RT Article
T1 Evil and maximal greatness
JF International journal for philosophy of religion
VO 91
IS 2
SP 93
OP 109
A1 Büttner, Kai Michael
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1796750107
AB By defining God as a maximally great being Plantinga is able to devise an ontological argument which validly infers from the possibility of there being a God that there necessarily is a God. In this article I shall argue that Plantinga’s argument is not only question-begging, as several critics have complained, but circular in the strongest sense of the term. Based on reflections on the relation between the notions of coherence and possibility, I shall defend two arguments, previously proposed by Tooley (Mind 90:422–427, 1981) and Guleserian (Nous 17:221–238, 1983), against the existence of a maximally great being. The article concludes with some critical remarks on Plantinga’s rationale for conceiving God as such a being.
K1 Plantinga
K1 Modal problem of evil
K1 Modal ontological argument
K1 Maximal greatness
DO 10.1007/s11153-021-09810-1