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Lotze's Outlines Of Philosophy: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Lotze's Outlines Of Philosophy: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
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This ebook edition has been proofed and corrected for errors and compiled to be read with without errors!
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An excerpt from:
CHAPTER I. - THE PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
§ 5. The different attempts of reason to attain to certainty concerning the Supersensible, by starting from all the above-mentioned points of departure, are too manifold for direct statement. As often, however, as science has undertaken to give an account of its profits, it has done this in a doctrine of the "Proofs for the existence of God." Accordingly we also now present these proofs with the design to show how each one of them adopts its own special method for discovering a portion of the supersensible truth; and with the brief preliminary remark that these proofs naturally cannot, properly speaking, demonstrate the existence of God as necessary, — that is, as dependent on something else,—but that they are all able merely to demonstrate our assumption of this existence as a logically necessary consequence of the given facts of the world.
THE MOST PERFECT BEING.
§ 6. The ontological argument, as ordinarily apprehended, maintains that, while the conception of other beings does not include their existence, the conception of the most perfect Being of all does include it; and that this being would in fact contradict its own conception, if the one perfection — to wit, existence itself — did not belong to it.
The logical error of this argument is sufficiently well known. Not merely the conception of the most perfect Being, but indeed that of every living or active being (as, for example, the conception of an animal), includes existence also as necessary to be added in thought for defining it; and without this all the rest of its predicates (e.g., sensation, motion, propagation, etc.) would be quite unthinkable. But with respect to no one of these conceptions, does it follow from the necessity of adding in thought this mark (of existence), that after this the total content of the conception thus fully thought has validity in the nature of reality also, and that it may not be a merely thinkable combination of our imagination.
But although logically this attempt at proof is quite invalid, it is nevertheless of interest in other respects. For that which induces it to regard existence as a necessary attribute of the total content of the conception of the most perfect Being, is not, as it is in the case of the other conception (that of the animal), the mere circumstance that the rest of the predicates would admit of formal attachment to what is existent only, and not to what is non-existent. This is obviously rather a case where* an altogether immediate conviction breaks through into consciousness; to wit, the conviction that the totality of all that has value — all that is perfect, fair, and good — cannot possibly be homeless in the world or in the realm of actuality, but has the very best claim to be regarded by us as imperishable reality. This assurance, which properly has no need of proof, has sought to formulate itself, after a scholastic fashion, in the above-mentioned awkward argument.
IDEA OF THE 'CONTINGENT.'
§ 7. The cosmological argument begins in an apprehension of frequent occurrence, yet withal wholly incorrect; namely, that the existence of each individual Thing and of the world in general is contingent, and therefore presupposes not a contingent but a necessary Being. At this point, the particular conceptions which are wrongly attached to this thought, must be first subjected to a definition.
The ordinary use of language is not at all acquainted with the philosophic significance of the word 'contingent,' according to which it is applicable to every existing thing whose non-existence in general would be thinkable without contradiction, and whose conception or whose nature accordingly offers no resistance to the cessation of its own existence. Rather does the common usage in the first instance merely contrast the 'contingent' with the designed, and understands by it all those secondary effects which, without being themselves designed, originate from action of ours that is designed. This happens because our actions themselves are for the most part capable of accomplishment only by means of some change in the objects of the external world; these objects, however, because of those relations independent of ourselves in which they stand to each other, cannot be changed by us without propagating still further in various directions the impressions they have received.
***
An excerpt from:
CHAPTER I. - THE PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
§ 5. The different attempts of reason to attain to certainty concerning the Supersensible, by starting from all the above-mentioned points of departure, are too manifold for direct statement. As often, however, as science has undertaken to give an account of its profits, it has done this in a doctrine of the "Proofs for the existence of God." Accordingly we also now present these proofs with the design to show how each one of them adopts its own special method for discovering a portion of the supersensible truth; and with the brief preliminary remark that these proofs naturally cannot, properly speaking, demonstrate the existence of God as necessary, — that is, as dependent on something else,—but that they are all able merely to demonstrate our assumption of this existence as a logically necessary consequence of the given facts of the world.
THE MOST PERFECT BEING.
§ 6. The ontological argument, as ordinarily apprehended, maintains that, while the conception of other beings does not include their existence, the conception of the most perfect Being of all does include it; and that this being would in fact contradict its own conception, if the one perfection — to wit, existence itself — did not belong to it.
The logical error of this argument is sufficiently well known. Not merely the conception of the most perfect Being, but indeed that of every living or active being (as, for example, the conception of an animal), includes existence also as necessary to be added in thought for defining it; and without this all the rest of its predicates (e.g., sensation, motion, propagation, etc.) would be quite unthinkable. But with respect to no one of these conceptions, does it follow from the necessity of adding in thought this mark (of existence), that after this the total content of the conception thus fully thought has validity in the nature of reality also, and that it may not be a merely thinkable combination of our imagination.
But although logically this attempt at proof is quite invalid, it is nevertheless of interest in other respects. For that which induces it to regard existence as a necessary attribute of the total content of the conception of the most perfect Being, is not, as it is in the case of the other conception (that of the animal), the mere circumstance that the rest of the predicates would admit of formal attachment to what is existent only, and not to what is non-existent. This is obviously rather a case where* an altogether immediate conviction breaks through into consciousness; to wit, the conviction that the totality of all that has value — all that is perfect, fair, and good — cannot possibly be homeless in the world or in the realm of actuality, but has the very best claim to be regarded by us as imperishable reality. This assurance, which properly has no need of proof, has sought to formulate itself, after a scholastic fashion, in the above-mentioned awkward argument.
IDEA OF THE 'CONTINGENT.'
§ 7. The cosmological argument begins in an apprehension of frequent occurrence, yet withal wholly incorrect; namely, that the existence of each individual Thing and of the world in general is contingent, and therefore presupposes not a contingent but a necessary Being. At this point, the particular conceptions which are wrongly attached to this thought, must be first subjected to a definition.
The ordinary use of language is not at all acquainted with the philosophic significance of the word 'contingent,' according to which it is applicable to every existing thing whose non-existence in general would be thinkable without contradiction, and whose conception or whose nature accordingly offers no resistance to the cessation of its own existence. Rather does the common usage in the first instance merely contrast the 'contingent' with the designed, and understands by it all those secondary effects which, without being themselves designed, originate from action of ours that is designed. This happens because our actions themselves are for the most part capable of accomplishment only by means of some change in the objects of the external world; these objects, however, because of those relations independent of ourselves in which they stand to each other, cannot be changed by us without propagating still further in various directions the impressions they have received.
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