This paper compares the attempts of hare, Singer and gewirth to provide the trivially true universalizability principle with normative content. The programs of hare and singer share an inability to convict the sincere fanatic ( the servant of an immoral but aesthetically compelling ideal) of moral inconsistency. Gewirth avoids the "fanatic" pitfall by adding some purely logical footwork; but his system too admits of important indeterminacies which may or may not prove fatal, E.G., The handling of morally tolerable coercion and (...) of the occasional duty to repair damage caused by someone else. (shrink)

CHARLES HARTSHORNE, in Anselm’s Discovery, begins his attempt to save the Ontological Argument by claiming that its latter half has been ‘conveniently ignored’ by its critics through nine centuries of debate. His own contentions center around a slightly updated version of Anselm’s ‘second’ Argument, as found in Proslogium III I paraphrase his reasoning as follows.