Kwasi Dankwa PHL100 23-Mar-26

Expository Essay 3

“[I]f I got my being from myself, I would not doubt, nor would I desire, nor would I lack
anything at all. For I would have given myself all the perfections of which I have some idea;
in so doing I myself would be God” (AT VII 48, Cress 32)

The French guy gets to this point as he states that he must have been filled with the view of God
by the folks who birthed him or some man with flaws. Even if this being lacks the range, we still
need to know how it gained the thought of a God with no bounds. We can trace this back through
a lot of beings, but in the end, we must deem the fact that only God, and not some being with
bounds, can be the source of the view of God. He goes on to give points as to why he can’t be
God. Next, the French guy weighs the thought of his own being with no God. If he was to make
his own being, he would have made a being with no flaws. The French guy could not have lived
for all this time since it takes so much work to keep up one’s being as it does to make it, and if
the French guy had that much might he would know of it. The folks that gave him life do not
have such might as well. So, the French guy could not have been made by a being with less skill
than God, as this would show why he has such a view of God and, since that state of being joined
as whole is a part of being void of flaws, a lot of beings that are in a state of no flaws could not
have teamed up to make the view of having no flaws in the French guy.
The most tedious part of this assignment was substituting certain words with one-syllable words.
I also had to make sure that the substitution did not necessarily change the meaning of what
Descartes was trying to communicate. My main issue was trying to substitute the word “being”.
In some cases, the word represents God as an entity and in some other cases is used to represent
Descartes parents in which case, I used the word folks. Structuring the last sentence proved to be
difficult as well. I had to find ways to represent the words unity ad perfection with one-syllable
to discuss that the idea of perfection in the Meditator could not have been created by numerous
entities, each of which represents a distinct aspect of perfection, because unity is a component of
perfection.