The fallacy of equivocation occurs when a term or word switches meaning in the course of the argument, that is, when a term or word expresses one meaning in one premise and another meaning in another premise or conclusion.
Let us consider the example below.
Example 1
Philosophy is an art. But art is practiced by painters. Therefore, philosophy is also practiced by painters.
As we can see, the premises of the argument above are plausible, and the argument appears to be valid. However, the term “art” is used in two different senses. In the first premise, the term art refers to a skill that requires creativity, imagination and the ability to think critically, while in the second premise it refers to the “fine arts” or the cultural institution which involves the fine arts (that is, painters in the case of the example above.
It must be noted that although it may be true that painters practiced the fine arts, it is not necessarily true that they practiced all the skills that involved creativity, imagination and the ability to think critically.
Let us consider another example.
Example 2
Logic is the study of arguments. Well, that is one course that I could ace. I know all about arguments. I have learned from experts. You should hear the arguments my parents have.
As we can see in the argument above, the arguer may conclude, in effect, that he would do well in the study of arguments because he knows all about arguments. But it is important to note that the word “argument” here is being used in two different senses. In the first sense, it means “reasoning”, but in the second sense it means “quarreling”. If we substitute the two senses of the word “argument” here, then we are able to clarify what the arguer, in fact, had said: that he would do well in the study of “reasoning” because he knows all about quarreling. This, of course, does not follow.
The examples below will further illustrate the fallacy of equivocation.
Example 3
“Impartiality” means not taking sides in a dispute; I had hoped that the judge would be impartial, but he ruled against me.
Example 4
All stars are heavenly bodies. But Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are stars. Therefore, there is a good reason to believe that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are heavenly bodies.
The fallacy of composition is a type of informal fallacy which occurs when the arguer mistakenly concludes that something is true to the whole simply because it is true to some of the parts of the whole. Put differently, in the fallacy of composition, the arguer assumes that the truth of the part of the whole necessarily affects the truth of the whole. Hence, what is assumed to be true to the part of the whole is necessarily true to the whole.
Let us consider the example below.
Example 1
De La Salle University is an excellent university. I know it because De La Salle’s College of Nursing consistently tops the board exams for nursing.
As we can see, the assumption of the argument above is that what is true of the part (that is, De La Salle University’s College of Nursing) is true of the whole (that is, the entire De La Salle University). However, it is obvious that the assumption is false. It is false because the excellent performance of De La Salle’s College of Nursing in the board exams for nursing does not necessarily imply that De La Salle University is an excellent institution of higher learning. It might be the case that De La Salle’s College of Engineering performs very poorly in the board exams for engineering.
The examples below will further illustrate the fallacy of composition.
Example 2
The pink sweater is gorgeous. The purple skirt over there is smashing. I love those red shoes in the window, and how about that terrific yellow vest on the mannequin! Let us face it, it will make a great outfit for you!
Example 3
Smoking this cigarette surely cannot harm me. So, how can smoking cigarettes harm me?
Example 4
All the angles of a triangle are less than 180 degrees. Therefore angles PQR, STU, and XYZ, which compose this triangle, are less than 180 degrees.
Example 5
If anything is good for an outstanding and crucial industry, such as the steel industry, then it would be good for the country as a whole.
The fallacy of division, also known as “false deduction”, is a type of informal fallacy which occurs when the arguer mistakenly concludes that something is true to one or some of the parts of the whole simply because it is true of the whole.
As we can see, the fallacy of division is the opposite of the fallacy of composition; as we may already know, the fallacy of composition is committed when the arguer erroneously assumes that something is true to the whole simply because it is true to some of the parts of the whole.
Let us consider the example below.
Example 1
One of the causes of poverty is laziness. Since 80 percent of the Filipino people are poor, then it can be logically argued that the Filipino people are lazy.
As we can see in the example above, the specific characteristic of the group as a whole (that is, the laziness of the Filipino people) is mistakenly attributed to all the members of the group (that is, the Filipino people are lazy). As the example illustrates, many Filipinos may have the characteristic of being lazy, which may be one of the causes of poverty. However, it is not safe to assume that the characteristic of being lazy is possessed by all the Filipino people taken individually. Thus, again, what is true of the whole is not necessarily true of the parts.
The examples below will further illustrate the nature and dynamics of the fallacy of division.
Example 2
The union voted to strike. Thus, every member of the union voted to strike.
Example 3
Humans are the only animals capable of philosophical thinking. Thus, every person is capable of philosophical thinking.
Example 4
Tomatoes are common in California. Therefore, since Los Angeles is in California, tomatoes are common in Los Angeles.
Example 5
The average beginning salary of college graduates with a major in nursing is USD 90, 000 per annum. Therefore, if I major in nursing, I can expect to begin at USD 90, 000.
An either/or fallacy, sometimes called false dichotomy, occurs when the arguer mistakenly reason from two alternatives, one claimed to be bad (that is, to be avoided) so that we ought to choose the other alternative. Put differently, an either/or fallacy consists of mistakenly assuming that there are only two possible solutions to some problem or that solving some problem consists of choosing between only two alternatives.
Thus, in either/or fallacy or false dichotomy, the argument develops by showing that one of the alternatives is false or unacceptable and then concludes that the other must be true.
Let us consider the example below.
Example 1
As I see it, either we enforce the death penalty or we eventually find the convicted murderer out on parole. We cannot have murderers going free, so we had better start enforcing the death penalty.
The example above has this from:
Either we enforce the death penalty or we eventually find the convicted murderer out on parole.
We cannot have murderers going free. Therefore, we must enforce the death penalty.
The form of the argument is as follows:
Either P or Q Not Q Therefore, P
If one is familiar with a disjunctive proposition in symbolic logic, one may notice that the argument above is a valid argument form. Hence, the either/or fallacy or false dichotomy does not consist in the use of an invalid argument form. Rather, it consists in a false premise, that is, the premise that says that there are only two alternatives available in addressing the problem or, as in the case of the example above, the death penalty or parole for murderers.
Let us consider another example.
Example 2
President George W. Bush: If you are not with us, then you are against us.
We heard this famous line of the former president of the United State George W. Bush during his war against the Al Qaida. In his attempt to force the governments in the world to support him, he argued that if they are not with him, they are against him. Of course, it does not always follow that if one is not in favor of a particular idea, then he is against it. For sure, if one nation is not on the side of President George W. Bush in his war against the Al Qaida, it does not necessarily follow that it is against Bush.
