Confessions of a Rational Mystic: Anselm's Early Writings (review)

994 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL i996 Gregory Schufreider. Confessionsof a Rational Mystic: anselm's Early Writings. West Lafayette , IN: Purdue University Press, i993. Pp. 392. Cloth, $39.95- Paper, $15.95. In his Confessionsofa RationalMystic, Gregory Schufreider sets out to explain Anselm to a (post)modern audience, while remaining loyal to the philosophical and theological outlook of his premodern author. Schufreider succeeds remarkably well in the first part of his task, as he explains Anselm's argument to an audience unfamiliar with its historical context: medieval monastic life. To overcome the distance between Anselm and his (post)modern audience , Schufreider introduces four meaningful approaches to the interpretation of a text: the logical, the hermeneutical, the phenomenological and the deconstructive (117 ). Critical of the ahistorical rationality implicit in the logical approach to Anselm's "ontological" argument, Schufreider nevertheless expresses his intention to use all four approaches in his attempt to "understudy" the tradition. But he ultimately favors the deconstructive approach, because it builds on a certain incongruity between text and interpretation. For Schufreider, Anselm's theological scenario sets the stage for the Proslogion's historic redemption of reason 03-14). Anselm took as his starting-point for the mystical/rationaljourney to God humanity's limited rationality after the Fall (Proslogion, ch. 1), because a yearning for paradisical truth had remained after the Fall. Schufreider considers Anselm's clinging to this vestige of a vision of God an important trope for the decisive transition in Western history from religious revelation to the revelatory power of reason. These and other insights assist Schufreider in explaining to his readers the unique importance of the Proslogion. The intent to remain loyal to the philosophical and theological outlook of his premodern author brings out certain difficulties in Schufreider's interpretation. After a chapter on the Mono/ogion (i8-96), he explores the Proslogionin Chapter 3 (97-239) 9 Although he treats the monastic context of the Proslogion with respect, he simplifies somewhat the complex balance of faith and reason that underlies Anselm's monastic thought. While this does not undercut his exposition of Anselm's argument directly, it causes at times an unfortunate misreading of the Proslogion as a whole: for example, when Schufreider explores the distinction between Anselm's "incantation" or opening prayer, and the logical chapters 2- 4. Schufreider's mistake is not that he separates prayer and proof completely, but rather that he appears to identify this distinction anachronistically with that between faith as a private mystical experience and philosophy as public rationality. For example , Schufreider explains how the biblical topic of mankind's fallen state provided Anselm with a historical parallel for his own personal desperation, as he had failed to find a single argument for the existence of God in the Monologion (97-112, esp. lo~, lo6). From a monastic perspective, however, Anselm's strategy appears to have been the reverse. Rather than using the Bible as a historical book offering personal consolation , Anselm's prayer in chapter I uncannily heightens the stakes of the familiar biblical drama of loss and redemption by making the rational search for God exemplary for the saving efficacy of the biblical narrative. Anselm's prayerful attempt to BOOK REVIEWS 295 underscore God's existence sola ratione actualizes the biblical narrative, not by requesting personal satisfaction as he hopes to find the sought-after argument, but, in good monastic-penitential fashion, by having this very argument command redemption for all of humanity. Risking far more than personal disappointment, Anselm's quest for God sola ratione merges prayer and proof to such an extent that any distinction must forthwith be abandoned. Schufreider approaches the Proslogion as a mixture of prayer and proof, but he is not ready to abandon their distinction. Consequently, he not only isolates chapters 2-4 from chapter l, but also from chapters 5-26. On 2o8ff. he speaks of Anselm's "theologizing" of the ontological reality of GOd in those later chapters. In a recent article Stephen Gersh has suggested that the earlier and later parts of the Proslogion are connected by the following unstated premiss: "when two terms are compared as greater and lesser, then God corresponds...