreme power. The “representative reality” is the representational contents of “intrinsic reality”. For example: the Idea of God represents God, the name represents each person. Since God is eternal, infinite, unchangeable, omniscient, and omnipotent (p.12), the idea of him is in the highest scale of representative reality. God and the idea of God have an extreme position in both intrinsic and representative scale respectively. Every idea has a same level of intrinsic reality, so God holds more level of intrinsic reality than Descartes’s idea of God. Although, Descartes, himself is not wholly perfect (p.14), he has an idea of God that lies in the extreme position in the representational scale. Given that the Idea of God, which has an absolutely unlimited content, could not have originated from Descartes, who is finite and imperfect. The source of the idea must be perfect and infinite itself. Descartes is less perfect than God. Consequently, the idea of God in Descartes is innate and it could only origin from God. It is now certain that God does …show more content…
Descartes states that if God wanted to, he can easily deceive Descartes, but he would not because with his mighty and perfections, he is a non-deceiver and the leads Descartes to the truth. The Evil Demon, who is also extremely powerful, but not omnibenevolent. He is a deceiver. By applying the same intrinsic reality scale, I think that the Evil Demon has more intrinsic reality than Descartes, but less than God. Descartes also has the idea of the Demon, but it must not be internally produced by Descartes because he has less the intrinsic idea. It could not be acquired either because Descartes comes to the Evil Demon while establishing the certain. So, the idea of the Evil Demon is innate in Descartes, and it might me put by the God or the Evil Demon. If the supreme God exists, he would not anyone be deceived because of his perfection. While the Evil is trying to confuse views, God leads Descartes to true knowledge. If he let the Demon do so, therefore God must be a deceiver too. God is imperfect, which differs from his utter perfection. Therefore, the Evil Demon can not

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