Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument [1st ed. 2023] 3031415345, 9783031415340

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Understanding Anselm’s Ontological Argument

Guy Jackson

Understanding Anselm’s Ontological Argument

Guy Jackson

Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument

Guy Jackson Norwich, Norfolk, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-41534-0    ISBN 978-3-031-41535-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41535-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

I saw gathered there in the depths of it, Bound up by love into a single volume, All the leaves scattered throughout the universe; Substance and accidents and their relations, But yet fused together in such a manner That what I am talking of is a simple light. —Dante, Paradiso 33.85-90, trans. Sisson How so many learned heads should so far forget their Metaphysicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures. —Thomas Browne It’s all in Plato, all in Plato; bless me, what do they teach them in these schools? —C. S. Lewis

Contents

1 I ntroduction 1 2 Anselm  in Context: Neoplatonism 5 The Theory of Forms   6 The Divine Nature   8 The Ladder of Nature  12 The Nature of Cognition  14 Anselm’s Teachers  16 3 A  nselm’s Ontological Argument21 Anselm’s Ontological Argument and Neoplatonism  23 Interpretative Issues Regarding the Argument  26 4 R  ebuttal of Rebuttals35 Gaunilo of Marmoutiers  36 The Lost Island and Other Parody Arguments  37 Does that than Which Nothing Greater Can Be Thought Exist in the Intellect?  40 Aquinas’ Criticisms of the Ontological Argument  42 Solution to the Above Difficulties  46 Is Existence a Predicate?  49 Kant’s Second Objection to the Ontological Argument  52 vii

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5 C  onclusion55 Appendix A: Anselm’s Ontological Argument (Proslogion 2-3)59 Appendix B: The Life of St. Anselm63 B  ibliography71 I ndex79

1 Introduction

It was early morning in the monastery of Bec—the sun had not yet risen—and the prior, Brother Anselm, was not a happy man. He had already built a reputation for scholarship with his first major work, the Monologion (the name means Monologue or Soliloquy), which discoursed on the existence and nature of God through a “chaining together of many arguments”. Since then, however, he had started to wonder whether it might not be possible to find “a single argument, which would require nothing else to prove it but itself alone, and which on its own would suffice to show that God really exists; that he is the highest good, depending on nothing else, but on which all other things depend for their existence and wellbeing; and whatever else we believe about the divine nature.”1 For a long time he laboured to discover such an argument, but in vain; so distracting was the search, and so hopeless did it appear, that he began to wonder whether the whole thing was not merely a temptation sent by the Devil. But the more he tried to forget the issue, the more it pressed in upon his mind, until at last, while he was praying Matins with his fellow  Ans. Pros. pref. All translations of Anselm’s Proslogion are the author’s own; translations of Anselm’s other works are from Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, 2007). 1

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monks, “the grace of God illuminated his heart, the whole matter became clear to his mind, and a great joy and exaltation filled his inmost being.”2 What Anselm had discovered was the ontological argument, one of the most fascinating, most controversial—and most misunderstood—arguments in the entire history of Western thought. At first, however, the argument’s reception was somewhat cool. Anselm’s Proslogion (Address), written to showcase his new argument, was criticised by another monk, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers: Gaunilo wrote a short tract entitled Pro Insipiente (On Behalf of the Fool) trying to rebut it, prompting Anselm to pen a counter-rebuttal, the Liber Apologeticus Contra Gaunilonem (Apologetic Book Against Gaunilo). Anselm’s ontological proof was later cited favourably by St. Bonaventure, and critiqued by St. Thomas Aquinas.3 After this, however, it seems to have fallen into obscurity: Descartes used a strikingly similar argument in his fifth Meditation, although he seems to have developed this independently, and early modern philosophers tended to associate the ontological argument with him or with Leibnitz, who expanded upon the Cartesian proof, rather than with Anselm. Kant’s famous discussion of “the celebrated ontological or Cartesian argument for the existence of a Supreme Being”, for example, never once names or even alludes to St. Anselm.4 The twentieth century, however, witnessed a remarkable surge of interest in Anselm, finally establishing his ontological argument’s status as one of the key topics of philosophical debate. This discussion has brought little in the way of consensus, and it often seems as if there are as many different interpretations of what Anselm said—or should have said—as there are interpreters. Indeed, scholars cannot even agree on where exactly the ontological argument is to be found, or how many versions Anselm presents. Traditionally, commentators tended to focus almost exclusively on Chap. 2 of the Proslogion, regarding it as the articulum stantis et  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.19, trans. R. W. Southern (London, 1962); cf. G. R. Evans, “Anselm of Canterbury”, in idem (ed.), The Medieval Theologians (Oxford, 2001), p. 201. 3  Bonav. Myst. Trin. q. 1 art. 1 §§ 21–4; Aq. Ver. 10.12, S.C.G. 1.10 f., S.T. 1.2.1. 4  Lawrence Nolan, “Descartes’ Ontological Argument”, S.E.P. (Autumn, 2017); Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. J. Meiklejohn (Chicago, 1952), p. 182. Kant, incidentally, appears to have been responsible for coining the term “ontological argument” (Brian Davies, “Anselm and the Ontological Argument”, in idem and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, Cambridge, 2004, p. 157). 2

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cadentis on which everything else depends. Karl Barth, however, has suggested that Chaps. 2 and 3 really form two phases of a single argument, with Chap. 2 being concerned to show that God exists, Chap. 3 that he exists necessarily.5 Yet others have suggested that Anselm, wittingly or not, actually gives two ontological arguments, and that Chap. 3 represents an independent, and perhaps superior, proof of God’s existence.6 Debate has also raged over how to characterise Anselm’s aims in the Proslogion: was he a rationalist seeking to prove God’s existence to unbelievers, or was philosophy a means for him to clarify and defend beliefs which rested ultimately on faith rather than reason?7 One modern scholar of Anselm, Sir R.W. Southern, once called Anselm’s proof “the only general, non-technical philosophical argument discovered in the Middle Ages which has survived to excite the interest of philosophers who have no other interest in the period.”8 This has been both a blessing and a curse for students of the argument. On the one hand, it is always pleasing to see interesting philosophical arguments being discussed more widely, and the amount of literature dedicated to Anselm’s proof shows how brilliant, or at least provocative, the argument is. On the other hand, the fact that many who write on the topic have little familiarity with ancient or medieval philosophy inevitably leads to misunderstanding, as even the more sympathetic treatments often end up denying premises which Anselm would have regarded as obvious or inserting ones which he would have rejected out of hand.9  For an example of the traditional approach, see Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), pp. 132–4, whose discussion of Anselm’s argument does not once mention Pros. 3. For Bath’s analysis of the proof ’s alleged bipartite structure, see his Fides Quaerens Intellectum, trans. Ian W. Robinson (London, 1960), pp. 100–161. 6  This view is defended by Charles Hartshorne, Anselm’s Discovery (LaSalle, 1965), and Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments”, in John Hick and Arthur C. McGill (eds.), The Many-Faced Argument (London, 1968). 7  This question is discussed in Arthur C. McGill, “Recent Discussions of Anselm’s Argument”, in Hick and McGill (eds.), 1968, which also provides a good overview of early- and mid-twentieth-­ century scholarship on this topic. For more recent surveys of the modern literature, see Frederick Van Fleteren, “Twenty-Five Years of Anselm Studies”, in idem and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (eds.), Twenty-Five Years of Anselm Studies (Lewiston, 1996), and Graham Oppy, “Ontological Arguments”, S.E.P. (Spring, 2019), § 10. 8  Sir R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm (Cambridge, 1990), p. 128. 9  For a good example of this, see G. E. M. Anscombe’s (1985, 1993) attempts to “save” Anselm from “the stupidity of an Ontological Argument”, as she puts it. 5

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In this volume, then, I will endeavour to site Anselm’s argument squarely in its proper intellectual context, to enable readers to get a proper understanding of what exactly Anselm was trying to say and why. To this end, I have divided the book into three parts. The first will look at the Neoplatonic intellectual tradition within which Anselm was writing, and which is crucial for understanding his argument properly. The second will look at the argument itself, offering a reconstruction based on the ideas explored in the first section and correcting various interpretative errors which have impeded modern discussions of the Proslogion. The third and final section will look at the most prominent critiques of the argument, considering whether they still have force when considered against the background of the previous two sections. I trust I will not spoil the ending for the reader if I state that I consider Anselm’s argument to be successful, and that even the most powerful objections to it can still, ultimately, be defeated. It should be noted that, when I talk of Anselm’s “proper intellectual context”, I mean the entire tradition in which he wrote, both before and after Anselm himself. Hence, although I have generally tried to cite either Anselm himself or previous authors when discussing Anselm’s philosophy, I have not hesitated to refer to later writers or concepts when I think it necessary or useful. I make no apologies for doing so: teasing out all the implications of a given worldview is a lengthy process, lengthier than can be completed in a single human lifetime, and ideas which are implicit or inchoate in earlier thinkers’ works may not be stated clearly until later. Nevertheless they are present in the earlier texts, and can inform the arguments there even if they are not yet explicitly recognised. Accordingly the version of the ontological argument which I present in these pages is what I take to be the strongest possible version of Anselm’s argument, with various assumptions which Anselm did not explicitly express, and may not even have explicitly recognised, made clear. Although my reconstruction sometimes goes beyond what Anselm stated, however, it does not contract him, nor do I think that Anselm would disagree with it. With all this in mind, then, let us begin our investigation into Anselm’s ontological argument by looking at the Neoplatonic philosophy which he was taught.

2 Anselm in Context: Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism, as the name implies, traces its origin back to the writings of the ancient philosopher Plato. His thought was subsequently enriched with elements of Stoic, Pythagorean, and Aristotelian doctrine, most notably by the third-century thinker Plotinus, who is generally considered to mark the transition from “Platonism” to “Neoplatonism”. (Considered by modern scholars, that is; the term “Neoplatonism” only dates back to the nineteenth century, and Plotinus and his followers would have considered themselves Platonists simpliciter, if indeed they thought in such terms at all.1) Plotinus wrote in Greek, but his ideas were disseminated in the West by Marius Victorinus, who translated his works into Latin, and by St. Ambrose of Milan, whose sermons and writings drew heavily on Greek philosophy. In this form they were embraced by St. Augustine of Hippo, through whom Plotinus’ thought was to have its greatest impact on the medieval Catholic world. As a philosophical system, Neoplatonism remained dominant in the West until the thirteenth century, when it was eclipsed somewhat by the newly rediscovered  For a polemic against the term “Neoplatonism”, see Mark Anderson, Pure (San Rafael, 2009), pp. 30 f.

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teachings of Aristotle. Even then, however, Neoplatonism did not altogether die out, and those philosophers who looked to Aristotle tended to read him through distinctly Neoplatonic lenses.2

The Theory of Forms For Plotinus and his followers, the universe began (in a logical, rather than a temporal, sense; Plotinus believed that the universe was eternal) with the One, the divine, eternal, absolutely simple, and utterly unique cause of everything else that exists. When explaining Neoplatonic philosophy, however, it is best to start not with the One, but with the forms. A form—also known as an “idea” or “universal”—is simply the essence or archetype of a particular thing, or to put it another way, it is the metaphysical principle which makes a particular thing the kind of thing that it is. Examples of forms include Piety, Justice, Beauty, Similarity, Dissimilarity, Brightness, Humanity—in short, anything (or almost anything; see below for caveats) that can be predicated of multiple particulars. Each form is present in each and every particular that exemplifies it. Socrates, Plotinus, and Anselm are all different individuals, but they are all the same kind of thing—men—because they all participate in one and the same Form of Man; grass, the national flag of Libya, and a patch of moss are all green because they all participate in the same Form of Green; going to church and reading about the ontological argument are both pious activities because they both participate in the Form of Piety; and so on. Since the forms are present in multiple particulars simultaneously, it follows that they must be both immaterial and irreducible to the matter in which they inhere. Plato famously thought that they exist in a so-called “third realm”, distinct from both the sensible world and the world of

 For an account of late antique Platonism and Ambrose’s rôle in influencing Augustine, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (London, 1967), chapters 8–9; for an overview of Neoplatonism’s influence on medieval Latin Christendom, see Dermot Moran, “Neoplatonism and Christianity in the West”, in Pauliina Remes and Svetla Slaveva-Griffin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism (London, 2014). 2

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cognition, but most Neoplatonists—including Anselm—instead identified them with ideas (ideae) in the mind of God.3 This theory of forms proved a remarkably fruitful basis for philosophical development. In the first place, it enabled philosophers to develop a theory of the good. Since (the argument goes) an object’s form determines what it is, it follows that, the more perfectly it instantiates its form, the better it will be qua kind of object that it is. For example, a triangle which I draw carefully with the use of a ruler and sharp pencil will more closely approximate the Form of Triangle than one which I scribble hastily and freehand with a crayon, and will therefore be a better triangle; a lion with sharp teeth and claws, powerful muscles, and a thick, glossy coat will more perfectly instantiate the Form of Lion than a weak and mangy lion with blunt claws and teeth, and will therefore be a better example of lion-hood; and so on. It is worth emphasising here that this account of goodness is an entirely objective one—the carefully-drawn triangle and the healthy lion just are better than the hastily-drawn triangle and the mangy lion, quite regardless of whether or not anybody happens to value them more, or happens to derive any greater benefit from them than from the worse examples. Since a thing’s goodness consists of its instantiating a form, evil, being the opposite of goodness, must consist of a failure to instantiate. This theory, sometimes known as the privatio boni (Latin for “privation of goodness”) theory, holds that “every being, insofar as it exists, is good, and that evil is a form of non-being.”4 Does this mean, then, that, as G.E.M. Anscombe objects, “existence will be a perfection when blindness exists, and all sorts of evils and privations”?5 By no means: blindness is merely the absence of a certain power (sight), not a power in its own right, and the same reasoning applies to other such “evils and privations”. Whilst we might sometimes talk of evils as if they were existent, this is  Ans. Mon. 9; he undoubtedly got the idea from Augustine, who held the same position (Div. Quaest. Oct. 42.2). 4  Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minnesota, 1972), p. 19; cf. Ans. Cas. Di. 9, “injustitiam vero ipsum malum esse, quod nihil aliud dicimus esse quam boni privationem.” 5  G. E. M. Anscombe, “Why Anselm’s Proof in the Proslogion is not an Ontological Argument”, The Thoreau Quarterly 17 (1985), p. 33. 3

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only a loose way of speaking and does not imply that they actually do exist, any more than (pace any cyclopes reading this) the sentence “Nobody is hurting me” implies “There is a person called Nobody who is hurting me”. And although an existent thing might be an evil for something else, it is still not evil per se. Augustine illustrates this with the example of a man getting poisoned by a scorpion: whilst we may reasonably say that this is an evil for him, the scorpion’s venom is not inherently evil, for otherwise we would expect the scorpion—which is, after all, in closest contact with the venom—to suffer most from it, which clearly does not happen.6

