Ontological proof of the existence of God in the phenomenology of the sacred by B. Welte and in the philosophy of Russian intuitionism by N. Lossky

The problematic of the article is to clarify the meaning of the ontological argument in its non-classical form in the thinking of being and faith of Revelation in German-language theology and Russian religious philosophy of the 20th century. The solution to this problem involves turning to the thematization of the ontological argument in the context of its event-based, verbal and emotional nature.

The article will discuss the phenomenological model of the ontological proof of the existence of God by the German Catholic theologian B. Welte and the metaphysical model by the Russian philosopher N. Lossky.

The Catholic theologian believes that in the ontological argument, thinking does not think only of itself. It goes by way of transcendence, turning into an existential, personal act. Distancing himself from the metaphysical presumption, he identifies the ontological argument with the search for the original meaning by thinking. Proof in B. Welte is one of the ways to justify and explain the possibility of meaning in being. The ontological argument reveals the meaning of being in the positive nothing (the sacred). B. Welte inscribes the ontological argument in the Thomistic metaphysics updated by phenomenology. Revelation for B. Welte acquires the features of an existentialverbal event.

Lossky’s ontological argument is based on the idea of intuitive knowledge, that is, the clarification of the obviousness in the consciousness of the concept of the Absolute. God is really seen in the idea of God, as the subject of any general concept. Each step of discerning an insensible (mental) object presupposes focusing attention on it, and regarding the Absolute, contemplating it in the unity of concept and being. A genuine ontological proof does not rely on the law of contradiction, but on the consciousness of the unity of the objective and subjective, the individual and the general. The judgment “God exists” is at first an analytical judgment, then it becomes synthetic. Differentiation of the concept of God for us occurs. N. Lossky classifies the judgment “God exists” as an existential judgment. Their subject is not a thing, but the existence of a thing. N. Lossky and B. Welte each in their own way deduce the ontological argument from its criticism by I. Kant, prolonging its life in the culture of modernism and postmodernism.

1. Filatov, V.P. (1991), “The life and philosophical system of N.O. Lossky”, in Lossky. N.O., Izbrannoe [Selected], Pravda, Moscow, Russia, pp. 3–10. (Iz istorii otechestvennoi filosofskoi mysli)

2. Gaidenko, P.P. (2016), “Hierarchical personalism of N. Lossky”, in Lossky, N.O., Filosofiya Rossii pervoi poloviny XX veka [Philosophy of Russia in the first half of the 20th century, ROSSPEN, Moscow, Russia, pp.12–46.

3. Konacheva, S.A. (2010), Bytie. Svyashchennoe. Bog [Being. Sacred. God], RGGU, Moscow, Russia.

4. Molschanov, V.I. (2016), “Positions and prerequisites. The theory of knowledge of N.O. Lossky and phenomenology”, Lossky, N.O., Filosofiya Rossii pervoi poloviny XX veka [Philosophy of Russia in the first half of the 20th century], ROSSPEN, Moscow, Russia, pp. 86–112.