ABSTRACT
Descartes (in)famously endorses modal voluntarism, the doctrine that God freely creates the eternal truths. The scope of this doctrine is remarkably wide: the eternal truths include, for example, mathematical truths. Descartes thus goes a lot further than “mere” moral voluntarists, who include “only” the laws of morality in their voluntarist claim. Why does Descartes endorse such a strong claim? This chapter argues that, on Descartes’s view, the (seemingly weaker) doctrine of moral voluntarism in fact entails the (seemingly stronger) doctrine of modal voluntarism; thus, because Descartes thinks that there are good reasons for endorsing moral voluntarism, he endorses modal voluntarism as well. But why does Descartes think that moral voluntarism entails modal voluntarism? The chapter argues that he holds that there cannot be any difference in modal status between moral truths on the one hand and, say, mathematical truths on the other; moral truths hold necessarily in exactly the same sense as mathematical ones. As a result, subscribing to moral voluntarism requires one to subscribe to modal voluntarism as well.
