Knights of Academia discussion

This topic will be for reading Cur Deus Homo in a structured way in a group using the method of "shared inquiry." https://www.greatbooks.org/about/what... People who don't want to work within the method, or who want to post things that don't fit within the method, can post in the unstructured Cur Deus Homo topic.

Question: Using only the text, describe the "unbelievers" the text keeps talking about. Let's restrict ourselves to the dedication, preface, and first four chapters of Book 1 for now.

That is, a rhetorical analysis of a text says in part that the text constructs a speaker, at least one audience, probably one or more opponents, probably one or more allies, and other "persons" in the little universe created by the text.

I'm asking that we describe, relying exclusively on the text itself, the constructed "person" (a group) the text refers to as the "unbelievers." What do they know? What is convincing to them? Do they have any emotions, if so, what are they?

I'm not asking that we try to figure out who, historically, these "unbelievers" were. I'm asking that we use the words of the text as a kind of ultrasound thingy to get a picture of the unbeliever as created/revealed by the text itself.

If you want to discuss who the unbelievers were in history, do it in the unfettered discussion topic or create a brand new topic for that discussion.

They have reason but not reason and faith together, so don't have the more spiritual knowledge which leads them to faith. Regarding what convinces them, nor do they have the knowledge of why Christ died instead of merely God willing the sin of men away or sacrificing some other non-God person, thus the story of Christ's death is unconvincing to them (hence the "central problem" that Anselm needs to address in the book, though he says even believers mull over the problem, implying it confuses believers too). Reason would be convincing to them in showing the rational basis for Catholic faith, as Boso says in chapter three. Boso repeats this sentiment in chapter four by saying there is a requirement to exhibit the truth's firm foundation (for one of Anselm's arguments relating to the fitting nature of many aspects of the redemptionsm through Christ, made in chapter 3) as otherwise unbelievers will think Anselm's argument in this case lacks a foundation (and thus, implicitly, is not rationally compelling to unbelievers).

Should we have a new shared inquiry thread for each question and its exploration or use this #1 for all of them?

And regarding emotions, I haven't seen much either way from chapters 1 to 5 in Cur Deus Homo about the emotions of unbelievers.

The way I have done it before is one topic (thread) per question.

Here's a link to a previous attempt of mine. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Here's a quotation from the preface on the unbelievers: The present work consists of "two short books. The first of these contains the answers of believers to the objections of unbelievers who repudiate the Christian faith because they regard it as incompatible with reason."

This certainly matches what you said.

"Unbelievers habitually raise this particular problem as an objection to us, while derisively terming Christian simplicity a foolish simplicity; ..."

They don't seem to be some construct created for the purpose of the dialog, but some sort of real phenomenon. But I don't see any more details on them than that they exist and aren't dramatis personae.

He says through Boso "But so that I may exclude all your excuses: [remember that] what I am asking of you, you will be writing not for the learned but for me and for those who are seeking this solution together with me."

I wonder whether the unbelievers are learned, unlearned, both, or the text doesn't tell us.

Chapter 3: "Allow me, then, to use the words of unbelievers. For since we are fervently seeking the rational basis of our faith, it is fair that I present the objections of those who are altogether unwilling to approach our faith without rational argumentation. Although they seek a rational basis because they do not believe whereas we seek it because we do believe, nevertheless it is one and the same thing that both we and they are seeking."

As you said, the unbelievers have reason but not the Faith. The unbelievers are portrayed as being exclusively rational. Believers have faith and reason. Emotions are nowhere to be seen. :-)

The first of the "words of the unbelievers" that Anselm presents is: "The unbelievers who scoff at our simplicity raise against us the following objection: that we dishonor and affront God when we maintain that He descended into the womb of a woman, ..."

It seems to me the exclusively rational unbelievers are making an argument that is not a rational one as I conceive the terms "rational" and "reason." Perhaps I don't understand what Anselm means by those terms. Let's unpack their argument.

To "affront" or "dishonor" are not truth terms. They are moral wrongs, not logical ones.

I can sorta turn it into a rational argument this way:

God exists and is perfect and is infinite and timeless and placeless.

You Christians say that God became finite and was in a particular time and place.

But these claims contradict the axioms re God's nature, etc.

Therefore the Christian claims are false.

And, *incidentally,* to make such false claims about God is to commit the *moral* wrong of affronting and dishonoring God.

