This essay consists of a comparative study of the ontological argument for the existence of God asformulated by St. Anselm of Canterbury and René Descartes. The comparative analysis itselfconsists of two parts. Firstly, a comparative study of the argument itself, and an examination of theunderlying metaontological commitments that form the basis of the respective arguments, whichare then likewise contrasted. The stated purpose is to examine whether two versions of theontological argument that appear to be similar may have an underlying framework that makes themfundamentally fundamentally distinct in a way that is not immediately apparent. The analysis foundthat this was the case, and that there are significant differences in how the argument is formulated.This is of interest especially as these two thinkers wrote in and were influenced by widely differingcultural, intellectual and academic contexts, which may be reflected in their work. Ontologicalarguments for the existence of God as a phenomenon is a metaphysical argument that seeks toprove that God exists without relying on empirical and observational evidence. Rather, one seeksthrough these ontological arguments to show that the existence of God is self-evident.With Anselm and Descartes this happens in a seemingly very similar yet fundamentally differentway. The results of this study demonstrate differences that appear primarily in the starting point forthe respective discourses, as well as in the methodology that is applied. Anselm bases his discourseon a distinctly neoplatonic foundation regarding the highest good, which he later extrapolates to amore comprehensive reasoning regarding the distinction between different natures according togreatness, of which goodness is one such greatness. Descartes, on the other hand, anchors hisdiscourse in scholastic philosophy and especially the idea of the causal principle of transference,especially in relation to human consciousness and the idea or the concept of God which manifeststherein. These results have been achieved primarily by examining Anselm's arguments based onsecondary sources that relate both directly and indirectly to his ontological argument, which in itssimplicity otherwise consists almost in its entirely of a self-evident descriptive definition of whatGod is. However, the differences that emerge are not of such a degree that a division of these twoargument into different categories can be made with a high degree of confidence. On the otherhand, it is of interest to analyze these underlying frameworks for ontological arguments in order toalso be able to analyze the potential influence or impact of various contextual aspects such as place,time and prevailing academic culture as this essay attempts to do.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-195952 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Forss, Elin |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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