Dowód ontologiczny w ujęciu Siemiona L. Franka

Abstract

Anselm’s Proof has interested thinkers for various reasons, one of them being that it seems “concise and logical”. But neither its logical nor its Christian charms - so argues Semen L. Frank, one of the most renowned Russian philosophers - must be allowed to conceal its fundamental sense. For purposes of the Proof, God is taken to be ens realissimum, that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Anselm’s first formulation distinguished between what exists in the mind and what exists in reality. To exist in reality is taken to be “better” than existing only in the mind. So one can understand that God exists, since if He did not He would fail to be that than which nothing greater can be conceived. However Frank sees two parts in Anselm’s argument of which only the first is dependent on logic. Anselm’s second argument (in Proslogion III) is meant to explicate the idea that we cannot even think of God as nonexistent. God’s real and necessary existence is condition sine qua non of our thinking and existing. Therefore Frank’s Proof is meant to be a fitting articulation of religious experience which is - theologically speaking - an act of faith or, from a more philosophical point of view, intuition. In the course of analysis we suggest however that Frank’s concept of “intuition” is problematic.