The following examples below will further illustrate the either/or fallacy or false dichotomy.
Example 3
Either we give in to these terrorists’ demands and jeopardize the lives of thousands of Americans or we refuse and risk the lives of the hostages. Well, I for one will not risk the lives of the Americans all over the world. So, we must not give in to these terrorists.
Example 4
The idea of deliberately causing trauma, deliberately injuring the head of a living baboon, is extremely distasteful. But if we are not allowed to continue this research, then we will simply not learn how to treat human beings with head injuries. It is unfortunate, but it must be done.
In these notes, I will briefly sketch the key concepts of Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy. However, it must be noted that Heidegger is a huge philosopher and difficult to understand. Thus, I will only present the key concepts of his existential philosophy.
To begin with, it is important to note that Heidegger offers a new conception of philosophy, which, according to some scholars, such as Werner Marx, aims ultimately to attain a “second beginning” at this late stage (20th century) of human development. Thus, Heidegger’s effort must be seen as composing in a new different way the question concerning the “Essence of Being”, and, at one with this, articulating the “Essence of Man”. It appears therefore that Heidegger’s main intention in rekindling the question concerning the “Essence of Being” is to really articulate the essence and meaning of being human.
Why the “second beginning” of philosophy and the task of composing anew the “Essence of Being” and the “Essence of Man”?
For Heidegger, this question has long been stalemated and yet the question of Being, that is, the Essence of Being and the Essence of Man, remains the original question. Indeed, it is the “first” question concerning the meaning of our own Being (that is, the meaning of being human) vis-à-vis the meaning of Being (that is, Being in general or the entirety of Nature).
The attempt to rekindle the question of Being implies for Heidegger not only a “going back” (that is, remembering) to the original question and appropriating what this serious question itself had revealed to human beings (Dasein), but also a “going back” to those thinkers who first raised the question concerning the Being of beings, that is, the pre-Socratics. In other words, for Heidegger, if we want to understand the essence of Being, then we need to revisit the pre-Socratic philosophers and know what they said about “Being”.
As is well known, the pre-Socratics were the first to raise the question concerning the Essence of Being and of Man. Thus, they were referred to as the “first philosophers”. With this, they were said to have set the “first beginning” of philosophy.
We must note, however, that the term “pre-Socratics” does not refer only to the set of philosophers from Thales to the Sophists (for example, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thracymachus), but also to the philomythoi (that is, the lovers of myth, like Hesiod and Homer), as Aristotle would call them. Thus, in this context, philosophy could be said to have begun with the philomythoi and the pre-Socratics. Let me briefly explain the difference between the philomythoi and the Pre-Socratics’ way of philosophizing.
On the one hand, the philomythoi addressed the question concerning Being through their mythical songs. According to Werner Marx, through the mythical songs of the philomythoi, the great and terrifying powers that formed and ruled the cosmos came to light and shone forth in the brilliance of the beautiful and the terror of the numinous. In other words, the philomythoi explained the meaning of Being (that is, the entirety of Nature) through mythical songs and poems.
If it helps, we have to remember that the ancient people (the philomythoi and the Pre-Socratics in this case) found the cosmos or Nature to be mysterious. For example, it’s difficult for the ancient people to make sense of darkness, lightning, the four seasons, the, and the like. But as records show, they attempted to explain the mysteriousness of these phenomena, and, in doing so, the philomythoi used their mythical songs and poems. Concrete example to this is the Genesis (the first part of the Bible). As we know, the authors of the Genesis explained the origin and development of the world through myth.
It is interesting to note that during this time, “myth” is the best available method in explaining the mysteriousness of the world.
It is also important to note that in and through the simplicity and immediacy of the speech (saying and singing) of the philomythoi, a whole meaningful order arose out of the darkness that had shrouded all-that-is (Being). In other words, it is through their mythical songs and poems that the philomythoi was able to make sense of the mysteriousness of the world.
Lastly, the philomythoi in awe and wonder felt themselves as simply servants or instruments or and voices of the powers about which they sang. In other words, the philomythoi believed that they were simply “recipients” of thoughts or knowledge, that they did not invent thoughts; instead, thoughts or knowledge were simply revealed to them. As we can see later, this is the basis of Heidegger’s famous line “we do not come to thoughts; thoughts come to us”.
The pre-Socratics, on the other hand, addressed the question concerning Being through reason. Hence, it was with the pre-Socratics that reason was first used in in thinking of the mysteriousness of the world. For Heidegger, the thinking of the pre-Socratics was simple, immediate, and poetic (that is, creative). Hence, for Heidegger, the thinking of the pre-Socratics is a thinking of and toward that which enables, empowers, and forms all-that-is, that is, the thinking of and toward the logos or underlying principle of the world.
Like the philomythoi, the pre-Socratic thinkers felt themselves as servants, instruments, and voices of that power they deserved most―that is, of Nous, the light-giving Reason.
Blessed with Nous (light-giving Reason), the pre-Socratic thinkers were gifted with noises, that is, the capacity to apprehend intuitively and, thereby, to bring the meaning of Reason into the fullness of its light. And through these elucidations, the cosmos become more lucid.
Now, it must be noted that the pre-Socratics did not try to elucidate the various meanings of all the many “particular beings”. Instead, they tried to understand the meaning of Being holistically. Hence, the pre-Socratics most of all attempted to understand the entirety of Nature through the conception of the phenomenal elementary powers of Nature―the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. And in doing so, the pre-Socratics attempted to let emerge that which held all these elements together and empowered them: namely, physis―that is, the natureness of Nature.
For the pre-Socratics, physis is the great unifying mother and is conceived as Eon or “to einai”, that is, Being or “to be”. This is because the way physis unfolds itself was seen by the pre-Socratics as the way Being unfolds itself, or the way Being allows the physei onta, the natural beings, to “be” or “not be”. In this way, physis is understood as that which allows Being to make itself appear, but in the act of “appearing” Being passes again into darkness of their past. Again, as we can see later, this is the basis of Heidegger’s famous claim that the moment Being reveals itself, it automatically withdraws itself.
