St. Anselm of Canterbury | J. F. Worthen (essay date 1993)
J. F. Worthen (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: Worthen, J. F. “Augustine's De trinitate and Anselm's Proslogion: ‘Exercere Lectorum.'” In Collectanea Augustiniana, edited by Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske, pp. 517-29. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
[In the following essay, Worthen asserts that St. Augustine in his De trinitate and Anselm in his Proslogion engage in a narrative process of leading readers toward an understanding of God, and compares the methods used by both writers to achieve this goal.]
I
The power of speech, Socrates says in the Phaedrus, consists in ψυχαγωγία, which we might translate as “the leading of souls.”1 Plato as an author is interested in discourse not as a neutral medium for the communication of information but as a way of leading—of shaping, transforming—the souls of his readers. Augustine and Anselm are similarly...
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