Desgabets on the Creation of Eternal Truths

For many philosophers Robert Desgabets's¹ doctrine of the creation of eternal truths will be of interest for the light it throws on Descartes's doctrine of the creation of eternal truths, a doctrine receiving considerable scrutiny the past several years.² Desgabets was one of the few followers of Descartes to defend this doctrine; and he not only defended it, he made it central to his philosophy.³ He spoke of the doctrine as "being of the greatest importance and having great and incomparable consequences;" and he referred to it as being "so lofty, so fine, so saintly and so worthy of God" that Descartes ought never to have departed from it (RD 208, 209).⁴ But, Desgabets thinks, Descartes sometimes forgets his own doctrine and says things incompatible with it. More important, he thinks, Descartes fails to realize how important the doctrine is and fails to extend it to its full consequences. In Desgabets we get from a Cartesian and a near contemporary of Descartes: an interpretation of Descartes's doctrine of the creation of eternal truths, a criticism of Descartes's version of the doctrine purportedly based on Descartes's own principles, and the development of the supposedly correct version of the doctrine that Descartes would have advocated had he been truer to his own principles.⁵

Recent discussions have brought to the fore several controversies about how to interpret Descartes's comments on the creation of the eternal truths. I piece together both where Desgabets's own doctrine stands on these controversies and how Desgabets interprets Descartes's position on them, and I note some consequences that Desgabets draws from the doctrine that are clearly opposed to Descartes's explicit views.

1. Desgabets's Interpretation of Descartes

In Critique de la Critique, Desgabets first states Descartes's doctrine of the creation of eternal truths as follows:

That the Whole is greater than its part, that the circle has its diameters equal, that man is a rational animal, that two & two are four, etc., are not such of themselves but . . . God has made & established them with a sovereign indifference being able not to establish them so that what is now true & necessary should not be so if he had not established it.

(CdC 73)

This states the core of Descartes's doctrine of the creation of eternal truths, and I doubt that anyone would deny that it is in Descartes.

In the next paragraph, however, Desgabets both expands and limits the scope of what he takes to be Descartes's doctrine:

Descartes claims that there is neither nature, nor essence, nor reality, nor conceivability, nor truth among created things that God has not made or established with a sovereign indifference, so that before we conceive that he has freely resolved to make & establish things & truths there is nothing conceivable except his unique Essence. And we must not listen to those who say that before his free decrees & before his indifferent action he already necessarily saw natures & determined essences that had by themselves a real possibility that they did not owe to him & that distinguished them from chimeras & beings of reason.

(CdC 74)

Whether or not Descartes subscribes to the views expressed in this paragraph, they clearly go beyond the core doctrine of the creation of eternal truths expressed in the previous paragraph.

First, Desgabets expands Descartes's doctrine to include opposition not just to the view that the eternal truths exist independently of God, but also to the view that God creates by giving actual existence to pre-existent essences that determine what is possible. Desgabets believes that for Descartes God does not create by contemplating pre-existent essences, to some of which he gives actual existence. Rather, God creates the essences themselves (cf. RD 32-33, 232). Moreover, Desgabets believes that for Descartes God gives existence not just to essences but also to possibilities. God does not confront...