Descartes's provisional morality

Descartes's provisional morality is a temporary code for conducting life while inherited foundations are under examination and judgment remains suspended. The book presents its first two maxims as more than practical advice: they also illuminate how action proceeds within contingent conditions that cannot be replaced by certainty before one must act.

Purpose and Provisional Character

Descartes introduces the code by comparing philosophical reconstruction to pulling down and rebuilding a house. Demolition and materials are not enough: one also needs another house in which to live while the work continues. In the same way, suspending judgment in the search for a new foundation cannot leave a person irresolute in action or unable to live. The temporary code supplies a practicable dwelling for conduct during that unsettled interval.

The passage calls the code a set of three or four maxims, but develops the first two here. Its provisional status is essential: these rules do not amount to the unconditional foundation Descartes is seeking. They offer guidance for acting before that foundation has been secured, addressing the practical demands that remain even when reason compels suspension of judgment.

The First Two Maxims

The first maxim directs a person to obey the laws and customs of their country, adhere to the faith received in childhood, and regulate other matters according to the most moderate opinions. It makes inherited practices and moderation a basis for conduct while more fundamental judgments are under review. The maxim does not present the customs themselves as newly proven foundations; it specifies how to live amid the continuing search for one.

The second maxim concerns resolve. Once an opinion has been adopted for action, a person should follow it as steadfastly as if it were certain, even when it remains doubtful. The passage explains this through travelers lost in a forest: rather than wander from side to side or remain in place, they should proceed in a straight line in one direction and not change course for slight reasons. Their initial choice of direction may have been made by chance, but continued movement gives the choice practical force. The maxim thus treats decision as necessary under uncertainty, not as proof that uncertainty has disappeared.

Relation to Finitude and Decision

The book places these maxims beside Heidegger’s ontology of finitude. The first echoes the condition of being thrown into a contingent yet unsurpassable historical horizon; the second resembles an abyssal decision to which one remains committed even though it cannot be fully grounded in reasons. On this reading, provisional morality names a broader condition of action: conduct takes shape within inherited circumstances, and a choice may have to be assumed without an appeal to transhistorical absolute knowledge.

The comparison also marks a tension. Firmness can appear as irrational formalist decisionism if the content of a choice is treated as secondary to unconditional fidelity to it. But the passage’s emphasis is not simply that any decision is justified. It is that action cannot wait for complete certainty: the traveler must move, and the person seeking a foundation still needs a way to live during the search. The provisional code therefore links ordinary practical direction to the harder problem of owning a decision made under finite conditions.