Indeed, in their “philosophizing poems”, the pre-Socratics elucidated poetically a certain “Essence of Being”, and at one with the Essence of Being, the Essence of Man was poetically composed as that natural being that can think the Essence of Being. Put differently, as Martin Heidegger sees it, through the thinking of the pre-Socratics we are therefore able to make sense of the mysteriousness of Nature; and part of this understanding is the realization that indeed man (which Heidegger calls Dasein) has the capability of understanding reality.
The discussion above indeed provides the context of Heidegger’s existential philosophy and the reason why Heidegger appropriated the “thinking” of the pre-Socratics in making sense of the meaning of Being. As Werner Marx writes:
“It is therefore not surprising to find in analyzing the writings of Heidegger that his new conception of philosophy seems to demand that the self-understanding of the philosopher be changed to the kind of self-understanding which the pre-Socratics had, that is, that the new philosopher feel himself again as intermediary, instrument, and voice and the style of philosophizing again become simple, immediate, and poetic like the singing and thinking of the pre-Socratics. And finally,
Heidegger―as the first thinkers did―now sees the foremost task or subject matter of philosophy not as the explanation of the meaning of “particular beings”, but as the elucidation, articulation, and poetic composition of a new Essence of Being, and thereby of a new Essence of Man”. See Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971).
The Metaphysics of Heidegger
At this point, I need to briefly present the key intuition of Heidegger’s brand of metaphysics because we cannot fully understand Heidegger’s existential philosophy without understanding the key intuition of his metaphysics.
It must be noted that Martin Heidegger rejects the whole enterprise of “metaphysics” in the traditional sense of this word where it indicates something eternal, infinite, and perfect. Heidegger’s metaphysics is a “finite metaphysics of finiteness”.
What Heidegger calls metaphysics, therefore, is bound up with the structure of man’s finite existence in the world. And so Heidegger proposes to understand man’s being in particular and Being in general within the horizon of Time. Thus, the idea of going beyond Time and coming back to Time (i.e., Transcendence) is a misunderstanding of Heidegger. Transcendence for Heidegger is Transcendence within immanence, that is to say, Transcendence within Time.
Again, the point of Heidegger’s metaphysics is that the meaning of Being in general and the meaning of man’s existence should be understood in the context of time. There is no outside of time for Heidegger. And this is one of the proper angles in understanding Heidegger’s existential philosophy.
Thus, for Heidegger, man (Dasein) transcends itself, but not toward a perfect Being (like God of Kierkegaard and Jaspers). Man transcends itself toward its own world, and nothing else. We can fully understand this concept once we have understood the key concepts of Heidegger’s existential philosophy.
Key Concepts in Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy
1) Facticity and Deliverance
The result of Heidegger’s inquiry into the meaning of Being (that is, existential phenomenology) is that Dasein is being-there-in-the-world and that it has come to be in the world through “deliverance”―“thrownness,” to use Heidegger’s word. As Heidegger says, Dasein is “thrown” into the world and that being-in-the-world is a “thrownness”.
Heidegger writes:
“This characteristic of Dasein’s Being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we call it the ‘thrownness’ of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the ‘there’. The expression ‘thrownness’ is meant to suggest the facticity of its being delivered over.”
For Heidegger, this “thrownness” into the world necessarily implies that Dasein always exists with other entities in the world and, hence, as a being with-others-in-the-world, Dasein is entirely submerged in the immediate care and concern of the everyday world into which it is thrown. Evidently, being with-others-in-the-world suggests that the existence of Dasein in the world is an existence with the “they” (das Man) or the anonymous anyone. Thus, when Heidegger says that Dasein is submerged in the immediate care and concern of the everyday world into which it is thrown, this means that Dasein is constantly related to other human beings in the form of concern and care.
As a thrown being, Dasein is not simply extant (vorhanden or present-at-hand) like a stone, nor Dasein is determined by an alien purpose (zuhanden or ready-to-hand) like a hammer which is what it is as something “to hammer with” and which only man can handle.
In contradistinction from these two other ways of being, the merely extant (vorhanden) and the functional being (zuhanden), man (Dasein) has the privilege of being in such a way that he is thrust upon himself, and yet owns his own existence. And unlike all other beings, man is so constituted that through most of his actions, he stands in some awareness of his being, of “that and how he is”. This means that man (Dasein) is conscious not only of the things around him, but also of his own existence.
For this reason, almost all of man’s act is an act in some awareness of the Essence of Being. In other words, for Heidegger, the awareness of one’s being (that is, self-consciousness) is also at the same time an awareness of the Essence of Being (or Essence of Reality). In fact, Heidegger believes that man is so constituted that he is “open” not only for his own Being (the character and meanings of his own existing) but also for the Being of other human and non-human “particular beings”.
2) Overtness and World:
The idea that man (Dasein) is open to the Essence of Being (i.e., his own Being and the Being of other beings) gives way to the concept of “overtness” as one of the conditions of the possibility of truly existing as a human being.
But what is “overtness” and how does man make himself open to the Essence of Being?
Heidegger understands “overtness” as “consciousness”, but he avoids using the term not only because of its Cartesian implications, but because it prevents us from realizing that each individual lucidity or overtness is part and parcel of a wide and general overtness, of an elementary sort of Truth. Thus, “overtness” as consciousness simply refers to the “manifestness” of Being or things. Thus, for Heidegger, this “overtness” is an a priori condition for any so-called subject-object relationships.
Thus, for Heidegger, no subject could refer itself to an object, no act of experiential knowledge about an object could take place, and no statement or judgment could be arrived at about an object, if such prior statement of manifestness had not come about, embracing both subject and object.
Now, again, how does man make himself open to the Essence of Being?
First, we need to note that for Heidegger man (Dasein) is gifted with understanding, mood, and speech. But for Heidegger, these gifts are not gifts from someone, say, God. In fact, Heidegger hardly believes in God. Heidegger simply calls these gifts as “existential givens”. They were there the moment man was born.
According to Heidegger, in and through these existential givens, man discloses or illuminates himself. This is because, with these existential givens, man (Dasein) can understand, feel (mood), and articulate (speech). Hence, through these existential givens, overtness is brought into the fore, and man (Dasein) is able to understand himself and the things around him.
Lastly, with overtness, it is therefore possible for man (Dasein) to become truly himself, to truly exist as a human being.
In addition to overtness, Heidegger introduced the concept of “world” as another important condition of the “possibility” of truly existing as a human being.
