In his first systematic work, the Monologion, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) founds a rational knowledge of God, in fact as subject to his famous principle "only by reason" (sola ratione). This is continued in the Prologion, even in a systematic rad ...
In his first systematic work, the Monologion, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) founds a rational knowledge of God, in fact as subject to his famous principle "only by reason" (sola ratione). This is continued in the Prologion, even in a systematic radicalization with the idea of the "one argument" (unum argumentum). By such an argument all of the contents of Christian faith could be rational founded. The final figure of this new sytematical project becomes clear in the proof of the existence of God. The proof, called by I. Kant the "ontological argument", is even reinforced by using the concept of God as "that of which nothing greater can be conceived" (aliquid quo non maius cogitari possit). On the basis of its central conceptual elements for philosophical thought, such as thinking (noein) and being (einai), this noteworthy concept enable the possibility and the limits of the act of thinking to be the essencial moments in the proof. This principal property confers on Anselm’s thought the character of modern rationality and rational modernity, and makes him rightly the pioneer of rationalism. But, not only the systematic radicalizing of the issue of the "unum argumentum" by invoking the principle of the "sola ratione", but also the conceptual continuation is striking in thinking God in the Proslogion. Upon the background of rational arguments for concepts such as God (Deus), faith (fides) and soul (anima) in the Monologion, in which reason (ratio) itself adopts the role of guide to knowledge of God, the soul (anima) can become, through faith in on God, the subject of a search for God by way of a knowledge of God in the Proslogion.
This study is an attempt to open up this sketchily described formation of a knowledge of God in the Proslogion as a whole, especially by considering the structure of the arguments in the method of the "unum argumentum". Beginning with the concepts of reason (ratio), argument (argumentum) and soul (anima), it will be shown that the process of the practical unity of the soul’s intellectual capacities constitutes the as yet unfolded structure of the knowledge of God. It will contribute to widening the horizon of Anselm’s thinking of the unity of reason (ratio), faith (fides) and emotion (affectus). Only by virtue of this unity of the trinity of reason, faith and emotion, can Anselm’s attitude, from which this proof proceeds in the Proslogion, become comprehensible: "Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this, too, I believe, that, unless I first believe, I shall not understand." (Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam.)