Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
To follow this lecture, you will need either the Readings book, or:
Turn to Readings, p.26 (or to Charlesworth, St Anselm's Proslogion), and read the Proslogion preface. In making the Readings I cut off the end of the preface. It reads:
And although I deemed neither this present writing nor the former one (i.e. Monologion) worthy to be called a treatise or to bear the name of an author, nevertheless I thought that they should not be circulated [i.e. by copying the manuscript] without titles which in some way would issue to anyone coming across them an invitation to read them. Hence I gave a title to each, and called the first An Example of Meditating about the Rational Basis of Faith calling the present work Faith Seeking Understanding. But after a number of people had already copied both works under these respective titles, I was urged by several readers to prefix my name to these writings... To make the affixing of my name less inappropriate [I can't explain how], I retitled the first writing Monologion, i.e. a soliloquy, and the present writing Proslogion, i.e. an address.It is an address to God - the book is a prayer, like Augustine's Confessions.
At the end of chapter 1 (omitted from the Readings) he writes:
Lord, I do not attempt to comprehend your sublimity, because my intellect is not at all equal to such a task. But I yearn to understand some measure of your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe even this: that I shall not understand unless I believe.
In the Readings, p.26, read chapter 2. (Pause the tape while you do that.) To summarise the argument: God is the greatest being we can possibly think of; suppose he does not exist; then we could think of something greater - namely something else with the same characteristics we think of God as having, but, in addition, as existing; and thus the greatest thinkable being (God) would not be the greatest thinkable being - this something else would be. But it is obviously impossible that the greatest being we can think of should be not the greatest being we can think of. Therefore the supposition that God does not exist must be false - he must exist.
Notice that in this summary I don't say anything about existing in the mind. Anselm uses this terminology - in fact down to "And surely" is to explain what it means; but it's not essential to the argument.
This mode of argument is a variant of one of the Stoic schemata. Turn to Supplement, p. 44, and look at the second inference scheme: "If the first, then the second; but not the second, therefore not the first". In a reductio ad absurdum "the first" is the supposition, the opposite of what you want to prove; "the second" is the obviously impossible proposition that follows from it; therefore not the first, but its opposite, what you wanted to prove. To construct an argument using "the first" as a premise inferring "the second" justifies the hypothetical or conditional proposition, "If the first then the second".
Let me explain this point in more detail. It is not likely that you can prove anything significant from just one premise - most arguments have two or more premises. But it may be that some of those premises are obviously true, too true to need saying. So imagine an argument from the premises A, B and C to the conclusion D; and let's suppose that A is the opposite of what you finally want to prove, and suppose B and C are obviously true, and suppose D is obviously impossible, a proposition that cannot possibly be true. Then the construction of a valid argument from A, B and C to D justifies the conditional statement. If (A&B&C) then D. Then use this conditional statement as a premise in the final stage of argument (write this down and think about it):
1.If (A&B&C) then D
2.But not D (obviously false)
3.Therefore not (A&B&C) (from 1 and 2 by the second Stoic
schema).
4.But B&C (obviously true)
5.Therefore not A (from 3 and 4, by a variant of the third Stoic
schema).
To return to Anselm's argument. What is the obviously impossible proposition that follows from the supposition that God, the greatest being we can think of, does not exist? It is that the greatest being we can think of is not the greatest being we can think of. This is like saying that John Smith is not John Smith. Turn now to Supplement p.94 and read the notes, together with the text of chapter 2, Readings, p.26.
Many readers feel that there is something wrong with this argument, and there are books and articles on it; in fact there is a considerable modern debate about it. But for the present let us leave aside the question whether it is a good argument; I will return to it in the last part of this tape.
In Readings p.27 read chapter 3. This chapter takes the argument a little further: chapter 2 argued that God does exist, chapter 3 argues that he cannot even be thought not to exist - not only is his existence a fact, but his non-existence is unthinkable. The non-existence of any other thing that exists is thinkable, but not the non-existence of the most perfect thinkable being.
Notice that the argument of chapter 3 is of the same form as the argument of chapter 2. Chapter 2 argues that God must have true existence, because otherwise we could think of a more perfect being; ch. 3 argues that he must have existence in such a way that his non-existence is unthinkable, because otherwise we could think of a more perfect being. In general, the most perfect thinkable being must have a given attribute if a being with this attribute would be more perfect that a being without it: because if that is so, then if God did not have that attribute we could think of a more perfect being, namely one with all the other attributes we think God has, plus this one.
This is reminiscent of Monologion chapter 15 - turn to Readings p.23 and re-read that chapter. This is the "one single argument" Anselm refers to in the Proslogion preface - the one argument that would suffice to prove whatever we believe about the divine being. It is this argument:
X can be true existence, or existence so true that non-existence is unthinkable, or wisdom, or justice, or "whatever we believe about the divine being". In Readings p.27 read chapter 5. The idea of Monologion chapter 15 was the thought that forced itself on Anselm when he looked for the single argument, as he describes in the Proslogion preface.
