Anselm & the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.

‘So in one way it is possible to entertain the concept that God does not exist, but not in the other way. For no one who truly understands that which God is, can think that God does not exist, though he may say those words in his heart, either without any, or with a special meaning. For God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. Whoever truly understands this, understands that he is of such a kind of existence that he cannot be thought not to exist. So whoever understands this to be the nature of God, cannot think of him as not existing.’

Anselm’s Argument

1. In 1077-8, whilst at The Abbey of Bec, in Normandy, Anselm (1033-1109) wrote two short studies dealing with what would now be termed the problem of the existence of God.  The first, Monologion, dealt with the reality of the creator in a meditative fashion, with a particular emphasis on the idea that the existence of particular goods required and implied that the Supreme Being existed as the highest good.  The second work was Proslogion.  (Hereafter P. Quotations from P are from the Penguin edition).
2. Proslogion contains the famous ‘ontological’ argument.  However, it should be noted that the term ‘ontological’ as applied to Anselm’s argument is a consequence of how the argument was viewed in a later period by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).  In his Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, Kant made some of the most significant criticisms ever of the ‘ontological’ argument, which he appears to have known through its presentation in the thought of the philosopher Descartes (1596-1650).  Hence Kant refers to the argument as ‘the ontological or Cartesian argument’.  (‘Cartesian’ is the term commonly used to refer to the ideas of Descartes).
3. What Kant meant by the term ‘ontological’ in this connection is a consequence of the argument to the effect that in the case of the idea of the Divine there is no distinction between his essence and his existence – that God is that being whose nature it is to exist self-sufficiently.  The point to remember at this stage, however, is that the title or term ‘ontological’ is not an invention of Anselm’s.

The Context of the Argument in Proslogion

1. P must be viewed in context.  When we read summaries of Anselm’s argument in textbooks of philosophy of religion we can get the impression that the original context of composition was a speculation, an abstract and remote piece of pure logic, clear enough from the formal point of view perhaps, but arid and academic in character and unrelated to real experience.
2. Such an impression is misleading.  It is understandable, given the fact that Anselm is usually read in summary form, via his critics, but the thing that is vital to an appreciation of the argument and which the usual approach obscures, is that the argument is the consequence and expression of a deliberate and actually very humane theological method.  Anselm claims that his approach is that of fides quaerens intellectum, that is, ‘faith in search of understanding’.  The critical point is that for Anselm, faith, belief in God, was the presupposition, the basis, the starting point, for the sort of theological reflection of which P is an example.  The aim was to explore, to the end of obtaining a better understanding, an existing faith.  There was in no sense at all an attempt to argue in a persuasive fashion and/or from a neutral point of view for belief in God in a manner that would remove the involvement of faith as a component in the process.
3. To put the matter in a different way, the argument in P wasn’t the record of a discovery of theistic belief from a position of scepticism.  Rather, it charts the discovery of a means by which an existing personal faith finds intellectual expression.
4. Thus we find Anselm writing that his study is ‘an example of meditation on the meaning of faith.’  It is, he claims, the work of someone ‘trying to raise his mind to the contemplation of God, and seeking to understand what he believes.’ And, in the relatively long first chapter of P, (although the division into chapters was the work of later commentators), Anselm writes what is, in style and effect, a prayer on the pattern of preparation for this sort of contemplative meditation on faith.  He argues, if that is the right word, that the preconditions are the withdrawal of the subject into solitude so that peace of mind and place are obtained and the mind is freed for a reflection upon its own state of being.  This process will reveal the sorrowful awareness of man’s estrangement from God, and the deep longing for the reunion known and enjoyed in and as faith.  The chapter ends with the following remarks:

“…Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is in no way equal to that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves.  I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe I shall not understand.”

