ABSTRACT
The impossibility of infinite regress was also pivotal in the argumentation for God’s existence proposed by René Descartes (1596–1650). However, his reasoning here did not have the medieval focus on efficient causation, but rather tuned to the modern and quintessentially Cartesian factor of ideation:
Although it may be the case that one idea gives birth to another idea, that cannot continue to be so indefinitely; for in the end we must reach an idea whose cause shall be so to speak an archetype … which … the light of nature causes me to know clearly. 1
