Joachim Ringleben, Lutheran theologian from Göttingen: New way to read the argument; later.
Gaunilo was a monk who wrote a reply to the Proslogion. He said: your intentions are good, the idea that one argument can prove gods existence is good, but, we can think of the most perfect beings, does not imply the existence of the most perfect.
He bases his argument on a folktale of a man who travels north and finds basically hyperborea, the insula fortunate, is the most perfect place to live. Though the fact that you can think of this perfect place does not indicate that that place actually exists.
Anselm is not arguing that his argument is conclusive, but simply very compelling.
To be better than not to be in every respect imaginable.
Anselm agrees with Gaunilo except in the case of God. He argues for a certain kind of specificalism in relation to God.
To think of the genre of beings is that they can be the most perfect within that genre of being, however, God does not belong to any further genre or category, except for the genre of general perfection, the limit of our thought; this limit in kind implies the actual existence of God.
Anselm thinks his argument contains so much force (viz nominis) that in each and every respect God is what is the most best than not to be. When every element of God lacks limits.
Anselm’s reply insists on the unique case relating to God, and not on any other concept.
Joachim Ringleben: focuses on the answer to Gaunilo and then chapter 2, 3 and 4 which are the most crucial. His first point (erfahren Gottes im denken) he presents the state of the art of all given interpretations and recalls some points that are not an object of contestation in relation to Anselm. He stresses that this definition of God lacks a superlative but has a comparlativ. Not maxime, but maior. Second point, when in chapter 2 Anselm talks about incipience (fool), he says that the fool says that God is not. Anselm makes a distinction between saying and saying in your heart, the latter meaning that you are saying something in a more genuine or real way. You can say self-contradictions but you cannot think them in your heart (goes back to Augustine).
J. H. Newman, The Grammar of Assent. Develops the idea in Augustine of notional knowledge and real knowledge. For knowledge to be real, you have to realise all the implications (the totality) for any piece of notional knowledge. The problem with the fool is thus that the fool can pray and go to church and can say that he believes in God without actually knowing how to really believe, he only has a notional knowledge of God, rather than real knowledge. So each time from chapter 2 on, Anselm uses the word Cogitare, he intends what Newman would call real knowledge. Ringleben agrees. Third: the negative definition of God rather than a positive definition; ”that which nothing greater can be thought”.
Ringleben goes on to focus on the conclusion from Anselm’s answer to Gaunilo. ”That than which a greater cannot be thought”. The object that nothing greater of the object can be thought. Maius can also refer to cogitare, to think really. The object that cannot be thought more really, so it is about the way in which it is thought rather than about what is thought.
He goes on to talk about the Esse intellectu, esse intelligere. To say to be in the intellect is equivalent to thinking something, you can see this from two sides. Either: in the intellect there is something that is, or I understand something that is, something in the real world.
The act of real knowledge is radically intentional. Thinking is intentional. There is not an empty thinking that in a second moment is filled with content. The act of thinking is thinking-of.
In the second moment one can think of one’s thoughts, but this has no effect on the fact that thinking is always thinking-of.
If thought and reality are originally correlated, if I can have exhaustive evidence from the point of thinking it is also exhaustive form its correlate, its object. So to think radically, I need to think of the object of true knowledge. So thought is divided in a structure of the above concepts. Thought and the object of the thought are structurally related, you cannot have one without the other.
So if I think of something greater than can be thought of, the maximum thinking, it essentially implies a maximum in reality.
So the argument is not about God being greater than what can exist in my head, but rather that I think about the most radical understanding, I can understand that what is absolutely perfect necessitates an object which is the most maximum, the most absolutely perfect.
In this way, the argument; the greater implicates a correlation between thinking and reality, and is not so much a statement concering reality, but rather the very nature of knowledge.
It is not to insist on the object of God, but rather on the distinction between two ways of knowledge, one that is partial, and one which is a limit case (which might not be something we always find) on the very condition of possibility of thinking when I say that I think something and I know really then I must realise that to be is better than not to be. In the sense that the object is real because I am thinking about it really. So the real act of thinking is a modality between both the object and the thought.
This interpretation implies the distinction from Augustine, and so is not in any way perfect, but we can understand that a lot of the standard critcism that Anselm receives is basically null, because they miss the point. If you focus on the perfection of a thought, which might exist, it doesn’t imply its existence but if I am thinking of the possibility of real knowledge as a limit of any possible knowledge, then all my knowledge cannot be real anymore, and so I cannot give up here without giving up any possibility of knowledge at all.
The crucial aspect is the maius as linked to the verb, cogitare, and the object which is thought.
The reply to Gaunilo would have been a better hemeneutical perspective from which to read Anselm, so that one does not think of Anselm in his everyday critiques.
Descartes:
Made dutch philosophy relevant. That’s it.
Interesting about Descartes is the way in which Descartes remains a figure that has a function in the periodisation of philosophy. Even people who have different readings of Descartes all agree that he begins a new epoche in the history of philosophy; begins modern philosophy more or less agreed on by all.
