In the present paper, the three most prominent formulations of the ontological argument will be analysed, namely the classical argument which renders existence a perfection, Norman Malcom’s modal version of the argument which labels not existence but necessary existence a perfection, and Alvin Plantinga’s modal version of the argument which appeals to the possible worlds semantics to prove the necessity of God’s existence. According to Kant’s objection, the ontological argument takes existence to be a predicate that adds up a further perfection to the concept of God and thereby entails either a reference problem between the actual object and its concept or infers God’s actual existence in a tautological way. Despite its impact, Kant’s objection to the argument has been criticised for his ambiguous employment of the notion of existence as well as for being irrelevant to the ontological argument and to the modal ontological argument by Plantinga. In the present study, I aim first to show that Kant’s objection is not only relevant to the classical version of the argument but also to the modal formulations of it as opposed to Plantinga’s claim. In doing so, I argue that it is not Kant’s use of the notion of existence that is ambiguous, but it is the classical and modal versions of the ontological argument which gain their apparent strength from their ambiguous employment of the notion of existence. Second purpose of the paper is to give an alternative analysis of the notion of existence based on Avicenna’s metaphysics and thereby to point towards an alternative ground for a possible reformulation of the ontological argument, which could avoid Kant’s objection.
This article concerns the problem of eternal hell in Islam as an aporetic problem of evil with a focus on Aijaz's description of the Islamic soteriology. I contest his description of Islamic culpability and his claim that all non-Muslims are regarded as kâfir and consigned to eternal hell. First, I aim to illustrate the pitfalls in his line of argumentation such as crude generalizations and selective reading of the Islamic sources, which seem to render his argument a strawman fallacy. I offer a more accurate analysis of the Islamic view, by arguing that only a limited group of people who fight against truth through evil actions are considered as kâfir. Second, building on my analysis of the notion of kâfir, I address the question whether God's perfect love and wisdom are compatible with limited salvific exclusivism. Thus, I aim to elaborate on the rationale behind the prescription of eternal punishment for the kâfir in the Quran in the rest of the article, by arguing that the kâfir is incapable of genuine repentance due to his character formed by his free choices. This, in turn, makes it impossible to achieve retributive justice through a finite punishment concerning the kâfir's evil actions.
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