St. Anselm's Ontological Argument as Expressive: A Wittgensteinian Reconstruction

Philosophical Investigations 37 (2):130-151 (2013)
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Abstract

We offer a reading of Anselm's Ontological Argument inspired by Wittgenstein which focuses on the fact that the “argument” occurs in a prayer addressed to God, making it a strange argument since as a prayer it seems to presuppose its conclusion. We reconstruct the argument as expressive. Within the religious perspective, the issues are to be focused on the right object not to present an argument for the existence of God. While this sort of reading lets us understand much about the argument, it also opens new avenues of criticism, one of which is the problem of worship

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Author Profiles

Scott Aikin
Vanderbilt University
Michael Hodges
Vanderbilt University

Citations of this work

Expressivism, Moral Judgment, and Disagreement: A Jamesian Program.Scott Aikin & Michael Hodges - 2018 - Journal of Speculative Philosophy 32 (4):628-656.

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References found in this work

On Certainty (ed. Anscombe and von Wright).Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969 - San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe, G. H. von Wright & Mel Bochner.
Language, truth and logic.Alfred Jules Ayer - 1936 - London,: V. Gollancz.
The Language of Morals.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1952 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The language of morals.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1963 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.

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