The Divine Nature Although the forms were held to be eternal and unchanging, philosophers were not content to simply leave their existence as an unexplainable “brute fact”. Plato had argued that, as the forms are all good—indeed, they are the very rule by which we measure goodness—they must themselves depend on the Form of the Good. This Form of the Good is consequently the highest of all the forms and the source of all the rest; it is the ultimate end of human contemplation, and knowledge of it is the highest kind of knowledge. Indeed, it is only through the Form of the Good that we can know anything at all—as Plato himself puts it, “not only do the objects of knowledge [i.e., the forms] owe their being known to the Good, but their existence and being are also due to it, although the Good is not a being, but is beyond being in dignity and power.”7 Did Plato think that the Form of the Good was God? It is impossible to be sure, as Plato never clearly commits himself one way or the other.8 His Neoplatonic followers, however, made the identification explicit.  Aug. Mor. 2.8.11–13.  Plat. Rep. 509b (author’s translation). 8  For a contemporary philosopher who argues that Plato did equate the Good with God, see David Conway, The Rediscovery of Wisdom (Basingstoke, 2000), pp.  34–52. Cf. also the discussion of Plato’s theism in A. E. Taylor, “Theism”, in James Hastings et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. xii (Edinburgh, 1921), pp. 262–264; and John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (London, 1977), pp. 1–11, who suggests that Plato himself never reached a settled opinion on the matter. 6 7

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Plotinus, for example, considered the Good to be the same as the One. Meanwhile Augustine used a similar idea to argue for the existence of God. The forms (according to the most common interpretation of his argument) exist both in the intellect and in the things that instantiate them. Because they are changeless and eternal, whereas both physical things and the human mind are mutable and exist in time, it follows that the forms cannot depend on either of these things for their existence. Instead, Augustine proposed that there must be a changeless, eternal intellect on which they do depend. This intellect is the cause of the forms and, through them, of everything else, and Augustine equated it both with God and with the “unchangeable truth” (incommutabilis veritas) which alone enables us to have knowledge.9 Using this conception of God as the first principle and the source of everything else, Neoplatonic philosophers were able to construct a detailed picture of the divine attributes. In the first place, God cannot have any parts—even metaphysical ones, such as forms, properties, and the like—since otherwise these parts would be ontologically prior to him, and hence he could hardly be the first principle. Therefore, God must be absolutely metaphysically simple. This “doctrine of divine simplicity”, as it is called, is one of the key features of the classical theism which dominated the European intellectual tradition from late antiquity to the early modern period, so much so that St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica treats it immediately after the existence of God, and before any other divine attributes such as perfection, goodness, infinity, and so forth.10  For Plotinus, see Plot. Enn. 5.3, and Gerson, “Plotinus”, S.E.P. (Autumn, 2018). For Augustine’s argument, see Aug. Lib. Arb. 2.2–18, Ver. Rel. 27–30; for a discussion of this proof, which is sometimes called the “argument from eternal truths”, cf. P. Coffey, Ontology (London, 1914), pp. 89–95; Cardinal Mercier et al., A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, vol. ii, trans. S. A. and T. L. Parker (London, 1922), pp. 32–35; Gilson, Introduction à l’Étude de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1931), Chap. 2; Hugh Chandler, “Augustine’s Argument for the Existence of God” (2011); and Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco, 2017), Chap. 3. Interestingly, Augustine’s argument from eternal truths has sometimes been considered a forerunner of Anselm’s ontological argument (John F. Callahan, Augustine and the Greek Philosophers, Villanova, 1967, p. 3; Lawrence Roberts, “Augustine’s Version of the Ontological Argument and Platonism”, Augustinian Studies 9, 1978, pp. 93–101; cf. John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God, London, 1970, pp. 69 f.), although to my mind Anselm’s proof is sufficiently original to count as a genuinely new piece of philosophy. 10  Aq. S.T. 1.3; for an overview of the doctrine of divine simplicity, cf. William F. Vallicella, “Divine Simplicity”, S.E.P. (Spring, 2019). Anselm himself refers to the idea in Pros. 18. 9

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From God’s identity as the first principle, it moreover follows that his nature is identical to his properties. Unlike other things, he is not (for example) great through participating in the Form of Greatness, since this would imply that the Form of Greatness pre-exists God, which is impossible. Rather, God just is greatness itself; and the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to all the other properties which he possesses.11 (Although, of course, talk of God “possessing” properties is merely a manner of speaking, since taken literally it would suggest that these properties are independent of God, the very thing being denied.) Moreover, since these properties are all identical with the divine nature, they are all identical with each other as well. Strictly speaking, therefore, God’s being, greatness, omnipotence, wisdom, et cetera, are not separate qualities, but all one and the same thing, which is in turn identical with God’s nature; and, if we often think of the divine attributes as if they were distinct, this merely reflects a limitation of our own intellects, rather than an objective truth about the divine nature itself. The same holds true of God’s existence: God’s essence is identical to his existence, which is therefore also identical with his goodness, truth, and so on.12 Here we have the doctrine known as the “convertibility of the transcendentals”, the idea that being, truth, goodness, beauty, and so forth, all designate one and the same thing under different aspects, in much the same way as (si parva licet) the names “Superman” and “Clark Kent” really designate one and the same individual, considered according to the different aspects of his life.13 Since God’s being and essence are identical, he cannot fail to fully exist, unlike other, contingent, things; as the later scholastics would put  Aug. Trin. 5.10.11; Ans. Mon. 17, Pros. 12, 18, 22.  The idea that God’s essence is identical to his existence is usually identified with later scholastic thinkers such as Aquinas, but the idea can in fact be traced back at least as far as Plotinus. Cf. Gerson, Plotinus (London, 1994), p. 6: “After all, if the One is ‘beyond being’, then it is apparently beyond conceivability so long as conceivability is taken to belong to all and only that which has being in some sense. I think we shall better understand Plotinus’ highly creative and nuanced response to this problem if we suppose that the One’s being ‘beyond being’ does not mean that it has no nature or essence at all or that it is a blank ontological place-holder or bare particular. Rather, its essence is identical with its existence and therefore it is unqualifiedly simple. By contrast, if in everything else essence or nature or ‘whatness’ is really distinct from existence, then what each thing is can be conceived of apart from its existence.” Herein we have the germ of the ontological argument. 13  This example is taken from Feser, Aquinas (Oxford, 2009), p. 33. 11 12

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it, God is pure actuality (or “pure act”, actus purus), whereas everything else is a mixture of actuality and potentiality (or “potency”, potentia). Since, as we saw above, evil is not a substance in its own right but rather a failure of something to fully instantiate its essence, it follows that God cannot be evil. For failing to fully instantiate an essence is the same as having an unactualised potential, a thing which is not possible with God. Similarly, God cannot be a material being, since to be material entails having certain potencies (actualised or unactualised)—the potency to be in this place rather than that, for example. Nor again can he be in time, since as Aristotle says, “there is no time apart from change and alteration”,14 and change consists of the actualisation of a potential. But God has no potentials to actualise, and therefore cannot change. Therefore, God is both immutable and atemporal. Nor could there be more than one God. For if there were multiple Gods, then they would each have to participate in one and the same Form of God, by virtue of which they would count as Gods. Then, however, this Form of God would be ontologically prior to any of the particular Gods who instantiate it, in which case they could hardly be first principles. Again, the two deities would have to be distinguished by some property which one had and the other lacked, and this would entail at least one God having an unactualised potential, something which is contrary to the divine nature.15 It follows, therefore, that there can be only one God, and Neoplatonic theism is specifically monotheism.16  Aristot. Phys. 218b.  It might be objected here that a thing can lack a property by lacking a potency tout court, rather than by having a potency but failing to actualise it; a rubber ball, for example, lacks the capacity to speak, but this is because it lacks the potential for speaking altogether, not because it has the potential but fails to actualise it. To this I reply that, in the present case, any property would either have to be an inherent part of the divine nature, or not. If it is, then any God would have to possess it, in which case it could not serve to distinguish between multiple deities; if it is not, then this property would have to be distinct from the divine nature, in which case a being which possessed it would not be metaphysically simple, and therefore would not be God. (This argument came to me to me in a dream.) 16  It is true that some pagan Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, professed a belief in multiple deities, but these were lesser beings, more akin to the angels of Christian theology than to the Christian God or Plotinian One. “The word gods in this system is simply not the plural of God; there is a difference in kind, even an incommensurability, between them” (C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, Cambridge, 1964, p. 66). 14 15

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The Ladder of Nature Just as different individuals of a particular kind can be ranked as better or worse depending on how well they instantiate their form, so too, according to Neoplatonism, the various kinds themselves can be ranked according to how far they resemble God, who is Goodness itself. Each stage of the ranking includes all the goodness of the lower stages, but adds some new quality of its own. At the bottom of the scale are inanimate objects such as stones, which resemble God in the bare fact of their existence and nothing more. Plants, which come just above inanimate objects, possess life and certain powers (such as reproduction, growth, and the ability to take in nutrition) in addition to existence; beasts have all these properties, as well as the powers of sensation and locomotion. Above the beasts come humans, who have the ability to reason; above humans come the angels and other spirits, who, being spiritual rather than physical, are not subject to the frailty and mutability inherent in having a physical body. At the very top of the scale is God, who is all-powerful, perfect, and unchanging. Thus “[e]verything except God has some natural superior; everything except unformed matter has some natural inferior. The goodness, happiness, and dignity of every being consists in obeying its natural superior and ruling its natural inferiors.”17 This is the idea of the so-called scala naturae, the “ladder of nature” or (as it is often rendered in English) “great chain of being”, which was a commonplace of Western thought from Plato to Locke and without which so much of the art and philosophy of the pre-modern era cannot properly be understood.18 Modern readers will be apt to regard the idea as a strange one, although on reflection it is not quite as counter-intuitive as it may seem: most people, for example, would doubtless be willing to sacrifice a dog in order to save a human’s life, or to sacrifice a tree in order to save a dog. Given the importance of this concept, it is not surprising that we find it explicitly articulated by Anselm, who tells us that:  Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford, 1942), p. 72.  For Plato, see, e.g., Rep. 504e-517b; for Locke, see An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 3.6.12. Lewis, 1942, Chap. 11, has a good overview of the rôle of the “Hierarchical Conception”, as he calls it, in medieval literature. For a fuller account of this scala naturae, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936). 17 18

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[E]very created thing is so much greater and more excellent the more it is like him who supremely exists and is supremely great… For since the supreme nature in his own unique way not merely exists but also lives and perceives and is rational, it is clear that of all existing things, what is in some way living is more like him than what is in no way living; and what in some way knows something, even through a bodily sense, is more like him than what perceives nothing at all; and what is rational is more like him than what is incapable of reasoning.19

As things are better or worse insofar as they are like God, so too they exist to a greater or lesser degree insofar as they resemble him. As we saw above, God’s essence cannot be separated from his existence, and so God, unlike any of his creatures, cannot even conceivably fail to exist. Hence, as Anselm tells us, there is a sense in which God alone can truly be said to exist.20 Hence, too, things on the higher rungs of the scala naturae exist more fully than things lower down, since they participate more fully in the divine goodness, which is also the divine existence. Anselm himself considers this to be “easily established”. Suppose, he says, we take a living, perceiving, rational substance, and then imagine removing its reason, perception, life, and finally its very existence. “Who would not understand that the substance that is thus destroyed a little at a time is gradually brought to exist less and less, and finally not to exist at all?” Conversely, if we were to add these features back, we would lead the substance back to greater and greater levels of existence. “So it is evident that a living substance exists more greatly than one that is not living, one that is capable of perception than one that is not capable of perception, and one that is rational than one that is not rational. And so there is no doubt that every essence exists more greatly and is more excellent to the extent that it is more like the essence that supremely exists and is supremely excellent.”21

 Ans. Mon. 31.  Ans. Mon. 3, 31. 21  Ans. Mon. 31. 19 20

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The Nature of Cognition The final aspect of Neoplatonism which we will consider is its account of cognition. Like the Aristotelian-influenced scholasticism of the high medieval period, but unlike later empiricist thought, Neoplatonism tends to maintain a strict distinction between the imagination on the one hand and the intellect on the other. On the Neoplatonist and scholastic account, imagination consists of entertaining mental images, or “phantasms” (phantasmata), and the concepts forming the objects of our cognition are irreducible to these phantasms. Phantasms are concrete and particular, whereas concepts are abstract and universal: hence, if I form a phantasm of a circle, this will inevitably include features—size, colour, et cetera—which any particular circle must have, but which are not relevant to circularity per se; conversely, if I entertain the concept of a circle, it will not have any such individuating features, but will apply to every particular circle in existence. Another difference between concepts and phantasms is the clarity and distinctness of the one, as opposed to the vagueness and indistinctness of the other. The concept of a chiliagon (a regular polygon with precisely one thousand sides) is both clear in itself and easily distinguishable from the concept of a myriagon (a shape with ten thousand sides), although it is impossible to form distinct phantasms of these two shapes. Hence it follows that a concept is different from, and irreducible to, a phantasm, and vice versa.22 If these abstract and universal concepts which form the basis of our cognition are not phantasms, what exactly are they? According to the Neoplatonist, they are, precisely, universals—that is, forms. When we entertain a concept, what actually happens is that our intellect takes on or contains the form of the thing we are considering, just like (as Anselm, following Augustine, held) the forms are contained in the divine Intellect.23 Neoplatonism, then, rejects the so-called “separate realms  Feser, “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought”, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87.1 (2013), pp. 7 f. 23  Aug. Div. Quaest. Oct. 42.2; Ans. Mon. 9; cf. Aq. S.T. 1.12.9, “Omnis enim cognitio est per assimilationem cognoscentis ad cognitum, sic enim intellectus in actu fit intellectum in actu… in quantum ejus similitudine informatur.” 22

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principle”, the idea that there is a sort of metaphysical chasm between mental concepts on the one hand and real things on the other, and that analysis of the former can tell us nothing about the latter.24 Rather, the forms in our intellect are one and the same as both the forms in particular things and the ideas in the divine Mind—one and the same Form of Triangle resides in the divine Intellect as an exemplar for particular triangles, in those particular triangles as the metaphysical principle that makes them triangles, and in my intellect as I contemplate the nature of triangularity. Thus the mind is directed outwards towards the extra-­ mental world through its involvement with the forms. Plato thought that our intellect has direct contact with the forms before we are born, and that we come to know them again through a process of remembering; Aristotle, that we know them through abstraction from sensible objects; Augustine, that we know them through divine illumination. It is not entirely clear what Anselm thought, although a comment in his Contra Gaunilonem, that we can come to know the highest good through a consideration of other, lesser, goods, might be taken as implying an Aristotle-­ style abstractionist view.25 Whilst our intellect enables us to think of forms in isolation, we can also think about more complex ideas by combining forms together. If, for example, I think of five thousand plane trees in a row, this is not done by my imagination, since it is impossible for me to imagine—that is, to form a phantasm of—such a large number of trees. Nor, although I can clearly grasp the concept, is there a single Form of Five Thousand Plane Trees In A Row for my intellect to be informed by. Rather, it is through combining forms—the Form of Plane Tree, the Form of Five Thousand, and so on—that I am able to understand the idea with my intellect.26

24  Cf. Peter Millican, “The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument”, Mind 113.451 (2004), p. 444. Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge, 1995), proposes this theory (although not explicitly named) as a “general objection” which shows that “there cannot be a dialectically effective ontological argument” (p. 116). 25  Plat. Men. 81a-e; Aristot. Post. 100a; Aug. Mag. 12.40; Ans. Gaun. 8. 26  Fr. Celestine N. Bittle, The Science of Correct Thinking (Milwaukee, 1934), p. 26.

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Anselm’s Teachers Such, then, is the Neoplatonic philosophy, and we may confidently suppose that Anselm was familiar with it, not only because it was the standard philosophical outlook of educated Western Christians during his period, but also because we know from references in Anselm’s own works that he was conversant with several prominent Neoplatonist authors. Chief among these, of course, was St. Augustine. Thanks to his prodigious output and intellectual acumen, Augustine became by far the most prominent Latin theologian of the early middle ages, towering over the theological landscape “like a Colossus”, or like an “awesome peak” overshadowing other, smaller, mountains.27 His influence is evident in Anselm’s works no less than in those of other medieval writers. Anselm frequently refers to Augustine in order to pre-empt or defend himself from criticism. In the preface to the Monologion, for example, while discussing his own hesitation over whether or not to publish the work, Anselm writes that “I could not find that I had said anything in it that was inconsistent with the writings of the Catholic fathers, and especially with those of the blessed Augustine,” and consequently asks anyone who might take exception to his arguments to “look carefully at the books of the aforesaid teacher Augustine on the Trinity and then judge my works according to them.” When Anselm’s friend and former teacher, Lanfranc of Canterbury, nevertheless criticised the Monologion, Anselm defended himself on the grounds that “It was my intention throughout this disputation to assert nothing which could not be immediately defended either from the canonical Dicta or from the works of St. Augustine.”28 As for the Proslogion specifically, it is replete with references to or verbal parallels with St. Augustine’s writings, implying a close familiarity on Anselm’s part with the corpus Augustinianum. In his De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine quotes the Scriptural verses, “The fool hath said in his  James J. McEvoy, “Neoplatonism and Christianity: Influence, Syncretism or Discernment?” in Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (eds.), The Relationship Between Neoplatonism and Christianity (Dublin, 1992), p.  158; Andrew Louth, “Postpatristic Byzantine Theologians”, in Evans (ed.), 2001, p. 38. 28  Ans. Ep. 77, quoted Southern, 1990, pp. 71 f. “Canonical Dicta” here probably means “scriptural texts and their authoritative interpreters” (idem, p. 72). 27

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heart, There is no God” (Ps. 13.1, 52.2), and, “Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand” (Isa. 7.9), just before giving his proof of the existence of God; Anselm quotes the exact same verses at the start of the Proslogion, just before giving his proof of the existence of God.29 Anselm’s statement shortly after this, “I do not seek to understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand,” may be a reference to the latter verse, but it may also be intended to echo Augustine’s injunction in his Tractate on the Gospel of John, “Do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe in order to understand.”30 Similarly, Anselm’s description of God as “that than which nothing greater can be thought” (id quo nihil majus cogitari potest) finds plenty of precedent in Augustine; although it is difficult to prove that Anselm was consciously borrowing from Augustine here, as the same idea may have occurred to both thinkers independently, the similarity does at least illustrate a fundamental congruity between Anselmian and Augustinian thought.31 Whilst Augustine and his “baptised Platonism”, as we might call it, were undoubtedly the dominant influences upon Anselm, other authors also played a rôle, although the precise nature and extent of this has proved hard to determine. Plato himself, despite exerting an enormous indirect influence via Plotinus and Augustine, was not generally available in Latin, except for part of the Timaeus, which survived mainly in the form of an incomplete translation (down to chapter 53c) and commentary by Chalcidius. (Another translation, by Cicero, was also extant, although since this only covered chapters 27d to 47b, it did not add much to Chalcidius’ version.) The twelfth-century catalogue of the monastic library at Bec lists copies of both Chalcidius’ commentary and  Aug. Lib. Arb. 2.2.6, 6; Ans. Pros. 1. Interestingly, the quotation from Isaiah (Nisi crederitis, non intellegetis) is given according to the so-called Old Latin (Vetus Latina) translation of the Bible; Jerome’s Vulgate, which had generally supplanted the Old Latin by Anselm’s time, instead reads “Si non credideritis, non permanebitis” (“If ye do not believe, ye shall not endure”). Anselm’s use of the older translation may simply be due to the greater applicability of its phrasing to the context of Pros. 1, although it could also be a deliberate reference to Augustine. 30  Ans. Pros. 1 (Neque enim quæro intellegere ut credam, sed credo ut intellegam), Aug. Tract. 29 (Ergo noli quærere intellegere ut credas, sed crede ut intellegas). 31  Hopkins, 1972, p.26. Cf. Aug. Lib. Arb. 2.6.14 (quo nullus est superior), Conf. 7.4.6 (Neque enim ulla anima umquam potuit poteritve cogitare aliquid quod sit te melius), Mor. 2.11 (Summum bonum omnino, et quo esse aut cogitari melius nihil possit), Doct. Christ. 1.7 (Deus… ita cogitatur ut aliquid quo nihil sit melius atque sublimius illa cogitatio conetur attingere). 29

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Cicero’s translation, so it is quite possible that Anselm was familiar with what little remained of the Platonic corpus, although since these texts may have been acquired after Anselm’s departure certainty in this matter remains elusive. Overall, however, there does not seem to be anything in Anselm’s works which could only have come directly from Plato, and whilst Anselm was undoubtedly writing within the Platonic tradition, he seems to have gained most of his knowledge about Plato’s own teachings at second or third hand.32 Also available were the works of the Neoplatonic philosophers Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John Scotus Eriugena, although again it has proved difficult to find anything Anselm shares with these authors which could not also have found in Augustine.33 A clearer example of influence is Boëthius, whose De Consolatione Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy) was one of the most influential works of medieval philosophy, so much so that “[t]o acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages.”34 Because of this work’s influence, it is highly likely that Anselm would have read it, and indeed his definition of eternity as “illimitable life as a whole, perfectly, and all at once,” seems to paraphrase Boëthius’ definition in De Consolatione, “the total, simultaneous, and perfect possession of illimitable life.”35 A number of Boëthius’ other texts were probably also read by Anselm, including his treatises on hypothetical and categorical syllogisms, although his chief importance during this period, apart from writing the De Consolatione, was as a translator of and commentator on Aristotle.36 Whilst his philosophy did not really come to prominence until the thirteenth century, Aristotle was by no means irrelevant during Anselm’s time, thanks both to his influence on the development of Neoplatonism and to those of his works which had been translated into Latin. Several of  Lewis, 1964, pp. 49–60; Hopkins, 1972, pp. 30–2; Gareth B. Matthews, “Anselm, Augustine, and Platonism”, in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 81 f. 33  Hopkins, 1972, pp. 35 f. 34  Lewis, 1964, p. 75. 35  Ans. Mon. 24 (Interminabilis vita simul perfecte tota existens); Bo. Cons. 5.6.4 (interminabilis vitæ tota simul et perfecta possessio). 36  Hopkins, 1972, pp. 28–30. 32

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these were extant, translated and commented upon by Boëthius, and were widely used as introductions to the study of logic. Aristotle himself is mentioned by name several times in Anselm’s De Grammatico, and his Categories explicitly cited; elsewhere Anselm clearly alludes to, although does not explicitly name, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione.37 Anselm may have become familiar with these works through his teacher, Lanfranc, who appears to have been particularly conversant with the Stagirite: Lanfranc had a high reputation as a logician and dialectician, and was, as far as we can tell, the first person to explain the doctrine of transubstantiation using the Aristotelian categories of substance and accident.38 Such, then, is the philosophical education which Anselm received: a healthy dose of Augustine, and a smattering of other authors as well. If this makes his intellectual horizons appear limited, we must bear in mind the great breadth, comprehensiveness, and intellectual fertility of the Neoplatonic system which he would have learnt from them. It now remains to be seen whether knowledge of this system can help us understand his famous ontological argument.

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 Ans. Gramm. 9, 10, 16–19; C.D.H. 2.17  Hopkins, 1972, p. 33.

3 Anselm’s Ontological Argument

Anselm gives his ontological argument in Chaps. 2 and 3 of the Proslogion, and his train of reasoning may be reconstructed as follows1: 1. God is that than which nothing greater can be thought (id quo nihil majus cogitari potest).2 2. Even a fool, who denies the existence of God, understands the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be thought”. 3. Whatever is understood exists in the intellect (or “in the understanding”, in intellectu). 4. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in the intellect. 5. To exist in reality (in re) is greater than to exist in the intellect.

 See the Appendix for Anselm’s exact words, in both the original Latin and an English translation.  Anselm does not keep this term entirely consistent, but frequently employs variants with apparently the same meaning; in Pros. 2, for example, we find God variously called id quo nihil majus cogitari potest, aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari potest, id quo majus cogitari nequit, id quo majus cogitari non potest, and aliquid quo majus cogitari non valet. For the sake of making the argument easier to follow, however, I have used only “that than which nothing greater can be thought” for this reconstruction. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Jackson, Understanding Anselm’s Ontological Argument, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41535-7_3

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6. If that than which nothing greater can be thought existed in the intellect alone, it could be thought to exist in reality as well, which is greater than existing only in the intellect. 7. But if the above premise were true, it would be possible to think of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be thought, namely, an equivalent being which exists in reality as well as in the intellect. But this is plainly absurd. 8. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality as well as in the intellect. Anselm’s train of thought continues on into Chap. 3, where he tells us that: 9. If that than which nothing greater can be thought could be thought not to exist, then a greater being, namely one that cannot be thought not to exist, could be thought. But this is plainly absurd. 10. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot be thought not to exist. 11. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot not exist. “Et hoc es tu, Domine Deus noster,” concludes Anselm ecstatically— “And this is you, O Lord our God.” For, as Anselm explains, “if some mind could think of anything better than you, then the creature would climb above its Creator and sit in judgement over him, which is utterly absurd.” And, since everything apart from God can be thought not to exist, “you alone have existence most truly, and therefore most greatly, of all things; for whatever else exists does not exist so truly, and therefore has less existence.” Chapter 4 goes on to consider the question of why, if God cannot be thought not to exist, the Fool can nevertheless deny his existence, concluding that he does not fully understand the meaning of the word “God”, and hence does not realise that God, properly understood, cannot be thought not to exist. The rest of the Proslogion goes on to derive the other divine attributes from the identification of God with that than which nothing greater can be thought: God depends on nothing else for his existence (Chap. 5), and is omniscient (6), omnipotent (7), merciful

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and just (8–11), simple (12, 18, 22  f.), omnipresent and eternal (13, 19–21), ineffable (14–16), the exemplar of all good things (17), triune (23), and desirable (24 f.).

 nselm’s Ontological Argument A and Neoplatonism Several of this argument’s stages have aroused bafflement amongst modern scholars, and various commentators have been tempted to try and explain away some of Anselm’s statements to make them (so the commentator supposes) more defensible. Nevertheless, Anselm’s argument is by no means difficult to understand if one bears in mind the Neoplatonic philosophy which we have just examined. Accordingly I will now go through some of the more seemingly problematic stages in order, showing how they relate to the ideas that were discussed above. That whatever is understood exists in the intellect

As we saw above, our intellect grasps concepts by taking on the form of whatever it is we are considering. But if we say that our intellect takes on the Form of X, this is the same as saying that the Form of X is present in our intellect. Hence, when Anselm says that “what [the fool] understands is [or exists] in his intellect,” this is not, as sometimes suggested, a mere manner of speaking, but a perfectly literal statement of fact.3 There is, accordingly, a sense in which Anselm is not trying to prove God’s existence at all, since the mere fact that we can understand the  Pace J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, 1982), p. 51. Mackie suggests that Anselm, no less than the fool, contradicts himself in Pros. 2, “For he too is saying that a being than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the fool’s mind, and yet that something greater than this can be conceived, and this is just as much a contradiction whether one says that the greater being exists or not.” Hence, if Anselm is to avoid being “hoist with his own petard”, he must recognise the expression for “what it evidently is, a mere manner of speaking whose literal equivalent is given by saying ‘The fool conceives (or ‘imagines’) a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.’” As a matter of fact, Anselm makes no such contradiction: he is not committed to the claim that there are two aliquæ quibus nihil majus cogitari potest, one in the mind and one in reality, but rather to the claim that there is a single entity existing both in the mind and in reality. 3

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expression “that than which nothing greater can be thought” is proof enough that he already has some kind of existence, in intellectu if not in re. Hence the argument is not, strictly speaking, trying to prove God’s existence simpliciter, but rather than he exists in a particular way—in reality, as opposed to merely in the understanding.4 (Note, however, that in order to avoid long-windedness, I will continue using “existence” without qualification to refer to existence in re.) That to exist in reality is greater than to exist in the intellect

The idea that existence is a perfection, which Norman Malcolm calls “remarkably queer”,5 is in fact just an obvious corollary of the notion that a thing is good insofar as it instantiates its essence. For it is clear that a mere idea in the intellect is not instantiated at all, whereas any really-­ existing thing must instantiate a form, even if it is only an inferior form or is only instantiated defectively.6 Hence the tiniest mote of dust in the air, drifting lazily across a sunbeam, is greater than the largest and most opulent of imagined palaces.7 Accordingly, Anselm arguably understates his case when he says that that than which nothing greater can be thought would be greater if it existed in reality than if it existed only in the intellect; if it existed only in the intellect, literally any actually-existing thing would be greater than it. That that which cannot be thought not to exist is greater than that which can be thought not to exist

The same reasoning which shows why existence in reality is greater than existence in the intellect also shows why necessary existence is more perfect than contingent existence. For that which is contingent depends on other things for its existence, and hence cannot instantiate its form  Southern, 1990, p. 132.  Malcolm, 1968, p. 303 6  In Plat. Parm. 130c-e Socrates suggests that base things such as dirt or hair do not have forms, although judging by the rest of the dialogue it does not seem that we are meant to take this idea seriously. 7  This example is taken from James Cutsinger, “Thinking the Unthinkable” (2007), p. 12. 4 5

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without outside assistance, whereas that which is necessary needs no such support but exists through its own power and by its own nature. Again, as we saw above, being and goodness are the same thing considered under different aspects. Hence that which has goodness to the highest degree also has existence to the highest degree. (Note that “highest degree” here means “highest degree logically possible”, not simply “highest degree that happens to be instantiated”.) But that which cannot coherently be thought of as non-existent has existence to a higher degree than that which can. Therefore, whatever has the highest degree of goodness cannot coherently be thought of as non-existent. Again, that than which nothing greater can be thought would have to be the highest good of all. The highest good of all is Goodness itself. But Goodness itself is the source of all other things, as we saw in the previous chapter, and hence has no metaphysical parts, for otherwise these parts would be ontologically prior to and distinct from it, and hence it could not be the source of all other things. Therefore, in Goodness itself, essence and existence are not distinct. It follows from this that non-existence is incompatible with its nature, and that to conceive of it as not existing is no more possible than to conceive of a triangle with four sides. Hence that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot be conceived of as not existing. That that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality

It is clear from the foregoing that that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality. For if it existed only in the intellect and not in reality, it would not be that than which nothing greater can be thought, since we would be able to think of a greater thing simply by thinking of anything that exists in reality. Again, in that than which nothing greater can be thought, existence is an inseparable part of its nature. Hence if there is a nature proper to that than which nothing greater can be thought, this nature cannot fail to be instantiated. But that there is such a nature is evident from the fact that we can understand the expression “that than which nothing greater can be thought”. Therefore, such a nature must be instantiated. Therefore, such a nature is instantiated. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality.

