The New York Times today had an interesting front-page blog post, The Self-Thinking Thought. Considering St Anselm’s recent popularity in my own conversations (and his concurrent ascendence of personal interest), it was apropos that Nathan Schneider (the post’s author, who also writes a blog entitled Killing the Buddha, which I haven’t explored at all) would discuss the ontological argument (or at least his experience in trudging his way through Anselm’s work).
I especially enjoyed this included illustration, also courtesy of Mr. Schneider:
I personally have little to offer, intellectually, in relationship to Anselm (and even less in critique of Schneider’s post). I do, however, remember the ontological argument as being something of a curiosity (put mildly; maybe it’s more accurately the ‘brunt of all religious/theistic absurdity’) to the atheists and agnostics I worked with at the Institute for Humist Studies (IHS). I haven’t read any of Anselm’s works, though I have a rudimentary familiarity with them, nor have I read any sort of response or criticism (other than the generally knee-jerk reactionary disavowing prevalent among the non-religious).
As with much else, of any kind of nature (whether mopeds, opera, literature, friendships, &c), when I’ve not yet made any sort of hard-and-fast decision or indelible opinion, I tend to consume indiscriminately. Similarly, I am encountering the same behavior regarding theology and religion (and indeed, spirituality and some modicum of practice): I’m still such a neophyte that I don’t have any real capacity to form preferences or tastes. Of course, there are parameters, inherent ground-rules I’ve had for myself (“I don’t need to try Communism to know it’s bad,” to quote The Opposite of Sex): some internalized set of boundaries is necessary in any process of discernment, regardless of nature. The key, though, is to understand how, when, and under what circumstances such boundaries are malleable (if, indeed, they are ever malleable).
When I first became interested in opera some years back, I saw everything I could: every single performance, every era, every language, every genre. Whatever, whenever, wherever. I had no discrimination about consumption, every opportunity was an opportunity to glean preference, idea, thought, and experience. I saw Baroque opera, Classical opera, Romantic opera, contemporary opera. English, French, German, Russian, Czech, Italian. Everything. I sat through hours of performance that I really didn’t enjoy (and kept checking my watch throughout), but I still learned. I also saw transcendent, breathtaking, exhilarating performances that tapped into the very root of my soul.
‘The process of discernment’ is, in its usual context, applies to one’s navigation of religious practice, belief, and – ultimately – faith. But it extends so far outside of that, the honing and crafting of personal desire, opinion, and thought. Philosophies need to be contextualized, I think, to be valid – preferences have to be contrasted to dislikes or disinterests. Reading Sartre, Nietzsche, Kant, or Heidegger is well and good, but without proper intellectual context, they become entirely void of true substance and meaning.
(At this point, I should note that this is the fundamental root of my ‘issue’ with core curricula at colleges and universities: the laying of an intellectual foundation can’t occur, in any meaningful sense, in a vacuum. How many students read, say, The Republic, or The Communist Manifesto, or a great piece of literature (Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (hell, any existentialist) both seem to be particularly victim to existing in a vacuum, without any real grasp of the framework and context of the work), but are lacking – in an essential sense – what makes these works important?
Understanding relevency (even if not agreeing with it-) is an endlessly complex task that, in no situation, can occur in the course of a semester, a year, or even the full tenure of an undergraduate career. Maybe the closest, I think, one can come to a truly immersive, worthwhile venture of the sort would be to do one’s studies at, say, St John’s College. The buying and selling of presumably-useful (though often hollow and substance-less) ‘intellectualism’ raises my ire, because it flies in the face of every sort of meaning the liberal arts possess.).
