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Recitation Over Anselm's Proslogion Summary

553 Words3 Pages

Jesha C. Lor
Dr. Arbo
Intro to Philosophy TR (9:30-10:45 a.m.)
22 October 2015
Recitation over Anselm’s Proslogion In Anselm’s Proslogion, Anselm starts out by asking himself whether there is a single argument which requires no other for its proof than itself alone; and if alone would suffice to demonstrate that God exists. Anselm’s ontological argument is set out in two forms: God exists and God has and will always exist. He begins by stating in Proslogion II that, “Truly there is a God, although the fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” which references to Psalm 14 in the bible of the fool who said that there is no God. For Anselm, this fool represents someone who would agree that, God would logically exist but, still insists that God does not exist. The argument in Proslogian II can be summarize as, we can imagine lots …show more content…

Anselm uses the painter analogy, “When a painter thinks ahead to what he will paint, he has that picture in his thought, but he does not yet think it exists, because he has not done it yet. Once he has painted it he has it in his thought and that it exists because he has done it,” to explain why things that exists are greater and better than things we only think about or imagine. He says that a painter begin with an idea of what they want to paint and based on this idea, they paint the picture and don’t continue to think about “what they want to paint”. A painter is called a painter because they paint not because they can think. Anselm continues in his argument that, “If God exists only in thought, he could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater,” and so he

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