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That that than which nothing greater can be thought is God

From what we have said already, it is plain that that than which nothing greater can be thought is God. For that than which nothing greater can be thought would have to be something which exists necessarily and eternally and has every power, every perfection, and every kind of goodness. But “something which exists necessarily and eternally and has every power, every perfection, and every kind of goodness” is just what is signified by the word “God”. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought is God. Moreover, since that than which nothing greater can be thought exists, as we saw above, it follows that God exists, as Anselm was seeking to prove with his ontological argument. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Interpretative Issues Regarding the Argument Anselm’s argument, then, is easy enough to understand if viewed in light of his Neoplatonic philosophy. Nevertheless, consensus in the secondary literature has remained elusive, with various scholars proposing various different interpretations of the proof. Accordingly, I will now consider some of the most notable modern reconstructions of the argument, in order to defend the plausibility of the one which I have offered. Is Anselm trying to prove the existence of God?

It is often supposed that Anselm intended his ontological argument to prove God’s existence in a way that would be convincing for non-­believers, but even this has not escaped dispute by modern scholars. Chief among these is Karl Barth, whose Fides Quaerens Intellectum argues that the Proslogion is concerned, not with proving God’s existence to a sceptic, but with making faith intelligible to those who already believe. Anselm, according to Barth, accepts God’s identity as id quo nihil majus cogitari potest as an article of faith, and then uses this “Name of God” (as Barth designates it) to prove that God’s existence is necessary; it is, he says, “a question of the proof of faith by faith which was already established in

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itself without proof ” rather than of “[establishing] the Church’s faith in a source outside of itself.”8 More recently, Lydia Schumacher has argued that Anselm’s goal in both the Monologion and the Proslogion is not so much to prove the existence of God as to equip those who already believe to “live in a way that is fitting for people of faith”, to form “a habit of reasoning in faith” and “to cultivate this habit of reasoning in the light of God’s supremacy and thereby break the habit of reasoning without it.” Anselm’s desire to find unum argumentum is, according to Schumacher, a desire to find a short, simple argument which people—or at least people with a basic grounding in philosophy—can easily memorise and deploy when necessary to determine what they should do in any given situation. Accordingly, Anselm’s ontological argument is “designed to make faith intelligible to those that already adhere to it and [is] not an enterprise in natural theology aimed to convince unbelievers of truth about God on purely rational grounds.”9 It is true that the Proslogion is written from an explicitly Christian perspective; unlike a modern philosopher, Anselm does not pretend to simply “follow the argument wherever it may lead” with no preconceptions or expectations as to what his conclusion might be. Indeed, he outright states in the preface that he is writing in the persona of “someone trying to raise up his mind to the contemplation of God and seeking to understand what he believes.” Nevertheless I cannot agree that Anselm is arguing on the basis of faith rather than attempting to provide rational proof of God’s existence. In the very same preface in which he states that he is writing as a believer, Anselm also describes how he “began to wonder whether it might not be possible to find a single argument that would require no proof but itself, and that on its own would suffice to show that God really exists.” If the argument were only intended to work within the context of Christian belief, however, it would be false to say that it would demonstrate God’s existence “on its own”, since it would require at least one other thing, namely, belief in God’s existence accepted as an article of faith. Nor indeed would it be accurate, if Anselm’s argument presupposed belief in God, to say that it “shows that God really exists”.  Barth, 1960, p. 170.  Lydia Schumacher, Divine Illumination (Oxford, 2011), pp. 73–9.

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Similarly, at the end of Chap. 3 Anselm asks, “Why has The fool said in his heart, There is no God, when it is so obvious to the rational mind that you [God] exist most greatly of all things? Why indeed, except because he is stupid and a fool?” But if the argument were only intended for those who are already Christians and who take God’s existence on faith, then there would be no cause to think a non-Christian foolish for not accepting it. A little later, Anselm says that “even if I did not wish to believe that you exist, nevertheless I could not fail to understand that you do exist” (Pros. 4). It would make little sense to describe someone who has faith in God’s existence as not wishing to believe that God exists; but then, since Anselm considers that even one who does not wish to believe in God must, if he is to be rational, be convinced by the ontological argument, it follows that Anselm thinks the argument compelling even for non-­ believers. Accordingly, his ontological argument cannot be intended solely to explicate the Christian faith to those who already believe it, but is also supposed to work without any presupposition of God’s existence. Again, Anselm writes in his later treatise De Incarnatione Verbi (On the Incarnation of the Word) that the Monologion and Proslogion were written for the same purpose, namely, “that what we hold by faith concerning the divine nature and persons, leaving aside the Incarnation, could be proved by necessary reasons, independently of the authority of Scripture.”10 But it is difficult to see how Anselm could describe his argument as working “independently of the authority of Scripture” if it required faith in the truth of Christianity to work. Therefore Anselm did not intend for the ontological argument to rely on faith for its efficacy, but to be compelling on the grounds of reason alone, without the need for divine revelation. Anselm’s statement, “I do not seek to understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand,”11 may appear to prove that he was basing his argument on Christian faith; deeper reflection, however, demonstrates that this is not so. For there is a difference between the manner in which an argument is made known to us and the manner in which it is justified logically; just as, for example, a student comes to understand Pythagoras’ Theorem because his teacher explains it to him, but if he were to draw up a mathematical proof for it, he would make no reference to his teacher.  Ans. Inc. Verb. 6.  Ans. Mon. 1.

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Similarly, Anselm believed that the ontological argument had been revealed to him by God,12 but now that it has been revealed, we can understand it without such revelation, since neither the premises nor the stages of the argument are beyond the natural capacity of the human mind. Accordingly there is no contradiction between saying that God’s help was required for Anselm to formulate the argument, and that the argument itself does not presuppose God’s existence. It may seem incongruous for Anselm to write a book, from an explicitly Christian perspective and for an explicitly Christian audience, seeking to prove the existence of God on grounds that would be acceptable to a non-believer, but such an impression would be misleading. One of Anselm’s aims—his main aim, even—is undoubtedly to explain the Christian faith to those who already believe, but part of explaining the faith is demonstrating the basis on which said faith is built; and, since the basis of faith cannot include faith itself on pain of circularity, this requires arguing Christo remoto, “leaving Christ out of the picture”, as Anselm says in the preface to his Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man).13 To a large degree, therefore, the dichotomy between doing natural theology and explicating the faith to believers is a false one: Anselm is indeed writing from a Christian perspective and for a Christian audience, but this does not preclude his trying to prove the existence of God in a way that requires no religious precommitments. One proof or two?

Further dispute surrounds the issue of how many proofs Anselm gives in the Proslogion. Traditionally, as mentioned above, scholars tended to focus almost exclusively on Chap. 2, until Karl Barth and, in Anglophone scholarship, Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm popularised the idea that Chaps. 2 and 3 represent two separate and parallel proofs. Barth separates the two chapters on the grounds that they are arguing for two different conclusions: Chapter 2 argues that God exists, Chap. 3 that he exists necessarily. Hartshorne, meanwhile, claims that whereas Chap. 2 depends on the premise that existence is a predicate, Chap. 3 need not, 12 13

 Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.19.  Richard Campbell, From Belief to Understanding (Canberra, 1976), p. 30.

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since it discusses “a unique and superior form or manner of existing”, which we may call “self-existence” or “existence through self ”, and that this form of existence is taken as a predicate “in the sole case of God” rather than for things in general. Since these two chapters depend on different premises and make use of different concepts, Hartshorne concludes that they should be considered different arguments. Similarly, Malcolm argues that, whereas the first argument (in Chap. 2) “uses the principle that a thing is greater if it exists than if it does not exist”, the second argument relies on the different principle that “a thing is greater if it necessarily exists than if it does not necessarily exist”. Chapter 2, then, seeks to prove that God exists, Chap. 3 that “His existence must either be logically necessary or logically impossible”. Other writers have claimed to find three or even four separate arguments contained in Anselm’s Proslogion and Contra Gaunilonem.14 It is worth noting here that Anselm himself clearly does not think he has offered more than one proof. As he says at the start of the Proslogion, it was the Monologion which contained “a chaining together of many arguments”, whereas the Proslogion was written to showcase “a single argument” (unum argumentum—not duo, tria, or quattuor argumenta). The wording and grammar of Chaps. 2 and 3 serve to emphasise their argumentative unity: Chapter 3 opens with the relative pronoun quod, clearly referring back to the “something than which no greater can be thought” spoken of at the end of Chap. 2. Indeed, so closely linked are the end of Chap. 2 and the beginning of Chap. 3 that we could join them together, without changing any of the words, and still have a perfectly coherent sentence: “Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid quo majus cogitari non valet et in intellectu et in re, quod utique sic vere est ut nec cogitari possit non esse.” Moreover, the statement “Et hoc es tu, Domine Deus noster” in Chap. 3 functions as a rounding-off of the main argument, in much the same way as the variations on the formula “And this all men call God” serve to round off each of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways.15 Anselm  Barth, 1960, pp.  133–5; Hartshorne, 1965, esp. pp.  11–18, 33  f., 99–106; Malcolm, 1968, pp.  306–9. Cf. Desmond Paul Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm (Oxford, 1967), § 5.5, and G. Nakhnikian, “St. Anselm’s Four Ontological Arguments”, in W. H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Mind, and Religion (Pittsburgh, 1967). 15  Aq. S.T. 1.2.3. 14

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organises the second and third chapters of the Proslogion as a ring composition, opening with the identification of God as “something than which nothing greater can be thought”, going on to prove that such a being must exist, and then reaffirming the identification with the words “And this [than which nothing greater can be thought] is you, O Lord our God.” Such considerations are sufficient to prove that Anselm did not see himself as offering multiple arguments for God’s existence in the Proslogion; still, it may be that he inadvertently ended up doing so, despite his intentions.16 Nevertheless, I believe it would be more accurate to say that Chap. 3 represents a development or refinement of Chap. 2, rather than an alternative argument. Having proven that God exists, it is natural for Anselm to expand on this by making it clear that he exists necessarily. Moreover, as was indicated above, the two premises on which Anselm is supposedly relying—that existence is a perfection and that necessary existence is a perfection—are just two corollaries of the single idea that a thing is good insofar as it instantiates its form. Something which exists must instantiate its form to at least some degree, whereas something which does not exist does not instantiate its form at all; and something that necessarily exists instantiates its form at all times, as opposed to merely sometimes, and cannot be prevented from instantiating it. Hence there is a fundamental unity between Chaps. 2 and 3, not only in their grammar but also in the thought behind them, and the two chapters should therefore be considered part of a single argumentative thrust rather than a pair of separate arguments. Is the argument an ontological argument?

Anselm’s proof is usually considered to be an ontological argument, that is, an argument which seeks to prove God’s existence “from premises which are supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone.”17 Campbell, however, in a recent book, argues that Anselm’s proof should in fact be considered “a quite

16 17

 As is suggested by Malcolm, 1968, p. 305.  Oppy, 1995.

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novel form of the cosmological argument”.18 For, he says, the premise that anything apart from God can be thought not to exist “is not a truth which is known a priori. That shows that [Anselm’s] proof in the Proslogion cannot possibly be a version of ‘the ontological argument’. For there is nothing else in the Proslogion which establishes the uniqueness of something-­than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought and that it is identical with the God whom Anselm is addressing.” Because this premise is so vital to the argument, however, it follows that, if it is not known a priori, the argument as a whole cannot be a priori, either, in which case it cannot be a version of the ontological argument.19 Given the importance of this premise, it is, says Campbell, “somewhat disconcerting” that Anselm should present it “without any justification”.20 The most likely explanation for this apparent omission is, I would suggest, that Anselm simply thought the premise too obvious to need justifying. Nor is it particularly surprising that he might have thought it so. As we saw in the previous section, God necessarily exists because he is metaphysically simple, and he is metaphysically simple because he is the first principle and origin of all other things. Since we also saw that there can only be one such first principle, it follows that everything apart from God is metaphysically complex, and that the existence of everything else is distinct from its essence. Because these two things are distinct, it is possible to think of their essences apart from their existence, and to suppose that, even if the form exists in the intellect, it is not instantiated—that is, it does not exist—in reality. Because essence and existence are not distinct in God, however, it is not possible to think of God without also seeing that he must exist necessarily. Therefore it follows that God cannot be thought not to exist, but everything else can. But this reasoning given above does not rely on a posteriori considerations, such as observations of the cosmos. Therefore it is possible to know a priori that only God cannot be thought not to exist, and there is no barrier to considering Anselm’s proof to be an ontological argument.  Richard Campbell, A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof that God Exists (Brill, 2021), Chap. 2. I am indebted to Prof. Campbell for giving me a copy of the proofs for his work. Since the pagination for the version I saw is different to that planned for the printed volume, I have cited quotations from this work by chapter (and section, where appropriate), rather than by page number. 19  Campbell, 2021, Chap. 2, § 2. 20  Ibid. 18

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Not only is there no compelling reason to reject the usual interpretation of Anselm’s argument as an ontological one, there is in fact a compelling reason to accept it. Anselm, as noted above, had been looking for “a single argument, which would require nothing else to prove it but itself alone [quod nullo alio ad se probandum quam se solo indigeret], and which on its own would suffice to show that God really exists.”21 It would perhaps be unwise to push “which would require nothing else” too far—as should be clear by now, I think that Anselm’s proof requires a quite definite set of metaphysical principles—but we cannot ignore the statement, either. If Anselm’s proof really requires us to bring in a posteriori considerations to bolster it, it is difficult to see how Anselm could possibly be justified in saying that his argument requires “nothing else to prove it but itself alone”. Rather, we must suppose that Anselm understood his argument to be such that merely considering it is enough to see its correctness—that is, that he understood his argument to be an a priori one. The meaning of “Quod majus est”

Hitherto I have been following the standard interpretation of “Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re, quod majus est,” as meaning, roughly, “If it is only in the understanding, it can be thought to exist in reality as well, which is greater.” G. E. M. Anscombe, however, proposes omitting the comma after in re, thereby rendering the sentence, “If it is only in the understanding, what is greater can be thought to exist in reality as well.” She bases her case partly on textual criticism and partly on aesthetics, but her main argument is that the proposed emendation renders the proof more powerful and interesting. Anscombe holds that the notion of existence being a perfection is a highly dubious one, and consequently that jettisoning this premise results in a stronger proof and saves Anselm from “the stupidity of an Ontological Argument”, as she puts it.22  Ans. Pros. pref.  Anscombe defends her position in two articles, “Why Anselm’s Proof in the Proslogion is not an Ontological Argument”, The Thoreau Quarterly 17 (1985); and “Russelm or Anselm?”, The Philosophical Quarterly 43.173 (Oct., 1993). Cf. Millican, 2004, pp.  439  f., who endorses Anscombe’s proposal; and Yujin Nagasawa, “Millican on the Ontological Argument”, Mind, New Series, 116.464 (Oct., 2007), pp. 1032–7, who likewise argues that Anselm is not committed to the “principle of the superiority of existence”, as he calls it. 21 22

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Anscombe’s reasoning has been criticised on a number of grounds,23 but by far the most serious flaw in her exegesis is her dismissal of the idea that existence is a perfection. Whether or not Anscombe is philosophically justified in dismissing this notion, we have already seen that Anselm himself accepted it, and consequently there is no reason to doubt, and every reason to believe, that the sentence in question does indeed affirm the superiority of existence in re. Moreover, Anscombe’s reconstruction of the argument makes little sense even on its own terms. According to Anscombe, Anselm is claiming that id quo nihil majus cogitari potest is greater if it cannot not exist than if it can; hence something that existed in re would be majus “not merely [in] that it exists in reality as well as in the mind, but [in] that it can have neither a beginning nor an end of existence.” Nevertheless, there is “no suggestion that it is the existing that is the greater thing about what is thought to exist.”24 But if existence is not a perfection, why should necessary existence be any better than contingent? Presumably, if it is not a perfection, existence would have to be neutral with respect to a being’s greatness.25 A neutral characteristic, however, makes no difference to greatness whether or not it is possessed, or (if it is) whether it is a contingent or a necessary property of its possessor. Therefore, if existence is not a perfection, that than which nothing greater can be thought must be equally great regardless of whether it exists necessarily, contingently, or not at all. On the whole, then, Anscombe’s reconstruction of Anselm’s ontological argument is not a plausible one, and the standard translation of esse et in re quod majus est ought to be retained.

