This is our backup site. Click here to visit our main site at MellenPress.com
Rogers, Katherin A.
About the author: Dr. Katherin Rogers received her PhD from the University of Notre Dame. She is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware.
1997 0-7734-8668-2Contemporary philosophers of religion frequently cite the medievals with approval. The school of analytic philosophers who aim to unpack the notion of a perfect being even label their method 'Anselmian'. Often, though, contemporary philosophers misunderstand or even ignore key aspects of the medieval system of religious philosophy, the upshot being that contemporary criticisms and even defenses often miss the mark. In this series of essays, the author sets out the traditional views on certain questions in the philosophy of religion, and to defend these views in the contemporary idiom. Some essays deal with doctrines like divine simplicity and eternity which are frequently rejected today, but which were held almost universally by medieval philosophers in the latin west. Many concentrate on the work of St. Anselm (including a long and daring piece on his idealism).
1997 0-7734-8622-4
Anselm is well-known for his "ontological" argument, for his discussion of the necessity of the Incarnation. This volume argues that Anselm is a Christian neoplatonist of the Augustinian variety, and thus that he is the inheritor of a powerful and systematic metaphysics and epistemology. The view that our world is an image of the divine mind and its ideas, a fragmented and temporal copy of the perfect, eternal unity which is God, leads Anselm to a strong exemplarism on the doctrine of the universals, and ultimately to a sane and sober theistic idealism. The discussion of Anselm's underlying metaphysics and epistemology concludes with a neoplatonic (and new) interpretation and defense of his most famous contribution, the Proslogion proof for the existence of God.