(It seems to me that the "scoffing" claim that Christians "affront" and "dishonor" God is not essentially emotional but is nonetheless loaded with emotion.)

So I give the exclusively rational unbelievers a yellow card for not being exclusively rational.

There is a precedent for giving a yellow card to a philosopher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i21OJ...

I think the argument the unbelievers would be making there is more along the lines of why did God stoop so low as to become a man and to have the whole resurrection rigmarole, when, as Anselm mentions in chapter 1 when he defines the central problem of the text, "He
could have accomplished this restoration either by means of some
other person (whether angelic or human) or else by merely willing
it?"

And if God could not accomplish the restoration by willing it or using another person, that would be limiting his power and omnipotence, and maybe thus could come the dishonour and affronting?

It is I think hard to recognize how nitpicky and literal-minded I am being here. My response is that your comments though accurate are up in the clouds while I am staring very hard at the dirt under my feet.

My general immediate goal here is to ascertain how the text depicts the unbelievers.

The text keeps labeling them as rational and as arguing entirely based on reason.

I am calling attention to the fact that the very first quoted argument from the unbelievers is not (in the sense that I was taking the term) "rational" or restricted to "reason".

Then to make my point clearer I separated the unbelievers' argument into what I deemed to be rational and emotional components. I stated the rational argument as part of that, as a sample. I wanted to do two things: identify the implicit, invisible starting points or axioms or assumptions that the unbelievers' arguments require, and make clear what it was that I found non-rational.

The unbelievers' argument takes it for granted that there is a God and that this god is of some exalted nature such that to say He was born from a woman is not consistent with that exalted nature.

Second, I am calling attention to the terms "stoop so low" and "dishonor" and "affront," which according to my conception of "reason" and "rational" are not rational terms but emotive ones. They are squishy, emotive terms unlike the rational, ultimately definable terms Anselm mentions in passing, "ability and necessity and will and of certain other notions." I would expect perhaps wrongly that "rational" arguments would use terms like these; terms like "affront" and "dishonor" would not appear in my idea of a "rational" argument.

From staring at the dirt I conclude certain things about the unbelievers, and I open up a question about my understanding of perhaps the central term in the whole work, viz., "rational" / "reason." See next messages.

I conclude about the believers that:

They are very well acquainted with Christian beliefs and arguments.

At least their initial attack on Christianity as Anselm gives it claims that Christian teachings are internally inconsistent or contradictory. They do not attack the Christian starting points, axioms, assumptions.

Anselm in this initial argument does not hint whether or not the unbelievers themselves accept any or all the Christian starting points. A radical atheist could make this argument without accepting the starting points; an Arian could make this argument accepting most of or all of the relevant starting points. There is no clue that I see. It may be it doesn't matter to Anselm's argument. So I state this as a blank place in my picture of the unbelievers.

I have concluded that they do not make only what I call "purely rational" arguments. They use terms like "affront" and "dishonor," which are 1) emotive, and 2) derivative. The word "affront" by itself doesn't make an argument. It requires the missing, underlying, neutral, rational argument that God is super-duper and being born as a human being is inconsistent with that super-duper-ness.

I said " I open up a question about my understanding of perhaps the central term in the whole work, viz., 'rational' / 'reason.'"

This opens a new topic. To pursue it I'd open a new question. The question would be, "According to the text, what does Anselm mean by "rational" and "based only on reason"?

If the first unbeliever argument he presents does represent for Anselm a "rational" argument that is "based only on reason" then for the purposes of reading Anselm well I have to adjust my idea of "rational."

This is a normal, necessary thing to do when reading an author -- identify what the author means by a term. Read the text using the author's definition of the term. It is the subject of Chapter 8 in How to Read a Book, "Coming to Terms with an Author."

P.S. I provisionally conclude that in this work by "rational" or "exclusively by reason" Anselm means anything that is not revelation.

FWIW as a kind of quarter-educated purist (a dangerous beast!) I would say that this unbeliever argument is (more like) an enthymeme than it is (like) a syllogism. I'll have to look up Aristotle's words if anyone cares enough. But Wikipedia says, "The first type of enthymeme is a truncated syllogism, or a syllogism with an unstated premise." The argument is that being born of a woman would dishonor God; there are missing premises that I have tried to make explicit above.