 E.g., by Hopkins, A New, Interpretive Translation of St. Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis, 1986), pp. 26–33; C. J. F. Williams, “Russelm”, The Philosophical Quarterly 43.173 (Oct., 1993). 24  Anscombe, 1993, p. 503; 1985, p. 39. 25  Theoretically, I suppose, one could try to claim that existence is a defect, but such a position would be exceedingly bizarre, and I am not aware of anybody ever having seriously tried to defend it. 23

4 Rebuttal of Rebuttals

Bertrand Russell once commented that “it is easier to feel convinced that [the ontological argument] must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies,”1 and the last nine hundred years of scholarship have amply borne out this statement. Various attempts to rebut the argument have been made since its first publication; two in particular— Aquinas’ claim that we cannot have sufficient a priori knowledge of God’s nature for Anselm’s argument to succeed, and Kant’s (alleged) dictum that existence is not a predicate—at times came to assume a position of virtual orthodoxy. Even these rebuttals, however, have never managed to command universal assent, and fresh attempts to pinpoint where precisely Anselm’s supposed fallacy lies have become a staple of the secondary literature. Here I will examine those attempts which are most notable for their cogency, the prominence of their originators, or both, and argue that they are, ultimately, unsuccessful as refutations of Anselm’s ontological argument.

 Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1945), p. 586.

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Jackson, Understanding Anselm’s Ontological Argument, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41535-7_4

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Gaunilo of Marmoutiers The earliest known critic of the ontological argument is Anselm’s contemporary, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. Although he left no other surviving work and nothing else is known about his life, Gaunilo’s Pro Insipiente has remained one of the most prominent critiques of Anselm’s argument, largely because the saint requested that future Proslogion manuscripts include copies of Gaunilo’s rebuttal and Anselm’s own response.2 Gaunilo gives several counter-arguments, with varying degrees of cogency. Sometimes he appears to simply miss the point of what Anselm is saying. For example, he is sharply rebuked by Anselm for his sloppy paraphrase of “that than which nothing greater can be thought” as “that which is greater than everything else” (majus omnibus). The importance of this difference is not hard to see. In the first place, until we have proven the existence of God, we have no way of ruling out the possibility that that which is greater than everything else is simply a particularly grand, but still limited and contingent, being. If this were the case, it would be possible to conceive of something greater than it—namely, a being without its limitations.3 Whilst Anselm obviously believes that the majus omnibus and the aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari potest are the same being, this is not yet evident at the start of the argument. Moreover, describing God as “greater than everything else” implies that God is a member of the set of actual entities, and hence subtly begs the question in favour of his existence.4 Similarly, in dealing with Proslogion 3, Gaunilo suggests that for “cannot be thought [cogitari] not to exist” Anselm substitute “cannot be understood [intellegi] not to exist”, since “in the strict sense of the word, false things cannot be understood.” He also points out that he knows that he himself exists with no less certainty than he knows that God exists, and asks whether he can think that he does not exist even whilst knowing that he really does. “But if I can, why can I not do the same for anything else that I know with the same certainty? And if I cannot, it is not God  Thomas Williams, 2007, p. viii.  Ans. Gaun. 5. 4  Cutsinger, 2007, p. 6. 2 3

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alone who cannot be thought not to exist.”5 Anselm, of course, gives him short shrift, pointing out that, in Gaunilo’s sense of the word “understand”, no actually-existent being can be understood not to exist, and hence the revised argument he proposes would apply equally to every existing thing and tell us nothing about God specifically. As for his objection that there are many things which he cannot think of as not existing, Anselm notes that Gaunilo has confused judgement (existimare) with imagination (fingere), and that, whilst it is indeed impossible to judge that something does not exist when we know it really does, it is certainly possible to imagine that it does not, except in the case of God alone.6

The Lost Island and Other Parody Arguments By far the most famous of Gaunilo’s rebuttals, however, and the one which has attracted the most modern attention, is his claim that Anselm’s ontological argument proves too much. Gaunilo illustrates this by referring to the fabled “Lost Island” (Insula Perdita), an isle of such surpassing beauty, fertility, and abundance of natural resources that it is superior in every possible respect to all other islands. If somebody were to tell us that such a place must exist, on the grounds that, if it did not, it could hardly be superior to other islands, we would quite rightly reject his argument as absurd. But then, Gaunilo suggests, if we do not accept this reasoning in the case of the Lost Island, we should not accept it in the case of God either.7 Anselm has little patience with this, stating that, “if anyone can find me something existing either in reality or only in thought to which he can apply this inference in my argument, besides that than which a greater cannot be thought, I will find and give to him that Lost Island, never to be lost again.” Apparently he considers the analogy too absurd to be worth spending more time on, since he gives the Lost Island objection  Gaun. 7.  Ans. Gaun. 4. The Latin word cogitare (thinking) could cover both judgement and imagination, which may explain Gaunilo’s confusion here. 7  Gaun. 6. 5 6

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no further attention, apart from a brief recapitulation of his argument in Proslogion 3.8 Fortunately, St. Bonaventure provides a rebuttal of Gaunilo’s Lost Island argument which can help indicate why Anselm may have found it so ridiculous. An island, writes Bonaventure, is a “limited being”, and therefore “there is no comparison” between Gaunilo’s Lost Island and that than which nothing greater can be thought.9 His meaning, I take it, is that an island is limited by its very nature, as there are certain goods which are simply incompatible with being an island (e.g., the good of being rational), and because it is limited, no island, no matter how great, can be something than which nothing greater can be thought. As we saw above, in that than which nothing greater can be thought, essence and existence are one, and hence its essence cannot fail to be fully instantiated. This is not true of an island, however, or indeed of anything else, since in their case essence and existence are distinct, and so knowing the essence does not tell us whether it is actually instantiated. Hence there is no reason to suppose that Anselm’s reasoning in the Proslogion, which explicitly related to id quo nihil majus cogitari potest, would apply equally, or at all, to Gaunilo’s Lost Island. Notwithstanding such considerations, parody arguments have become a commonplace in the secondary literature.10 One such parody is J.L. Mackie’s “Remartian” argument. A “Remartian” is defined as “a really-existing Martian”; hence the statement “The Remartian does not exist” is self-contradictory, and we are thereby driven to affirm the existence of intelligent life on Mars.11 Mackie’s parody, however, fails, for much the same reason as Gaunilo’s does. Like an island, but unlike God, a Martian is (or would be, if it existed) a limited being, and hence its essence and existence must be distinct. Therefore, it is impossible for there to be a nature which is like that of a Martian in every (other) way but also includes existence—that is, it is impossible for there to be a  Ans. Gaun. 3.  Bonav. Myst. Trin. q. 1 a. 1 conclusio § 6, trans. Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, 1979). 10  See Oppy, 2019, § 6, for some examples. 11  Mackie, 1982, pp. 42 f. Mackie’s argument is actually directed against Descartes’ version of the proof, although as he says later on, “there is a close underlying analogy between Anselm’s argument and Descartes’s, and correspondingly between the vital criticism of each of these” (p. 53). 8 9

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Remartian nature. When we talk of a “Remartian”, we are not talking solely of a nature, but of a nature (Martian) plus a contingent fact (this nature being instantiated), and there is no absurdity in supposing that a contingent fact does not actually obtain. Another type of parody seeks to invert Anselm’s reasoning and use it to prove the existence of the Devil rather than of God. The first writer to use such a procedure was Albert A. Cock in 1917, and similar arguments have surfaced periodically ever since.12 Typically, the parodist will define the Devil as “something than which nothing worse can be thought” (or similar), and then say that a Devil which exists in reality is worse than one which exists only in the mind. Therefore, if the Devil did not exist, it would be possible to think of something worse than him, namely a similarly evil being which did exist. But this is absurd. Therefore, the Devil exists. As any good Neoplatonist could point out, however, it is not actually the case that a Devil which exists in reality is worse than one which exists only in the mind, since a Devil which exists in reality will instantiate its form to at least some degree, whereas one existing only in the mind will not. Therefore, the worst conceivable being would have to be one that existed only in the intellect.13 It is true that a really-existing Devil will be capable of doing greater evil than a merely conceived or imaginary one, but that does not mean that it will be worse qua being than a non-­existent Devil. As refutations of Anselm’s ontological proof, therefore, arguments of this type cannot be considered successful.

 Albert A. Cock, “The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 18 (1917–18), pp. 363–84; for a more recent discussion and defence of the parody, see Timothy Chambers, “On Behalf of the Devil: A Parody of Anselm Revisited”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 100 (2000), pp. 93–113. 13  Chambers, 2000, p. 108, objects that “it is unclear how to ground [the thesis that something which exists in reality is greater than something which exists solely in the intellect] with plausibility.” Whilst this may be true under some metaphysical systems, it is not the case with Anselmian Neoplatonism. Meanwhile, Cock, 1917–18, p. 381, claims that, “We could not say that not to be is worse than to be, and, therefore, no devil at all, for it is clear that to be a devil is worse than not to be one.” There are two senses in which this latter statement could be taken: (i) it is better to be something other than a devil than to be a devil; and (ii) it is better not to exist at all than to exist and be a devil. If we go with interpretation (i), then his statement is plausible, but insufficient for his argument; if we go with interpretation (ii), then his statement is sufficient, but implausible. 12

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 oes that than Which Nothing Greater Can D Be Thought Exist in the Intellect? Although Gaunilo’s Lost Island analogy has been called “by far the most devastating criticism in his catalogue of Anselm’s errors”,14 I would contend that this distinction actually belongs to the argument given in Chap. 4 of the Pro Insipiente. Here Gaunilo, speaking in the persona of the fool, denies being able to understand that than which nothing greater can be thought. If he heard about a man, he “could think of him in accordance with that very thing that a man is, on the basis of that knowledge of genus or species by which [he knows] what a man is or what men are.” When it comes to something than which nothing greater can be thought,15 however, “I can no more think of it or have it in my understanding in terms of anything whose genus or species I already know, than I can think of God himself… For I do not know the thing itself, and I cannot form an idea of it on the basis of something like it, since you yourself claim that it is so great that nothing else could be like it.”16 Gaunilo, I take it, is presupposing an abstractionist view of concept formation, which as we saw above may also have been held by Anselm himself. According to this view, we come to know the essences of things by mentally separating them from their particulars: hence, for example, I know several men, and by considering their manhood apart from the individuating features that each particular man has (being tall or short, fat or thin, black or white, bald or hirsute, et cetera), I come to know what the Form of Man consists of. With God, however, this is impossible, since there are not multiple Gods by reference to whom I can know the Form of God. Accordingly I cannot actually know the nature of God, and so it is false to say, as Anselm does, that God (or id quo nihil majus cogitari potest) is in the intellect. Anselm’s defence is, of course, that we can come to know that than which nothing greater can be thought by a consideration of good things:  Thomas Williams, “Saint Anselm”, S.E.P. (Spring, 2016), § 2.3.  Actually Gaunilo says “something greater than everything else”, but as we saw above this paraphrase is misleading, and I have therefore taken the liberty of correcting him. 16  Gaun. 4. 14 15

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since every lesser good is similar qua good to a greater good, “it is clear to every reasonable mind that by raising our thoughts from lesser goods to greater goods, we can certainly form an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought on the basis of those things than which a greater can be thought.” In this way we can (for example) reason that, if something with both a beginning and end is good, something with a beginning but no end will be even better, and something with neither beginning nor end will be better still. Hence God, than whom nothing greater can be thought, will have neither a beginning nor an end; and the same method can be applied to determine the other properties that he would have to possess. “So there is in fact a way to form an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought.”17 The equation of God with Goodness itself has a strong pedigree in the Neoplatonic tradition, as we saw above, and it does appear to effectively parry Gaunilo’s objection, since while we do not know of multiple Gods, we do know of multiple good things, and hence we ought to be able to know something of the nature of Goodness itself based on our acquaintance with these particular goods. Even if we accept Anselm’s reasoning on this point, however, the idea that God can be in our intellects remains problematic. For God is infinite and unlimited, whereas our intellects are not, and it is difficult to see how the finite can contain the infinite. Again, since God’s essence and existence are identical, if our intellect were somehow to take on the form of God, it would have to take on the existence of God as well—that is, it would have to become God. But plainly this does not happen. Therefore, it would appear, God is not in our intellect.18 We will consider whether anything can be said in the ontological argument’s defence a little further on; first, however, we will consider the argument’s second famous critic, St. Thomas Aquinas, whose main objection to Anselm’s ontological argument is similar to that which we have just outlined.

