Bog u filozofskoj misli Stjepana Zimmermanna
God in the Philosophical Thought of Stjepan Zimmermann

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the article, the author critically examines the relationship between the philosophical thought of the Croat neo-scholastic Stjepan Zimmerman with that of Geyser, Külpe and Mercier. A brief biography and list of his works are presented, while extolling Zimmerman's search for God in which he followed various paths in his philosophical speculation. The author separates those that initiate from the world from those initiating from man. The starting point of the first path is the contingency of the world, which asks metaphysical questions that cannot be answered by the materialistic assertion that matter is a necessary being. His metaphysical thirst brought him through the principle of causality to the conclusion that God exists as a necessary, transcendent being, a being in himself, who is the founder and creator of contingent beings. The second path which has it's starting point in the teleological structure of created beings, and which is not the result of the immanent logos, nor of chance, arrives at the transcendental mind which gives order and is the creator of the world. Zimmerman's third path starts from man, which includes in itself and intertwines the search for happiness and the moral obligation to do good and avoid evil. This path also brought him to God, since no limited good can ever fulfill this desire for happiness, but only God as the highest good who also establishes the moral imperative. Having concluded that God exists, he then continues to present his qualities through analogies. He is a being in itself, pure existence, one, necessary, eternal, unchanging, limitless and absolutely perfect, incorporeal, immaterial, spiritual, transcendent in relation to the world, simple, alive, aware, omniscient and omnipotent, a rational and sensitive being, a person. Zimmerman criticizes the pantheistic joining of God and the world which leads to a contradiction, since God's characteristics as a necessary being are contrary to the characteristics of the world as an unnecessary being. Besides this, the differentiation of being and the revelation of it's awareness as being different in the / compared to you or I compared to it negates the pantheistic assertion. The author concludes at the end, that Zimmerman in his rational and philosophical search for God, accepts and presents the main arguments of the Thomistic tradition, which enriches Croatian philosophical thought. Comparing his thoughts on God with other philosophers of the time from the Catholic Theological Faculty in Zagreb, such as: Antun Bauer (1856-1937) and Vilim Keilbach (1908-1982), one notices similar assertions and argumentation.

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