Rethinking Anselm's Arguments

Rethinking Anselm's Arguments PDF

Author: Richard Campbell

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-07-23

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 9004363661

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book re-examines Anselm’s famous arguments for the existence of God. It demonstrates how he validly deduces from plausible premises that God exists most truly of all. The standard criticisms are shown to be based on misreading the text.

Rethinking the Ontological Argument

Rethinking the Ontological Argument PDF

Author: Daniel A. Dombrowski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-05-29

Total Pages: 12

ISBN-13: 1139457144

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In recent years, the ontological argument and theistic metaphysics have been criticised by philosophers working in both the analytic and continental traditions. Responses to these criticisms have primarily come from philosophers who make use of the traditional, and problematic, concept of God. In this volume, Daniel A. Dombrowski defends the ontological argument against its contemporary critics, but he does so by using a neoclassical or process concept of God, thereby strengthening the case for a contemporary theistic metaphysics. Relying on the thought of Charles Hartshorne, he builds on Hartshorne's crucial distinction between divine existence and divine actuality, which enables neoclassical defenders of the ontological argument to avoid the familiar criticism that the argument moves illegitimately from an abstract concept to concrete reality. His argument, thus, avoids the problems inherent in the traditional concept of God as static.

Reading Anselm's Proslogion

Reading Anselm's Proslogion PDF

Author: Ian Logan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 135190664X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Anselm’s Proslogion has sparked controversy from the time it was written (c.1077) to the present day. Attempts to provide definitive accounts of its argument have led to a wide and contradictory variety of interpretations. In this book, Ian Logan goes back to basics, to the Latin text of the Proslogion with an original parallel English translation, before tracing the twists and turns of this controversy. Helping us to understand how the same argument came to be regarded as based on reason alone by some and on faith alone by others, as a logically sound demonstration by its supporters and as fatally flawed by its opponents, Logan considers what Anselm is setting out to do in the Proslogion, how his argument works, and whether it is successful.

A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof That God Exists

A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof That God Exists PDF

Author: Richard Campbell

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 9004184619

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this book, Richard Campbell reformulates Anselm’s proof to show that factual evidence confirmed by modern cosmology validly implies that God exists. Anselm’s proof, which was never the “ontological argument” attributed to him, emerges as engaging with current philosophical issues concerning existence and scientific explanation.

The Many-Faced Argument

The Many-Faced Argument PDF

Author: John Hick

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2009-04-24

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1725225905

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Many-Faced Argument presents a compilation of essays on the ontogical argument for the existence of God, covering responses to Anselm's position in the first half, and, in the second half, covering developments of the argument in the context of modern philosophy. Along with contibutions by editors Hick and McGill, other writers include Karl Barth, Andre Hayden, Anselm Stolz, Bertrand Russell, Jerome Shaffer, Gilbert Ryle, Aime Forest, Norman Malcolm, and Charles Hartshorne. While interest in the the ontological argument has arisen from various disciplines -- historical, theological and philosophical -- the purpose of this book is to bring these varied writings together so that scholars and students within each discipline may have contributions from other fields readily available.

A Historical Study of Anselm’s Proslogion

A Historical Study of Anselm’s Proslogion PDF

Author: Toivo J. Holopainen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-08-03

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9004426663

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In A Historical Study of Anselm's Proslogion , Toivo J. Holopainen offers a new overall interpretation of Anselm’s Proslogion by providing a historical explanation for the distinctive combination of argument and devotion that this famous treatise exhibits.

Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument

Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument PDF

Author: Guy Jackson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-09-25

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13: 3031415353

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Anselm's ontological argument is one of the most fascinating, most controversial, and most misunderstood arguments in the entire history of Western thought. By centring the argument firmly in the Neoplatonic tradition within which Anselm was writing, Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument sheds fresh light and clarity on this enigmatic piece of philosophy. It argues that, far from resting upon a fallacy or illegitimately attempting to define God into existence, Anselm's argument is a powerful and plausible philosophical proof, and deserves to be taken seriously as such. Written to be understandable for specialists and non-specialists alike, Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument is ideal for scholars and researchers in philosophy of religion and philosophy in the Middle Ages (especially Neoplatonism) as well as for medievalists in general.

Reason, Community and Religious Tradition

Reason, Community and Religious Tradition PDF

Author: Scott Matthews

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1351806963

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This title was first published in 2001: Reason, Community and Religious Tradition examines key questions about the relationship of rationality to its contexts by tracing the early history of the so-called 'ontological' argument. The book follows Anselm's Proslogion from its origins in the private, devotional context of an eleventh-century monastery to its reception in the public and adversarial contexts of the friars' schools in the thirteenth century. Using unpublished manuscript evidence from the Dominican and Franciscan schools at Oxford, Paris and Bologna in the thirteenth century, Matthews argues that the debate over Anselm's argument embodied the broader religious differences between the Franciscan and Dominican communities. By comparing the most famous figures of the period with their lesser-known contemporaries, Matthews argues that the Friars thought as communities and developed as traditions as they developed their arguments. This book will interest anyone concerned with the nature of rationality, and its relationship to communities and traditions, and what this entails for rational debate across cultural divides. In particular, it offers a fresh perspective on traditional approaches to the rationality of religion and religious belief.

Anselm’s Other Argument

Anselm’s Other Argument PDF

Author: A. D. Smith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-03-10

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0674726855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109 CE), in his work Proslogion, originated the “ontological argument” for God’s existence, famously arguing that “something than which nothing greater can be conceived,” which he identifies with God, must actually exist, for otherwise something greater could indeed be conceived. Some commentators have claimed that although Anselm may not have been conscious of the fact, the Proslogion as well as his Reply to Gaunilo contains passages that constitute a second independent proof: a “modal ontological argument” that concerns the supposed logical necessity of God’s existence. Other commentators disagree, countering that the alleged second argument does not stand on its own but presupposes the conclusion of the first. Anselm’s Other Argument stakes an original claim in this debate, and takes it further. There is a second a priori argument in Anselm (specifically in the Reply), A. D. Smith contends, but it is not the modal argument past scholars have identified. This second argument surfaces in a number of forms, though always turning on certain deep, interrelated metaphysical issues. It is this form of argument that in fact underlies several of the passages which have been misconstrued as statements of the modal argument. In a book that combines historical research with rigorous philosophical analysis, Smith discusses this argument in detail, finally defending a modification of it that is implicit in Anselm. This “other argument” bears a striking resemblance to one that Duns Scotus would later employ.