 Ans. Gaun. 8.  Aquinas makes a similar point, although not in connection with the ontological argument, in S.T. 1.12.11, when discussing “Whether anyone in this life can see the essence of God”. 17 18

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Aquinas’ Criticisms of the Ontological Argument Aquinas considers Anselm’s ontological argument in three separate works—the De Veritate, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and the Summa Theologiae.19 Before we examine his critique of Anselm’s argument, however, it may be useful to deal with a widespread confusion which has clouded discussions on this matter. In each of the places wherein St. Thomas considers the argument, he does so in the course of discussing whether God’s existence is per se notum. Literally meaning “known through itself ”, this phrase is usually translated into English as “self-evident”.20 Now in English, to describe something as “self-evident” is to indicate that its truth is immediately obvious, without the need for any additional argument or proof. It is generally assumed that this is the attitude Aquinas imputes to Anselm—that, as Cutsinger puts it, “St Thomas is under the impression that the proof aims to go directly from concept to fact,” without any argumentation in between.21 This, of course, would be a total misrepresentation of Anselm’s real view, for if he really thought that God’s existence were self-evident in this sense, why bother formulating the ontological argument at all? He could simply have written, “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought,” and left it at that. Hence Cutsinger suggests that Aquinas had not actually read the Proslogion at all, but had received his information second-hand, probably from “a miscellany of isolated quotations from various works, including the Proslogion, compiled sometime in the 12th century in support of the idea that the existence of God need not be proven.”22  Aq. S.T. 1.2.1; S.C.G. 1.10 f.; Ver. 10.12.  E.g., S.T. 1.2.1, Videtur quod Deum esse sit per se notum, “It seems that the existence of God is self-evident” (trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province, London, 1920); S.C.G. 1.10, De opinione dicentium quod Deum esse demonstrari non potest cum sit per se notum, “The opinion of those who say that the existence of God, being self-evident, cannot be demonstrated” (trans. Anton C. Pegis, Notre Dame, 1976); Ver. 1.10.12, utrum Deum esse sit per se notum menti humanæ, “Is God’s existence self-evident to the human mind?” (trans. James V. McGlynn, Indianapolis, 1954). Cf. Campbell, 1976, p. 24: “Aquinas cites Anselm as supporting the view that the existence of God is per se notum or self-evident.” 21  Cutsinger, 2007, p. 8. 22  Ibid. 19 20

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Now there are passages of Aquinas which, if taken on their own, would seem to support this interpretation. Near the beginning of the Summa Theologiae, for example, Aquinas paraphrases Anselm’s argument as follows: Further, those things are said to be self-evident [per se nota] which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher says (1 Poster. 3) is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognised that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word “God” is understood, it is at once seen that God exists.

Such a conclusion about Aquinas’ interpretation would, however, be premature, for he goes on to say that: By this word [“God”] is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived [id quo majus significari non potest]. But that which exists actually and mentally [in re et intellectu] is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word “God” is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition “God exists” is self-evident [per se notum].23

This is a fair summary of Anselm’s argument, and also shares certain verbal parallels with the Proslogion, rendering it likely that Aquinas had indeed read the original text. Even stronger evidence is provided by Aquinas’ summary of the argument in his Summa Contra Gentiles, which is sufficiently full and accurate as to place his acquaintance with Anselm’s own words beyond reasonable doubt: The proposition God exists is of this sort. For by the name God we understand something than which a greater cannot be thought [aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest]. This notion is formed in the intellect by one who hears and understands the name God. As a result, God must exist already at least in the intellect. But He cannot exist solely in the intellect, since that which exists both in the intellect and in reality [in intellectu et in re] is greater than that which exists in the intellect alone. Now, as the very defini Aq. S.T. 1.2.1, trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

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tion of the name points out, nothing can be greater than God. Consequently, the proposition that God exists is self-evident [per se notum], as being evident from the very meaning of the name God. Again, it is possible to think that something exists whose non-existence cannot be thought. Clearly, such a being is greater than the being whose non-existence can be thought. Consequently, if God Himself could be thought not to be, then something greater than God could be thought. This, however, is contrary to the definition of the name God. Hence, the proposition that God exists is self-­ evident [per se notum].24  Aq. S.C.G. 1.10.2 f., trans. Pegis. Campbell suggests (2021, § 1.4) that Aquinas is not actually addressing Anselm’s argument here, but rather “a quite different argument presented by one of Thomas’s contemporaries: Bonaventure.” This view, however, is by no means admissible, for Aquinas’ summary of the argument is much closer in both structure and language to Anselm’s presentation than to Bonaventure’s. In order that the reader may more easily verify this, I have copied out the relevant section of the Summa Contra Gentiles in Latin, and of the De Mysterio Trinitatis in Latin and in the English translation of Hayes, 1979. Aq. S.C.G. 1.10.2 f.: “Hujusmodi autem est hoc quod dicimus Deum esse. Nam nomine Dei intellegimus aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest. Hoc autem in intellectu formatur ab eo qui audit et intellegit nomen Dei, ut sic saltem in intellectu jam Deum esse oporteat. Nec potest in intellectu solum esse: nam quod in intellectu et re est, majus est eo quod in solo intellectu est; Deo autem nihil esse majus ipsa nominis ratio demonstrat. Unde restat quod Deum esse per se notum est, quasi ex ipsa significatione nominis manifestum. Item, cogitari quidem potest quod aliquid sit quod non possit cogitari non esse, quod majus est evidenter eo quod potest cogitari non esse. Sic ergo Deo aliquid majus cogitari posset, si ipse posset cogitari non esse, quod est contra rationem nominis. Relinquitur quod Deum esse per se notum est.” Bonav. Myst. Trin. q. 1, art. 1, §§ 21–4: “Nam Anselmus, Proslogii capitulo quarto: ‘Bone Domine, gratias tibi, quia quod credidi prius, te donante, jam sic intellego, te illustrante, ut si nolim te esse credere, non possim non intellegere.’ Item, hoc ipsum probat Anselmus sic: Deus est quo nihil majus cogitari potest; sed quod sic est, quod non potest cogitari non esse, verius est quam quod cogitari potest non esse: ergo si Deus est quo nihil majus cogitari potest, Deus non poterit cogitari non esse. Item, ens, quo nihil majus potest cogitari, est talis naturæ, quod non potest cogitari, nisi sit in re; quia, si est in cogitatione sola, jam ergo non est ens, quo nihil majus cogitari possit: ergo si tale ens cogitatur esse, necesse est, quod tale ens sit in re, quod non posset cogitari non esse. Item, Anselmus: ‘Tu solus es quidquid esse melius est quam non esse’; sed omne verum indubitabile melius est quam omne verum dubitabile; ergo Deo magis est attribuendum esse indubitabiliter quam dubitabiliter.” Idem, trans. Hayes, 1979: “For Anselm writes in the fourth chapter of the Proslogion: ‘Good Lord, I give you thanks, because that which I first believed through your gift, I now understand through your illumination, so that even if I did not wish to believe in your existence, I could not fail to understand its truth.’ Again, Anselm proves the same thing in the following way: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. But since it is true that that which cannot be thought not to be is more true than that which can be thought not to be, therefore, if God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God cannot be thought not to be. Again, that being than which nothing greater can be conceived is of such a nature that it cannot be thought of unless it exists in reality. For if it exists only in thought, then it is not that being than which no greater can be thought. Therefore, if such a being is thought to be, it is necessary that such a being, which cannot be thought not to be, exist in reality. Again, Anselm writes: ‘You alone are whatever it is better to be than not to be.’ But every indubitable truth is better than a doubtful truth. Therefore being is to be attributed to God indubitably rather than doubtfully.” 24

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Accordingly, when Aquinas says that Anselm considers God’s existence to be per se notum, I think he is suggesting that Anselm believes it can be known (as we would say today) a priori, rather than that he considers it “self-evident” as the English term is generally understood. And, when he attributes to Anselm the idea that God’s existence is evident “as soon as the terms are known” (statim cognitis terminis), we are probably supposed to place this after the fool has had the full import of these terms made clear to him by hearing the ontological argument itself. Before this, Aquinas (and Anselm25) might plausibly say, the fool did not understand the true signification of the words in question, and hence did not really “know the terms”. Having considered what Aquinas does not say about the ontological argument, let us now proceed to what he does. In the first place, Aquinas argues, the equation of “God” with “that than which nothing greater can be thought” is not actually as evident as Anselm would have us believe, as some ancient philosophers believed that God was actually a corporeal substance, or that he was identical with the universe.26 We might argue against Aquinas that the existence of id quo nihil majus cogitari potest is the main point at issue, and that whether we call this being “God” or something else is of secondary importance. Indeed, Aquinas himself does not give this objection much weight; instead, his main rebuttal hinges on the difference between something’s being evident in itself and its being evident to us. God’s existence is evident in itself, because God’s essence and existence are the same, and hence anybody who knows the divine essence—a saint enjoying the Beatific Vision, for example—will consequently also know that God must necessarily exist. However, God’s ­existence is not evident to us, because our minds are not (yet) able to apprehend his essence. This does not mean that Aquinas thinks we can have no knowledge of God, or that we can only know of him through faith, but he does think that we can only know him indirectly, through a posteriori consideration of the created world. As Aquinas himself puts it in the Summa Theologiae, “because we do not know the essence of God,  Cf. Ans. Pros. 4.  Aq. S.C.G. 1.11, S.T. 1.2.2. Aquinas may here have been thinking of the ancient Stoics, who held both positions. 25 26

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the proposition [‘God exists’] is not self-evident [per se notum] to us, but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature—namely, by effects.”27 Aquinas’ objection, then, is similar to Gaunilo’s, insofar as both dispute our ability to form a concept of the divine nature adequate to provide the basis for an ontological argument.

Solution to the Above Difficulties Such objections obviously present a major difficulty for Anselm’s ontological argument. One of Anselm’s key premises is that even the fool understands the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be thought”; if this is not true, if the expression is actually unintelligible, then it is difficult to see how the Proslogion’s argument can be salvaged. It may therefore come as a surprise to learn that, to a great extent, Anselm actually agrees with Aquinas regarding the unknowability of God. The divine ineffability is made clear from the very start of the Proslogion, wherein Anselm tells us that God dwells “in light inaccessible” (a quotation from 1 Tim. 6.16), and that his “dwelling is inaccessible”. Anselm himself is “not trying to scale your heights, O Lord,” for his understanding is “in no way equal to that”.28 Even more explicitly, Anselm later tells us that God is not only that than which a greater cannot be thought, but is himself greater than can be thought: “For, since it is possible to think that something of that kind exists, then if you are not this being, it is possible to think of something greater than you.”29 Not only does Anselm advance a similar view to Aquinas’, he also does so using similar phrasing. Aquinas quotes Aristotle’s statement that “our intellect is related to the most knowable things in reality as the eye of an owl is related to the sun”—in other words, we cannot know God by looking at him directly, but only by means of his effects on other things.30 Anselm, meanwhile,  Aq. S.T. 1.2.1, trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province; cf. S.C.G. 1.11.1, Ver. 1.10.12. 28  Ans. Pros. 1. 29  Ans. Pros. 15. 30  Aq. S.C.G. 1.11.2, trans. Pegis; Aristot. Metaph. 2.993b. 27

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says that the eye of his soul is “dazzled by [God’s] brightness” (reverberatur fulgore), and that, although God’s light is too bright for him, “nevertheless whatever I see, I see through it, just like a weak eye sees what it sees through the light of the sun, even though it cannot look upon the sun itself.”31 In this matter, then, Anselm is closer to his critic than is sometimes appreciated. We might sum up the disagreement by saying that, for Anselm, the fact that we can understand the expression “that than which nothing greater can be thought”, even partially and inadequately, shows that we can form a concept of it, and hence that it exists in the intellect; whilst for Aquinas, the fact that we can only form a partial and inadequate concept shows that it does not exist in the intellect. This controversy is highly abstruse and difficult to adjudicate, although my inclination is to say that both thinkers are correct. Aquinas is correct insofar as the nature of God, or of that than which nothing greater can be conceived, does not exist in our intellects in the same way that, for example, the Form of Red exists in my intellect when I contemplate the nature of redness. Nevertheless I think Anselm is right to say that, since we can understand the concept “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, it is in some way or other present in our intellects; and that, since this is the case, we can understand that that than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot fail to exist, not only in our intellects but in reality as well. It may be useful at this point to recall the distinction between simple and complex ideas which we made back in Chap. 2. A simple idea is entertained when the intellect takes on the form of the thing being considered; I entertain the idea of triangularity when my intellect takes on the Form of Triangle, the idea of redness when my intellect takes on the Form of Red, and so forth. A complex idea is entertained when my intellect combines several ideas, such as when I think of five thousand plane trees planted in a row. This is a coherent object of thought, not merely a heterogeneous collection of unrelated ideas, but the concept is not entertained by thinking of a single form. When Anselm says that God “is both seen and not seen by those who seek him”,32 he is, I think, saying that our 31 32

 Ans. Pros. 14, 16.  Ans. Pros. 14.

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idea of God, or of that than which nothing greater can be conceived, is a complex idea rather than a simple one.33 My intellect cannot take on the form of the divine, it is true, and in that sense God is beyond all conception. Nevertheless, by combining ideas such as good, better, and so forth, I am able to indirectly think of God, and to entertain as a coherent object of thought the notion of that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Thus the soul “can see you in part, but it does not see you ‘as you are’.”34 And, because we can thus conceive of God’s nature, even if we can only do so indirectly, we can know through consideration of this nature that God cannot fail to exist, as Anselm tells us. This, then, would appear to be our best way of resolving the paradox that we can think of the God who is beyond all human thought. Someone might object here that treating our idea of God as a complex idea contradicts the doctrine of divine simplicity. This objection has a certain plausibility, for if God himself is perfectly simple, how can our idea of him be complex? Here, however, we may cite in Anselm’s defence a principle which is more usually cited against him, namely that there is a difference between a thing’s mode of existing and our mode of knowing it.35 God is simple in himself, but as our minds are unable to comprehend him directly, we know him only through the joining of ideas which we can comprehend. Hence we think of God as having properties such as ­goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, and so on, as if these properties were all distinct both from each other and from the divine essence, when in reality, as we saw above, they are all identical both with the divine nature and with each other. Therefore there is nothing novel or contrary to accepted theological practice in thinking of God through the conjunction of ideas, even though God is absolutely simple in himself.

