Prayer and Proof, Affect and Argument: The Role of Joy in St. Anselm’s Proslogion

What is it about?

St Anselm's ontological proof for the existence of God is usually explicated and taught in terms of logic, yet its author intended it as a more practical form of prayer exercise. This article views the logic of the argument as subordinate to the experience of it, looking at the proslogion "phenomenologically" rather than "logically."

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Why is it important?

The article reveals the lived aspect of the argument/prayer, a perspective that is generalizable over everything that we do. We take our everyday dealings to be about detached matters and specific tasks, and we tend to forget that those things are always in the service of life which is always lived through the specificity of the moment and place.

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