 If Frankfurt is right, Cartesian eternal truths are not really necessary; they “are inherently as contingent as any other propositions” (42). They may appear to be necessary to our rational faculties, but this is just a function of the makeup of our rational faculties and not of the necessity of the truths themselves. Frankfurt then argues more generally that Descartes holds that for all we know our rational faculties may be wrong about other things as well. After all, we are mistaken about the necessity of the eternal truths, which seems so very obvious, and so we might might be mistaken about anything else that is similarly evident. If Frankfurt is correct, Descartes holds that there is a way that reality appears from the viewpoint of the clearest of human reasoning, and the best that we can do as rational agents is to take up that viewpoint. But we can never get outside of it to see how things are  absolutely.[11]