René Descartes Ontological Argument

René Descartes, the famous French philosopher and brilliant 17th century Scholar is credited worldwide as the founder of modern western philosophy for his works in the fields of Ontology – a branch of metaphysics regarding the ‘nature of being’- and Epistemology – the study of knowledge. What set him apart from the ancient philosophers was his avoidance of the scholastic traditions to write only in Latin (the language that only highly educated people were trained in) and instead wrote in French so that even the common population could read and reflect on his works, as well as his refusal to accept the vast majority of Aristotelian views into his philosophy. On top of this his anti-elitist views – the idea that truth is not exclusive to scholars …show more content…
Thus, a being more perfect than himself must exist to create him, and to put the innate idea of a perfect being into his intellect. Equally, the existence of God is proven through the Ontological Argument: God’s existence cannot logically be thought of as separate from his very essence. To do so would be to think of God as less than perfect because of a being lacking existence is not perfect. Therefor in order for God to be the perfection that the Mediator imagines, he must exist. Finally, his existence is attempted to be proven through Descartes use of the Cartesian circle: (1) We can only be sure and clear on our perceptions if God exists and (2) we can only know that God exists because our perception of his idea is so clear. This argument has been widely criticised as being circular reasoning. As a result, Descartes used self-evident knowledge (also known as temporary truths) to escape the circular arguments at least while one is focusing on the subject at