Theological Origins of Modernity

194 chapter six
are dubitable. Science is thus impossible, and Descartes is forced to wonder
whether he himself is anything at all. As he puts it at the beginning of the
Second Meditation, “I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing
in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow
that I too do not exist?”
As rigorous and radical as this skepticism seems to be, many have
doubted its sincerity. Th is question is bound up with the larger question
of the sincerity of the Meditations and Descartes’ metaphysics as a whole.
One group of interpreters, including Louis Laird, Charles Adam, Etienne
Gilson, Lucien Laberthonnière, Jean Laport, Hiram Caton, Richard Kennington,
and Stanley Rosen, believes that Descartes was above all else a
scientist and that he turned to metaphysics only in order to make his science
palatable to believers. From their point of view, his hyperbolic doubt
is thoroughly insincere. 92 For them, Descartes never truly doubts the veracity
of mathematics. A second group, which includes Alfred Espinas,
Alexander Koyré, Henri Gouhier, and Jean-Luc Marion, sees Descartes
sincerely troubled by skepticism but rejecting it in favor of a genuine religious
life. For them the metaphysics of the Meditations is not merely a sop
for believers but the pinnacle of Cartesian thought. Th ere is solid support
for both views. Descartes, for example, clearly tries to shore up the metaphysical
foundations of his science, something he believed Galileo, to his
great detriment, had failed to do. 93
While it is certainly true that this was one motive behind Descartes’
hyperbolic skepticism, it is hard to believe that it is the only one, or that he
was only attempting to defend himself against potential enemies among
believers. In the fi rst instance we know that at least one of the reasons for
writing the Meditations was to answer questions that had been posed to
him by a variety of thinkers, at least some of whom (for example, Th omas
Hobbes) could hardly be accused of excessive piety. Descartes’ concern
with metaphysical and theological questions also clearly antedates the
Meditations. For example, there are already metaphysical questions at play
in the Little Notebook. Moreover, the challenge to the certainty of his science
that so concerns him, as we noted above, does not require the actual
existence of an omnipotent God but only his mere possibility. Descartes
thus does not have to believe in such a God or even in any God at all to
entertain such doubts. He only has to be unable to prove such a God’s nonexistence.
In a certain sense then even if his metaphysics is constructed
only to answer wild and hyperbolic doubts, those doubts are quite real and
resolving them therefore quite important for Descartes’ enterprise. Unless
Descartes can eliminate them, his science can never be apodictic. Th us,
Descartes is not insincere when he writes to Mersenne on April 15, 1630: “I