At this point we leave Proslogion. The rest of the book is in fact quite short, another sixteen pages, covering some of the topics discussed in more detail in the Monologion. The Monologion seems to be Anselm's main book on God; the Proslogion complements it by simplifying and unifying the main argument.
Near the end of section 1, notice the phrase "greater than all beings"; this is not quite the same as Anselm's phrase, "that than which nothing greater can be thought". Anselm will later suggest that the difference is significant. But otherwise section 1 seems a fair enough summary of the argument.
Now read the rest of Gaunilon's answer on behalf of the fool, together with my summary in Supplement p.95. The numbers in my summary correspond to the numbered sections of Gaunilon's text. Pause the tape while you work through this.
Now a few comments. Read again the first paragraph of section 2. Gaunilon says: from the fact that I can understand the words "greatest thinkable being" it does not follow that that being really exists: I understand the words "square circle", but there are no square circles. But does Anselm argue: "I have the concept of this being in my mind, therefore the being exists"? Obviously not: Anselm's argument is more complicated than that. In paragraph 2, Gaunilon attacks a "straw man", an argument that is not really Anselm's. Gaunilon imagines how the attack might be met: "unless this is a special case, and you can't understand the words except by understanding the real existence of the being the words refer to", and he goes on to refute this. But Anselm would not have made this reply, since it was not his argument that was being attacked.
Similarly section 3 does not bear on Anselm's argument - Anselm would agree with everything in section 3.
Section 4 comes closer to the point, since Anselm does say that this nature is in the understanding. But as I suggested earlier in this lecture, this point does not seem essential to the argument. Anselm need not say anything about existence in the understanding. He could simply argue, suppose the greatest being we can think of does not really exist; then we can think of a greater and so on. This will work as long as there is some sense, any sense, in which we can think of the greatest thinkable being. Still, section 4 may be a telling objection to the argument as Anselm states it. Sections 5 and 6 also seem relevant.
Two comments. First, near the beginning he says, "it will suffice if I reply to the Christian". The point of this appears two-thirds of the way down that page: "now my strongest argument that this is false is to be appeal to your faith and to your conscience" (i.e. "consciousness", which is what conscientia usually meant at that time). Christians know from experience that they have some understanding and thought of God, so it cannot be true that the greatest conceivable being can neither be understood nor thought of.
Second, on the right-hand side of Readings, p.33, in the paragraph beginning "further". The second sentence means: No one who doubts this doubts that if this being did exist, its non-existence, in actuality and in the intellect, would be impossible. This is explained by Proslogion, ch.4, Readings, p.27. "But whatever can be thought as existing and does not actually exist, could, if it were to exist, possibly not exist, either actually or in the mind" : For example, if you can think of the existence of your not yet actually existing great-grandchildren, then, when and if those great-grandchildren do exist, they will be capable of non-existence, e.g. they may die, they will not be necessary beings.
Let's distinguish between a necessary being and a possible being: a necessary being necessarily exists, it cannot not-exist. A possible being either does not exist now but may exist sometime in the future, or does exist now but may not exist in future - its non-existence is possible. Notice that a being actually existing now is a merely possible being (merely possible, though actual, as contrasted with necessary) if its non-existence is possible. Anselm assumes that if a being comes into existence after not existing, then its future non-existence is possible; it is not a necessary being.
Similarly, in the next paragraph ("I will go further") he assumes that whatever does not exist at some place or some time is not a necessary being. Perhaps this is what rules out the "lost island" analogy, which Anselm dismisses very briefly in section III. By definition of "island" an island does not exist at some places, namely in the water that must surround it.
Spend a little time reading right through the debate between Gaunilon and Anselm, and think it over.
When Archbishop Lanfranc died, King William II (son of William "the conqueror") kept the see of Canterbury vacant for four years. Then the king took sick, and was advised to confess his sins and prepare for death. Anselm was in England on some business between his monastery of Bec and an English monastery. He was called to hear the king's confession, which he did. Then some members of the court seized the opportunity to get the king to agree to install Anselm in the vacant see of Canterbury. Anselm resisted strenuously, but the king begged him:
O Anselm, what art thou about? Why dost thou deliver me to everlasting torment?... I beseech thee, suffer me not... to perish both in soul and body. For I am certain that I shall so perish if I end my life holding the archbishopric in my possession.(You can read the whole story in Eadmer's Historia Novorum, translated in English Historical Documents, Vol.II, p.650ff; of course they didn't speak in old-fashioned English with "dost" and the like, but in up-to-the-minute Latin or French!). The courtiers forced the symbols of investiture on him - the ring and the staff - but Anselm continued to protest. He said:
I tell you, my lord king, that thou wilt not die of this sickness, and therefore I wish thee to know how easily thou mayest alter what has been done with me; for I have neither acknowledged nor do I acknowledge its validity.
