Anselm

I ran across him today while browsing through Wessex history. Anselm was involved with the discussions related to Edith marrying Henry.

You see, Edith, in this case, is the daughter of Malcolm III (King of Scotland) and his wife, St. Margaret. Edith purportedly had taken religious vows (in a convent) earlier. Could she marry without incurring some type of retributive reaction by the Church?

Anselm

At the time, Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury which is a fairly high-ranking position in England, both then and now. So, he had to weigh in.

Well, Edith argued that being in the convent was by her mother's ruse to keep little Edith from falling into the hands of the Normans (those lusty ones from the continent). So, Edith won her argument, changed her name to Matilda and married Henry.

Henry? Yes, Henry I of England who was the son of William I and, thereby, partly Norman.

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But, that was a little aside (not a Who am I?) and introduction. This post is a start to re-establish Anselm's importance which we'll be looking at more fully. One motivation is the upcoming 1000th anniversary for him. He was born (circa) 1033. So, we have 20 years to get ready for this.

By then, we'll have had a lot of experience with all of the celebrations coming up that are 400th in flavor (numerous American cities and states), 800th (Magna Charta), and more.

Anselm's "ontological" argument has been scorned by some modern intellectuals who, for the most part, use mathematics as their ruse. And, these modern arguments use a sleight-of-hand to direct our attention away from the less-than-solid basis of their argument.

One of our tasks is to illustrate this problem and to discuss what it means to our future. There has already been a slight start: nods to the quasi-empirical views (several posts).

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Does this post open up the big "T" issues? Not exactly. There is plenty of territory (hint, here) to cover prior to that.

Remarks:

10/13/2015 -- "God" as name or predicate? How about Being?

05/21/2013 -- The big "T" issues can come to fore. By the way, "truh" in the file name? Mis-type, of course. But, interesting enough to not correct. Will have to start using the "Preview" feature more regularly (note the statement that these posts use no fancy editor; iterative write/review/edit steps are the key; just like the old days whey people wrote on paper). The process pops up the page in a fully formatted manner (nice, blogger.com) that allows the necessary pre-edits (some of which I used to do after the fact - incremental improvement, evolution, ... -- it bothers me when someone shows a final product as if it were obtained by magic (or Deus ex machina); let me see the details and intermediate steps, please).

05/03/2013 -- Either/Or.

Modified: 10/13/2015