Fifth Meditation essays

Fifth Meditation essays In the Fifth Meditation by Rene Descartes, he makes a case for the existence of God. He goes on to give reason to prove his argument that to exist is to believe in God for with out God we would not exist. Descartes gives the analogy of a mountain and a valley, pointing out that if a person believes that a mountain exists they cannot deny the existence of a valley, as stated in this quote: From the fact that I cannot think of a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that a mountain and valley exist anywhere, but simply that a mountain and a valley, whether they exist or not, are mutually inseparable. Descartes states the argument here, But from the fact that I cannot think of God except as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from God, and hence that he really exists. Then he goes on to explain his reasons for the existence of God, It is not that my thought makes it so, or imposes any necessity of the thing itself, namely the existence of God, which determines my thinking in this respect. For I am not free to think of God without existence. He is saying, without God he would not exist, and if he does not exist he cannot think therefore God must exist if he has the ability to think. He supports his arguments further, as we see here, Descartes gives his conclusion, it states, I have perceived that God exists, and at the same time I have understood that everything else depends on him, and that he is no deceiver; and I have drawn the conclusion that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive is of necessity true. He is saying, first of all, that everything that he unmistakably understands is true; he clearly understands God, therefore God exists! To support his conclusion he gives the argument, even if I am no longer attending to the arguments which led me to judge that this is true, as long as I remember that I clearly a ...