Are there any significant problems for Anselm’s understanding of truth? I don’t believe so. While there may be dimensions or aspects of truth that Anselm does not consider, his theory should seem both plausible and tenable to those who grant that God is real and all things depend on him. For if all things depend on him, then the truth of any created thing must ultimately be defined by the relation in which it stands to God, and Anselm has provided an elegant and illuminating way of conceiving what this relation is and how God establishes it.
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Some might object that that Aquinas’s conception of virtue is wholly incompatible with the Lutheran view of good works. After all, if faith is a necessary condition for good works and true virtue, in what sense can we speak of moral virtues that are attainable through one’s natural powers, especially in the case of those who reject Christ? Gerhard provides a straightforward solution. Even though only good works done in faith are spiritually good, the works of the unregenerate can still be deemed “morally and civilly good.” We can still consider their deeds and virtues “according to the substance of the act,” which is exactly the analysis that Aquinas provides. Even if the efficient, impulsive, and final causes of the works of the regenerate and unregenerate differ, the analysis of virtue according to the substance of the act remains the same.
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While less prominent than other theistic proofs, the argument from desire nevertheless bears several strengths. Perhaps its greatest asset is the ease with which someone can grasp the premises and conclusion of the argument, yet the proof remains sound enough to answer common nontheistic objections. Consequently, the argument from desire belongs in the toolkit of every Christian apologist.
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The worst harm from the decades of legalized abortion in the United States is probably the millions of dead human beings that none of us ever got to know. But I would argue, almost as bad has been the entrapment practiced on millions of women who found themselves unexpectedly in a tight spot, with an innocent new life suddenly blocking the way between them and their dreams, who had no externally enforced standards to keep them from taking the easy way out, and just rolling over it. If this life isn’t developed enough to say, “Don’t tread on me,” does it count when I do? “No,” the laws told them. “It doesn’t.
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It would be wrong, however, to imply that fortitude is, in any way, an exclusively masculine virtue. This is where the claim that “fortitude means ‘to act like men’” requires careful qualification. Some species of fortitude are necessary for feminine vocations. Not only that, but some expressions of fortitude are only possible in feminine vocations, as we demonstrated above with motherhood. To be a good mother is to be patient. To be a good daughter is to be persevering.
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Han further contemplates achievement and optimization in The Burnout Society, where he argues that “achievement society is the society of self-exploitation. The achievement-subject exploits itself until it burns out.” While society promises complete autonomy and the removal of sources of oppression or repression, this “absence of external domination does not abolish the structure of compulsion. It makes freedom and compulsion coincide. The achievement-subject gives itself over to freestanding compulsion in order to maximize performance. In this way, it exploits itself. . . . Exploitation now occurs without domination. That is what makes self-exploitation so efficient.”
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