For Heidegger, “world” refers to that which constitutes the unity of significances, that is, the context of meanings in which man moves. Thus, “world” for Heidegger is not a blind mass of things (or the totality of nature), but an existential structure that defines or constitutes man’s way of Being. Put simply, “world” for Heidegger could refer to a socio-cultural “context” upon which man draws meaning or that which shapes one’s behavior. For example, consider the phrase “The Germans’ way of doing things” or “The Americans’ way of doing things”. For sure, the Germans or the Americans have their specific way of doing things because they have been defined by their own context. Hence, it is unnatural for the Germans to do the Americans way of doing things because they it’s outside of their own context.
For Heidegger, man refers to this context of intersubjective meanings because he is always already within and amidst “beings” and moves around them with ease and familiarity.
Thus, for Heidegger, it is in and through the “world” that man projects and charts his own life for pragmatic reasons, but does so within this context of meanings and always guided by it.
In this sense, we can infer that man is determined by “world” and, therefore, on this ground alone, it is quite wrong to assert that Heidegger has conceived of a man as “sovereign” or a self-creator.
Now, the two notions of “overtness” and “world” constitute man as an entity that stands in an intimate and immediate awareness of Being in its character and meanings. Only when “overtness” and “world” occur can all-that-is (Essence of Being) and particular beings (ontic) be encountered as “be-ings”. It is only through “overtness” and “world” therefore that the “unconcealment of Being” becomes possible.
3) The Problem of Authenticity and Inauthenticity
In the previous discussion, we learned that through “overtness” and “world” man can gain a high degree of understanding of itself and the things around him, and, thereby, experience his true Being, that of others and of his things.
However, man in his everyday life fails to realize that his mood, understanding and speech are “necessary ways of Being”. This is due to the fact that man’s thrownness into the world implies deliverance or “fallenness”.
Man’s failure to realize that his mood, understanding and speech are “necessary ways of Being” suggests that man is “lost” in the world. For Heidegger, this “lostness”or “fallenness” in the world means that it is now the world that prescribes the path for man of which he succumbed (surrendered) his creative abilities to worldly things. This is exactly characterizes Heidegger’s notion of “inauthenticity” or an inauthentic or meaningless existence.
Hence, inauthenticity for Heidegger means being not free because we let others (das Man) decide for ourselves. Indeed, inauthenticity means not owning one’s own existence.
Now, in order for man (Dasein) to be authentic, therefore, it has to own its existence again, that it has to regain its existence that is lost in the “they”. And for Heidegger, this implies that Dasein has to gain somehow full awareness of the significance of what it means “to be”, of what it means to be a self with others and objects in the world.
If inauthenticity is understood as the fallenness of Dasein into the “world”, and if authenticity means full awareness of what it means to be a self with others and objects in the world, then this implies a “becoming” or the realization of Dasein’s possibilities. For Heidegger, such realization of Dasein’s possibilities occurs through the experience of angst which mobilizes other key categories, such as, death, conscience, and decidedness.
Heidegger understands angst as the authentic sensibility that discloses Dasein’s finite existence in the world. This disclosure allows Dasein to understand itself as a finite being thrown toward its own-most possibility, which is death. Through death, understood as the paradoxical possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there, Dasein is thrown back onto its own resources. This movement then discloses Dasein as an individual self thrown into the world, whose task in the world is to exist as itself, that is to say, to be authentic. For Heidegger, therefore, death is the ultimate basis of authenticity.
For Heidegger, the categories of conscience and decidedness answer the question concerning the possibility of authentic existence. Heidegger understands conscience as the inner voice within Dasein itself that calls Dasein to “come back to itself and seize the authentic possibility of truly being itself”. Conscience appears to be an “ought” on the part of Dasein to own his existence again. Once Dasein heeds the call of conscience, decidedness ensues. Authenticity, therefore, as the full awareness of the significance of what it means to be a self also means an “awareness of one’s own-most possibilities and the firm resolve to realize them in the future.” Authenticity is thus tied to one’s possibilities and to possible future ways of being. For Heidegger, this makes manifest the “temporal” axis of existential phenomenology─Dasein is in the present, indebted to the past, and oriented toward the future (death). Indeed, the threefold structure of care turns out to be also the structure of existence: the human being is a being in time.
However, for Heidegger, authenticity requires a kind of mood, understanding, and speech that are attuned to the Essence of Being, and this is possible in the “thinking of the philosopher”. And man as Dasein and as thinker will realize that his thinking is a way of Being, that the Essence of Being unfolds in it, and that he is therefore a necessary instrument, that he is needed for the articulation of the Essence of Being.
Heidegger, however, believes that Aristotle and the philosophers after him failed to think about the Essence of Being because they had only articulated the meaning of “particular beings”. Because of this, Heidegger believes, philosophers hitherto could not realize themselves as Dasein, as authentic beings.
This is precisely the reason why Heidegger calls for a second beginning of philosophy. And for Heidegger, this is the new task of philosophy: to think of Being holistically.
But what is the character of this new philosophizing?
Heidegger calls this andenken, which means a thinking “toward and of”, and in this sense a “remembering” kind of thinking―remembering because the moment Being reveals itself, it automatically withdraws itself.
But toward what and of what? In other words, what is the subject matter of this kind of thinking?
According to Heidegger, man should think toward and of the Essence of Being and of the Essence of Man. This is what we meant attuning oneself to Being. And as we already know, it is only when we attuned ourselves to Being that we become ready of the unconcealment of Being and our eventual appropriation of that which is unconcealed by Being. As Heidegger formulates it: “Being commands and directs the thinker”, or “Being claims the thinking of the thinker so that it thereby may conceal itself in its truth”. This is what Heidegger calls “essential or meditative thinking” as opposed to “calculative or scientific thinking”.
On a final note, it must be remembered that Heidegger did not pretend to have solved the problem of Being. Toward the end of his magnum opus Being and Time, Heidegger says explicitly that its only purpose is to rekindle the question of Being and to bring into motion what has become stalemated. In fact, Heidegger concludes this work not with ready-made answers, but with a series of open questions.
Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy revolves around the idea of existentialism or, as others would say, existential philosophy where individuals find meaning in their life through a leap of faith.
Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy or brand of existentialism is first and foremost a reaction to Hegel’s speculative philosophy. As is well known, in Hegel’s system, what matters is the realization of the Absolute upon which the individual is merely subsumed in the entire process of the development of Reason. In other words, as we can see in Hegel’s seminal work The Phenomenology of Spirit, in the development of Reason, everything that happens (for example, world wars) is just a necessary part of history and individuals do not play an active role in it. In Kierkegaard’s interpretation, the individual’s existence is being left out and reduced to passivity in this process. With this, as Kierkegaard sees it, the individual is unfree. Her life becomes meaningless.
As opposed to Hegel, what matters to Kierkegaard is concrete existence. It is important to note that the term existence for Kierkegaard is proper only to human beings. In fact, in existentialism, other entities, such as plants and animals, do not exist; they only “live”. This explains why for Kierkegaard, to exist means to strive, to consider alternatives, to choose, to decide, and most of all, to commit. As we can see, virtually all of this, as Kierkegaard may have argued, is not captured in Hegel’s system. This is precisely the reason why Kierkegaard rejected the system-building approach of Hegel and argued instead that the quest for truth involves personal choice, grounded in religious faith.
Kierkegaard also shared the conviction of the major philosophers reacting against Kant, Hegel, and the rest of the German Idealist (so famous during this time) that the 19th century European culture was terribly dysfunctional.
Furthermore, Kierkegaard also shared the argument that the individual will come to a proper understanding of human existence and society only when she radically breaks from the prevailing cultural attitudes.
But how can the individual truly exist? Or in what way can she attain authentic or meaningful existence?
According to Kierkegaard, authentic existence is attained when the individual realizes herself through the choice between alternatives and the subsequent self-commitment.
But how is self-realization possible?
According to Kierkegaard, self-realization can be attained through the three stages of life, namely, aesthetic stage, ethical stage, and religious stage. These three stages of life, which Kierkegaard calls “stages on life’s way”, involve a process whereby the true self or authentic existence is actualized in the form of individuality.
The Three Stages of Life according to Kierkegaard
Aesthetic Stage
According to Kierkegaard, the aesthetic stage is ruled by passion; it is indeed the realm of sensory experience and pleasure. As we can see, the aesthetic life for Kierkegaard is characterized by pleasure, and if one wants to live the aesthetic life to the fullest, she must maximize this pleasure.
The main goal of the aesthetic stage, therefore, is to satisfy one’s desires. Hedonism is a perfect example of this stage. And because the person in this stage is driven by desires only, according to Kierkegaard’s philosophy, she is not truly free. Even if she gets what she wants, such as food, drink, sex, and the like, still her life remains empty as her desires can never be fully satisfied. She needs more: more food, more drinks, more sex.
Kierkegaard acknowledges the importance of the aesthetic life. As a human flesh, we need to satisfy our physiological needs. However, because this stage lacks commitment to ideals, the aesthetic life will necessarily result in boredom, boredom not only with the activity but with self.
Boredom, according to Kierkegaard, is like a poison that flows through the veins of each individual, whether poor or rich no one escapes this “psychic-emotional state”. Boredom, therefore, plays an important role in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. This is because through boredom, the individual realizes that her desires can never be fully satisfied and, thus, she must change.
Now, according to Kierkegaard, when the individual experiences this situation, she is faced with a choice, that is, either she remains in the pursuit of sensual pleasures or to seek higher forms of pleasuresꟷ thus Kierkegaard’s work famous work Either/Or.
Ethical Stage
The ethical stage is the result of the individual’s decision to commit herself to the moral ideals of the society. Here, unlike the aesthetic stage, the individual considers the effects her actions will have on others and gives more emphasis on promoting social justice and equality.
For Kierkegaard, the primary goal of this stage is to live according to ethical standards, that is, to become an ethical person. Thus, the individual who lives in this stage takes responsibility for herself (including her choices and actions) and seeks to become what she ought to be. For this reason, the individual seeks to fulfill her duties and responsibilities related to her work, to her fellowmen, and the society as a whole. Thus, in the ethical stage, the self is no longer the center of everything as it was in the aesthetic stage. It is also in the ethical stage that the idea of “sacrifice” is introduced.
But there is a problem here.
Kierkegaard thought that the ethical individual will eventually reflect and realize that she does not always do what she ought to do―in fact, no one does. According to Kierkegaard, this eventually leads to the experience of guilt and despair.
In Kierkegaard’s philosophy, the experience of guilt and despair shows that the individual needs further change, and this is necessary if one wants to attain true fulfillment or a meaningful existence. As we can see, the individual cannot find real satisfaction in the ethics stage. In other words, one cannot find a meaningful existence in the ethical stage.
In response to this, according to Kierkegaard, the individual can either 1) simply try harder to do the right thing, that is, to be an ethical person, or 2) move to the third and final stage, through a leap of faith.
Religious Stage
According to Kierkegaard, as already mentioned above, we cannot find true fulfillment in the ethical stage. No matter how hard we try to be righteous, we always end up doing the wrong thing. Thus, again, we inevitably experience guilt and despair.
We know that the individual eventually becomes aware that she indeed cannot always do the right thing, but what is important in the ethical stage is that she accepts the fact that not doing the right thing is part of the nature of man―that we always commit mistakes, that we always commit sin.
Now, for Kierkegaard, it is only religion that can offer the possibility of a true fulfillment, of a meaningful or authentic existence. This is because, for Kierkegaard, it is only God’s forgiveness that can eradicate guilt and despair.
It must be noted, however, that the religious stage is not simply an alternative of the ethical. In fact, the ethical and religious stages may even be incompatible, for example, as to the demands of morality. The famous God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac is a typical example.
Issued without apparent justification or reason, this command goes against both the natural emotional ties of parental love and the basic moral principle of any conceivable human society. In its absoluteness and unconditionality, God’s commands mark the strict separation of the religious and the ethical spheres. As we can see, Abraham has faith and acts to obey God’s will, but in the end he is not required to sacrifice his son. For Kierkegaard then, we must believe even though faith violates human rationality, nature, and morality. This is because for Kierkegaard, a faith which conforms to moral intuition does not have any significance. Thus, it is the absurdity of religion that proves its unique value.
But why should humans believe in what they must find as irrational, unnatural and immoral?
This is exactly what Kierkegaard calls a “leap of faith”, which happens only when a choice in favor of faith has been made. Kierkegaard, however, emphasized that this choice or act of choosing must be based on SELF-CONSCIOUS and AUTHENTIC DECISION, rather than the effect of conformism.
