thom space

Todays diet: Anselm of Canterbury, founder of Scholasticism and originator of the ontological proof of God (big G) aka apple head.

So saint Anselm had quite a bit to say, and I guess we can credit him with being somewhat of a nice guy, though there is really no bases for me to say such a thing other than the fact that I have thought about him being a nice guy and there fore he exist as a nice guy by way of the fact that I am thinking of him as such. You see I think that one of Anselms essential qualities is that he be a nice guy, therefore if he existed (which we are sure he did) then he must have been a nice guy. Because if he was not a nice guy he could not have existed. SO because Anselm existed he must have been a nice guy. There is a semi ontological proof for the “nice guyness” of saint Anselm.

Perhaps you have realized that something might not be entirely kosher with how I arrived at the proof of Anselms niceness? Well that is because it is not really a proof of an objectifiable fact but is rather an expression of my own personal belief. let me explain, I simply posited (my belief) that part of Anselm’s being was to be a nice guy. from that subjective position I went on to prove that Anselm must have had that quality of being by way of the fact that he existed. Pretty cool huh.

So how is this at all relevant to what Anselm did for philosophy (or really what he did not do)? Well like I said before Anselm was the originator of the Ontological argument for the proof of God. Whoa. That’s right. SO here is how the ontological argument works: First you have people with minds, then you have these people think about God, then these people decide that one of the essential qualities of God be that nothing can be greater than God, then you have the same people try and think about something that nothing can be greater than, and then because they can think of something that has the Quality of nothing being greater than it, presto… Instant God.

So the ontological proof works extremely well at proving the existence of something based upon a preset definition of essential existential elements. But it is important to remember that this proof does not establish any kind of objective fact. The truth of the proof is only so good as the subjective postion of the people makeing the argument. And that sort of brings us to Anselms other philosophical contribution (if it can be called that) Scholasticism.

Scholasticism was a reaction to a lack of reason and a plethora of mystics in the church. The basic aim of the Scholastics was to make Faith and reason work together. Anslem spent a great deal of his time trying to establish the foundation of the church out side of scriptural authority as evident in much of his work. The benefit of Scholasticism is that it preserved much of antiquities writing, with out the diligent work of the Scholastics there would not have been much in the way of ancient text. See good things do come from blind adherence to dogmatic practices. But on the down side there was not really any type of philosophical development for nearly 1000 years from the time that Plato’s Academy was closed to the entrance of Descartes. Just a little down time. no big deal.