The Logic of Perfection

by Charles Hartshorne

Overview

“In blunt outline the answer to the question, how do we rationally know God, is this: we find Him in all of our fundamental meanings, and if we try to purify them of involvement with deity we find that nothing unequivocal is left. All begins to dissolve in paradox. Unless we are forced to conceive God Himself in equally paradoxical terms—which might be called the question of philosophy—we are bound to stand by our meanings, God and all.”

This book, one of the handful of truly pathbreaking works in twentieth-century philosophical theology, presents Charles Hartshorne’s persuasive rehabilitation of Anselm’s Ontological Argument, recast in neoclassical form as “the Modal Proof,” along with applications of Hartshorne’s method to a variety of issues in contemporary metaphysical and religious thinking.

Charles Hartshorne authored many works, including A Natural Theology for Our Time and Anselm’s Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Argument for God’s Existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875480374
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/19/1991
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1	Preliminary Survey	3
Chapter 2	Ten Ontological or Modal Proofs for God's Existence	28
I.	The Nature of the Problem	29
II.	The Neoclassical Idea of Perfection as Modal Coincidence	34
III.	The Religious Idea of Perfection	40
IV.	Twenty Objections to the Proof	44
V.	Bias and Short-circuited Inquiry	47
VI.	The Irreducibly Modal Structure of the Argument	49
VII.	Is Existence a Predicate?	57
VIII.	The Incompatibility of Perfection and Contingency	58
IX.	The Argument from Universal Existential Tolerance	68
X.	The Epistemic Proof	70
XI.	The Ten Marks of Contingency and the Omnibus Proof	73
XII.	A Theory of Existential Modality	84
XIII.	On Giving the Theistic Case Away	89
XIV.	Replies to Some Objections	92
XV.	Does the Divine Existence Make an Empirical Difference?	108
XVI.	The Barthian or Fideist Position	111
XVII.	Did Hume and Kant Refute the Theistic Proofs?	116
Chapter 3	The Wider Context: Theism as an Integral Philosophy	118
Chapter 4	Three Strata of Meaning in Religious Discourse	133
Chapter 5	Two Views of the Logic of Theism (Criticism of John Wisdom on "Gods")	148
Chapter 6	Freedom Requires Indeterminism and Universal Causality	161
Chapter 7	A World of Organisms	191
Chapter 8	Mind, Matter, and Freedom	216
Chapter 9	Science, Insecurity, and the Abiding Treasure	234
Chapter 10	Time, Death, and Everlasting Life	245
Chapter 11	Total Unity in Russian Metaphysics: Some Reactions to Zenkovsky's and Lossky's Histories	263
Chapter 12	Some Empty Though Important Truths	280
Chapter 13	The Unity of Man and the Unity of Nature	298
	Acknowledgments	324
	Index	326