This is what Kierkegaard calls inwardness or truth as subjectivity: when one becomes more of an individual through conscious choices and a full self-awareness before God.
Finally, the religious stage is where the individual finds true fulfillment and attains an authentic or meaningful existence, and, in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, this is made possible through a leap of faith.
In his work titled Arguments/Ruminations from Evil, William Rowe presents an argument against the existence of God that had been captured in two succinct premises, namely:
1) Probably, there is pointless suffering in the world.
2) If God exists, there is no pointless suffering.
3) Thus, probably, God does not exist.
As stated in the first premise, Rowe began his argument by proving his claim that there are instances of pointless suffering, more specifically, suffering that could have been prevented by an omnipotent and caring God without losing something for the greater good or permitting something worse to happen. His famous example of this is the pointless and agonizing suffering of a fawn that had been badly burned in a forest fire. Rowe sees the suffering of the fawn as pointless in the sense that God, or any divine deity out there, could have prevented the fire or the innocent fawn from dying or at least put it out of its misery, without causing any hindrance to any possible greater good or causing something far worse to happen. It’s a dying fawn, if He killed it now, it obviously dies; if He makes it suffer for hours, it still dies. The lack of any divine intervention begs the question of what reason does God have to deny the fawn of death.
While a theist may insist that there is a reason for Him letting the pointless suffering to happen, Rowe opens the possibility that it could be that He doesn’t have one or that He hadn’t stopped it either because he did not want to or because he wasn’t there. However, the point was set; there are instances of pointless suffering in the world and that these pointless sufferings prompt the inquiry into the justifications behind His actions. Curiously, despite his example of the burned deer, Rowe admits that it wasn’t conclusive that the first premise was true but that it was a reasonable case enough to accept, a point which will be discussed later on.
With his first premise explained and defended, he moves on to question the nature of God. Despite his refutation of the existence of the Christian God, his inductive argument which is directed against the former actually relies on the traditionally held idea that God is a being with omni-attributes, that is, He is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent. It is with these attributes in mind that theists and atheists alike can concede that if evil is to be permitted then there must be a form of “divine justification” since their God is loving and kind. Rowe cites instances where He can allow evil to exist, and they are as follows:
– A greater good occurs in such a case where evil occurs,
– A greater good occurs in such a case where evil, or some evil equally bad or
worse occurs,
– Or, evil is preventable only in such a case which God permits some evil equally
bad or worse.
– So, if some evil occurs, then either (i), (ii), or (iii) must obtain.
If one agrees to these points, one affirms the validity of the second premise that there is no cases of pointless suffering since God has justification. However, this particular premise is quickly invalidated by Rowe through the mere affirmation of the first premise wherein he has already proven that there are instances of pointless suffering wherein God could have prevented without violating his divine justifications but didn’t.
In addition to the attack on the “divine justifications” that have been forwarded in defense of God, the omni-nature of God came under fire seeing as there are instances of pointless suffering that He could have prevented without contradicting himself. The lack of intervention, for Rowe, shows that He is not as omnipotent or as omnibenevolent as the theists have suggested since he would have either seen the being suffering pointlessly and had chosen not to intervene, contradicting his all-kindness, or he had not seen him at all and thusly could not do anything, contradicting his all-seeing nature.
Therefore, with the first premise reasonably accepted, the second conclusion is invalidated and the conclusion logically states that God does not exist because the instances of pointless suffering evident in the world proves that not only is his nature contradictory and flawed in the face of evil, but the claim that there is no suffering that is pointless is just implausible.
As well-received, logical and succinct Rowe had been with this argument against God, there is one point in his argumentation that poses a very stark threat to his entire case. This apparent flaw lies at the very core of his first premise, more specifically in his justification of his readers accepting the first premise on the grounds that it is reasonable enough to believe or accept. It becomes problematic in that this statement itself is questionable. People may not easily find the first premise reasonable enough to accept due to the circumstantial nature of his main example (the burnt and dying deer) and may request a more concrete instance to be presented before agreeing to Rowe’s claim. They may also doubt the premise simply because it is a conclusion that had been drawn from just one cited circumstance. If the reader is not convinced in his examples or pieces of evidence, they are more likely to not accept or to not affirm the first premise. With this, his whole argumentation becomes less significant as the reader may not see the value of the first premises invalidation of the second premise.
Another aspect that Rowe had glossed over is the nature of the evil that he is referring to in support of his case. The evil that befell the fawn is more likely to be considered as something that could be classified as a “natural evil” which means that it is something that man cannot control. It begets the question of why he did not consider including moral and physical evils in the banner of pointless evils. There are notable instances of pointless moral evils in the world even during his time but it seems odd that he did not engage them. Rowe’s case may or may not had opted out of using moral and psychological evils for fear of falling under the argument of free will, however, this does leave an unexplored point in his argument.
Though his argument can be summarized within three lines of arguments, the implication and significance of his claim has prompted a new perspective in the ongoing debate on God’s existence. His inductive arguments not only helped solidify the need for more logical analysis of the discourse as opposed to historical re-tracings but it also introduced a new point of departure for succeeding philosophers, that is, the presence of cases of pointless sufferings being an indispensable proof for both the flawed nature of the Christian Omni-God but also of his non-existence.
In direct contrast to William Rowe is the soul-making theodicy put forward by John Hicks, a 20thcentury philosopher. In his theodicy, Hick not only claims that there is no such thing as pointless suffering in the world, but that despite there being evil in the world, God still exists and he is still kind and omnipotent since the evil that he allowed helps people in their development and soul-making.
The discussion on Hick’s theodicy began with a clarification of what the former thinks about the “Fall of Man” and how it shaped our conception of human nature. His view on the “Fall of Man” is quite notable as it presents his denial of the traditional Augustinian account of the fall of man. Traditional Augustinian philosophy/theology would tell us that the main reason as to why moral evils exist in the world is mainly due to our God-given freedom, and that the “original sin” (Adam and Eve’s sin of disobeying God) is the cause of all of the world’s natural and psychological evils since it caused us to drift away from God. The only way for us to be reconciled with Him is through atonement and redemption through His grace, which we can find in the Church.
For Hick, this account of the fall of man is inconsistent for three reasons:
Scientifically, pain and sorrow have existed even before the supposed fall of
man. The mere existence of man and the world already indicates the existence of fear, pain, agony, and hunger, among others.
