The role of God in Augustinian and Cartesian Epistemology

Subject Areas : Epistemological researches

Sayyed Mostafa Shahraeeni ¹ (گروه فلسفه، دانشگاه تبریز)
Maryam Ghazi ² (کارشناسی ارشد فلسفه، دانشگاه شهید بهشتی)

Received: 2015-11-01 Accepted : 2016-02-14 Published : 2016-03-20

Keywords: Illumination, god, knowledge, reason, Intuition,

Abstract :

Cartesian philosophical system, God has a pivotal role. To secure the credibility of all knowledge the Cartesian meditators acquire, it is necessary to prove there is non-deceiving God. Existence of such God not through belief but via must be proved by intuition that is a priori. Prior to Descartes, thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, anand Thomas Aquinas, among others, have tried to prove God via philosophical arguments. And Descartes’ contemporaries would hint critically to the effect of Augustine in his thought, especially with regard to God and His role in human knowledge. Setting aside the sense-data to meditate on God by Augustine has inspired Descartes in discovering his own first principles of philosophy without getting help from senses. For Augustine, the intelligible universals, i. e. the Platonic Ideas, are the basis of real world by which we became aware in the light of the divine illumination, while the basis of real world, for Descartes, is but the intelligible particulars, i. e. the mathematical objects. The former are placed within Gods’ Mind, while the latter within the human mind. While the intelligible Universals can not be grasped by Cartesian intuition, the intelligible particulars are only things can readily be intuited “here and now” (using the Hegelian terminology). By studying critically the theory of Illumination and that of Intuition, respectively, in Augustine and Descartes, the present paper tries to show the role of God and that of man in knowledge.

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