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Anselm and The Logic of Religious Belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
Johann Georg Hamann, that great critic of the Enlightenment, once satirized the contemporary philosophical effort of his time by writing certain memoirs of Socrates “fuer die lange Weile des Publicums zusammengetragen von einem Liebhaber der langen Weile.” No doubt another article on Anselm also runs the risk of contributing to ennui. Still, in the history of philosophy his work is virtually unrivaled as a source for philosophical puzzlement. Nearly every anthology which introduces philosophy includes a section of his Proslogion, and recent analysis continues to demand attention to “the ontological argument” which is attributed to him. The present offering is, perhaps presumptuously, one more attempt to untangle some of the puzzlement and to do away with some of the misunderstanding that has accrued to the Anselmic tradition.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1968
References
1 Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwuerdigkeiten, (Socratic Memoirs), Vol. II of his Saemtliche Werke. Edited by Nadler, Josef (6 Vol.; Wien: Thomas-Morus-Presse Im Verlag Herder, 1949–1958)Google Scholar, title page, “… compiled for the boredom of the public, by an admirer of boredom.”
2 Anselm, Saint: Basic Writings. Translated by Deane, S. N. (LaSalle: Open Court, 1962)Google Scholar. The quotations and Latin parallels which follow come from a new translation, with introduction and commentary: St. Anselm's Proslogion, edited by Charlesworth, M. H. (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar.
3 See The Ontological Argument, edited by Plantinga, A. (New York: Anchor Books, 1965)Google Scholar; Philosophy of Religion, edited by Smith, John E. (New York: Macmillan, 1965)Google Scholar, Pt. I; Metaphysics, Taylor, R. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar, Ch. 7; Philosophy of Religion, Hick, John (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar, Ch. 2; and The Existence of God, edited by Hick, John (New York: Macmillan, 1964)Google Scholar.
4 Op. cit., Proslogion, 117. Anselm himself makes a significantly different distinction: “For it is one thing for an object to exist in the mind, and another thing to understand that an object actually exists.” (Aliud enim est rem esse in intellectu, aliud intelligere rem esse.)
5 From Norman Malcolm's essay in The Ontological Argument, op. cit., 159. (Malcolm's essay appeared originally in The Philosophical Review 69 [1960].)
6 ibid.
7 Proslogion, 121—33, includes a series of arguments designed to show that God must be “whatever it is better to be than not to be.”
8 Cf. op. cit., Monologium (Deane Edition), Preface, 36.
9 ibid., Ch. I, 37; Proslogion (Charlesworth Edition), 119.
10 ibid. “In fact, everything else there is, except You alone, can be thought of as not existing.”
11 ibid., 103.
12 ibid., 117, quoted below, on p. 160.
13 Saint AUGUSTINE: Basic Writings, ed. Whitney Oates (New York: Random House, 1948), in the Confessions, Bk. XII, Ch. XXV.
14 Op.cit., Ch. II, 117.
15 ibid., “nothing greater can be thought” (mains cogitari non potest).
16 ibid.
17 ibid. See footnote 19.
18 Moreover, if I am right, ANSELM holds that it is unnecessary for one to be in possession of mental images in order for the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be thought” to be meaningful. See below.
19 ibid. “Thus, when a painter plans beforehand what he is going to execute, he has the picture in his mind, but he does not yet think that it actually exists because he has not yet executed it. However, when he has actually painted it, then he both has it in his mind and understands that it exists because he has now made it.”
20 Op. cit., Anselm's reply to GAUNILO, 169–91.
21 Op. dt., Proslogion, Ch. XI, 133. See footnote 23.
22 St. AUGUSTINE, On the Free Will, particularly Bk. II, Ch. VI, pp. 27–29, in Vol. I of Selections From Medieval Philosophers, ed. McKeon, R. (Scribner's: New York, 1929)Google Scholar.
23 Op. cit., Proslogion, 117. MALCOLM holds that this passage implies the doctrine that existence is a perfection. On that basis he rejects Anselm's initial attempt at proof. MALCOLM suggests that while it makes good sense to say that “my future house will be a better one if it is insulated than if it is not insulated,” it is senseless to say that my future house will be better if it exists than if it does not (op. cit., 139). If MALCOLM had not begged the fact (“my future house”), it would not be senseless to talk about the difference between a plan and its realization. The simpler reading of ANSELM is preferable: the claim that, of things conceivable, those which, upon reflection, turn out to be real are more important (to a person who attempts to establish reality in this way) than those which turn out to be unreal. And as ANSELM says: “What can be more clear than this?” (Deane edition, op. cit., 157).
24 ibid.
25 ibid. 119.
26 Cf. Hartshokne's article in the Plantinga anthology, op. tit., 134: “… since God is conceived as all-pervasive of actuality and possibility, if we do not know God as existent, it cannot be because we have been denied some requisite special experience, since either any experience is sufficient, or else none could possibly be.” See also 128f.
27 Op.cit., 119.
28 ibid.
29 For a more complete discussion of the nature of religious dispute see Scepticism and the Language of Dispute, in Discourse: A Review of the Liberal Arts (Fall, 1965).