REPLY TO JACQUES BOUVERESSE

Hidé ISHIGURO

In his extremely interesting paper on Descartes' theory of possibility,

M. Jacques Bouveresse agréés with M. Gueroult that Descartes' theory
of possibilityand impossibility is totally différent from that of Male
branche, Spinoza or Leibniz, but he disagrees with Gueroult's claim
that in Descartes we already find in embryonic form a distinction
between necessity and hypothetical necessity that Leibniz was
absolute
to revive later. Bouveresse develops his arguments by contrasting
Descartes' view with that of Leibniz. Let me briefly recapitulate five
points that Bouveresse raises, and comment on them, and then raise
one main question.
1. First, Bouveresse argues that since logical and mathematical
truths depend in Descartes on the free decrees of God, the status of the
truths of pure mathematics is in fact very close to that of physics. No
eternal truths are true in all possible worlds. But it seems to me that the
Problem is not so simple and that in Descartes' system the status of
mathematics and that of physics remain quite distinct. For according to
him God not only wills that logical and mathematical truths be true,
but also wills that they be necessarily true (Response to Sixth Set of
Objections, VI).
The passage quoted from Descartes' letter to Mesland is very
interesting. For here Descartes says that although God willed that some
truths should be necessary, it is not the case that he necessarily willed
them to be necessary. Thus God could have chosen not to make it the
' ' '
case that □ (2 + 3 = 5)' be true. (I use □ to read 'it is necessary that").
Yet, as I have said, once it is freely chosen by God that 2 + 3 = 5 should
be a necessary truth, the status of the truth is quite différent from that
which Leibniz ascribed to physical truths. It is true that a universal
truth which is expressed by a law of nature also has hypothetical

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312 H. ISHIGURO

necessity in Leibniz's system. Laws of nature are necessary only given

the initial conditions of the universe created by God. Leibniz does not
believe that laws of natures could exist disembodied. («De
ipsa Natura
sive de Vi insita Actionisbusque» ; Gerhardt, IV, p. 507). To create
laws of nature is nothing other than to create things with natures such
that they behave in regulär ways vis à vis other things. It is quite other
wise with the création of eternal truths. As Descartes says in the
Principles, an eternal truth, such as the thruth that something cannot be
made out of nothing, cannot be taken to be a thing or a property of a
thing. It is something which might be called a common notion or a
maxim which has its seat in the mind. (Principles I 49, Pléiade p. 593).
The truths of mathematics and geometry would be as they are, because
of the way God created our mind, even if there were no physical world
to which we could apply them.
2. Bouveresse asserts that the Cartesian notion of modality is purely
epistemic, but I shall argue in due course that it is doubtful whether one
should call it 'epistemic'. It is true that Cartesian modality depends on
how God created our minds. Eternal truths have their seat in the mind.
Numerical truths in their pure form are said not to have any existence
outside of the mind, for instance. But it is misleading to call the
Cartesian notion of modality 'epistemic'. It does not depend on any
individual minds or on any individual's states of knowledge. If a truth
is eternal, then Descartes claimed that this was something of which
God was the author. The necessity of an eternal truth is not generated
by the state of mind of an individual and his conviction. Nor, as
Bouveresse rightly points out, does it depend on historical states of our
knowledge, or on the development of our concepts. In fact Descartes'
position seems closer to Kant's view on the a priori, than it seems to the
so-called epistemic views of Hume. Descartes writes in Meditations V
that even if no triangular figure were to exist outside his consciousness
and never did exist, the triangle that he imagines has a determinate
nature or form or essence, which is unchangeable and eternal. What
this reveals is the foundation of eternal or universal validity of truths in
our mental constitution.
At first glance this Cartesian attitude may seem very différent from
that of Leibniz, for whom eternal truths do not depend on God's choice
or action, and hold in ail possible worlds. Yet, as we will see, the two
views are not quite as différent as they may seem. Descartes' eternal
truths depend on how things are/or us. We may often be mistaken or

