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Rene Descartes Evil Demon Analysis

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God: absolute, limitless, and perfect. It is a wonder to many if such an omnipotent being truly exists, or if it is nothing more than a fictitious concept. However, renowned French philosopher(and mathematician) René Descartes is confident in his belief that God exists. Descartes arrived to his conclusion on the premise of his “causal principle”, based on the twin concepts of intrinsic and representative reality; intrinsic reality being the scale of “perfection” a thing that exists has (ie: a rock is less “perfect” than God), and representative reality being the scale of symbolism of said object in existence (ie: an idea of a rock, and idea of God.) Given the proposed forms of reality, Descartes claims that “the total cause of something must …show more content…
If Descartes is capable of forming that idea on his own accord, it would mean that he would be of a greater intrinsic reality than the Evil Demon (on an arbitrary scale.) I believe that the Evil Demon, if he truly exists, would be placed on a lower intrinsic reality than Descartes himself. While the Evil Demon may possibly be more capable than a standard human being, with the ability to “[do] all he can to deceive me…” (First Meditation, p.3.), he is not capable of making Descartes doubt a certain belief; the Evil Demon could “never bring it about that [Descartes is] nothing while [he thinks he is] something.” (Second Meditation, p.4.) I believe that from the readings, the Evil Demon’s sole purpose is to create doubt in one’s (Descartes’) mind. Yet, he is unable to fully perform his duties as a deceiver, meaning that the Evil Demon is imperfect. Furthermore, it is already implied in Descartes’ meditations that the Evil Demon is not perfect; Descartes states “that all fraud and deception depend on some defect.” (Third Meditation, p.17.) That is to say that the Evil Demon thrives on imperfections. In spite of the fact that the Evil Demon is powerful enough to be an influence on Descartes thinking, this does not necessarily place the Evil Demon any higher than Descarte on the arbitrary scale of intrinsic reality; humans can also deceive one another. With this in mind, I think it is reasonable to claim that the Evil Demon may be placed lower than Descartes on the aforementioned scale due to the fact that he is an imperfect being that can be considered inferior due to inability to fulfill its (implied) purpose completely fooling Descartes. For the sake of my argument,

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