You seem (reasonably enough) to be understanding the notion of 'better' in the moral sense of the term. But that isn't the sense that Anselm had in mind, and it's not actually the word he used either. What he was concerned with (in chapter two of his Proslogium) was 'that, than which nothing greater can be conceived' (in the Latin, 'id quo maius cogitari nequit'). And it's true that the notion of greatness does sometimes carry moral connotations, such as when we describe a particular paragon of virtue as being a great man or woman. But it works the other way too. In cases like murder and rape, although we might sometimes regard wicked intentions as already constituting crimes -- we certainly do so when these intentions are shared and discussed by a cabal of conspirators -- most of us would nevertheless regard it as a greater crime if those intentions actually get translated into action. And then there are plenty of other senses of 'great' that carry no moral connotations whatsoever, one way or...

One observes an idea simply by having it. For an idea to exist, and for someone to be aware of it, are, for Berkeley, the same thing. To be is to be perceived. You might say: no, the things we are aware of are not ideas but bodies. But Berkeley would say: bodies are ideas, and it is through experience that we know about them. Empiricism holds that experience is the only foundation we have for knowledge, or indeed for any kind of cognition at all, whereas rationalism suggests that we have some other source for knowledge, perhaps some kind of super-sensory faculty of pure intellect. But Berkeley straightforwardly declares: 'Pure Intellect I understand not' ( Philosophical Commentaries , sect. 810). All that our senses reveal to us of bodies are their superficial appearances, qualities such as size, shape, colour, flavour etc. A rationalist would suggest that our intellect enables us to penetrate beyond these, and to grasp the underlying substance to which all these various qualities adhere....

It does indeed seem that Descartes believed that God was not constrained by the laws of logic. However, what he did nevertheless believe was that human thought was thus constrained. In an absolute sense, maybe a so-called logical impossibility was in fact possible: but the important point is that such a possibility was not something that we could conceive. And let's remember what Descartes was actually trying to achieve. He stated his goal in the opening paragraph of the First Meditation: to attain some knowledge that was "stable and likely to last". Notice that he did not say that it should be true, and still less that it should be 'absolutely' true. What he wanted was a system of beliefs such that he could be confident that no possible evidence could ever come to light that would shake him out of them. But if, as he believed, human understanding could not even grasp what it would mean for a logical impossibility to be true, then a fortiori we could never encounter any grounds for...

It is a fact, as inescapable as it is unfortunate, that female philosophers have generally been eclipsed by the men, over the millennia. But there have been a fair few women who have done good stuff in philosophy. Someone from the ancient period, often cited by people searching for such figures, was Hypatia, a philosopher and mathematician of the fourth century AD. Unfortunately, we have to rely more on other people's testimonies of her than on her own works: as far as I know, none of the latter have survived. In the medieval period, I suppose one might mention Heloise, the beloved pupil of the scholastic philosopher, Peter Abelard. The evidence would seem to suggest that she was genuinely a pupil, and even an inspiration, as well as being a lover, and that she probably understood what Abelard was going on about far better than most women in her time would have done. But, again, we don't have a whole lot to work with, philosophically speaking. The problem, through most of history, was that...

The Ontological Argument, in its simplest form, runs as follows: God, by definition, is infinitely perfect in every respect. One respect in which something can be perfect is by existing -- it's better to exist than not to exist -- therefore God must possess this perfection alongside all the others (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.). If God lacked existence, He would thereby qualify as imperfect, but that would contradict the definition of what we mean by 'God'. Now, Kant makes a number of points about this argument: but, at the heart of his critique, his main objection is that it's wrong to think of existence as a perfection comparable to those others. The point is sometimes expressed by saying that the term "exists" is not a predicate: its logical role in sentences and thoughts is very different from that of genuine predicates like "is omnipotent" or "is omniscient". Existence is not a quality that we ascribe to a subject, as we might ascribe omnipotence to it. It is something prior to all such...

With regard to Socrates, the thing to remember is that we're not reading his own works -- because, by all accounts, he never actually wrote any. Plato's Socratic dialogues, although they probably do have some connection with things that the historical figure of Socrates said and did, are principally designed as means for Plato to present his own philosophy. If the character of Socrates is portrayed as arguing in a certain manner, we should regard this primarily as a rhetorical device of Plato's design. Now, it's quite true that Socrates (the character), notwithstanding his regular insistence that he's only asking questions in hopes of being enlightened by his interlocutor, is often presented as dominating and leading the discussion. But this isn't always the case. In some of the dialogues ( Timaeus , for instance), he's just sitting back and passively receiving instruction from another character. In others (such as Parmenides ), he does challenge his interlocutors, but he actually backs down when...

I haven't read the Goldstein book, so I can't comment on what she might have had specifically in mind. But, more broadly, there certainly is a strong Platonic (or, perhaps more accurately, Neoplatonic) flavour to Spinoza's metaphysics. One way of characterising the general philosophical outlooks of Plato and Aristotle would be to say that Plato focussed on an eternal and intelligible reality while Aristotle was more down to Earth, instead concerning himself with temporal and sensible things. Spinoza's substance was, first and foremost, supposed to be eternal and intelligible, and, as such, it would be likely to appeal to a Platonist. When Spinoza said that God was extended, a lot of his contemporaries took him to be saying that God was corporeal: but what he had in mind was really much closer to the uncreated and immutable Platonic Form of extension than to the created and ever-changing extensions that were commonly ascribed to bodies. In many respects, Spinoza's God is a lot like the Neoplatonic...