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 REPI.Y TO JACQUES BOUVERESSE 313

confused, but by clear and distinct ideas we should be able to grasp

these eternal truths. Leibniz's eternal truths on the other hand depend
on the nature of things. Even so, for him also, all truths expressible by
us are expressible by us in our language. This means that although
Leibniz thinks that these eternal truths are not created by God, the ones
that can even be discussed by us have very much the status of those
created eternal truths of Descartes which have their seat in our minds,
and are more like institutions (as Bouveresse put it) than an artifice
created by God.
3. Bouveresse is certainly right to say that although Descartes and
Spinoza both hold that the understanding and the will are one for God.
the understanding is subjugated to the will in the case of Descartes. If
there are no separate acts of understanding and Willing, how could it
make sense to say that one is subjugated to the other ? Bouveresse
shows that Descartes does assume a distinction between acts of under
standing and acts of Willing. Descartes holds that the true and the good
are known to God only in so far as they are constituted as such by
God's own volition. Descartes feels that if it were otherwise and if ideas
could be assessed independently of God's will, it would be
blasphemous. So in contrast to Leibniz, Descartes
regarded the fact that
God chooses the best simply as a tautology. It would become a contra
diction for Descartes if there are other alternative states of affairs which
could have been created, but were not, and which are not inferior to
the actual state of affairs. God by his own choice in actualizing certain
states of affairs thereby makes them the best alternatives ; and similarly,
by choosing to make certain truths necessary, God understands them to
be so. This controversial doctrine becomes easier to understand if we
see that God's understanding these truths to be necessary amounts to
his understanding that they are necessary given the way he created
human minds.
4. Bouveresse raises a very important point when he explains that
Descartes' view on how we know the consistency of a complex notion
including that of God, is very différent from Leibniz's view. Descartes
holds that anything clearly and distinctly conceived is possible. What is
possible is however not limited to what we humans can conceive and
believe to be possible. This means that among things that we human do
not find possible there may well be things that are possible. Recently
some logicians have argued similarly that since even those propositions
which men had thought impossible, such as the proposition There is a

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314 H. ISHIGURO

method of proving the existence of a true but unprovable truth of

mathematics' have later been found to be possible, our conviction that
what a proposition says is impossible is no guarantee that it is so.
And, Descartes, in a stronger vein, claims that although what we
conceive clearly and distinctly to be eternal truths cannot become false
(because of the immutability of God's volition) they could have been
false. This last point seems at first sight clearly opposed to Leibniz's
view mentioned above in 2. We will return to this problem later since it
relates to the main point I want to raise against Bouveresse.
5. Gueroult saw in Descartes the beginning of the distinction which
Leibniz was to make between absolute necessity and hypothetical
necessity. According to Gueroult there were limits to even what
Descartes' God coulddo. And what God cannot help but do would
correspond to Leibniz's absolute necessity. Descartes cannot ascribe to
God acts which limit his omnipotence : we can no more conceive God
to be a deceiver than we can conceive him not to exist. Bouveresse
however is sceptical about Gueroult's way of reading Descartes, and
objects to two of Gueroult's examples of what Descartes' God cannot
bring about because his bringing them about would limit his omni
potence : these examples are the création of atoms and of vacuum.
Bouveresse says that neither are examples which Descartes thought to
indicate the limitation of God's omnipotence. Descartes believed that
God did not create atoms. But even if he had made atoms this would
not have gone against his capacity of infinité division. One can both
have such a capacity, and yet choose to make things in indivisible units.
I completely agree with Bouveresse here. It is perfectly possible to
envisage God having created atoms without setting any limit to what
he can do.
What Bouverese says about Gueroult's other example, the
impossibility of Descartes' God creating a vacuum seems less secure.
Descartes wrote that to imagine all matter removed from the interior of
a vase without removing extension implies a contradiction. Not only is
extension the essence of matter, extension is only given status as an
attribute of matter. (We would disagree with Descartes' thoughts, but
here we are following the conséquence of his thoughts). So vacuum, or
extended space without matter, is something even God cannot create.
Does this not put limits to what even God can do as Gueroult has said ?
Does this not point to an absolute necessity ? Bouveresse says however
that this points to an internai contradiction and not an impossibility in

