“ontology” defined ~ the science of being
Some students are fortunate enough to have had a teacher who made all the difference in life. I am such a person. During my junior year of high school in Carlsbad, New Mexico, John Hadsell was my English teacher. One day, apparently bored with the insipid materials in our English textbook, he took it upon himself to conduct an experiment that might have gotten him fired if he tried it in a public school today. He read aloud a paragraph from St. Anselm’s Proslogion, the so-called “ontological” proof for the existence of God. I sat still and eager for what was sure to be a fascinating revelation. When the proof was read to us, there was a general silence, everybody including myself quite perplexed at what we had just heard. I did not understand the proof, but I had just an inkling of what Anselm was trying to convey. I asked Mr. Hadsell if he would mind reading it again, which he did. Again, the classroom silence was deafening. This so-called “proof” started me on a lifelong search for the philosopher’s stone, the thing called Reason, which transforms foolishness into wisdom, without which we are lost in those regular fogs of mostly blissful ignorance all life long.
Saint Anselm (1033-1109) was an Italian by birth, an Englishman by adoption, and a defender of the rights of the Catholic Church against the opposition of the English Crown. He was the scourge of two kings, yet rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury and was, by some accounts, the fountainhead of medieval philosophy and theology. Like Augustine before him, amid all the whirlwind of politics and persecution he found time to write several brilliant theological treatises that should be required reading today for students of Catholic theology. His Proslogion (Discourse) is perhaps the most famous of them.