Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 4

Philosophy - Essay Example For this argument to proceed Aquinas’s idea is that human beings have to think of something as an effects of God and in the fourth way of argument, this thing is the best effect of God The understanding of the Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of god therefore begins with the analysis of his gradation criteria. He talks about good, better, and best. He finds some things to be â€Å"better†, true, and noble while others are less good, true or noble respectively (Elders, 114). In this way of argument, it is difficult to integrate his arguments especially when it comes to this kind of comparison. Many philosophers and researchers have questioned his arguments asking questions. For example if comparing two or more things, then you say that A is better than B, is Aquinas trying to assert that there is something better compared to the two and many others whose perfection cannot be challenged? This forms the basis for criticisms of the Aquinas fourth argument. The c hallenge here is to prove that there is actually something that is perfect beyond improvement. However as observed by Soccio (228), it would be misleading to argue that given a number of things with different degrees of goodness, there is one among those things that would not be possible to make any changes with regard to improving it. In other words, he asserts that there is no point believing Aquinas’s idea that there is something perfect beyond improvement. It therefore forms the weaker point of the Aquinas arguments since he believes that if we have to group different things together, yes we will have some of the best things, however, it would still be possible to improve that thing with regard to the degree of goodness. It is also possible to improve better to become better than the best. Another critic of Aquinas’s fourth way of argument is that he describes God in a sequence of being best among a group but denies later in the proceeding metaphors that he cannot group him in a group of the same kinds. In the next lines, he states that he does not think of God as the best or a group of things that can be graded together with respect to intelligent (Soccio, 230). The question therefore is; how can you compare things as good, better and best or truer, nobler, etc if in the first place you can’t group them together or they are not similar? In this way, it does not explain or describe the truth about the existence of God in this fourth way of argument because it is not clear. While Aquinas describes the effects, it is also important to note that we can only compare things with similar characteristics but God has no characteristics similar to any as he explains. However other philosophers have argued that this use of parallel texts is not misleading but it is misinterpreted by the individual’s readers of the Aquinas texts. According to Wippel (469), the perfections mentioned by the Aquinas are the transcendental perfections. In this context the interpretation of things like the â€Å"more† or less do not necessarily mean that the arguments are based on the things that are perceived by the senses and known by the intellect. In this point of view, the true of the text does not refer to the logical truth of intellect but to the ontological truth of things. With this regard, it is