Ontological argument for the existence of God, exposed by famous philosophers

Spinoza

It is in proposition 11 of the first part of the Ethics that Spinoza proposes a proof of the existence of God by the essentialist approach. The statement of this proposition is: “God, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.”

Spinoza gives three different proofs of this.

First demonstration

The first demonstration is a proof by the absurd.

1. Let us try to conceive that God does not exist.
2. This means that its essence does not envelop its existence, in accordance with Axiom 7: “Whatever can be conceived as non-existent, its essence does not envelop existence.”
3. Now this is absurd, by virtue of Proposition 7: “To the nature of a substance belongs to exist.”

(To complete, it would be necessary to show here how Spinoza demonstrates Proposition 7.)

Second demonstration

1. What has no reason or cause preventing its existence, necessarily exists;
2. no reason or cause prevents God from existing;
3. therefore God necessarily exists.

Third demonstration

1. To be able not to exist is impotence, to be able to exist is power;
2. but we exist, and we are finite beings;
3. so if God (infinite being) did not exist, finite beings would be more powerful than infinite being, which is absurd. So God exists.

Leibniz

Leibniz takes up and completes the ontological argument: the idea of ​​God expressing that of a perfect Being, this Being can only exist, but it is still necessary to demonstrate that the said idea – and the essence it expresses – is intrinsically possible and contains no contradiction, which Leibniz sets out to establish: see the Discourse on Metaphysics.

Hegel

Hegel also admits and develops the ontological argument: the idea of ​​God, in the sense that it expresses the essence of the Perfect, Infinite and Supreme being, is the richest and most effective of all ideas; thus, God can only exist. Hegel: “Certainly, in finite beings existence never fully corresponds to the concept; but even at this level the opposition is not absolute: concept without existence is one-sided, existence without concept is inconceivable. In any case, in God this heterogeneity disappears: He is the Totality which can only be thought of as real and whose very notion contains existence”. But God, in Hegel, exists only by accomplishing himself dialectically and immanently in all forms of reality, from the lowest – inert nature – to the highest: philosophy.

Bochensky’s ontological argument

Ontological proof of God, of absolute logic: according to logician Józef Maria Bocheński are “laws” – like the eternal laws of logic, mathematics and others, the only “absolute”, while all the rest of these laws depends. And these laws apply to the world, through the structure of things created by a projection of the eternal “laws of thought”. God or the Absolute is neither more nor less than absolute regularity itself.

(Includes texts from Wikipedia translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu)