In what way do we understand ourselves such that it requires a prior understanding of God?

The

case put forth by Descartes seems most plausible in terms of certain ‘perfections’. By a perfection we

can understand something like what is put forth by Anselm. In the Monologion, Anselm is concerned

with what can be said of God (2). He claims that it would be impious to claim that God could have some

feature which it would be better not to have in some cases. Therefore, what we attribute to God must

be features which are better to have in an unqualified sense. For example, it is better to be wise than

not wise in an unqualified sense. According to Anselm, there is nothing such that it would be better if it

did not have that feature. That list plausibly includes things we intuitively might take as perfections such

as goodness and knowledge to name but a few. I will understand the perfections to be such features.

Descartes holds that certain perfections, plausibly the ones meeting Anselm’s criteria, are contained

formally in our idea of God. In being so contained they form part of the positive content of our idea of

God. This positive content makes available or gives us some purchase on the essence of God. For

example, Descartes claims that certain perfections, such as knowledge, are contained formally in the

idea of God (7). The very idea of God is the idea of a being with infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom and

infinite goodness etc.

With this in mind, it seems that Descartes is claiming that our understanding of the perfections is ‘top
down’. The understanding of our limited perfection relies on a prior understanding of God’s infinite
perfection. For example, understanding my limited wisdom, or that my wisdom is limited, is reliant on
my idea of God’s infinite wisdom. One can imagine a naïve but perhaps intuitive response to the
Cartesian position. Perhaps it is correct to believe that one cannot come to a perception of themselves
as ‘not wholly perfect’ without some kind of exposure to a more perfect being. However, I need not go
as far as God to find such a being. So long as the world is occupied by other agents and I step out of my
door, the world is bound to furnish me with a better person than I. For example, suppose that I do not
recognize that my knowledge is limited. There is much that I do not know. Furthermore, I do not know
that I do not know. There are no known unknowns in my world. Joe asks Jane and I whether either of us
knows the way to San Jose. While I shrug my shoulder’s, Jane informs Joe of the many ways he might get
there. I can easily recognize that Jane has knowledge where I do not. Does she not allow me to
recognize my own defects and limitations by comparison? There seems to be no need for God in this
picture.