Abstract

Admitting that God is humanly knowable, not in himself, but in concept, William of Ockham examines accurately the nature of our concepts about God. We find here the remaking of anselmian elements, like the attachment and the detachment between the concepts of supreme and insuperable. Then considering the concepts involved in the proposition “God exists”, the Franciscan philosopher takes position for its demonstrability. Within his position takes place the reception of the anselmian argument, which is called the “ratio Anselmi”, in the wake of John Duns Scotus. As a matter of fact, it is through the Doctor Subtilis that the philosopher of Ockham revisitates critically the most well known bequest of the Doctor Magnificus. Duns Scotus had assumed the ratio Anselmi of Proslogion 2, as an argument for God’s infinity. William is an incisive critic of the scotist ways of demonstration of God’s infinity, but he does not exclude completely the possibility of demonstrating the existence of a finite insuperable, in the wake of the scotist interpretation of the ratio Anselmi.