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 REPI.Y TO JACQUES BOUVERESSE 315

itself. (He therefore writes that it is an impossibility that could have

been created). What is the différence between the two ? If talk of
vacuum implies a contradiction in our conception as Descartes
believed, than our talk of vacuum inside the vase does not express a
possible state of affairs that could be instantiated. It is not merely
"répugnant to our conception" as Descartes believed. It would be
impossible for an omnipotent God to realize 'it', simply because we
have not succeeded in specifying any it, i.e. any state of affairs to be
realized. Bouveresse is wrong to suggest otherwise. I do not understand
what it is to be an 'impossibility in itself ; but surely, if a purported
concept is internally contradictory, then it is of the nature of the
purported concept itself that it is impossible to be instantiated. This is
very much like the form of argument which Leibniz uses against
Clarke's defence of Newtonian absolute space time. When Clarke says
that God could have moved the whole universe in a straight line in
space without changing any relational positions of things in it, Leibniz
tries to show that since no content has been given to the notion of
change of position of the whole universe, there is nothing specified as
an act that God could do. It is, Leibniz says, 'agendo nihil agere and
therefore it is a 'chimerical supposition'. We have not coherently
described any change in the state-of-affairs of the whole universe that
God bring about.
6. Gueroult then is in one sense right to say that we see already
in Descartes a germ of the Leibnizian distinction between absolute
necessity and hypothetical necessity. Although the distinction arises not
from any inappropriateness of ascribing to God an act that limits his
omnipotence, as Gueroult indicates, but from the expressive powers of
our language (from which Descartes can no more escape than we can)
and from the way we understand négation. On the one hand there is
absolute modality even in Descartes. The impossibility of actualising
something that falls under a contradictory concept is absolute. I
disagree with Bouveresse when he writes that it is true that Descartes'
God could have made it possible (and even true) that 2 + 2 be 5. And I
do not agree that it is only once God has freely created the impossibility
of 2 + 2 being 5, that it is beyond him to make it possible that 2 + 2 be
5. It is not only the necessity of 2 + 2 = 4 and the other arithmetical
truths that depends on God's free création of our mind. The very
concepts of natural number and of addition depend on God's having
made our mind in the way he did. God cannot have created minds to

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316 H. ISHIGURO

'
have the very same concepts of '2' *5" + and at the same time made it
true that 2 + 2 = 5. Thus it is absolutely impossible for God to have
made 2 + 2 = 5 true, or to have made a contradiction true.
In contrast to this, the necessity of the truth of 2 + 2 = 4 is
conditional (or if we anachronistically use Leibnizian
terminology, it is
hypothetical), because it is necessary only given that God freely chose
to make our mind in a certain way. Thus, far from saying that it could
have been possible for God to have made 2 + 2 = 5, Descartes says in
the letter to Arnauld (29 July 1648) quoted by Gueroult and Bouveres
se, 'Je n'oserais même pas dire que Dieu ne peut pas faire qu'une mon
tagne soit sans vllée, ou qu'un et deux ne fassent pas trois : je dis
seulement qu'il m'a donné un esprit de telle nature que je ne saurais
concevoir une montagne sans vallée ou une somme d'un et deux qui ne
serait pas trois'.
Here Descartes is saying that what is a priori for us could have been
otherwise. If there had been created no minds that counted or did
arithmetic then 1+2 = 3 need not have been a truth. It is thus possible
that it not be the case that 1 + 2 = 3. Thus Descartes clearly départs
from traditional theological views, as well as from the view that
Leibniz was to articulate, that such truths of reason are independent of,
and logically précédé, God's création, governing God's thoughts of
possibles. If mathematical truths can be identified only with reference
to a system of mathematical calculations, then in a created world which
lacked such a system one cannot meaningfully identify a mathematical
truth. But this is not to say e.g. that it is possible for it to have been true
that 1 + 2 = 4. Descartes says that he does not even dare to say that God
could not have made 1 + 2 not be 3. We cannot assess the status of the
négation of an eternal truth, or the négation of any truth that is
conditional on how our mind is constituted. In his Response to the
Second Set of Objections to the Méditations Descartes insists that in
describing God's nature he has not supposed anything that is répugnant
to thought or to human concepts. If not, he goes on to say, "vous
feignez quelque autre possibilité, de la part de l'objet même, laquelle, si
elle ne convient avec la précédente [la pensée humaine], ne peut jamais
être connue par l'entendement humain ..." (Pléiade pp. 383-384). The
point Descartes is making then is the same as the point that Bouveresse
earlier pointed to, namely that what is necessary is not necessarily
necessary. It is this that makes ail Cartesian necessity in some respect
resemble Leibniz's hypothetical necessity, that is to say dépendent on

