Preview

A Short History on Modern Philosophy Paper

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1076 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Short History on Modern Philosophy Paper
As a Christian, St. Augustine (354-430 AD) couldn’t believe that the soul preexisted creation despite his ties to Neoplatonists, who held disdain for the material world. Philosophy had a purpose geared towards the religious and the ethical because God’s truth is that He is a priori, or prior to experience, in his existence. His work expressed his belief that happiness can be achieved when Faith is preceding and Understanding is succeeding: an individual cannot understand if he first does not believe in divination divinity. The existence of the self lends to the existence of God because of truths discovered through inner experiences of being and thinking, which may have influenced Descartes’ truth in Cogito Ergo Sum.
Boethius (c. 475-526 AD), a former senator and top-level assistant turned persona non grata, developed proof of the problem of divine foreknowledge as the concern that human freedom doesn’t truly exist due to God’s foreknowledge through His prophetic revelations in the Bible. His knowledge that events will happen cannot be changed—which means that He can never be wrong: the outcome is guaranteed—man has no will to follow but His. Boethius eventually come to a solution: God is eternal (the simultaneous and complete possession of life) and thus cannot have knowledge of the future because He has no concept of time. He can experience every moment at once instead of in intervals due to his status as ultimate reality. Taking away free will as been labeled as simple necessity of nature (the mortality of man), whereas keeping as a result of a relationship is conditional (if you are seen walking, then you must be walking).
St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was an infamous follower of Augustine’s work who believed that philosophy rationally justified religious beliefs through necessary reasons (logically true proportions and valid inferences). He proves God’s existence in understanding and reality as an absolute truth: the idea of God in fact defines what it

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    ‘There seems to be a considerable contradiction and inconsistency between God’s foreknowledge and the existence of free will.’ (Boethius).…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anselm put forward his ideas about the existence of God through his book, the Proslogion. He started by simply giving the word ‘God’ a definition, and then explaining that to not believe in God was absurd. The Proslogion consisted of two main parts. In Proslogion 1, Anselm explained God as being…

    • 400 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hum112 Assignment 1:Essay

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In Discourse on Method by René Descartes, the author starts by expressing his methodology and thought process in the effort to determine his own existence. While the topic of this piece starts by focusing on Descartes and the truth he was searching for about his existence, it quickly turns to the topic of the truth or existence of something more perfect than himself. That more perfect example being God.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Boethius’ main concern was in showing that god rewards and punishes justly. In order for Boethius to successfully address this concern and answer it convincingly, he must explain the problem of evil and suffering in our world, as well as explain how God can exist with his specific attributes and still allow for us to have free will. Such issues raise three important questions relating to; time and where God is within it, the two kinds of necessity and God’s divine foreknowledge. On analysis of these points, Boethius doesn’t resolve the problem of God’s foreknowledge to an extent where both God and his foreknowledge can exist coherently.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    argument with ideas that do not depend on experience and progress to a throughly logical…

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Augustine’s various writings have been critical to the Middle Ages and the understanding of Christianity. This understanding provides a strong religion which was able to survive the splitting of the Roman and to continue to manifest itself…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the “Proslogion” Anselm argues God as the greatest conceivable being that exists in reality. In this essay, I will show that Anselm’s ontological argument is sound and his conclusion logically follows from his premises. I will consider an objection towards Anselm’s definition of God and show that it is unconvincing and flawed. The objection against Anselm’s ontological argument that I will consider will be one brought up by a contemporary of Anselm, Gauinilo.…

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Saint Anselm and Gaunilo’s “The Ontological Argument”, Anselm believes that God is the greatest of all conceivable things and nothing else can be ....…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    St. Anselm was a philosopher who proposed the first ontological argument in Western Christian tradition back in 1078 through his work Proslogian. An ontological argument is “an argument aiming to prove the existence of God through just thought of God alone” (Timmons 439). St. Anselm believed the definition of God to be, “That than which nothing greater can be conceived.” While Anselm argued God’s existence was purely through introspection, it can be disputed that just rationalization of God in one’s mind alone cannot contrive his existence in reality.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Out of the two arguments presented by Anselm and Aquinas the one that makes the most sense to me is Aquinas. I think this because, unlike Anselm, Aquinas believes that people will never be able to fully grasp an understanding of “God’s nature” through reason alone. In my opinion Anselm is a mix between Locke's Empiricism and Kant's Structuralism. On the other hand Aquinas is more along the lines of someone who practices Plato's Dualism, and Descartes' Rationalism.…

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Big Paper 1

    • 1625 Words
    • 4 Pages

    St. Anselm wrote “The Ontological Proof of God’s Existence”. He believes it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding and another to understand that the object exists. God must exist in the mind even if that mind is a “fool” who doesn’t believe in God. He thinks that if the greatest possible being (God) exists in the mind, then he must exist in reality. If God only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible. This being exists in the mind…

    • 1625 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Descartes’s Meditations III, the Meditator describes his idea of God as "a substance that is infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else."(70) Thus, due to his opinion in regards to the idea of God, the Meditator views God containing a far more objective reality than a formal one. Due to the idea that of God being unable to have originated in himself, he ultimately decides that God must be the cause of the idea, therefore he exists. The meditator defines God as such, “by ‘God’ I mean the very being the idea of whom is within me, that is, the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp, but can somehow reach in my thought, which subject no defects whatsoever.” (70)…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Consolation of Philosophy

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The ability to know the plan for mankind and allow them to happen because they must have a purpose disproves Boethius’ belief that things happen haphazardly. If an AGAPAK God knows what’s going to happen, and sees a purpose behind them, then nothing can happen by chance. It’s impossible for chance to exist if God knows the future. However, this raises questions about the existence of free…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Philosophical theodicy demonstrates that God, being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, has good reasons for occasionally allowing the continued existence of evil and suffering. It also demonstrates that the existence of evil and suffering provides greater benefits than the benefits of removing evil . St Augustine, 354 – 430 AD, based his arguments on the Bible; especially the accounts of the Creation and the Fall in Genesis. His influential theodicy rests upon two major assumptions; evil did not come from God, since God’s creation was faultless and perfect. Also that evil, having come from elsewhere, God is justified in allowing it to stay.…

    • 1230 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Philosophy Response Paper

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The existence of God has been a huge issue for many, many centuries. In H. J. McCloskey's article "On being an Atheist" he said that the cosmological and teleological arguments are false and that we need to forget the idea of God completely because there is no definitive proof. McCloskey's main issue with the idea of God is the presence of evil in the world. ca…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays