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Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-MoreControversy about the Universe as Indenite

Laura Benitez

Grobet

Dialogue / Volume 49 / Special Issue 04 / December 2010, pp 517 - 526DOI: 10.1017/S0012217310000661, Published online: 04 March 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0012217310000661

How to cite this article:Laura Benitez Grobet (2010). Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-MoreControversy about the Universe as Indenite. Dialogue, 49, pp 517-526doi:10.1017/S0012217310000661

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Dialogue 49 (2010), 517– 526 .© Canadian Philosophical Association /Association canadienne de philosophie 2011doi:10.1017/S0012217310000661

Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-More Controversy about the Universe as Indefi nite

LAURA BENITEZ GROBET Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

RÉSUMÉ : À travers l’étude de la correspondance philosophique entre Descartes et Henry More, je souhaiterais montrer que les thèmes centraux en sont la considération de la nature de l’espace et le statut de l’infi ni, bien que la polémique aborde également le problème ontologique de la distinction entre l’étendue et la pensée, et les questions physiques de la négation du vide et de l’atomisme. More rejette l’hypothèse cartésienne d’un univers indéfi ni, qu’il considère être une manière détournée de postuler le carac-tère infi ni de l’univers, ce qui revient à attribuer tout autant l’infi nité à la matière qu’à Dieu, d’où le fait que Descartes soit un matérialiste selon Henry More.

ABSTRACT: The correspondence between Descartes and More covers a diversity of each author’s fundamental philosophical views. Their polemics range over not only general aspects of physics, but also extend to cosmology and theology. On the one hand, we have God as infi nite and His creation as indefi nite for Descartes; on the other hand, God as extant, ubiquitous and omnipresent, and His creation as limited for Henry More. It is this last problem that constitutes the focus of my essay, strictly speaking – the problem of the universe as infi nite.

1. The Context of the Controversy Adrien Baillet comments in his Descartes biography La vie de M. Descartes that “Descartes goes from Leyden to Amsterdam on September 6 [1648]. … Three days after he goes to enclose himself at Egmond in Nord-Holland, as a

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quiet place against the problems that he had already seen like an introduction to his travel.” 1

Descartes left Paris because he wanted to distance himself from political and religious controversies. The last controversy with Roverbal had been very complicated, even though they remained on friendly terms. From September to November 1648 Descartes corresponded with the Abbot Picot, who was in charge of Descartes’s affairs in Paris, and with Elizabeth of Boehme. In December 1648, Henry More (Henricus Morus Anglus) sent Descartes a fi rst letter that underlined the aspects of Cartesian philosophy that More considered diffi cult to understand. In appearance, he adopted the character of a disciple who was looking for a better explanation, but in subsequent letters he made it clear that he had many disagreements with Cartesian philosophy. Baillet considers that in 1648 More deceived Descartes by making him believe that all his [Descartes’s] philosophical proposals actually were close to what More thought, because the contents of the later letters reveal a very strong opposition to Cartesian philosophy and, above all, show that Henry More was far from being a Cartesian.

We fi nd ourselves, historically speaking, in a time of confl ict where accusa-tions of atheism were very frequent. Descartes and More differ in ontological principles as well as in physical and cosmological ones, even though the two of them were dualists because they both accepted the separation between material and spiritual entities. Their agreement isn’t strong because they come from very different traditions: Neoplatonism in the case of More and Aristotelian-Scholasticism in the case of Descartes.

Nevertheless, it is very important to point out that Descartes and More, in different ways, reject their own traditions when they change the locus of some important concepts. Such is the case when Descartes takes the concept of the infi nite from the theological area and introduces it into the natural world. As for Henry More, he takes the concept of extension from geometry and gives it cosmological and theological meanings.

2. The Descartes-More Controversy: Some General Aspects The correspondence between Descartes and More that took place between 1648 and 1649 shows the authors’ diverse fundamental philosophical proposals.

In the fi rst place, the Cartesian defi nition of matter as extension gives rise to controversy because More considers that the defi nition of “material body” has to be given with respect to sensible perception; that is to say, as a tangible and impenetrable being. Furthermore, More rejects the Cartesian corpuscularism because he advocates atomism, which means that he is against the plenum proposed by Descartes, instead favouring a vacuum.

The polemic gets complicated because it not only is about general aspects of physics but also includes some ontological principles. More is against a radical dualism and in favour of “extensionism” because he asserts that each and every

The Descartes-More Controversy 519

being (material or spiritual) has the property of extension. Likewise he rejects the general mathematical principle of infi nite divisibility because he adheres to atomism, where the limit of division is given by the atom. The controversy also extends to cosmology and theology. On the one hand we have Descartes, who sees God as infi nite and His creation as indefi nite; on the other we have Henry More, who sees God as extent, ubiquitous, and omnipresent and His creation as a limited universe.

Strictly speaking, it is this last problem that constitutes the focus of my essay: the problem of the universe as infi nite. To do this, I take the suggestion of Edward Grant that carefully analyzing the meaning of the division between inner and outer space enables us to have a better comprehension not only of the controversy itself but also of the antecedents that give rise to it. Edward Grant tells us that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, diverse authors “that reject all kind of external space could easily adapt their ideas about extent substance to the concept of inner space.” 2 Among those authors, Grant refers to Francisco Toledo (1532–1596), Francisco Suárez (1528–1619), and René Descartes (1596–1650).

Descartes took from Aristotle, as did Toledo and Suárez, the concept of in-ternal space (the volumetric measure of the body) and incorporated it into his idea of extent substance. But while for Aristotle the concept of internal space is mathematical and refers to the quantity of the body independently of its other properties, the Cartesian proposal underlines the geometrical reduction of the material world when Descartes considers that the substance of the body is its three-dimensional extension: “There is no real distinction between space, or internal place and the corporeal substance contained in it: the only differ-ence lies in the way in which we are accustomed to conceive of them. For in reality the extension in length, breadth and depth which constitutes a space is exactly the same as that which constitutes a body.” 3

The complete identifi cation of matter with space implies, as it does for Aristotle, the rejection of three-dimensional vacuum space as separated from material bodies. So when Descartes proposes extension as the essential mode of bodily substance it is impossible to have a vacuum space, because if some-thing has extension then it is a body and vice versa. In other words, for Descartes, everything in the universe is as full as it could be and there is no “place” for a vacuum. This is the Cartesian version of the plenum theory.

Contrary to Aristotle, some philosophers of Nature in the Renaissance considered that there existed a vacuum separate from the body but fi lled with some kind of subtle matter. Patrizzi fi lled this vacuum space with light and Giordano Bruno with ether; i.e., they did not conceive that it really existed without matter.

So we can say that the notion of vacuum space still exists when the authors talk about the dimension of space independently of the dimensions of bodies. In other words, it would be a three-dimensional volume with no resistance ( antitipia) ; that is to say, it would be penetrable. Therefore, we see how this

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space, which is full of subtle matter and able to accept bodies, is in opposition to the impenetrability arguments of Aristotle. Space has also been conceived by some authors as immaterial dimension and later as infi nite. As for Henry More, he thinks of space as a spiritual and infi nite extension, but in order to better understand him we have to go back and look at the ontological grounds.

3. The Problem of Dualism More sustains an ontological dualism, but he rejects the radical substantial distinction that Descartes proposes between res extensa and res cogitans because they do not share any property, making it very diffi cult to explain the union of the mind-body interaction. As mentioned above, contrary to Cartesian dualism, More proposes extensionism. It is true that he agrees with Descartes that there are two orders of reality – the material one and the spiritual one – but he considers that matter and spirit have extension as a common property. More argues that everything that subsists per se is a being and that, among its essen-tial characteristics, every being has to be extended. Thus if the soul and God are substances per se, then the soul and God are extended, whereby the soul can interact with the body and God with the world. Naturally Descartes cannot allow those proposals because in his philosophy, by defi nition, nothing spiri-tual can be extended.

But how can More conceive spiritual beings to be extended ones? While the Cartesian conception of matter follows the Aristotelian tradition of internal space as a property of bodies and considers that extension is an essential prop-erty of matter, excluding the vacuum, More’s concept is close to that of the Renaissance philosophers of Nature, who look to separate the extension or space from matter. Accordingly, although all material beings have dimensions, not every being that has dimension is necessarily material. But although More agrees with those who release space of its material burden, because he is a dualist he considers that space can be either material or spiritual. So space without matter is not a vacuum, but rather is a plenum of spirit.

In other words, the traditional concept of space is unintelligible without the concept of body. For modern philosophers there is a very interesting alternative: either space is united to corporeal beings or space is conceived as different from corporeal beings, fi rst full of subtle matter and then becoming spiritual.

More tries using extensionism to explain two problems. First, he argues that if the soul and the body have a common property as extension, this could easily explain their interaction. However, if we look at this problem carefully, to endow the soul with extension is not enough to explain interaction because the extension of the soul is spiritual and the extension of the body is material. So the question remains: How can the spiritual extension act over the material extension and vice-versa?

