Anselm's Ontological Argument and the Philosophers
Saint Anselm of Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury, perhaps during a moment of enlightenment or starvation-induced hallucination, succeeded in formulating an argument for God's existence which has been debated for almost a thousand years.
It shows no sign of going away soon. It is an argument based solely on reason, distinguishing it from other arguments for the existence of God such as cosmological or teleological arguments. These latter arguments respectively depend on the world's causes or design, and thus may weaken as new scientific advances are made (such as Darwin's theory of evolution). We can be sure that no such fate will happen to Anselm's Ontological Argument (the name, by the way, coined by Kant).
In form, Anselm's arguments are much like the arguments we see in philosophy today. In Cur Deus Homo we read Anselm's conversation with a skeptic.
This sort of question-and-answer form of argumentation (dialectic) is very much like the writings of Plato. The skeptic, Boso, question's Anselm's faith with an array of questions non-believers still ask today. Anselm answers in a step- by-step manner, asking for confirmation along the way, until he arrives at a conclusion with which Boso is forced to agree. This is just like Socrates' procedure with, say, Crito.
Later philosophers have both accepted and denied the validity of
Anselm's famous ontological argument for the existence of God, presented in both the Proslogium and Monologium. Anselm did not first approach the argument with an open mind, then examine its components with a critical eye to see which side was best. Anselm had made up his mind about the issue long before he began to use dialectic to attempt to dissect it. "Indeed, the extreme ardor which impels him to search everywhere for arguments favorable to the dogma, is a confession his part that the dogma needs support, that it is debatable, that it lacks self-evidence, the criterion of truth." (Weber, V)
In chapters 2-4 of his Proslogium, Anselm summarizes the argument. A fool is one who denies the existence of God. But even that fool understands the definition of God, "a being than which nothing greater can be conceived." But the fool says that this definition ...
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... I tend to agree with logically sound arguments at all other intersections of my life. It seems as if Church dogma these days accentuates the mystery of God, staying away from reasoning such as Anselm's to attract followers. For to have faith in the mystery is what is admirable. One should not be tempted to attend church smugly because it is illogical not to.
Bibliography
Anselm. Proslogium, Monologium, Cur Deus Homo. with introduction by Weber, translated by S. N. Deane. Open Court, La Salle, 1948.
Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Image Books, New York, 1994.
Honderich, Ted (editor). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University
Press, New York, 1995.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by N. K. Smith. London,
1933 (2nd edition).
Kierkegaard, Soren. Philisophical Fragments. Translated by D. F. Swenson.
Princeton University Press, 1962. Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval
Thought. Random House, New York, 1962.
Lotze, Rudolf. Microcosmus. Translated by Hamilton and Jones. Edinburgh, 1887.
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Southern, Richard. Saint Anselm. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Van Inwagen, Peter. Metaphysics. Westview Press, Boulder, 1993.
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