Anselm

A counterpossible conditional, or counterpossible for short, is a conditional proposition whose antecedent is impossible. The filioque doctrine is a dogma of western Christian Trinitarian theology according to which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The filioque doctrine was the principal theological reason for the Great Schism, the split between Eastern Orthodoxy and western Christianity, which continues today. In the paper, I review one of the earliest medieval defenses of the doctrine in Anselm of Canterbury, and (...) I show that Anselm’s treatment of counterpossible conditionals concerning the procession of the spirit from the son in Trinitarian theology represent an early foray into default logic. Thus, the mutual estrangement of eastern and western positions on the matter may not lie fundamentally in a change in dogma, but rather in a change in logic. (shrink)

The Weakness of Will in Anselm of Canterbury and his Sources. The article aims to retrace the sources for a theory of the weakness of will (incontinentia) in Anselm of Canterbury’s works. Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo and Lanfranc of Canterbury seem to be in the theological context the main Anselmian sources for what is defined as a modal theory of the weakness of will, founded on the crucial notion of rectitudo. This theory appears to be original compared to (...) both the theological traditions of the Latin West and the models of Greek philosophy (particularly with respect to the Aristotelian notion of akrasia in Nicomachean Ethics VII), while it is shown to be in debt to Seneca and his argument on the topic. The article demonstrates that the Epistulae morales ad Lucilium have several analogies with Anselmian ethics. (shrink)

The kalām cosmological argument for the existence of God proposed by W. L. Craig (in 1970’s) has been subject to much debate on all sorts of issues related to the existence of God and the beginning of the universe. The goal of the paper is to briefly evaluate several complex questions embraced in the argument in order to show the depth and strength of the argument, and to avoid oversimplification, which one can find in some recent publications. The argument as (...) such does not rely on a single thesis or a theory proposed by a single author. The argument has such a support from different fields that its opponents would need to elaborate a theory with much more explanatory power than the most recent cosmological theories. (shrink)

From an awareness of his own being and the world that surrounds him, man is capable of transcending to the Being who exists of itself, the Cause and End of all beings. In the contemplation of reality, in search of the cause of all the effects he observes, as well as the perfection of all things, proceeds the encounter with the Absolute Being, object of the desire for happiness that man bears latent within his heart. And being faithful to the (...) principles implanted within his own spirit, he can know even in this life, to the extent possible, who is God. (shrink)

Although philosophers have long agreed that Anselm’s PROSLOGION contains what is often called the ontological argument, they do not agree about just what that argument is. In this paper, I do two things: I set out a careful, precise statement of the argument in the PROSLOGION, taking due account of the historical, personal, philosophical, and theological contexts of Anselm’s thought. Having disembarrassed the argument of some common misunderstandings and placed it in its proper setting, I argue that it is more (...) complicated and much stronger than all but a very few philosophers have realized. (shrink)

In the paper I analyse Anselm’s ontological arguments in favour of God’s existence. The analysis is an explication and formalization of Pavel Tichý’s study‘Existence and God’, Journal of Philosophy, 1979. It is based on Transparent Intensional Logic with its bi-dimensional ontology of entities organized in the ramified hierarchy of types. The analysis goes as follows. First, necessary notions and principles are introduced. They are: existence is not a property of individuals, but of individual offices to be occupied by an individual; (...) the notion of requisite is defined, which is a necessary relation between an office O and a property R: necessarily, if a happens to occupy O then a has the property R. I demonstrate that an argument of the form “R is a requisite of O, hence the holder of O has the property R” is invalid. In order to be valid, it must be of the form “R is a requisite of O, the office O is occupied, hence the holder of O has the property R.” Finally, higher-order offices that can be occupied by individual offices are defined. Their requisites are properties of individual offices. Then the analysis of Anselm’s arguments is presented. The expression ‘God’ denotes an individual office, a ‘thing to be’, rather than a particular individual. Thus the question whether God exists is a legitimate one. I analyze the expression ‘that, than which nothing greater can be conceived’. Since ‘greater than’ is a relation-in-intension between individual offices here, the expression denotes a second-order office, and its requisites are properties of first-order offices suchas necessary existence. The second of Anselm’s assumptions is that individual office that has the property of necessary existence is greater than any other office lacking this property. From these it follows that the first-order holder of the office denoted by ‘that, than which nothing greater can be conceived’ enjoys the property of necessary existence. Thus God exists necessarily, hence also actually. Anselm’s argument is logically valid. If it were also sound, then an atheist would differ from a believer only by the former not believing whereas the latter believing in a tautology, which is absurd. Yet we may doubt the validity of Anselm’s assumption that a necessary existence makes an office greater than any other office lacking this property. (shrink)

Dissertatio proposita circa “argumentum ontologicum” pro existentia Dei, quem K. Goedel construxit, versatur. In prima parte structuram logicam dicti argumenti exponimus, singulos gradus argumenti explicamus, “collapsumque modalitatum”, quo argumentum invalidari invenitur, examinamus. Sequenti parte recentiores quasdam confectiones argumenti pertractamus; et scil. praecipue formam eius, quae super conceptum mathematicum multitudinis seu “complexus elementorum terminatorum” fundatur, et formam “algebraicam”, quarum affinitates quasdam notabiles prae oculos ponimus. Ultima parte disceptationes, quae circa huiusce argumenti validitatem ac momentum respectu modernae theisticae philosophiae agebantur, describimus. Loco (...) conclusionis observamus, Goedelii argumentum exemplum esse notabile “fidei quaerentis intellectum”.The article deals with Gödel’s ontological proof of God’s existence. It consists of three parts. In the first part we present the logical structure of the argument, analyse its individual steps and discuss the implied collapse of modalities, which is fatal for the proof. In the second part we focus on some more recent versions of the argument, especially the set-theoretical version and the algebraic version, and we show several interesting connexions between the algebraic and the set-theoretical version. In the final part of the paper we briefly recount the discussions concerning the validity of the argument and its importance for modern theistic philosophy. We conclude by observing that Gödel’s argument is an interesting modern instance of “faith seeking understanding”. (shrink)