Morally, Hick finds it unfair to have an entire race suffer for the sins of two
individuals (Adam and Eve). With this, even a baby is considered a sinner even before he had learned how to walk! This only serves to paint God as a vengeful, unjust and immoral Being.
Lastly, Hick finds this account logically inconsistent seeing as man and the
world, in Augustine’s account, is described as perfect and almost god-like. By all accounts, that also goes to imply that they are flawless and are perfect enough not to perform actions that are obvious violations of God’s orders. Augustine’s version of man then after the fall is not a developed one but is one that has regressed from being perfect to antiquated.
With the idea of the “original sin” denied, sinning, then, for Hicks is something that was influenced by an inner or outer flaw. This led to Hick claiming that humans and the world were created by God, before or after the fall, imperfectly or unfinished. This claim would prove significant in his theodicy as it is because of our imperfectness or our being created unfinished by God that gives us the need to have evil exist.
For Hick, evil or suffering is not exactly pointless or unnecessary since it is vital to God’s “master plan,” and so it does not contradict God’s nature but in one way or another, it actually supports the omni-attributes. Since humans are created unfinished, then they are still in the process of creation and one way in which God gives man the avenue for development is by letting evil exist. With God allowing it to be in the world, Hick claims that it serves as the catalyst for man to become virtuous beings through becoming people that are more than capable of following His will. Suffering then is not exactly pointless or there is no such thing as pointless suffering since it helps ‘perfect’ man, which is the express purpose of what Hick calls soul-making.
The concept of soul-making is the core of Hick’s theodicy. As mentioned before, the main objective of pain and suffering is to help mankind become perfect. By this, Hick doesn’t mean to become flawless and ethereal beings but to become beings that are not only virtuous (as mentioned before) but are also conscious and aware of their dependence on God. This need for God is emphasized when Hick states that it is through the man being ignorant of this dependence on Him that he falls into sin and fall away from Him (this may be the internal or external flaw that he was referring to in his refutation of traditional Augustinian perspectives).
With this awareness of our relationship with God, one can begin to understand why Hick says that a sinner can have their sins done away with through redemption that is freely chosen seeing as man now knows that to be perfect is to be one that aligns their will to His. The perfect man or the perfect child of God is not something that is created but is something that is developed, nurtured, or perhaps fostered. The world, therefore, does not only allow for the cultivation of this idea of perfection but is “…a valley of soul-making,” which means that it is a place where self and spiritual development is always happening.
But, according to Hick, the soul-making process is not one that we can complete on Earth. It may be due to the natural life-span of man or to the unpredictability of our environment, but the process of self -development, and soul making is one that will reach completion in the afterlife despite the fact that it begins on Earth. It is a process that will occupy man for the entirety of his mortal life and perhaps even after it. Nonetheless, John Hick’s soul-making theodicy does present a more optimistic and positive perspective of God’s position and actions in the face of evil being present in the world. His theodicy does not necessitate a compromise of the three omni-attributes but invokes the idea of a God that is as loving as he is patient. However, this does not mean that it is beyond critique.
One of the criticisms that makes itself apparent is the scope of the soul-making process. As we have understood from Hick, one of the main motivation for God to let the world experience suffering is to help them develop and become virtuous beings that acknowledge their dependence on Him. Does this also mean that this soul-making process also extends to the non-human beings? If not, then it begs the question of why God allowed these non-human beings (which includes, but are not limited to, animals, plants, insects, and microorganisms) to suffer the same evil as human beings if they are not included in the development. Following his inclination to using scientific evidence, the inclusion of the non-humans would imply that God unfairly subjected the non-human beings to pain and suffering as far back as Mesozoic Era in anticipation of the human race’s development despite the fact that they do not come into existence for at least several billion years later. This line of argumentation not only works against the idea of a kind God but also of an omnipotent God.
Another point of contention in Hick’s theodicy concerns the duration of the soul-making process. If the person at the beginning of the process is the same at the end of it in the sense that they were still both developing, then what does the completion of the process entail? If it truly did entail the development of man into a perfect being, then why does God want to wait for a person to die before he can become someone reconcilable to Him? Pragmatically-speaking, it would make more sense to have man return and believe in Him while they were still alive as to assist others in reaching God-consciousness? This line of questioning, in turn, invokes the idea of an afterlife wherein man can actually ‘reap’ the results of his life-long struggle for development and ‘be with’ his/her creator. Sadly, Hick was silent about the idea of a life after death nor did he clarify why the process had to end in death and not when a person reaches an epiphany.
Yet, by the end of it all, John Hick’s idea of a life-long process of self and spiritual development is one that gives a more positive perspective of an evil-filled world. Suffering does exist, but it is not detrimental to both man and his world as it is through pain and suffering that they learn to become better versions of themselves, to be virtuous, God-conscious, and perfect beings that are on their way to being reconciled with Him in this life or the next.
One of the famous arguments for the existence of God is the ontological argument. And, as is well known, of all the versions of the ontological argument, it is Anselm’s argument for God’s existence that stands out the most.
What is common among these versions of ontological argument, including Anselm’s argument for God’s existence, is the claim that it is self-contradictory to deny the existence of a greatest possible being. In other words, for the adherents of the ontological argument, the existence of a greatest possible being is necessary, and He is God. Therefore, God exists.
On a side note, according to Norman Melchert (1999), the term “ontological” comes from the ancient Greek word onto, which means being. The term “ontological argument” was given such name in the eighteenth century by one of its critics, namely, Immanuel Kant. This is because, unlike the argument of St. Thomas Aquinas, it does not begin from facts about the world from which the term “cosmological arguments” was derived. Instead, it goes straight from the idea of God to the conclusion about his being and his necessary existence.
According to Melchert, many thinkers find it important to distinguish two, or even more, distinct arguments because at least one form of the argument is pretty obviously invalid. In his version of the ontological argument, Anselm does not do so. Many thinkers interpret Anselm’s argument as one argument. Let us now briefly sketch Anselm’s argument for God’s existence.
Anselm’s Argument for God’s Existence: A Brief Sketch
For Anselm, God does not just exist, but God “truly and necessarily” exists so that it is impossible for us to think that He does not exist. According to Melchert, this apparently simple, yet deeply perplexing argument is called in the history of philosophy as ontological argument.
Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence, which he developed in his famous work titled Proslogium, begins with a definition of God. But the idea of definition here does not necessarily refer to the “idea” of something as produced by experience. By “definition” Anselm means our rather abstract conception of God when we utter the word God.