The Origin & Aim of the Argument

1. Anselm wanted to sort out a pure, clear and simple argument to confirm and express the faith of the Christian in God.  It seems that this matter occupied his mind for quite some time. He wondered if it was possible to have ‘one single argument, needing no other proof than itself, to prove that God really exists’ (P Preface), before the essence of the argument came to him one night at Matins.  Anselm doubtless knew of the work De Libero Arbitrio, by Augustine, in which a primitive form of the ontological argument is suggested and, as a means to the end of addressing the problem of expressing the ultimate referent of faith, reference is made to the biblical ‘fool’, i.e., an atheist, ‘who says in his heart, “There is no God”.’ (Ps 14 v1, Ps 53 v1.).
2. On the evening in question, Anselm was listening to the reading from Ps 14 when the meditative penny dropped and a line of thought came into his mind.  The spur to this was the paradoxical suggestion that even the fool/atheist – who has the idea of ‘God’ existent in his understanding – is capable of a) using the term ‘God’, and b) of having some sort of idea, an imperfect one, Anselm would contend, of what the term denotes.
3. But what does the term `God’ denote?  In Anselm’s view, and on the basis of his experience, ‘God’ stands for a being or a reality greater, more perfect e.t.c. than any other conceivable reality.  The evidence of the fool, in short, was that the idea of God was undeniably existent at the level of definitions or understanding: on the basis of this Anselm believed that it could be shown how, from the additional perspective of faith, that God ‘really exists’.
4. Such was Anselm’s confidence that he duly claimed, in the preface to P, that through the method of ‘faith in search of understanding’ he had discovered ‘one single argument needing no other proof than itself, to prove that God really exists, that he is the highest good, needing nothing, that it is he whom all things need for their being and well-being…’
5. Thus did Anselm’s argument emerge, with the aim of extending the self-understanding of an already existent faith.  Again, it is important to note that it is not a part of Anselm’s intention to provide a ‘cold’ proof that of the existence of God.

The First Phase of the Argument in Proslogion

1. Anselm’s argument is set out in what is now re-presented in chapters two, three and four of P, the rest of which is devoted to a consequent review of the nature, status and attributes of the Divine.
2. In P2 (line 160) Anselm suggests that on the basis of faith it can be said that God is believed to be ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought.’  This definition needs to be repeated aloud about twenty times!
3. This definition has generally been accepted by later critics as a fair and reasonable presentation of what traditional theistic belief entails.  But it is worth pointing out that the definition is just one of five or six variations that Anselm employs in P. Clearly he was not intending to offer a narrow or over-prescriptive definition.
4. We should also see that by ‘greater’, Anselm means ‘most perfect’, and not the largest!  The claim is not, of course, that God is the greatest thing that there is, i.e. that there is within the world.  Such a claim would hardly survive the critical attention of Anselm’s Christian contemporaries!  In fact Anselm seems determined to protect the sanctity and the unique status of the Divine against any type of anthropomorphism, and as a thinker in the tradition of Platonic realism he is – as Monologion demonstrates – concerned to display a defence of the absolute universal over and against every particular.  His use of a number of variations on the theme of ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought is evidence of this concern, as is the point that constitutes pretty well the whole of P15:  “… not only are you that than which a greater cannot be thought, but you are also something greater than can be thought.”
5. This is a vital clarification of what Anselm is affirming – for here he makes explicit the notion that what God ‘is’ in essence is beyond what can be thought by Man.  This puts into touch the point made by careless readers of Anselm who think that the standard definition of God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ means that God is the same as whatever is ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’.
6. Taking these points further, we can say that there is a definite trace of apophatic theology here -i.e. affirmation via negation over the status of the Divine.  We are being warned against trying to ‘identify as God any being such that it is conceivable for this being to be surpassed in value.’ We are being led to an appreciation of the least that God could be, not to God as such.  (Anselm seems to make this point in the comment at the end of P1 quoted above).  Anselm takes the view that it is clear that the latter is superior, and we can illustrate this if think of, say, a glass of champagne or an envelope with £1000 in it and our name on the outside.  In both cases the idea is one thing, and quite nice too – but the glass of champagne and the envelope with the £1000 in it would be even better 9as well as more real) if they were in each of our hands!  And this line of thinking is of particular importance in relation to the concept of God, i.e. ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’.  Thus Anselm (who never mentions champagne or money) writes in the following terms:

“Certainly that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot exist only in the understanding.  For if it exists only in the understanding, it is possible to think of it existing also in reality, and that is greater.  If that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in the understanding alone, this thing than which nothing greater can be thought is something than which a greater can be thought.  And this is clearly impossible.  Therefore there can be no doubt at all that something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the understanding and in reality.” (P 2, 177-85.)

Thus, to avoid an absurd contradiction of the initial conception and the foundational experience of faith, the absolute being must exist in reality as well as in the understanding.