Published : 2024-06-28

Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute

(trans. Marcin Iwanicki and Joanna Klara Teske)

Abstract

The author argues that the existence of subjectivity requires an addition to the traditional attributes of God, which she calls the attribute omnisubjectivity. It is the property of consciously grasping with perfect accuracy and completeness every conscious state of every conscious creature from that creature’s first- person perspective — the perspective of I. The author uses the analogy of empathy to defend the possibility of omnisubjectivity. She argues that given the existence of conscious beings in the universe, omnisubjectivity is entailed by such traditional attributes as omniscience and omnipresence, and it is implied by traditional practices of prayer. The author concludes by using the idea of one person’s grasp of another person’s subjectivity to give a possible explanation of the differences in the consciousness of the Persons of the Trinity.

The original: Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute. The Aquinas Lecture, 2013 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2013). A slightly modified version of this lecture was published as ”The Attribute of Omnisubjectivity”, in Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski's, God, Knowledge, and the Good. Collected Papers in the Philosophy of Religion, 187–209 (Oxford: OUP, 2022) DOI:10.1093/oso/9780197612385.001.0001. Translation with the Author’s permission.

Keywords:

God, traditional attributes of God, omnisubjectivity, subjectivity



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