ABSTRACT
God, after all, displays Himself in and through the moral life, as Descartes shows in the special case of intellectual integrity. The fact of the matter is that Descartes had no moral theory, though he was interested in moral facts, and was eager to make his way to a moral theory if he should first conquer the difficulties which he believed to stand in the way of a proper approach to it. Descartes is not effusive about one's duty to one's neighbour, and he regarded political speculation as impertinent. His metaphysics and his ethics meet in the personal experience of devoted thinking to which he consecrated his life. But in Descartes's philosophy there can be no separation of thought and thinking, and if thinking requires severe moral endeavour, without that endeavour there can be no truth. But because there is no more liberty of indifference, Descartes does not on that account declare that there is no more free-will.
