Common Consent Arguments for the Existence of God

Common Consent Arguments for the Existence of God

Numerous philosophers and theologians have appealed to the "common consent" of humankind (the consensus gentium) as support for certain doctrines. Richard Hooker, for example, in his Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity appeals to this common agreement of humankind in justifying his view that the obligatory character of certain moral principles is immediately evident. Most frequently the conclusions supported in this way were those asserting the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul. In the present entry we shall confine ourselves to common consent arguments for the existence of God.

Among those who favored arguments of this kind were Cicero, Seneca, Clement of Alexandria, Herbert of Cherbury, the Cambridge Platonists, Pierre Gassendi, and Hugo Grotius. In more recent times these arguments were supported by numerous distinguished Protestant and Catholic theologians. G. W. F. Hegel did not accept the argument, but he thought that it contained a kernel of truth. Rudolf Eisler, in his Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, ranks the argument fifth in importance among so-called proofs of the existence of God, and this seems an accurate estimate of its place in the history of philosophy. At the same time, J.

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