Q&A: A Question About the Ontological Argument
A Question About the Ontological Argument
Question
Happy holidays!
When I listened to lesson number 14 in the series on faith / belief, where the Rabbi explains Anselm’s ontological proof from the Proslogion, the following question occurred to me: Anselm argues that a concept whose reality a person can imagine (just as a painter imagines his painting before painting it) is more perfect than an entity that a person is unable even to conceive of (“a mere concept”). But I wonder: couldn’t one argue exactly the opposite—that the most perfect thing is that which our human grasp cannot imagine or describe at all? An entity that human thought cannot picture or represent would seem greater and more perfect than one that fits into the finite definitions of human beings, no?
Also, how can one join the Zoom/WhatsApp? They didn’t answer me by email.
Answer
Nowhere in the argument is there any such assumption. If you want, you can see a systematic analysis of the argument in the first conversation in my book The First Existent.
The link for joining the WhatsApp group for the lessons is here on the left side of the page.
Discussion on Answer
https://chat.whatsapp.com/GyhVZHNqhgY1JLKObl9hHg
Thanks for the answer, I’ll look into what you wrote more deeply.
Regarding WhatsApp—the link here directs to an email address where you have to request to join, and as I said, I didn’t get any response when I sent an email there.
Can I send it here?