Second, More considers that his proposal of spiritual extension allows him to understand the ubiquity of God in the sense that, if God is infi nite, then God

The Descartes-More Controversy 521

exists everywhere. Moreover, if God extends Himself over the entire universe, because the universe is fi nite, beyond the world is the infi nite spirit of God. Here, it is interesting to point out that these ideas give rise to the notion of a vacuum space independent of bodies and beyond the world. More considers that if God’s extension is spiritual then that means that it is neither tangible nor impenetrable, so the vacuum space that has no matter is full of God and con-tains all bodies.

In brief, the disagreement between Descartes and More is clear in the cosmological perspective. Descartes comes close to the Aristotelian tradition that rejects vacuum space and considers the universe as a material plenum. More, to the contrary, accepts external space as separate from bodies and makes it coincide with the extended being of God.

It follows that between Descartes and More, there is no agreement about the theological implications. For the latter, God is omnipotent in the sense that He is everywhere and he acts as an immediate cause in each part of the universe. For More, such is the only way to guarantee the direct presence of God in order to avoid the postulation of action at a distance and the notion of cause and effect. To the contrary, Descartes argues that interaction between the extended and the non-extended, because they are substances ontologically diverse, does not obey the order of mechanical causation that is required to explain the action among bodies. Descartes suggests that, contrary to what More believes, it is not necessary that substances share properties in order to interact, and not all causes are mechanical ones because the soul does not act mechanically over the body nor does God act in this way over the universe.

4. The Problem of Space and Infi nity It is natural that if there is no agreement between Descartes and More neither in the cosmological nor in the theological perspective, then it is impossible to fi nd it in the physical fi eld. More does not accept the starting point of Cartesian physics, i.e., that matter is extension and that all is full of matter so conse-quence there is no vacuum neither in nor out of the world. For Henry More it could be a vacuum of matter that had to be occupied by the extended being of God. We are clearly in the problem of space. The question is: Could there be a space without matter or is the only space that exists the space of each body? The defenders of internal space such as Descartes are the defenders of the plenum: all is full of matter, as much as there could be, and there are no vacuum spaces. More denies that principle of material plenum, because in the world we can fi nd holes that are fi lled by the extension of God and, if we suppose a place beyond the world, that place will be full with the extension of God.

In a letter that More sent to Descartes dated 11 December 1648, we can underline two arguments: one against the divisibility ad infi nitum of matter and the other against the notion of indefi nite that Descartes applies to the universe.

With regard to the fi rst argument, More considers that if the part is always divisible by nature, God Himself cannot stop that division and as a consequence

522 Dialogue

He cannot constitute material bodies. In this way, the process of infi nite divi-sion seems to escape the power of God. Descartes answers that it is impossible to have at the same time something extended and indivisible because extension implies divisibility. So there are no things indivisible by their own nature, which is to say that, strictly speaking, there are no “atoms” because God can always divide them. But He also has the power to stop the division, because His omnipotence is in relation with the possible, not the impossible. If it is possible for God to divide and to stop the division of material parts, then He can constitute the things of the world when He wants. 4

Within the same objection More considers that if matter is infi nitely divisible, then it is infi nite. Descartes denies such possibility because the non-limitation of matter is not identical to infi nity in God. In the world there are processes, divisions, measures, comparisons, etc., but God does not admit any compar-ison. The infi nity in act cannot be identifi ed with the idea of potential indefi nite of the universe:

In my view it is not a matter of affected modesty, but of necessary caution, to say that some things are indefi nite rather than infi nite. God is the only thing I positively understand to be infi nite. As to other things like the extension of the world and the number of parts into which matter is divisible, I confess I did not know whether they are absolutely infi nite; I merely know that I know no end to them, and so, looking at them from my own point of view, I call them indefi nite. 5

Beyond the personal controversy, the arguments of Descartes and More reveal the state of affairs in relation to the notion of space in the seventeenth century. This can be summed up as follows:

1. In accordance with his proposal of matter as extension, in general Descartes is in favor of the thesis of internal space as the magnitude of bodies in length, breadth, and depth. Consequently he will deny that there is extension separated from the bodies.

2. The geometrical point of view about matter plus the notion of internal space of bodies led Descartes to consider that matter is always divisible by its own nature and, because all extension is divisible, it is impossible to accept atoms or indivisible parts. In Descartes’s opinion matter is, in principle, divisible to infi nity.

3. A third consequence for Descartes is that since it is impossible to sepa-rate space from bodies because space constitutes their essential property, it thus is impossible to think of a space beyond the world and this is the reason why matter progresses to infi nity.

4. More insists on separating matter from extension so he can sustain the thesis of external space independent of bodies, even if it is a spiritual extension.

The Descartes-More Controversy 523

5. Without the fear of vacuum, because space can sometimes be devoid of matter but not of spirit, More can accept both the existence of atoms (that traditionally move in vacuum) and the possibility of vacuum in and out of the world.

5. The Infi nity of God and the Universe More and Descartes consider the problems of cosmology and theology to be related. More argues that if the universe is indefi nite per se, then in fact it is infi nite, but if it is indefi nite with respect to us, then that means that the uni-verse is fi nite per se. In brief, More does not accept the Cartesian term of indef-inite, because for him the world is either infi nite or fi nite. Descartes now insists on the epistemological argument with some ontological nuances:

To remove all diffi culties here, I should explain that I call the extension of matter indefi nite in the hope that this will prevent anyone imagining a place outside it into which the particles of my vortices might escape, for on my view, wherever such a place may be conceived, there is some matter. When I say that matter is indefi nitely extended, I am saying that it extends further that anything a human being can conceive. 6

The problem of space is strongly focused. The conception of matter as exten-sion forces Descartes to deny the possibility of a vacuum space, but at the same time to accept the material plenum without limits. If everywhere that we fi nd a place, there is matter, then where our imagination can reach and beyond, the material plenum extends without limits as parts aggregated to other parts in an indefi nite succession. Even though in the case of the material world we are talking about a potential and not an actual infi nite, because our knowledge cannot establish its limits, then only in God can we positively recognize the perfection of infi nity.

More rejects the material indefi nite, which he considers to be comparable to the divine infi nity, so for him the world is just fi nite. But with respect to space, his most important idea is that because it extends infi nitely beyond the world, as extension full of spirit, we can consider it as external space separated from bodies. That allows for successful explanation of the problems about move-ment that, in the context of the Cartesian material plenum, are very diffi cult to deal with.

Because More makes a very signifi cant effort to separate extension from matter when he adopts the thesis of the valid external space, he has to explain how the world as a material fi nite extension moves itself within the infi nite exten-sion of God. Besides his cosmological concerns, More exposes to Descartes his ideas about God. If we recognize in God an infi nite eternity, we also can rec-ognize a temporal eternity; that is to say, a succession in duration – thus, we also can accept in God an infi nite extension that fi lls up all spaces. 7

524 Dialogue

For Henry More, the world has no infi nite magnitude or duration because God has not created it from all eternity, and because if it were infi nite this would limit His power to aggregate anything to it. The cosmological problem is tightly related to the theological question about the omnipotence of God, which can be perceived clearly when he compares God with matter. In More’s view, God is extended even though such extension differs from matter because the extension of God is not sensible, not created, and is independent; also, it is not divisible and is not formed by an accumulation of parts. Matter, to the con-trary, is sensible, created, and dependent. The extension of God is penetrable and pervades everything, while the extension of matter is crass and impene-trable. Finally, the extension of God is ubiquitous by the repetition of His essence complete and entire. 8

One of the important consequences of Henry More’s thesis is understanding space as something that belongs not only to material bodies, because extension can be applied to spiritual as well as material things. So he proposes a peculiar differ-ence between internal and external space when he attributes to material extension (as internal space) impenetrability and sensible properties, while divine extension (as external space) would be penetrable and non-sensible. More related internal space to corporeal extension and external space to the spiritual extension of God.

Descartes rejects that God has extension for two reasons: The fi rst is ontological, because for Descartes, only material substance has extension as its essential mode and it is divisible and compounded by parts, something con-trary to the idea of God; the second is theological, disputing the idea of the existence of God as being everywhere:

I do not agree with this ‘everywhere’. You seem here to make God’s infi nity in his existing everywhere, which is an opinion I cannot agree with. I think that God is everywhere in virtue of his power; yet in virtue of his essence he has no relation to place at all. 9

In a last letter sent in August 1649, Descartes asserts that the power of God can be manifested everywhere but not as an extended being:

I said that God is extended in virtue of his power, because that power manifests itself, or can manifest itself, in extended being. It is certain that God’s essence must be present everywhere for his power to be able to manifest itself everywhere; but I deny that it is there in the manner of extended being, that is, in the way in which I just described an extended thing. 10

We are now led to consider the problem of God’s action in the universe. From what has been said above, it is clear that in the case of More, God needs to be entire and present in the place where He acts and this is possible, in part, due to the fact that More considers God as extended. For Descartes, however, the power of God and His capacity to act everywhere are not related to the necessity

The Descartes-More Controversy 525

of His being present immediately at or in the place where He acts, since the fact of His perfection determines that He can act everywhere without having to be there and without participating in the extended beings of material bodies.

