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Anselm's Background Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Richard Campbell
Richard Campbell
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The Australian National University, P.O. Box 4 Canberra 2600
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Extract

In the background of Anselm's philosophical theology there appear a number of philosophical issues which have not received as much attention from philosophers as they deserve. Some of these issues are his view on the relation between language and reality; the way he handles the notion of being and its opposite, non-being; and his notions of necessity and eternity. Despite its title, this paper will not issue in a systematic and comprehensive reconstruction of the Anselmian metaphysics, since I doubt that that would be possible. Anselm's objectives were always ultimately theological in character, and he never purported to present a rounded metaphysical system. In his hands the basic notions mentioned were modified through their being employed by such an acute and subtle thinker to articulate and elucidate basic articles of Christian belief. But it is possible to discern a central unifying theme through which his views on metaphysical topics are connected. That theme is his interesting and quite novel account of truth. In this paper I will focus upon that theme for the light it sheds on these other issues.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , August 1980 , pp. 317 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1980

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References

page 317 note 1 Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 32 No. 6, p. 541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 317 note 2 From Belief to Understanding (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1976).Google Scholar

page 319 note 1 Hopkins, J. and Richardson, H.: Anselm of Canterbury: Truth, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965).Google Scholar

page 322 note 1 ‘Truth’, Proc. Artist. Soc., vol. LIX, 1958–1959Google Scholar, reprinted in Truth, ed. G. Pitcher (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 93–111.

page 326 note 1 In Reformed Theological Review, XXXV, 3, 1976.

page 327 note 1 op. cit.

page 331 note 1 The qualification ‘perceived by the mind’ is added only because in his Latin the straightness of a stick is also called rectiludo; the straightness of some sticks has nothing to do with truth, and is excluded by this clause.

page 332 note 1 De Veritate 2.

page 332 note 2 op. cit., p. 16.

page 333 note 1 Cf. the admirable exposition by Torrance, T. F.: ‘The Place of Word and Truth in Theological Inquiry according to St. Anselm’ in Studia mediaevalia et mariologica, Balić, P. Carolo septuagesimum explenti annum dicata (Rome: Ed. Antonianum)Google Scholar. Although he is clear about Anselm's views, Torrance tends to translate Anselm's genitive as ‘the word corresponding to a thing’, which for the reasons stated I believe is misleading. Torrance thinks that ‘correspondence’ is the appropriate term to express Anselm's ‘cross-level reference’ between language and the intimae locutiones of things, without presupposing any bifurcation of language from reality.

page 335 note 1 Cf. Foucault, Michel: The Order of Things (London: Tavistock, 1970)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 2.

page 336 note 1 Cf. Categories 2a4–10, 13a37–bII; De Interpretation 16ag–18; Metaphysics 1051b2–17.

page 336 note 2 From Belief to Understanding, p. 221.

page 341 note 1 cf. Foster, M. B.: ‘The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science’, Mind, 1934, pp. 446–468.Google Scholar