Anselm's Proslogion | Seeing and Not Seeing God | Philosophy Core Concepts

This is a video in my new Core Concepts series -- designed to provide students and lifelong learners a brief discussion focused on one main concept from a classic philosophical text and thinker.

This Core Concept video focuses on Anselm's work, the Proslogion, and examines his discussion in chapters 14-16 of how God is both seen and not seen, and the "inaccessible light" that God dwells in. He also argues that God as "that than which a greater cannot be thought" is also "something greater than can be thought".

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#Anselm #medieval #proslogion #philosophy #Christianity #theology #metaphysics #God #divinity #argument

[JoshV]

I'm really enjoying these small bite sized videos that break down concepts and chapters in a philosophical work. I watch them after I read the chapters and they are helping me to understand the Proslogion bit by bit. For such a short piece of literature there are many concepts introduced and arguments presented, but very little verbiage to digest Anselm's thoughts, at least compared to other more wordy books. for me the repetition between the reading (and rereading) reinforced by these videos is a must to even begin to understand the work.

[AcceleratingUniverse]

thanks for these analyses, they're useful and so much more interesting than an infotainment summary of the first 3 chapters (which is what every other Anselm video is)

[byaringan]

"That which nothing greater can be conceived" is one of those statements that will take me a lot of time to wrap my mind around. What does it even mean...I hope i figure it out one day

[Ben.....]

9:15 When Anselm argues that the human mind is limited, visual metaphors might not be best. I use numbers. I can imagine a single silver ball in my mind as one. I can imagine ten silver balls in my mind and keep each individual separate and distinct at the same time. I cannot do this indefinitely. In my mind if I imagine one-million silver balls it doesn't look much different from one-billion. My mind is too limited to keep each distinct in such large powers.


In this way God surpasses our ability to understand.