 It may be worth noting here that Anselm’s statement that God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought” can only be understood relative to other natures, and so cannot be meant as a description or definition of the divine nature in se. 34  Ans. Pros. 14, quoting 1 Jn. 3.2. 35  Aq. S.T. 1.2.1. 33

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Is Existence a Predicate? The next objection we will consider is, with the possible exception of Gaunilo’s Lost Island, the most famous criticism of the ontological argument, and for much of the last century has enjoyed a position of virtual orthodoxy amongst commentators on Anselm’s proof.36 It was first raised by Immanuel Kant in his discussion “Of the impossibility of an ontological proof of the existence of God”,37 and although Kant was focusing specifically on Leibnitz’ version of the argument, his criticism is often applied to Anselm as well. Kant’s objection centres on the idea that “Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing.” Instead, he says, It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgement. The proposition, God is omnipotent, contains two concepts, which have a certain object or content; the word is, is no additional predicate—it merely indicates the relation of the predicate to the subject. Now, if I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (omnipotence being one), and say: God is, or, There is a God, I add no new predicate to the conception of God; I merely posit or affirm the existence of the subject with all its predicates.38

Kant gives the analogy of a hundred real dollars as opposed to a hundred imaginary dollars. “For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it.” It is true that, when it comes to calculating my wealth, one hundred real dollars are worth more than one hundred fictitious dollars; but “the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state).” Hence, “By whatever and  Millican, 2004, p. 437.  Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 182, trans. Meiklejohn. 38  Ibid., p. 181. 36 37

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by whatever number of predicates… I may cogitate a thing, I do not in the least augment the object of my conception by the addition of the statement: This thing exists.”39 There are several interpretations of Kant’s argument, the most common of which is simply to take “real” as a synonym for “genuine”.40 According to this view, for something to count as a predicate, my use of it must in some way expand or modify the concept to which it is applied. Red is a predicate, because describing something as red gives us extra information about that thing; either is or is not a rhinoceros is not, because it could be used to describe anything, and is therefore what we might call a “trivial”, rather than a “real”, predicate. Existence, Kant is suggesting, is like either is or is not a rhinoceros rather than red: because everything belongs to the category of existent beings, describing something as existing does not give us any new information about it, and hence cannot be used to distinguish it from any other object. Or, as Brian Davies puts it, “‘____ exists’ cannot serve to distinguish one thing from another since, so to speak, everything exists.”41 Despite its popularity, this interpretation is, philosophically speaking, highly dubious. If I said to my friend, “Cambridge University is a real place, whereas Hogwarts School is not,” he would understand the distinction I were making, even if he knew nothing else about either institution. But then, if existence or non-existence can in fact be used to distinguish things, it follows that it is not simply a “trivial” predicate. In Neoplatonic terms, we might say that the difference is that between existing merely in intellectu (as fictional things do) and existing in re—precisely the distinction to which Anselm refers when he claims that the fool, “when he hears me say ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought’, understands what he hears; and what he understands is in his intellect, even if he does not understand that it exists [in reality].”42  Ibid. An “analytic” statement is one “whose truth depends upon the meaning of its constituent terms (and how they’re combined)”, whereas a “synthetic” statement is one “whose truth depends also upon the facts about the world that the sentence represents” (Georges Rey, “The Analytic/ Synthetic Distinction”, S.E.P., Winter, 2020). 40  The following reconstruction is taken from Chris Heathwood, “The Relevance of Kant’s Objection to Anselm’s Ontological Argument”, Religious Studies 47.3 (Sept., 2011), pp. 348–50. 41  Davies, 2004, p. 170. 42  Ans. Pros. 2. 39

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A more plausible and philosophically interesting interpretation is provided by Richard Campbell. According to Campbell, when Kant speaks of a “real predicate” he means what we might call a “determining predicate”, that is, a predicate which helps determine what kind of thing (res) something is. He contrasts this with predicates “which signify something which may be true of a thing but in a quite extrinsic way.”43 Hence—to get back to the hundred dollars example—there is indeed a clear difference between a hundred real dollars and a hundred imaginary dollars, so real and imaginary are evidently functioning as genuine predicates. At the same time, however, the real and imaginary dollars are both the same kind of thing, namely dollars—in other words, real and imaginary do not change the kind of thing that they are, and hence are not acting as “real predicates” under Kant’s definition. As we saw above, Neoplatonism also holds that an X existing only in intellectu is the same kind of thing as an X existing both in intellectu and in re; indeed, such a presupposition is arguably necessary for Anselm’s argument to work.44 Why, then, would Kant consider this thesis a problem for the ontological argument? Because, I take it, if existence is not a determining predicate, then mere knowledge of a concept, such as “something than which nothing greater can be conceived”, can never tell us whether or not that concept has any correspondence to reality. As Kant says, “the real object”—in this case, God—“is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition.”45 Hence, to discover whether or not God exists, we could not simply study the concept of God, as proponents of the ontological argument would have us do, because no matter how much we come to know about the concept, its existence in reality would still be an open question. Or, to put the matter in more medieval terms, because essence and existence are distinct, knowing a thing’s essence is insufficient for knowing whether that thing exists. Whilst such logic may apply in the majority of situations, however, we have grounds for rejecting it in the case of God. As we have already seen, God is metaphysically simple, meaning that, among other things, his  Campbell, 1976, p. 58.  Campbell, 1976, p. 55. 45  Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 181, trans. Meiklejohn. 43 44

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essence and existence are not actually distinct; or to put it another way, his essence includes existence, in a manner not dissimilar to that in which (for example) the essence of triangularity includes having three sides. Hence we may say that, whilst existence is not a real or determining predicate in the case of creatures, it is a real predicate in the case of God, and only of God. This is not a case of special pleading or an ad hoc exception to the general rule, but follows necessarily from God’s status as the creator of everything else. Kant’s objection, then, applies more properly to Gaunilo’s Lost Island, Cock’s Devil, and other such parody arguments, than to Anselm’s original proof.

 ant’s Second Objection K to the Ontological Argument Kant gives another criticism of the ontological argument, which, although less widely discussed than his claim that existence is not a real predicate, will nevertheless be considered here for completeness’ sake. According to Kant: If I annihilate the predicate in thought, and retain the subject, a contradiction is the result; and hence I say, the former belongs necessarily to the latter. But if I suppress both subject and predicate in thought, no contradiction arises; for there is nothing at all, and therefore no means of forming a contradiction. To suppose the existence of a triangle, and not that of its three angles, is self-contradictory; but to suppose the non-existence of both triangle and angles is perfectly admissible. And so it is with the conception of an absolutely necessary being. Annihilate its existence in thought, and you annihilate the thing itself with all its predicates; how then can there be any room for contradiction?46

Here again we must consider the distinction between existence in intellectu and existence in re. Whatever we think about must exist in intellectu, even if it does not exist in re. Hence we cannot “annihilate its existence”  Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 180, trans. Meiklejohn.

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simpliciter, but only its existence in re. For to say that something does not even exist in intellectu is to say that it is, quite literally, inconceivable; but it is plainly false to suppose that something of which we do in fact conceive is inconceivable. But then, if we only annihilate the existence in re of that than which nothing greater can be thought, we are left supposing that it exists in intellectu but not in re, which Anselm has already shown to be impossible.

5 Conclusion

In discussing whether God’s existence is per se notum, Aquinas suggests that those who believe so could be misled due to “the custom by which, from their earliest days, people are brought up to hear and to call upon the name of God.” For, he says, “custom, and especially custom in a child, comes to have the force of nature. As a result, what the mind is steeped in from childhood it clings to very firmly, as something known naturally and self-evidently.”1 Some readers might have similar thoughts when considering Anselm, his Neoplatonism, and his ontological argument. Let us grant, if only arguendo, that Anselm’s proof is plausible if Neoplatonism is true; is it really “so obvious to the rational mind” that we entertain a concept by means of our intellect taking on its form, or that a thing is good insofar as it instantiates its form, or that being and goodness are really the same thing considered under different aspects? Perhaps not; even if these propositions are true, one might reasonably claim, they still need to be argued for, and it may well be that Anselm, having been educated in an

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 Aq. S.C.G. 1.11.1, trans. Pegis, 1976.

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environment wherein Neoplatonism was more or less taken for granted, overestimates the obviousness of their truth. Does Anselm’s argument require Neoplatonism to be true? Certainly there have been philosophers, including some we have studied above, who sought to interpret Anselm’s argument in non-Neoplatonic ways, or to give similar arguments which make no appeal to Neoplatonist doctrines. Maybe Anselm’s premises can be defended on intuitive grounds which are neutral between Neoplatonism and alternative philosophical systems. Maybe. But what we find intuitively plausible depends to a large extent on “what the mind is steeped in from childhood”, as Aquinas puts it, and accordingly can differ wildly from one person to another. Besides, I suspect that, if we take the premises needed for Anselm’s argument— whether known by intuition or by some other method—and fully and exhaustively work out their implications, we will end up more or less reinventing Neoplatonism under another name. In other words, I think that the ontological argument, at least in its Anselmian version, does indeed depend on the truth of Neoplatonism for its success. By itself, though, this is hardly a devastating point against it. All arguments, after all, presuppose a certain metaphysical foundation, and no position in metaphysics is entirely free from detractors. To reject Anselm’s proof because it rests on Neoplatonic metaphysics would simply be to beg the question against it. The propositions Anselm took for granted may need to be argued for, but they also need to be argued against. Unfortunately, arguing for or against Anselm’s metaphysical views is one thing that very few modern authors have tried to do.2 The approach which contemporary Anglo-American philosophy departments normally take to their subject—going straight from Socrates and Plato to Descartes and Locke, as if the intervening two millennia did not exist—must undoubtedly shoulder a large portion of the blame: many philosophers are quite simply unaware of what Anselm and his fellows thought, and (what is worse) they are unaware that they are unaware, and so cannot seek to learn more. (As for those philosophers who do specialise in  For example, see M. J. Charlesworth, St. Anselm’s Proslogion (Oxford, 1965), who states that “for a modern thinker the notion of a ‘perfection’ is a puzzling one and not at all self-evident” (p. 60), as if this somehow constituted a refutation of the idea. 2

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medieval philosophy, perhaps they have been scared off by Aquinas’ condemnation of the proof—an understandable reaction, since setting oneself against the Angelic Doctor is rarely an advisable course of action.3). Doubtless this is why, as mentioned above, “it is easier to feel that [the ontological argument] must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.”4 Modern scholars are, in a sense, speaking an entirely different language to Anselm without even realising it, and it is consequently no surprise that they end up speaking past their interlocutor, causing great frustration and confusion all round. If we are to really dialogue with Anselm, we must learn his philosophical language—what he means by such terms as understand, intellect, greatness, and so on. Perhaps, after doing this, we will discover that what he says is true after all. Perhaps we will wish to reject his conclusions instead; at the very least, however, we will now have the advantage of knowing just what it is that we are rejecting.

 I once asked a professor at Blackfriars in Oxford whether one had to agree with everything Aquinas said in order to become a Dominican. He thought for a moment, and then replied, “I don’t know; I’d have to see what Aquinas says on the matter.” 4  Russell, 1945, p. 586. 3



Appendix A: Anselm’s Ontological Argument (Proslogion 2-3)

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Chapter II Ergo, Domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi ut quantum scis Therefore, O Lord, who give understanding to faith, grant that I may expedire intellegam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod understand, as much as you know is expedient, that you are as we believe credimus. Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil majus and that you are what we believe. And indeed we believe you to be cogitari possit. An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia Dixit something than which nothing greater can be thought. Or is there perhaps insipiens in corde suo, Non est Deus [Ps 13.1, 52.1]? Sed certe no such nature, since The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God [Ps. ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico, ‘aliquid 13.1, 52.1]? But certainly that very same fool, when he hears me say quo majus nihil cogitari potest’, intellegit quod audit; et quod ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought’, understands what intellegit in intellectu ejus est, etiam si non intellegat illud he hears; and what he understands is in his intellect, even if he does not esse. Aliud enim est rem esse in intellectu, aliud intellegere understand that it exists. For it is one thing for something to be in the rem esse. Nam cum pictor præcogitat quæ facturus est, habet intellect, and another to understand that that something exists. For when a quidem in intellectu, sed nondum intellegit esse, quod nondum painter thinks of what he is going to paint, he assuredly has it in his fecit. Cum vero jam pinxit, et habet in intellectu et intellegit intellect, but he does not yet understand that it exists, because he has not esse, quod jam fecit. Convincitur ergo etiam insipiens esse vel yet painted it. But, when he has painted it, he both has it in his intellect and in intellectu aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari potest, quia hoc, understands that it exists, because he has already painted it. Hence even the cum audit, intellegit, et quidquid intellegitur in intellectu est. fool is bound to concede that that than which nothing greater can be Et certe id quo majus cogitari nequit non potest esse in solo thought at least exists in the intellect, because when he hears this he intellectu. Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse understands it, and whatever is understood exists in the intellect. And et in re, quod majus est. Si ergo id quo majus cogitari non certainly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the potest est in solo intellectu, id ipsum quo majus cogitari non intellect alone. For if it exists only in the intellect, it can be thought to exist potest est quo majus cogitari potest. Sed certe hoc esse non in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which a greater potest. Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid quo majus cogitari non cannot be thought exists only in the intellect, that very thing than which a valet, et in intellectu et in re. greater cannot be thought is something than which a greater can be thought. But this is assuredly impossible. Therefore something than which no greater can be thought undoubtedly exists, both in the intellect and in reality.

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Chapter III Quod utique sic vere est, ut nec cogitari possit non esse. Nam And assuredly it exists so truly that it cannot even be thought not to exist. For potest cogitari esse aliquid, quod non possit cogitari non esse; it can be thought to be something which cannot be thought not to exist, quod majus est quam quod non esse cogitari potest. Quare si which is greater than that which can be thought not to exist. Therefore, if id, quo majus nequit cogitari, potest cogitari non esse, id ipsum that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought not to exist, quo majus cogitari nequit non est id quo majus cogitari nequit; that same thing than which a greater cannot be thought is not that than quod convenire non potest. Sic ergo vere est aliquid quo majus which a greater cannot be thought, which is impossible. So truly, therefore, cogitari non potest, ut nec cogitari possit non esse. Et hoc es is there something than which a greater cannot be thought, that it cannot tu, Domine Deus noster. Sic ergo vere es, Domine Deus meus, even be thought not to exist. And this is you, O Lord our God. For you so ut nec cogitari possis non esse. Et merito: si enim aliqua mens truly exist, O Lord my God, that you cannot even be thought not to exist. posset cogitare aliquid melius te, ascenderet creatura super And rightly: for if some mind could think of anything better than you, then Creatorem et judicaret de Creatore, quod valde est absurdum. the creature would climb above its Creator and sit in judgement over him, Et quidem quidquid est aliud præter te solum, potest cogitari which is utterly absurd. And indeed anything apart from you alone can be non esse. Solus igitur verissime omnium et ideo maxime thought not to exist. You alone, therefore, have existence most truly, and omnium habes esse, quia quidquid aliud est, non sic vere, et therefore most greatly, of all things; for whatever else exists does not exist idcirco minus habet esse. Cur itaque Dixit insipiens in corde so truly, and therefore has less existence. Why, then, has The fool said in his suo, Non est Deus, cum tam in promptu sit rationali menti te heart, There is no God, when it is so obvious to the rational mind that you maxime omnium esse? Cur, nisi quia stultus et insipiens? exist most greatly of all things? Why indeed, except because he is stupid and a fool?