Based on views she draws from Anselm, Katherin Rogers mounts an extend­ed attack on my account of God’s relationship to human sin. Here I argue first that if Anselm’s view of the relationship in question is different from my own, then Rogers fails to locate any reason for thinking his account is correct. I argue further that Rogers fails to demonstrate her claim that my account of God’s relation to sin makes him a deceiver, that her criticisms of my theodicy (...) of sin are misguided, and that she is mistaken in claiming a world in which God has full sovereignty over human willing is less safe for the repentant than I hold it to be. (shrink)

Anselm defines free will as “the ability to keep uprightness of will for the sake of uprightness itself ” rather than as the ability to sin or not sin. I fulfill two objectives pertaining to his definition. First, I show that his definition should be interpreted as a hierarchical account of free will, one that emphasizes the idea that an agent’s will is free if she is able to have the will she wants to have. The interpretationis based on Anselm’s (...) hierarchical account of the structure of the will. Secondly, I show that Anselm’s theory of ultimate responsibility, when added to the hierarchical interpretation of his definition, provides an answer to one of the primary objections to the hierarchical approach to free will. (shrink)

This paper is consecrated to the problems of the semantics in the Anselm’s philosophy of language – one of the most important parts of his philosophical inquiry. The main care is focused to the analysis of terms veritas and rectitudo, mainly because of significatio and the semantics – e.g. significatio with respect to names. Special passage refers to denominative names, because in their case Anselm of Canterbury makes differences between significatio and appellatio in his semantic analysis.

For Saint Anselm, the mystery of the Holy Trinity was not merely an object of intellectual speculation but, more importantly, the object of praise and worship. Even though he claims that there is nothing in his treatise that violates the teachings of the Fathers, especially that of Augustine, Anselm explores in Monologion the doctrine of the Trinity in his own unique style. One very interesting discussion that does not appear in Augustine’s De Trinitate or in any of the Augustinian corpus (...) is found in chapter 42, in which Anselm argues for the propriety of naming the Supreme Spirit “Father” and His Word “Son.” This paper examines this chapter, first, in the context of the four immediately preceding chapters and, second, in the context of those writings of Augustine that might have influenced Anselm in his presentation. The paper then offers reasons why Anselm included this unique chapter in his discussion on the Trinity. (shrink)

An important issue raised and resolved in St. Anselm’s Proslogion is the compatibility between justice and mercy as divine attributes. In this paper I argue that Anselm’s discussion of divine justice and mercy is an exploration of God’s nature as quo maius cogitari non potest, and that his discussion contributes to a better understanding of the complicated relationship between God and creatures—including the creatures attempting to know or argue about God. It seems at first that God’s mercy must be in (...) contradiction with God’s justice. On the basis of a more adequate way of framing the issue, however—one that requires reference to other parts of the Proslogion and is supported by the Monologion—we can grasp, though not fully comprehend, the harmony between divine justice and divine mercy. (shrink)

Anselm claimed that his Proslogion was a “single argument” sufficient to prove “that God truly exists,” that God is “the supreme good requiring nothing else,” as well as to prove “whatever we believe regarding the divine Being.” In this paper we show how Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion and in his Reply to Gaunilo can be reconstructed as a single argument. A logically elegant result is that the various stages of Anselm’s argument are validated by standard axioms from contemporary modal (...) logic. (shrink)

In William L. Rowe’s “The Ontological Argument,” an essay that appears in the most recent editions of Feinberg’s Reason and Responsibility and as a chapter in Rowe’s Philosophy of Religion, Rowe reconstructs Anselm’s Proslogium II argument for the existence of God, surveys critically several standard objections to it, and presents an original critique. Although Rowe’s reconstruction is perspicuous and his criticisms of the standard objections are judicious, his own critique, I argue, leaves Anselm’s argument unscathed. I conclude with some programmatic (...) remarks about what a more adequate critique of Anselm’s argument should do. (shrink)

The title of Hopkins’ book is apt in at least two ways. First, it is a "companion"—a book which is best read in conjunction with a serious reading of Anselm’s works. Hopkins states that his book is "envisioned primarily as a handbook for students", but that is true in the sense that Taylor’s book on Plato or Gilson’s books on Augustine, Bonaventure, and Aquinas could be said to be intended for students. Secondly, it is a study of practically all of (...) Anselm’s philosophical and theological contributions. The only significant work that is not treated in some detail is De Grammatico, a lacuna which is understandable in light of the complex and recondite nature of that dialogue: one either says nothing or very much about it. There are chapters on the unity and chronology of and the historical influences on Anselm’s works; the role of faith and reason in Anselm; the Ontological Argument; Anselm’s writings on the nature of the Trinity and the relations between the three persons; Anselm on human nature, truth, freedom of choice, and evil; and Anselm on the necessity of the Incarnation, Christology, and original sin. There are two appendices: one consisting of a translation of Ein neues unvollendetes Werk..., and the other on "Anselm’s Methods of Arguing." There is also a very helpful sixteen-page bibliography. One of the valuable side features of the book is the wealth of references to the works of Augustine. Southern’s Saint Anselm and His Biographer, Henry’s The Logic of Saint Anselm, and Hopkins’ Companion all approach Anselm from different perspectives, and lay emphasis on different issues, but they are the three most important books on the historical, philosophical, and theological Anselm in English.-W.E.M. (shrink)