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The Tension Between Direct Experience and Argument in Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John E. Smith
John E. Smith
Affiliation:
Clark Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
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Extract

There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known, moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to the discovery of a sufficient reason for finite existence. Anselm seems to have had his own sense of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when, in his own words, he wondered, ‘if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists’. Here we are entirely within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition, a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface. With such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention, it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed, concern should have been overlooked - Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof superfluous, while the inference in an argument - especially one moving towards existence – inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree, the absence of what is sought for.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1981, pp. 487 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 487 note 1 Descartes gave a new and somewhat confusing turn to the discussion by starting with the idea of God and then asking for its cause (something Anselm had never done), thus creating a type of cosmological argument from the Ontological starting point.

page 487 note 2 Anselm's, StProslogion, trans. Charlesworth, M. J. (Oxford, 1965), p. 103.Google Scholar

page 487 note 3 It is important to notice that Aquinas somewhat obscured the rational development involved when he characterized the Argument as being ‘self–evident’.

page 488 note 1 It is not without significance that Anselm was concerned to emphasize the ‘silent reasoning within himself’ that gave rise to the Argument, as if it were quite essential that every individual should actually participate in the tracing out of this reasoning in his own mind, rather than merely reading it in its objectified written form.

page 488 note 2 Charlesworth, , p. 135.Google Scholar

page 488 note 3 Ch. XVIGoogle Scholar, Charlesworth, , p. 137 ‘non te sentio’.Google Scholar

page 490 note 1 It is interesting to note that the whole point of Kant's intuitionism in mathematics was to show that even in that discipline something in addition to ‘pure reason’ is at work.

page 491 note 1 This essay first appeared in the Hibbert journal in 1908Google Scholar, and is reprinted in The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Hartshorne, and Weiss, , (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), vol. II, paras 452–493.Google Scholar Since the editors of these volumes present Peirce's writing in numbered paragraphs, it has become standard practice to refer to them in this way; hence the citation ‘6. 454’ refers, not to pages, but to that numbered paragraph in volume VI.

page 491 note 2 For purposes of consistency, I shall follow Peirce's practice of using capital letters for technical terms – Universes, Neglected Argument, Musement, etc. – which in his discussion are distinguished from vernacular words.

page 492 note 1 Peirce distinguished between an ‘Argument’ and an ‘Argumentation’; the former means any process of thought ‘reasonably tending to produce a definite belief’ and the latter is an Argument ‘proceeding on definitely formulated premises’ (6. 456). In a fuller discussion, more attention would have to be paid to this distinction, but for present purposes we need only to point out that, for Peirce, the work of reason is not confined to Argumentation or formal demonstration, but is manifest as well in the reflective development of a person's experience and in man's instinctive capacity to propose relevant explanatory hypotheses. And, indeed, Peirce was convinced that theologians have overlooked the line of thought he was pursuing because they ‘share those current notions of logic which recognize no other Arguments than Argumentations’ (6. 457).

page 494 note 1 The central feature of Musement is, as Peirce says, that it is not an exercise in which we set out to convince ourselves of a belief we already hold, but is rather an opening out of the mind to the Universes so that there wells up within us, ineluctably, the idea of God as the creator of these Universes.

page 495 note 1 Those familiar with the full range of Peirce's thought will recognize here the presence of the three ‘normative’ sciences esthetics, ethics and logic and in that order.

page 495 note 2 In a full treatment of the Neglected Argument account would have to be taken of the theory of experience held by Peirce and, in a similar vein, by James and Dewey as well. Central to that theory is the idea of experiencing as ‘actually trying out’ or ‘actually undergoing’ as opposed to merely thinking or conceptually entertaining a thought content. It is clear from Peirce's entire discussion that actually engaging in Musement is essential, for it is obvious that it would be idle for him to speak of the effect Musement has on an individual were no Musement to take place.