6. Some Final Words about the Controversy This controversy not only illuminates some important aspects of Descartes’s and More’s philosophies but also reveals, despite their differences, common interests growing in different intellectual climates. Among those common interests, without a doubt one of the most important is the problem of space.

Descartes advocates for internal space, an Aristotelian inheritance. Besides the notion of matter as extension, his concept of space pushes him to recognize the universe as indefi nite in the sense of potential infi nity because we do not know the limits of the world (epistemological argument) or even if it can be indefi nite per se (ontological argument). His argument, understood as conceiving space to be merely geometrical and reducing physical bodies to their volume measures, among other interesting consequences opens the universe to infi nity and thereby carries the concept of infi nity from the theological to the physical fi eld.

Henry More realizes that Descartes pushes the notion of matter-space toward the divinity when Descartes conceives it as indefi nite. For that reason, More accuses Descartes of being a materialist: if the world is indefi nite, it is in More’s view another way of saying that the world is infi nite and therefore is a being at the same level as God. With respect to More’s proposals about space (and these are completely opposed to Aristotelian theories), he argues that space conceived as separate from bodies is not a contradictory notion and that it is possible to conceive of extension as totally separated from matter. Furthermore, he purports that if the notion of void space is not acceptable, then we have to accept that every space where there is no matter in or out of the world is full of God. The Cartesian arguments go completely against the idea of considering God as an extended being from beginning to end. In February 1649, albeit in a friendly manner, Descartes shows his disagreement with that proposal:

I am surprised that a man otherwise so perspicacious, having seen that he cannot deny that there is some substance in every space, since all the properties of extension are truly found in it, should nevertheless prefer to say that the divine extension fi lls up the space in which there are no bodies, rather than admit that there can be no space without body. For as I said earlier, the alleged extension of God cannot be the subject of the true properties which we perceive very distinctly in all space. 11

A change can be sensed in the fi nal letter: Descartes becomes angry and directly speaks against some Neoplatonic proposals that More subscribes to. Descartes says that the power is a mode in created things, but not in God:

In a created substance this power is a mode, but it is not a mode in God. Since this is not easy for everyone to understand, I did not want to discuss it in my writings. I was

526 Dialogue

afraid of seeming inclined to favour the view of those who consider God as a world soul united to matter. 12

Finally, Descartes reveals himself to be frankly disappointed when he closes their exchange of letters with these words:

You add that body seems to you to be ‘alive with a stupid and drunken life’. This I take it, is just a fi ne phrase; but I must tell you once and for all, with the candor which you permit me, that nothing takes us further from the discovery of truth so much as setting up as true something of which we are convinced by no positive reason, but only by our own will. That is what happens when we have invented or imagined something and afterwards take pleasure in our fi ctions, as you do in your corporeal angels, your shadow of the divine essence, and the rest. No one should entertain any such thoughts, because to do so is to bar the road to truth against oneself. 13

Nevertheless, beyond the controversy, More’s idea of space as separated from matter, even with some Neoplatonic implications, will constitute an important antecedent for the conception of absolute space in Newtonian physics.

Notes 1 “ M. Descartes passa de Leyde à Amsterdam le VI Septembre [1648]. … Trois jours

après il alla se renfermer dans son Egmond en Nord-Hollande, comme un port assuré contre les tempêtes, dont il avoit déjà vû les préludes dans son voyage .“ In Adrien , Baillet , La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, part 2, in The Philosophy of Descartes , ed. Willis Doney ( New York and London : Garland , 1987 ), p. 351 .

2 Edward , Grant , Much Ado about Nothing. Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientifi c Revolution ( Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press , 1981 ), 15 .

3 John Cottingham , Robert Stoothoff , and Dugald Murdoch , trans., Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings , vol. 1 ( Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press , 1990 ), 227 .

4 Descartes to More, 5 February 1649, ibid., vol. 3, 363. 5 Ibid., 364. 6 Ibid. 7 More to Descartes, Cambridge, 5 March 1649, Œuvres de Descartes , vol. 5, ed.

Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris : Librairie Philosophique Vrin, 1996), 306. 8 Ibid., 308. 9 Descartes to More, 15 April 1649, in Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings ,

vol. 3, p. 173. 10 Ibid., 381. 11 Ibid., 362. 12 Ibid. p. 381. 13 Ibid., 382.