TY - JOUR
T1 - Perfect being attacked! Jeff speaks’s the greatest possible being
AU - Leftow, Brian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Philosophy Documentation Center. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - Jeff Speaks’s The Greatest Possible Being criticizes several sorts of perfect being theology. I show that his main discussions target what are really idealizations of actual perfect-being projects. I then focus on whether Speaks’s idealizations match up with the real historical article. I argue that, in one key respect, they do not and that it would be uncharitable to think that one of them does. If the idealizations do not represent what perfect being thinkers have actually been doing, a question arises about how much Speaks’s critique should worry those pursuing projects modelled on real historical perfect being theology.
AB - Jeff Speaks’s The Greatest Possible Being criticizes several sorts of perfect being theology. I show that his main discussions target what are really idealizations of actual perfect-being projects. I then focus on whether Speaks’s idealizations match up with the real historical article. I argue that, in one key respect, they do not and that it would be uncharitable to think that one of them does. If the idealizations do not represent what perfect being thinkers have actually been doing, a question arises about how much Speaks’s critique should worry those pursuing projects modelled on real historical perfect being theology.
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U2 - 10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.2.6
DO - 10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.2.6
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85121046363
SN - 0739-7046
VL - 38
SP - 262
EP - 273
JO - Faith and Philosophy
JF - Faith and Philosophy
IS - 2
ER -