The medieval saint and philosopher Anselm of Canterbury is famous for developing the first ontological argument in his book Proslogion (1078).
Anselm was deeply inspired by Plato. He believed in a spiritual (or metaphysical) reality that was every bit as real as the physical reality we experience through the 5 senses, but separate from it. God exists in this metaphysical reality. |
Anselm wrote the Proslogion ("Discourse") around 1078. Chapters 2 and 3 contain his ontological argument. The book is in the style of a prayer or 'meditation' rather than a typical philosophical argument, which has led philosophers like Peter Vardy to wonder if Anselm was really setting out to 'prove' God's existence at all.
Proslogion begins like this: Come then, Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You. Where and how |
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THAT THAN WHICH NOTHING GREATER CAN BE CONCEIVED - ANSELM
To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? - Isaiah 40: 18
Anselm goes on to explain that things that exist only in the mind are inferior to things that are real. He uses the example of a painter planning a new painting. The painting that exists in his imagination might be very fine, but it only becomes valuable or beautiful once he has painted it - once it exists in reality.
Certainly, you wouldn't call someone "a painter" if they'd never actually painted a single picture, but had only imagined them.
This means that a God who only existed in your mind WOULDN'T be the greatest thing you could conceive. A God who existed in reality would be greater. Since God is the greatest thing you can conceive, God must exist in reality and not just in the mind.
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The proposition “God exists” is self-evident in itself…since God is his own existence but, because what it is to be God is not evident to us, the proposition is not self-evident to us - Thomas Aquinas
YES
Anselm demonstrates that God cannot be thought of as "not existing". He uses a priori reasoning to show that, if you truly understand what the idea of 'God' means, you will see that God cannot not-exist. It's a mistake to think that Anselm is trying to "define something into existence". Instead, he's exploring what it means to say that a being like God exists.
Critics of Anselm always focus on his first argument (Proslogion 2), but this is the weaker of the two. Anselm isn't saying existence is a predicate: he's saying it is greater to exist necessarily (aseity) compared to existing contingently. This was recognised by Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm, who interpret Anselm as saying that God must be either necessary or impossible.
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NO
Anselm certainly IS trying to "define something into existence" and this was recognised at once by Gaunillo and later by Thomas Aquinas. Anselm is using a 'play on words' - in particular, he's muddling up the idea of predicates with the idea of existence. Existence is not a predicate (as Kant showed) and God is not 'greater' for existing.
Whether God exists necessarily or not, Anselm's argument still moves from analytic propositions (God's definition) to synthetic propositions (the existence of a real God in the actual world) and this is a violation of logical rules. The only arguments that add to our knowledge of the real world are a posteriori arguments; a priori arguments clarify what words mean, but don't give us facts.
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