The Perfect God
Anselm’s clever trick
St. Anselm (1033-1109),
Archbishop of Canterbury
Faith Seeking Understanding
• If anyone does not know, either because he has
not heard or because he does not believe, that
there is one nature, supreme among all existing
things, who alone is self-sufficient in his eternal
happiness, who through his omnipotent
goodness grants and brings it about that all
other things exist or have any sort of well-being,
and a great many other things that we must
believe about God or his creation, I think he
could at least convince himself of most of these
things by reason alone, if he is even moderately
intelligent. (Monologion)
Background: The argument of the
Proslogion
• The fool has said in his heart, there is no
God. (Psalm 14:1)
• How can a believer answer the fool?
• Anselm claims that it is part of the nature
of God to exist.
• His argument is called ontological (reason
about being) because its premises turn on
what we understand God to be, and its
conclusion is that such a being must exist.
The Argument I
1. We believe that You are something than
which nothing greater can be thought.
2. (I)t is one thing for an object to exist in
the mind, and another thing to
understand that an object actually exists.
3. Even the fool… is forced to agree that
something-than-which-no-greater- canbe-thought exists in the mind.
The Argument II
• (S)urely that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought cannot exist in the mind alone.
• For, if it exists solely in the mind, it can be
thought to exists in reality also, which is greater.
• If, then, that-than-which-no-greater-can-bethought exists in the mind alone, this same thatthan-which-no-greater-can-be-thought is thatthan-which-a-greater-can-be thought.
• But this is obviously impossible.
The Argument III
• (T)his being exists so truly that it cannot be even
thought not to exist.
• For something can be thought to exists that
cannot be thought not to exist, and this is greater
than that which can be thought not to exist.
• Hence, if that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought can be thought not to exist, then thatthan-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is not
the same as that-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought, which is absurd.
Aftermath
• Why, then, did ‘the Fool say in his heart, there is
no God’?... Why indeed, unless because he was
stupid and a fool.
• The challenge here: if the fool really thought
there was no God, he did precisely what A has
argued he cannot do.
• So Anselm has to explain in what sense the Fool
could believe there is no God, even though we
cannot really think that this being doesn’t exist.
• How does he do this?
Responses
• How do we go about criticizing
arguments?
• Standard: Attack one or more premises,
or attack the link between the premises
and conclusion (i.e. deny that the
conclusion really follows).
• But there are other kinds of response:
Consider Guanilo’s “On behalf of the
Fool”, which takes two different tacks.
First question: how could Anselm’s
argument possibly work?
• Guanilo begins with the distinction between what
is thought of in the mind, and its existing in the
world: “…it cannot be doubted that this truth is
one thing, and the understanding which grasps it
is another.”
• He also worries whether we really do have a
proper idea of this being: “… neither do I know
the reality itself, nor can I form an idea from
some other things like it, since…it is such that
nothing could be like it,” and “It is rather (as) one
who…thinks of it in terms of an affection of his
mind produced by hearing the spoken words”
Consequences
• It’s not clear to G that this thing is in the
mind; what he accepts is only a verbal
grasp of it: “I do not concedethat it exists
in a different way from that…when the
mind tries to imagine a completely
unknown thing on the basis of spoken
words alone.”
• So G rejects a premise of Anselm’s
The Island
• The story: a wonderful island, better than all
other islands…
• It’s easy to understand these words.
• But if the story-teller goes on to say, ‘and you
must believe this island exists, since it is the
most excellent island, and it wouldn’t be all that
excellent if it didn’t exist’, we would not be
convinced.
• So G claims A needs first to prove the existence
of this wonderful being, before trying to make a
necessary link between the idea of the thing and
its existence.
Closing Shots
• G. reassures us about his orthodoxy.
• But at the same time, G. emphasizes that I
can be certain of things (such as my own
existence) while recognizing that they
could be otherwise, and asks, if I can think
of myself as not existing while being
certain that I do exist, why couldn’t I also
think of God as not existing despite my
certainty that he exists?