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 REPI.Y TO JACQUES BOUVERESSE 317

God's choice, i.e. on the facts of création. Necessity is then a

conditional modality. One of the examples that Descartes uses in the
above mentioned letter to Mesland (2 May 1644, Pleiade p. 1167) is
especially interesting for us here. It is the limitation of our own
intelligence, Descartes writes, that makes it difficult for us to conceive
that it was open to God to make the three angles of a triangle not add
up to two right angles. We know to-day that the concept of a triangle is
not limited to a Euclideangeometry, and that depending on the
geometry the angles of a triangle could add up to more or less than two
right angles. Indeed we can see how the above proposition would be
true in a Euclidean geometry and false in général in Riemannian
geometry. Thus, as Descartes writes, we learn that even two [apparent]
contradictories could coexist (e.g. when each belong to différent
geometries). We learn that each of the apparent contradictories were
conditional truths, dépendent on distinct différent antecedent condi
tions.
We are used to defining possibility in terms of necessity and négation
and vice versa, (viz. 0 ρ as ~ □ ~ p, and □ ρ as ~ 0 ~ p.). Thus the
asymmetry that I have suggested between the absolute character of
impossibility and the hypothetical character of necessity may appear
counterintuitive. If ρ is contradictory and the impossibility of ρ is
absolute, wouldn't the necessity of not ρ be absolute also ? For
example, for all that I have said, it is surely absolutely necessary that
not 2 + 3 = 4. Yes. The necessity which qualifies the négation of a
conceptual impossibility must be absolute. Thus there is a proposition ρ
of the form ~ q (where q is a contradiction) which is absolutely
necessary. In order for me to say then, that a necessary (eternal) truth
for Descartes is only hypothetically necessary, I must restrict the truths
to ones in the expression of which no négation occurs. A positive
eternal truth ρ is actually expressible by the form "if God made human
mind in the way he did then □ p, and God made human mind in the
way he did", and is not absolute.
Similar restrictions must be made for impossibility, for if the
impossible thought is one in the expression of which a négation occurs,
such as 2 + 3 = 5', then, as we have seen, this impossibility is not
1~ '
absolute, 0 ~ 2 + 3 = 5' is in effect the same as □ 2 + 3 = 5' and if
expressed fully, is of the form "If God made human minds in the way
he did, then it is impossible that 2 + 3 = 5 is not the case, and God made
human minds in this way". We can imagine that if God had created

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318 H. 1SHIGURO

our mind differently so that we did not think in the way we do, what
we now grasp as eternal truths would no longer be the case. On the
other hand, we cannot imagine that those contradictions not expressed
as négations of eternal truths might have been true whatever God
might have done. This is because they do not specify any possible state
of-affaires at all. If nothing has been specified by the expression ρ then
the impossibility of ρ being the case is absolute.
To conclude then, I would like to say that even Descartes cannot
escape the distinction between modalities that are absolute and those
that are conditional. I am suggesting that Descartes was quite aware of
this distinction which shows itself in the carrefully chosen examples of
what God could do that is given by him, in which the négation of a
necessary truth is never confused with the affirmation of a contra
diction. Such a position présupposés treating négation not as a content
of a proposition but as an opération carried out on it. Descartes' view
expressed in the Fourth Meditation where he treats negating as on a par
with affirming implies this. The only passage where Descartes
describes God as doing more than allowing an eternal truth not to have
obtained, is in the letter to Mesland mentioned earlier, where Descartes
uses a double négation and writes that God was at liberty to have made
it not be true - in général - that contradictories are incompatible. I find
this passage difficult, but am reminded that God not ordained the truths
of number in the way he did, there could have been no contradictions
governing numbers either. Descartes still sees to be saying that God is
not bound by the conditions which bind us in making déniais of contra
dictions. But to acknowledge the limit of our intelligence, and to refrain
from imposing our limitation onto God, is not to imagine him
instantiating a contradiction.

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