For Anselm, God is a being in which nothing greater can be thought of or, in Anselm’s own words, “than, that which no greater can be conceived” (Melchert, p. 270). According to Melchert, Anselm used this convoluted phrase for two reasons. On the one hand, Anselm does not want the idea of God to be limited by what we may be able to conceive. On the other hand, Anselm does not want to suggest that a positive conception of God can be entirely comprehensible by us. Suppose we are thinking or conceiving of a certain being. According to Anselm, if the mind can still conceive of something greater than what we have just thought, then it is not yet God that we have conceived. This is because it is not yet “that, than which no greater can be conceived”. Hence, as we can see, Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence rests entirely on the conception of a being in which nothing greater can be thought of or, again, in Anselm’s own words, “that, than which no greater can be conceived”.
It is important to note that this line of thinking was framed in terms of the Augustinian notion of a Great Chain of Being. As we may already know, the Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, which, in medieval Christianity, has been understood as being decreed by God. This means that the world is ordered by the degrees of being and value (or greatness) in its various parts. For example, the tree is higher than the stone, while humans are higher than the trees, and so on. Now, if we move up and down the chain, it would appear pretty obvious that we can easily conceive of lesser and greater beings; and in doing so, we are inevitably led to think of an idea of something that is not only greater than other beings, but of an idea of something that we cannot even think of a greater. As Anselm would have us believe, this being, which is at the highest point of the Great Chain of Being, is God.
Now, if God is a being in which nothing greater can be conceived, is there such being in reality? Of course, it might be the case that this being in which nothing greater can be thought of exists only in the mind, like the idea of a golden mountain or a unicorn. As we can see, this calls to mind the contention of the atheists that “There is no God”.
In response to this, Anselm argues that the claim that God does not exist in reality is absurd because while we can utter the words “There is no God” or “God does not exist”, we cannot clearly think what we mean without falling into the pit of contradiction. This is because the idea of God appears to be self-evident. If we think of the Great Chain of Being, we cannot help but affirm the existence of a being in which nothing greater can be conceived. God, therefore, necessarily exists.
As we can see, the atheists are wrong, at least for Anselm. Indeed, for Anselm, the statement “There is no God” or “God does not exist” is absolutely false. Hence, as Anselm argues, it follows not only that God exists but also that it is impossible that He does not exist. Melchert (p. 273) puts Anselm’s argument for God’s existence this way:
Anselm’s argument for God’s existence, as we can see above, moves from God’s essence to God’s existence. In other words, it moves from our understanding of what God is to the fact that God is. “In certain clear sense, the argument is a claim that the existence of God is self-evident. What that means is that it is enough to understand the conception of God to know that God must exist. Nothing else is required. God’s essence entails God’s existence.” (Melchert, p. 273)
Descartes’ proofs for God’s existence came after he had proven that it is his ability to doubt that proved his very own existence. The argument that culminated in his most famous dictum, “cogito ergo sum,” is what some scholars would call the first certitude in his philosophy. The second certitude is the proof for God’s existence or that he exists despite our doubting of everything else in our immediate world, and Descartes’ argument promptly “starts off” where the first certitude ends. He proves His existence using the idea of perfection.
At this point in his philosophy, it is a fact that man has the ability to doubt everything that surrounds him. Due to the fact that man has this said ability, Descartes believes that he is an imperfect being. But despite his being imperfect, he can still think of perfection and he can still conceive of a more perfect being than himself which is God. This would not make sense because an imperfect being cannot think of or know of perfection and of such a perfect being, that is, unless there is someone or something out there that had given or bestowed upon him this idea of perfection, allowing him to be able to know it or conceive it.
According to Descartes, for man to be able to do that, it must also follow that this being must also be perfect to be able to impart the idea of perfection since it makes no logical sense for an imperfect being to impart knowledge of perfection to anyone else. The only perfect being that can do this is God; and since we can conceive him and know of his perfection-therefore, God exists.
His argument was short, concise and impactful but continued to be logical and sensible. But as well-written and elucidated it is, there remains several points of clarification and considerations. Firstly, Descartes has to defend or clarify whether God is necessarily perfect. In his argument, it is because of our ability to conceive of perfection that necessitated the existence of a perfect being but how will Descartes’ argumentation hold if the very being that imparts the knowledge of his existence to man, the imperfect being, is not the perfect being that the philosopher was describing?
If his answer would still be in the affirmative, that God is perfect, it would also be logical to say that it still wouldn’t necessarily follow that man would, each and every time, hold the idea of God as a being that is perfect. Several sects of the faith do believe in God, however, they do not see him as the omni-God or the perfect God but they see him as the imperfect God or a God that suffers and bleeds with them. An Atheist can still think of and conceive of God but they see him as a flawed being; a being that isn’t just, that doesn’t listen, and so on and so forth. Man would then still know of God but we then have an imperfect idea of God. Such an idea would make it hard to continue to call that deity “God” seeing as that God would then be seen as a Being that is just as vulnerable and erroneous as man which is the complete opposite to the idea of the Christian God.
Secondly, is man’s capability to conceive ideas of perfection and of God really evidence enough to declare the existence of God? As Descartes himself has said, men are imperfect beings that still use their unreliable senses to gain knowledge and understanding of their world, regardless of whether that knowledge is true or not. It is then reasonable to see man having different or deviant ideas of perfection. In the very first place, it is difficult to get to one idea of perfection seeing as man can think of many ways that perfection can be characterized, so is it really the best idea of concept to use in justifying the existence of a transcendent Being? If man’s ability to know of perfection can lead to the conclusion that there is a being that is more perfect than us, does that also mean that man’s ability to think of and conceive of evil and unjustness also lead to the existence of a perfectly evil and unjust being? If so, wouldn’t that defeat the purpose for his having included the defense of God in his works when it would also defend the existence of His counterpart?
Still, despite the fact that his argument kept being questioned at every possible opportunity, his defense of God’s existence through the consideration of man’s imperfect nature and his ability to conceive of perfection and the idea of God by itself is a testament to his sound and resourceful logic. Considering that this has been conceived of and written in the 17th century, it is a feat then that Descartes’ philosophy continues to find relevance in modern society and thought and that it has paved the way for man’s reconsideration of what truth actually is and how we can attain it.
