a pure intellectual game; there was no premium on accepting proofs, and
rejection of inadequacies of rival argument was taken as a mark of superiority.
The philosophers of the High Middle Ages were no beginners in the abstrac-
tion-reflexivity sequence. They started off by appropriating what ancient capi-
tal was available, but turned it toward the distinctive puzzles of anthropomor-
phic monotheist theology. Anselm, a law-trained debater, won the first great
medieval reputation by raising the standards of argument, seeking a perfect
proof contained in itself, without appeal to any empirical premise. The acute-
ness of philosophical abstraction was raised thereafter in conjunction with
refinements in the concept of God. The proofs marshaled by Aquinas, refined
by Duns Scotus, and rejected by Ockham and the nominalists were entwined
with the metaphysical game. Although the arguments seemed to press the
borders of heresy and sometimes outraged traditional relations between faith
and reason, there was no question of jettisoning Christian theology for a purely
secular philosophy; the reasoned conception of God, opened up and drama-
tized by the proof game, is the deep trouble space on which metaphysical
advance is made.
The same holds true in much of the secularizing period of European
philosophy. From Descartes to Leibniz and Berkeley, God is a central item in
the reasoning contests of philosophy, played with new standards of argument.
Anthropomorphic qualities are transcended on this refined level of abstraction;
what is retained, and what makes the path to further abstract construction
possible, are the standards of perfection embodied in the concepts of infinite
perfection. Secular science and the philosophies of pure reason and freedom
eventually became movements for overthrowing theology. But this is a case of
the offspring devouring the parent; the standards of omniscience, omnipotence,
infinite freedom, and goodness explored by theology provide the conceptions
taken over by the scientific and philosophical goals of totally comprehensive
explanation, perfect and complete causality, and the various ultimates of Ide-
alist and post-Idealist philosophy. Even the skeptical and anti-foundational
positions were formulated against this yardstick. Arguments over God are not
atavisms in modern European philosophy, but the main pathway of the epis-
temology-metaphysics sequence.
The most important comparison for testing the importance of anthropo-
morphic monotheism is ancient Greece. Here was no political pressure to
adhere to a sole God, much less a personalistic one; yet there were some
developments of theological proofs. The early development of cosmological
philosophy took place by critiquing polytheism or reinterpreting the multiple
gods as natural elements. A second version of rationalizing mythologies was
forwarded by the Stoics, who conceived of divinity in a generalized sense as
one of the world ingredients, developing arguments that the universe itself is
an animate, rational being with an intelligent soul.
834 •^ Meta-reflections