| Our grasp of the infinite sustains a crucial proof for God's existence in Descartes' Meditations. But do we really grasp the infinite? I offer a new, sympathetic interpretation that uncovers Descartes' answer, which invokes an ontological dependence relation between the idea of the finite and the idea of the infinite. A primary aim of the dissertation is to understand Descartes' notion of ontological dependence, and to clarify the role it plays both in Descartes' thinking about infinity and in his broader metaphysics and epistemology. A further aim is to show that arguments, like Descartes', that employ dependence can usefully be viewed as transcendental arguments of the type that will later become prominent in Kant and the Kantian tradition. |