Diennes jadwdson wrote his phd on the scholastic sources of Descartes, and says that basically all of Descartes’ thoughts existed in authors before him, and what he really did was thus only to recapitulate all those thoughts into one whole.
What he says is actually mainly important due to the way in which he says and for the rhetoric of ”moving forward”.
In the Proslogion you can sense that Anselm realises that he is doing something new, whilst still being presented as a meditation that he happened to stumble by in order to understand his belief. There is no claim of originality. Because being original is departing from the common sense and from the possibility of sharing your result with others. We should never give the impression that what we say is new but just a new way of saying it.
This is not the case in Descartes. In Descartes there is a clear intellectual endeavour where there is a claim of originality as a value. The rhetoric that every thinker and artist has to be original is a completely new form of positive value. In premodern thought, originality was a mark of error.
Descartes intentionally constructs with very elegant latin of originality as the mark of authentic philosophy. So Descartes didn’t actually think very many original thoughts, however, he makes the rhetoric of seeming like you do important.
The rhetoric and the structure of Descartes argument are integral parts of him whitout which we no longer have Descartes.
I → God → World
Unconventionally, Descartes first gets rid of the world and then instead finds his solid ground on the I. After this he demonstraits the existence of God and only then can he demonstrate the existence of the world, to have science. This part of Descartes’ project too is something that is explicitly his own. The matter of presenting the issue and the order of the argument is what is really changed compared to previous authors.
Descartes was a cautious author who did not want to get in trouble.
Descartes’ meditations had multiple editions due to not wanting to get in trouble with eg. Paris.
Studied un an important Jesuit school and thus has a very good education.
But also very aware of the condemnations of people like Galileo, as a schoolboy he wrote a poem about him and was chastised for it, which he might have learnt from later (according to Toulin).
Descartes sends the work and asks for a lot of correction, to which he basically adds none of it. He asks famous philosophers to object to the meditations and then published the work together with objections and then the answers to the objections.
The meditations include the preface and the synopsis (which is a summary of what will be done, an abstract) presented in a very domesticated way but without the more controversial aspects of his argument.
(Via Trita, trodden path, where the meaning is that the trodden path is the path of truth. Do not leave it.)
Descartes says that the route he follows is a path less trodden, and thus thought it would not be helpful to have it in French lol.
Though he did authorise a French translation 5 years later.
The term ”objective-subjective” was developed at the end of the 17:th century, Descartes is using very hip lingo.
In Descartes the Idea and its effect are the same. Idea → Effect. There is no Idea that is not an effect.
Descartes wants to create a foundation for prima philosophica, metaphysics.
Descartes’ wants to present himself as someone who does not want to create any kind of scandal.
Stephen Toulmin Cosmopolis.
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing. His example is Spinoza who is persecuted. Being a philosopher is always a risky business so they usually only say things that are interpretable for those who are already in the know. Thus, when reading a philosophical text we should take the main message but we need to do a certain hermeneutics of paranoia about what kind of inconsistencies are found in the text which might aim at what they really want to say.
Paul Oskar Kristeller: ”Leo Strauss is the philosopher who thinks that all philosophers lie, and that what they are really trying to say is everything that Leo Strauss says.”
For Descartes, the idea of starting from scratch is very new. We cannot only build on the old, but we have to tear it down and create the new. (Husserl does not tear down, nor build anything new; for him it’s about seeing the structure that is already there)
”The Father of Immanentism”
Descartes doesn’t use the word, but says clearly in the preface to give a new grounding of the existence of God and the immortality of the Soul. It was to defend the christian faith. The idea that you base everything, including God on the existence of the mind, makes all else immanent and dependent on the mind. Even if you speak of a transcendental God, the way in which God is established is dependent on the self. If we read Descartes in a kind of line like Descartes-Spinoza-Hegel, immanentism is fully declared in Hegel, but one could contest that that is actually the only proper lineage coming from Descartes in thinkers like Hegel.
From the fact that I think, it’s not obvious to say that ”I think therefore I am”, it’s an assumption rather that the thinking self is a substance, so this thinking that is undeniable is a substance. Substance is what is without needing anything else to be.
In the fourth meditation he focuses on the equation of Idea → Effect. (You cannot have more from the less)
The cause ≥ to the effect. It is impossible to have a cause that is less than it. An assumption he makes.
If an Idea is infinite, the cause must also be infinite. He analyses our ideas as thinking substances, the I. Then the thinking substance has Ideas. We do not know whether anything exists outside our ideas, but if we describe them we can group them in three different kinds; Adventitious Ideas that seem to derive from something external; and then ideas that seem to be a combination of adventitious ideas and something in the imagination; Inborne ideas, Ideas that are in my mind but are not a combination from the outside. Among the innate ideas, there is one particular idea which is the idea of God. It doesn’t come from outside. How is the Idea of God? Infinite and perfect. What is the cause of this idea? The I. If I have an Idea which is infinite, the mind which is finite cannot be the cause of God. Thus, since the Idea is infinite, it presupposes a cause which is infinite and perfect which is not in the mind, ie. God-outside-the-mind.