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This comprehensive and lucid study examines the development of Anselm's thought, treatise by treatise, in the light of his early interest in the problems of language and epistemology attempting to talk or write about God.
Some commentators claim that Anselm’s writings contain a second independent “modal ontological argument” for God’s existence. A. D. Smith contends that although there is a second a priori argument in Anselm, it is not the modal argument. This “other argument” bears a striking resemblance to one that Duns Scotus would later employ.
This volume presents fourteen of William E. Mann's essays on three prominent figures in late Patristic and early medieval philosophy: Augustine, Anselm, and Peter Abelard. The essays explore some of the quandaries, arguments, and theories presented in their writings. The essays in this volume complement those to be found in Mann's God, Modality, and Morality (OUP, 2015). While the essays in God, Modality, and Morality are primarily essays in philosophical theology, those found in the present volume are more varied. Some still deal with issues in philosophical theology. Other essays are aporetic in nature, discussing cases of philosophical perplexity, sometimes but not always leaving the cases unresolved. All the essays display, directly or indirectly, the philosophical influence that Augustine has had. His Confessions is a rich source for philosophical puzzlement. Individual essays examine his reflections on the alleged innocence of infants, which raises questions about cognitive, emotional, and linguistic development; his juvenile theft of pears and its relation to moral motivation; and his struggle with and resolution of the problem of evil. One essay presents the rudiments of an Augustinian moral theory, rooted in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Another essay illustrates the theory by discussing his writings on lying. Mann argues that Abelard amplified Augustine's moral theory by emphasizing the crucial role that intention plays in wrongdoing. Augustine bequeathed to Anselm the notion of "faith seeking understanding." Mann argues that this methodological slogan shapes Anselm's "ontological argument" for God's existence and his efforts to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity.
This volume provides a broad interpretation of Anselm’s theological method through a study of his Monologion. The Monologion has been chosen specifically because of its rich and nuanced account of the search for the one God. Through a careful analysis of this text what becomes evident is that Anselm’s theological project is much broader than a single argument or a simple account of how divine justice and honor are appeased. What one encounters is a theology informed by the notion of the human desire for God and the honest search to come to know God in an intimate way. The Monologion, therefore, will present an entry point into Anselm’s theological project. The second half of the volume will examine the reception history of Anselm’s two most famous philosophical and theological contributions (i.e., the “ontological argument” and the “satisfaction theory”). Anselm is often misunderstood because his approach to theology is reduced to the “one argument” or a carefully construed calculus of human redemption—such readings of Anselm abound and often obscure the Benedictine context within which his thought developed—and so a careful reading of Anselm’s texts and the history of reception and interpretation will offer a counter narrative to the standard perception of one of the greatest thinkers of Christian history.
Can human beings be free and responsible if there is a God? Anselm of Canterbury, the first Christian philosopher to propose that human beings have a really robust free will, offers viable answers to questions which have plagued religious people for at least two thousand years: If divine grace cannot be merited and is necessary to save fallen humanity, how can there be any decisive role for individual free choice to play? If God knows today what you are going to choose tomorrow, then when tomorrow comes you have to choose what God foreknew, so how can your choice be free? If human beings must have the option to choose between good and evil in order to be morally responsible, must God be able to choose evil? Anselm answers these questions with a sophisticated theory of free will which defends both human freedom and the sovereignty and goodness of God.
"Anselm of Canterbury gave the first modal "ontological" argument for God's existence. Yet, despite its distinct originality, philosophers have mostly avoided the question of what modal concepts the argument uses, and whether Anselm's metaphysics entitles him to use them. Here, Brian Leftow sets out Anselm's modal metaphysics. He argues that Anselm has an "absolute", "broadly logical", or "metaphysical" modal concept, and that his metaphysics provides acceptable truth makers for claims in this modality. He shows that his modal argument is committed (in effect) to the Brouwer system of modal logic, and defends the claim that Brouwer is part of the logic of "absolute" or "metaphysical" modality. He also defends Anselm's premise that God would exist with absolute necessity against all extant objections, providing new arguments in support of it and ultimately defending all but one premise of Anselm's best argument for God's existence"--
This book re-examines Anselm’s famous arguments for the existence of God in his Proslogion, and in his Reply. It demonstrates how he validly deduces from plausible premises that God so truly exists that He could not be thought not to exist. Most commentators, ancient and modern, wrongly located his argument in a passage which is not about God at all. It becomes evident that, consequently, much contemporary criticism is based on misreading and misunderstanding his text. It reconstructs his reasoning through three distinct but logically connected stages. It shows that, even if Anselm’s crucial premises are sceptically interpreted, his conclusions still follow. Properly understood, this argument is not vulnerable to the standard criticisms, including Gaunilo’s ‘Lost island’ counter-example.
Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams offer a brief, accessible introduction to the life and thought of St. Anselm (c. 1033-1109). Anselm, who was Archbishop of Canterbury for the last 16 years of his life, is unquestionably one of the foremost philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages. Indeed he may have been the greatest Christian thinker in the 800 years between Augustine and Aquinas. His keen and rigorous thinking earned him the title 'The Father of Scholasticism.' The influence of his contributions to ethics and philosophical theology is clearly discernible in figures as various as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, the voluntarists of the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the Protestant Reformers. The prevalence of self-identified Anselmians - and anti-Anselmians - in contemporary philosophy of religion attests to the enduring importance of his approach to the divine nature. Visser and Williams's book falls into two main parts. The first will elucidate Anselm's metaphysics, concluding with an examination of Anselm's account of truth, which serves as a capstone for his metaphysical system. The second part focuses on Anselm's theory of knowledge. Topics considered include Anselm's general account of cognition and his odd but compelling theory of language-acquisition and the role it plays in discourse about the divine. The third section of the book is devoted to the moral life. Anselm's account of the foundations of ethics is philosophically of great interest, the authors show, because it effectively combines insights that contemporary philosophers have thought to be antithetical. In the fourth and last section, they turn to Anselm's philosophical explorations of Christian doctrine, including Redemption, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. They show how Anselm puts his metaphysical system to work in establishing the coherence of Christian doctrine and explain how his philosophical theology rests on his theory of knowledge.