Kant's Ontological Meditation

In “Meditation V” of Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes presents his ontological argument. This argument, simplified, states that God necessarily exists since God is an infinitely perfect being and perfection includes necessary existence. Possibly the most considered objection to the ontological argument, first introduced by Immanuel Kant, is that necessary existence is not a property or an attribute. I agree with Kant’s objection, arguing that Descartes’ ontological argument is flawed, because

Hegel and Kant on the Ontological Argument ABSTRACT: I intend to present Kant's refutation of the ontological argument as confronted by Hegel's critique of Kant's refutation. The ontological argument can be exposed in a syllogistic way: everything I conceive as belonging clearly and distinctly to the nature or essence of something can be asserted as true of something. I perceive clearly and distinctly that existence belongs to the nature or essence of a perfect being; therefore, existence can

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) contains six Meditations. In the first two of these Descartes addresses doubt and certainty. By the end of the second Meditation Descartes establishes the possibility of certainty by concluding that he is a “thinking thing” and that this is beyond doubt. Having established the possibility of certainty, Descartes attempts to prove the existence of God. The argument he presents in the Third Meditation for the existence of God has been nicknamed the

Descartes' Meditations In Descartes’ meditations, Descartes begins what Bernard Williams has called the project of ‘pure enquiry’ to discover an indubitable premise or foundation to base his knowledge on, by subjecting everything to a kind of scepticism now known as Cartesian doubt. This is known as foundationalism, where a philosopher basis all epistemological knowledge on an indubitable premise. Within meditation one Descartes subjects all of his beliefs regarding sensory data and even

It is during the fifth meditation where Descartes really begins to go deep inside the existence of God and tries to uncover the proof behind his thoughts. Descartes said, “I can be certain that I exist, but I cannot be certain there is a world outside me,” (Skirry). With this, he needed a bridge to get him from his own experience to something external to his mind. What could that bridge be? Well he thought that it would have to be a good God. Not just a God, but a good one. Good so that he wouldn’t

Descartes’ ontological argument is an echo of the original ontological argument for the existence of God as proposed by St. Anselm in the 11th century. To illustrate the background of the ontological argument, Anselm’s argument works within a distinct framework of ontology that posits the existence of God as necessity by virtue of its definition. In other words, for the mind to conceive of an infinite, perfect God, ultimately implies that there must indeed be a perfect God that embodies existence

Due to the preconceptions I have concerning Anselm’s Ontological Argument, as learnt through course research and lectures. I will like Descartes in his ‘First Meditation’, put these preconceptions to one side and present an essay that explores both sides of the argument in an attempt to reach an independent conclusion. However, I hope to reach the same conclusion as I had before – that is, that the Ontological Argument can be refuted on the basis that there exists a fundamental dissimilarity between

demonstrate the existence of God. These theories are the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the teleological argument. St. Anselm of eleventh century, and Descartes of seventeenth century, have used the ontological argument for proving the existence of God. The God, for them, is supreme, "needing nothing outside himself, but needful for the being and well-being of all things." (Pg. 305). St Anselm’s account of the ontological argument for the existence of God deals with the ‘existence

mandala is the] living conception of the self. The self, I thought, was like the monad that I am, and which is my world. The mandala represents this monad, and corresponds to the microcosmic nature of the psyche." (196). Buddhist mandala meditations thus functioned to deconstruct self-centeredness, but Jungian mandalas served to affirm, sustain and maintain the health and integrity of the "monad" of the self. And while Buddhist mandala visualizations culminated in the existential act of dissolving

Locke’s empiricism Rene Descartes was a rationalist who believed that knowledge of the world can be gained by the exercise of pure reason, while empiricist like Locke believed that knowledge of the world came through senses. Descartes from his meditations deduced from intuitive first principles the existence of self, of God, of the mind as a thinking substance and the extended body as a material substance whereas Locke, asserts that knowledge is acquired through perception, direct sensory of the

of a discontinuous leap. So, too, it seems has the profession generally and this has infected philosophical research and teaching. It is urged here that discontinuous processes are crucial in the universe, in human life, in human thinking. Such ontological events cannot be handled by dualism, materialism or postmodernism. Concentration on such discontinuous processes is urged, an alternative is briefly indicated, and a criterion for ordering levels of human levels of reality is offered. It follows