Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Tapp, Christian
• Siegwart, Geo

Titel

Did Anselm Define God? Against the Definitionist Misrepresentation of Anselm’s Famous Description of God

Ist Teil von

• Philosophia (Ramat Gan), 2022-09, Vol.50 (4), p.2125-2160

Ort / Verlag

Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

SpringerLink

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological proofs in the Proslogion have puzzled philosophers for centuries. The famous description “something / that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is part and parcel of his argument. Most commentators have interpreted this description as a definition of God. We argue that this view, which we refer to as “definitionism”, is a misrepresentation. In addition to textual evidence, the key point of our argument is that taking the putative definition as what Anselm intended it to be – namely a description of a content of faith – allows getting a clear view of the discursive status and argumentative structure of Proslogion 2–4, as well as making sense of an often neglected part of the argument.