Essay: The fourth Meditation and the rule pertaining judgment

Sample Essay

Words 1,876

Thus far, it has been established that nature only leads us to sensory judgments and to analyze whether they are truly right or wrong we must use our intellect. God is perfect and he has created the human being who is not perfect and creates errors. God should be able to create things that do not have room to create error because they are created by him. How could God, the most perfect, create something that is not perfect? Because if he did, then he wouldn’t be God and us not humans.

We are creatures who are prone to errors and that is not a reflection of the imperfection of God but of the complexities of why he has created us that way. The perfection lies in the entire universe as a whole and how each piece fits in perfectly. We are simply the pieces of a puzzle that only God knows how to put together. (Descartes, 2002, Meditation 4)

Although human beings are imperfect God has blessed us with free will. Free will brings us closer to God than anything else. There is nothing else without limits than the idea of free will. To do something or not to do something has been given to us in its perfect form. The only difference is that God when practicing his will has knowledge of everything. Human beings on the other hand have only limited knowledge. Therefore, while practicing free will human beings make many errors. (Descartes, 2002, Meditation 4) If we withhold judgment on any occasion where we do not know the entire truth we will never be able to make any decisions because we will never know the entire truth. Only God can know the entire truth therefore he is the best judge of us all. But in life we have to make decisions and practice our free will because it is a gift from God. In practicing our goodwill we must make the best decisions by trying to know all that is possible to know. We should sense and use our intellect in the best possible way to practice our free will in the best possible way and leave the rest to God since he is the best judge. Even if we err, God will know of all our intentions and be the best judge.

Descartes proves to us that we exist because we think. He helps us unlearn and rebuilds the foundations of all our thoughts and ideas as we have them today. He proves that nature is our teacher because it tells us what is right and wrong. Our intellect, understanding, and free will help us act upon what we have learnt through nature and obtained through our senses. We then make judgments in life even though we don’t have complete knowledge of anything and everything is doubtful and believe that God will pass the best judgment because God is the all knowing.

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