Necessity and Contingency in Descartes

Descartes's 'extravagant' doctrine of the creation of eternal truths deploys a singular modal structure in which necessity and contingency, impossibility and possibility depend on divine choice. This article, based on the analysis of Cartesian texts, aims to draw a picture of the connection between divine freedom, the necessity of the laws of nature and the human knowledge of the eternal truths, to show that, through this doctrine, Descartes is interested in a correct view about God's nature and power rather than in the construction of a general theory of modality.