Abstract

This essay investigates the nature of the doubt which Descartes introduces in the first "Meditation" on behalf of an omnipotent God. To account for a doubt about propositions whose contrary can be conceived, some interpreters have resorted to the Cartesian doctrine of the free creation of eternal truths. Yet the conditions, which are the grounds for the thesis that God freely establishes the truth, are not present in the first "Meditation". Hence, the doubt has to be understood having recourse only to God's power on the human mind, and not on the object of knowledge (essences or eternal truths). A text by Suárez corroborates that conjecture.