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Appendix B: The Life of St. Anselm

Although Anselm’s ontological argument, as befits an a priori philosophical proof, is perfectly understandable without any knowledge of the man who discovered it, I have nevertheless thought it good to write a brief sketch of Anselm’s life, for the benefit of any readers who wish to learn more about this remarkable philosopher. Anselm was born in 1033 or 1034 in the town of Aosta, in what is now north-western Italy, but was then part of the Kingdom of Burgundy. His parents were of the noble class; in particular, his mother, Ermenberg, was descended from Conrad the Peaceful, King of Burgundy from 937 to 993, and more distantly related to Henry II, who had ruled the Holy Roman Empire between 1014 and 1024.1 Thanks to his noble station, Anselm was able to receive an excellent education, becoming a Latin prose stylist of some note.2 A religious individual even from childhood, Anselm had a vision in his youth in which God fed him with fine white bread, and at the age of fifteen sought to join a monastery.3 This request was denied, and for a  Martin Rule, The Life and Times of St. Anselm, vol. i (London, 1883), p. 1.  See Southern, Saint Anselm, pp. 73-7, for some examples. 3  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.2 f.; William Kent, “Saint Anselm”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. i (New York, 1907). 1 2

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time Anselm abandoned his plan of becoming a monk. Following Ermenberg’s death, Anselm’s father Gundulf treated him with unbearable harshness, and at the age of twenty-three he left home with just a single companion. On his way over the Alps, Anselm was near to collapse from lack of sustenance, when his servant unexpectedly found bread “of an exceptional whiteness” placed in his pack.4 After spending three years in the Kingdom of Burgundy, he travelled north to France, eventually reaching the monastery of Bec in Normandy in 1059. The prior here, Lanfranc, was one of the most distinguished scholars of his day; Anselm eagerly studied under him, proving such an apt pupil that he was even permitted to share in the work of teaching the monks there.5 Despite this, Anselm had not yet taken the habit, and he hesitated for some time as to whether he should join the monastery officially, become a hermit, or return home and put his patrimony to use supporting the poor. (His father was now dead, and his estates had devolved upon Anselm.) In his perplexity he sought Lanfranc’s opinion; Lanfranc, who could hardly act as an impartial advisor in this matter, referred the issue to Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen; Maurilius decided in favour of the monastic life, and so Anselm entered Bec as a novice, at the age of twenty-­ seven.6 Just three years later, Lanfranc left to become abbot of the monastery at Caen, and Anselm was chosen to fill his place—an unusual honour for one so new to the monastic life, and one which initially caused some controversy, with several of the monks feeling that they were more suitable candidates than the young tyro. Anselm’s biographer Eadmer describes how one particularly difficult character, Osbern by name, whose “good qualities were much disfigured by his really difficult character”,

 Eat. Vit. Ans. 1.4, trans. Southern.  Kent, “Saint Anselm”. 6  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.6. 4 5

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pursued St. Anselm with a “mordant hatred”.7 But Anselm, instead of meeting this malice with malice of his own, instead preferred to work on him with kindness: He began with a certain holy guile to flatter the boy with kindly blandishments; he bore indulgently his boyish pranks, and—so far as was possible without detriment to the Rule—he allowed him many things to delight his youth and to tame his unbridled spirit. The youth rejoiced in these favours, and gradually his spirit was weaned from its wildness. He began to love Anselm, to listen to his advice, and to refashion his way of life. When Anselm saw this, he showed a more tender affection to him than to any other; he nursed and cherished him, and by his exhortation and instruction he encouraged him in every way to improve. Then slowly he withdrew the concessions made to his youth, and strove to draw him onto a mature and upright way of life. Nor was his pious care in vain: his holy counsels took firm root in the youth and bore fruit. When therefore he saw that he could confidently rely on the firmness of the young man’s good intent, he began to cut away all childish behaviour in him, and if he found in him anything worthy of blame, he punished him severely not only with words but with blows.8

Osbern was so far won over by Anselm’s kind treatment that, far from falling back into his old animosity in response to the saint’s chastisement, he “bore everything patiently, he was strengthened in every religious endeavour, he was eager to learn every form of religious exercise, he patiently endured the reproaches, the insults, the detractions of the others, and preserved towards all an attitude of unfeigned love.” When Osbern died shortly afterwards, Anselm nursed him so tenderly on his deathbed, and took such great pains to have prayers said for his soul, that several other monks “devoted themselves body and mind to Anselm’s service, hoping to succeed to Osbern’s place in his affections; but he, though he thanked God for their change of heart, ‘became all things to all men, that he might save all.’”9  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.10, trans. Southern. Southern’s translation arguably underplays Osbern’s tenacious bad temper: he is actually described as venting his hatred on Anselm more canino, “like a dog”. 8  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.10, trans. Southern. 9  Ead. Vit. Ans. 1.10, trans. Southern; cf. 1 Cor. 9.22. 7

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When not fulfilling his duties as prior, Anselm exercised himself in his studies. Intellectually, the early medieval period was a time of consolidation rather than innovation, of the systematisation of pre-­existing material—much of which had been in circulation for centuries already—rather than the development of novel theories and ideas.10 Anselm was unusual amongst his contemporaries for his intellectual daring and independence of mind, qualities which he showed even in the early stages of his career, during the writing of the Monologion. When he showed this work to his former teacher Lanfranc—now Archbishop of Canterbury—Lanfranc replied that, whilst none of the content of the Monologion contradicted St. Augustine, Anselm was nevertheless too free in rewording the Doctor’s arguments, when he should have simply cited Augustine’s authority and hewed close to the original phrasing of his source material. Anselm quietly ignored this advice, and published the Monologion anyway.11 This event set the tone for Anselm’s subsequent writings. Anselm was no rebel, nor did he seek disagreement for its own sake; nevertheless, he was more confident than his contemporaries in the persuasive power of rational argument, without the need for explicit citations of authority.12 Perhaps the fullest expression of this attitude was the Proslogion itself, which sought to prove Christian beliefs about God’s existence and nature using nothing but “a single argument, which would require nothing else to prove it but itself alone.”13 Anselm’s erudition and unparalleled focus on rational argument turned the monastery at Bec into a major centre of learning, with students travelling from as far away as Italy to learn at the prior’s feet.14 When Herluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec, passed away in 1078, Anselm was chosen to succeed him. Initially he was reluctant to accept this honour, as it would leave him less time for study and prayer,  Richard Cross, The Medieval Christian Philosophers (London, 2014), p. 31.  Evans, “Anselm of Canterbury”, p. 96. 12  Ibid. 13  Ans. Pros. pref. 14  For Bec’s importance during this period, see William Kent, “The Abbey of Bec”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. ii (New York, 1907). 10 11

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but his brethren besought him until finally he relented. As part of his duties, Anselm made several trips across the Channel to visit lands which England’s new Norman rulers had donated to the monastery. He evidently made a good impression, as upon the death of Lanfranc in 1089, the chapter of Canterbury Cathedral wished Anselm to succeed him as archbishop. This was no simple matter, for the new King of England, William II, was taking advantage of the vacancy to appropriate the see’s revenues for his own use, and consequently had no desire to let Lanfranc’s place be filled so quickly. Not wishing to incur royal enmity, Anselm stayed away from England for three years, until he was finally convinced to visit by his friend, Earl Hugh of Chester. While Anselm was in England, King William fell gravely ill and, in a fit of penitence, agreed to let a new Archbishop of Canterbury be appointed. Even now Anselm was reluctant to accept the office, and had to be physically dragged to his ordination.15 Anselm’s reluctance proved well-founded, for William’s repentance lasted no longer than his illness, and tensions soon emerged between the king and the new archbishop. This was probably inevitable, for Anselm’s determination to preserve the Church’s independence was fundamentally incompatible with William’s equally strong determination to bring it under royal control. Matters came to a head in 1097, after William launched an unsuccessful invasion of Wales. He blamed the débâcle on Anselm, who had allegedly not provided enough soldiers for the royal army, and demanded he pay a fine in punishment for this failure. Anselm refused, and was driven into exile. Although Anselm nominally remained Archbishop of Canterbury, William immediately seized the archbishopric’s revenues, and did not give them up until his death.16 Anselm travelled to Italy, where at the request of the pope, Urban II, he prepared a defence of the Catholic doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, rather than from the Father alone, as the Greek Church held. Anselm presented his case, together with a defence of the Western practice of using unleavened bread at Mass, 15 16

 Ead. Vit. Ans. 2.1 f.; Southern, 1990, pp. 189 f.  Kent, “Saint Anselm”.

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to the Council of Bari in 1098. This city had been ruled by the Greek-­ speaking Byzantine Empire until 1071, and Greek cultural and religious influence was still strong. Thanks in part to Anselm’s intervention, however, the Council accepted the Western positions on both the procession of the Holy Spirit and the use of unleavened bread, thereby smoothing the way for southern Italy’s incorporation into the Latin Catholic sphere of Western Europe rather than the Greek Orthodox sphere of the East. Anselm’s arguments were subsequently published in his De Processione Spiritus Sancti Contra Graecos (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit Against the Greeks).17 William II was killed in a hunting accident in August, 1100, and Anselm was finally permitted to re-enter England, where he began a campaign of reforms to stamp out corruption amongst the clergy.18 This turn of good fortune was short-lived, however, for Anselm once again found himself embroiled in disputes over Church independence—more specifically, whether bishops should receive their official regalia (and hence, implicitly, their authority) from the king or from representatives of the Church. After a heated exchange of letters between England’s new king, Henry II, and Pope Paschal II, Anselm himself went to Rome to explain the situation. Henry seems to have expected him to argue the royal case, and so must have been disappointed to learn that the Pope had excommunicated his councillors for encouraging him to violate the rights of the Church. (Henry himself was not excommunicated, presumably to make any eventual reconciliation easier.) Anselm, either sensing that it would not be safe to return or ordered by the king to stay away, remained in a second exile in France for two further years. Eventually the sides reached a compromise, whereby bishops and abbots would take their regalia from Church representatives, but would do homage to the king for the lands they controlled by virtue of their office.19 With this, Anselm could finally come back to England. The last two years of his life were relatively peaceful, troubled only by a disagreement with the Archbishop of York, who was attempting to assert his see’s  Rev. B. J. Kidd, The Churches of Eastern Christendom (London, 1927), pp. 252 f.  Ead. Vit. Ans. 2.49. 19  Kent, “Saint Anselm”. 17 18

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independence from Canterbury. Anselm continued to write, producing a work De Concordia (On Harmony), which dealt with the issue of how divine foreknowledge and predestination could be compatible with human free will, as well as several uncompleted works, including a dialogue on pairs of opposites and a treatise De Similitudinibus (On Likenesses), which among other things considered the similarities between a monk and a penny.20 He passed away on Spy Wednesday, 21st April 1109, at the age of seventy-six, and was buried in his cathedral in Canterbury.21

 Greg Sadler, “Anselm of Canterbury”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006), § 13; Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Nummus Falsus: “The Perception of Counterfeit Money in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Century”, in Giles E. M. Gasper and Svein H. Gullbekk (eds.), Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000-1200 (Farnham, 2015), pp. 84-8. 21  Ead. Vit. Ans. 2.66. 20

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List of Abbreviations Used Ans. C.D.H.: Anselm, Cur Deus Homo Ans. Gaun.: Anselm, Liber Apologeticus Contra Gaunilonem Ans. Gramm.: Anselm, De Grammatico Ans. Inc. Verb.: Anselm, De Incarnatione Verbi Epistula Ans. Mon.: Anselm, Monologion Ans. Pros.: Anselm, Proslogion Aq. S.C.G.: Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Aq. S.T.: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Aq. Ver.: Aquinas, De Veritate Aristot. Metaph.: Aristotle, Metaphysics Aristot. Phys.: Aristotle, Physics Aristot. Post.: Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Aug. Conf.: Augustine, Confessiones Aug. Div. Quaest. Oct.: Augustine, De Diversis Quaestionibus Octoginta Tribus Aug. Doct. Christ.: Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana Aug. Lib. Arb.: Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio Aug. Mag.: Augustine, De Magistro Aug. Mor.: Augustine, De Moribus Manichaeorum Aug. Tract.: Augustine, In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus

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Index1

A

C

Anscombe, G.E.M., 3n9, 7, 7n5, 33, 33n22, 34, 34n24 Aquinas, Thomas, 2, 9, 30, 35, 41, 55 Summa Theologica, 9 Aristotle, 6, 11, 15, 18, 46 Augustine of Hippo, 5, 6n2, 7n3, 8, 9, 9n9, 14–19, 17n29, 18n32, 66

Campbell, Richard, 29n13, 31, 32, 32n18, 32n19, 42n20, 44n24, 51, 51n43, 51n44 Cock, Albert A., 39, 39n12, 39n13, 52 Cognition, 7, 14–15 Contra Gaunilonem, 2, 15, 30 Convertibility of the transcendentals, 10 Cur Deus Homo, 29 Cutsinger, James, 24n7, 36n4, 42, 42n21

B

Bari, Council of, 68 Barth, Karl, 3, 26, 27n8, 29, 30n14 Bec, Monastery of, 1, 17, 64, 66, 66n14 Boëthius, 18, 19 Bonaventure, 2, 38, 38n9, 44n24

D

Davies, Brian, 2n4, 18n32, 50, 50n41 De Incarnatione Verbi, 28

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Jackson, Understanding Anselm’s Ontological Argument, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41535-7

79

80 Index

Descartes, René, 2, 2n4, 38n11, 56 Divine simplicity, 9, 9n10, 48 E

Eriugena, John Scotus, 18 Evil, 11

L

Lanfranc of Canterbury, 16, 19, 64, 66, 67 Leibniz, Gottfried, 2 Locke, John, 12, 12n18, 56 M

Forms, theory of, 6–9, 14, 15, 24n6, 49 Form of the Good, 8

Mackie, J.L., 23n3, 38, 38n11 Malcolm, Norman, 3n6, 24, 24n5, 29, 30, 30n14, 31n16 Monologion, 1, 16, 27, 28, 30, 34n23, 66

G

N

F

Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, 2, 36–38, 37n6, 40, 40n15, 41, 46, 49 Lost Island argument, 37–40, 47, 49, 52

Neoplatonism, 5, 5n1, 6n2, 12, 14, 16n27, 18, 23–26, 39n13, 51, 55 P

H

Hartshorne, Charles, 3n6, 29, 30, 30n14 Henry II, King of England, 63, 68 I

Intellect, 9, 14, 15, 21–25, 32, 39–41, 39n13, 43, 46, 47, 50, 55, 57, 60

Paschal II, Pope, 68 Perfection, 7, 9, 24, 26, 31, 33, 34, 56n2 Plato, ix, 5, 6, 8, 8n8, 12, 12n18, 15, 17, 56 Plotinus, 5, 6, 9, 9n9, 10n12, 17 Proslogion, 1n1, 2, 4, 7n5, 16, 21, 22, 26–32, 33n22, 34n23, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44n24, 46, 56n2, 59, 66 Pseudo-Dionysus, 18

K

Kant, Immanuel, 2, 2n4, 35, 49–53, 49n37, 50n40, 51n45, 52n46

R

Russell, Bertrand, 35, 35n1, 57n4

 Index  S

U

Schumacher, Lydia, 27, 27n9 Separate realms principle, 14–15 Southern, Sir R.W., 2n2, 3, 3n8, 16n28, 24n4, 63n2, 64n4, 65n7, 65n8, 65n9, 67n15

Urban II, Pope, 67

81

W

William II, King of England, 67, 68