This is an edifying story of a monk's humble reluctance to become archbishop; but perhaps the monk had some political shrewdness, too. He knew that if the king recovered he would think he had been stampeded into filling the vacancy. He did recover ("as Anselm had foretold"), and reversed all his good resolutions. Then Anselm went to him, and said "My lord king, my mind is still in doubt whether I should agree to accept the archbishopric or not", and laid down a number of preconditions (again, perhaps a shrewd move, making the king want to stick to his resolution to install Anselm by seeming to resist). Eventually Anselm was installed as Archbishop and set out to undo the damage done during the vacancy.
But more strife followed (you can read about it in Eadmer's Historia, or in A.L. Poole From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, ch.6). The strife was over the practice of royal installation with staff and ring - i.e. over the king's claim to a veto over church appointments, which the Church was challenging in every country at the time. Eadmer describes a great row in the king's council.
Aghast at the turn of events and divided among themselves, they [the counsellors] stood apart in groups of two or three or four, earnestly taking counsel and discussing how they might compose an answer refuting the archbishop's argument, which would allay the king's anger without directly impugning the word of God. Meanwhile Anselm sat by himself, putting his whole trust in the innocence of his heart and the mercy of God. The deliberations of his adversaries being unduly protracted, leaning against the wall he fell into a gentle sleep.
In the midst of all this conflict he was working out the argument of Cur deus homo. He finished the book in exile: the king's anger drove him out of the country.
Let's look very briefly at what the New Testament says about the subject. In the library you will find several "Bible concordances" which index all the words, or most of the words, of the bible. In Christian bookshops you will find a range of scripture-searching software, computer-readable bibles - the Greek text, the Hebrew text, English translations: I don't think any other book has been so often published electronically. So by using a concordance or a computer you can search to key words. On the present topic you might look up "death", "save", "redeem", for a start.
Here are a few passages (RSV translation):
These passages seem to say that Christ reconciled sinners with God by undergoing death. However, the New Testament does not seem to explain how Christ's death could reconcile sinners with God. Sometime you might read J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, chapters 7 and 14, to see how early Christians understood the doctrine. He begins chapter 7 by remarking that "the development of the Church's ideas about the saving effects of the incarnation [that is, of God becoming man] was a slow, long drawn-out process" (p.163). One common theory was that Christ's death and resurrection was a victory over the devil: the devil had Christ killed, but by this injustice lost the rights he had previously had over sinners. Kelly summarises Origen to this effect:
He speaks of Jesus delivering up his soul, or life, not indeed to God, but to the Devil, in exchange for the souls of men which the Devil had claimed as his due because of their sinfulness. The Devil accepted the exchange, but could not hold Jesus, Who proved stronger than death, in his clutches and was thus cheated of his victim. (Kelly, p. 186).Similar explanations were given by Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augustine, though they also offered other explanations. Richard Weingart, in his book on Peter Abelard's doctrine on this subject, The Logic of Divine Love, gives a summary of a version of this explanation given by Gregory the Great:
He treats redemption principally as the liberation of the human race from the power of the devil. Because of the sin of Adam all men are subject to the sway of Satan, a power which is just because man originally submitted to it by his own free volition. In order to destroy the dominion of the devil, God sent the Redeemer, who was to effect his mission "not by force, but by reason". Although Satan had a legal right to exercise power over sinners, he had no jurisdiction over one in whom there was no sin; and if he once exercised his right unjustly, he would lose it over all his subjects. Christ assumed human nature to deceive his adversary, for in his incarnate form as a servant, subject to the passions and vicissitudes of humanity, he could not be recognised by the devil. "When coming for the redemption of mankind, our Lord made, as it were, a kind of hook of himself for the death of the devil... as if it were his bait". Snapping up Christ's flesh, the devil was caught on the hidden hook of his divinity and thus destroyed. Because he engineered the crucifixion of the sinless Son of God contrary to justice, his own legitimate power over sinners was justly abolished (Weingart, The Logic of Divine Love, pp. 82-3).
Anselm rejects this theory: the devil never had any rights over sinners. According to Weingart it was rejected not only by Anselm, but also by Abelard and most other theologians of the time, perhaps because of Anselm's objections to it. In its place Anselm gives an explanation foreshadowed by Augustine in terms of the satisfaction owed to God because of Adams's sin - the obligation to make up for the dishonour that sin had done to God. Only God himself could pay such a debt, but it was a debt owed by mankind; so God became man and himself paid the debt.
Read the "Preface", Readings, p.38 (or in Fairweather, A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham).
Notice that Anselm refers to the objections of unbelievers: whereas Monologion and Proslogion were written for his monks, and the doubts and objections were imagined, this book is a contribution to an actual exchange of argument with non-Christians, probably with Jews. (On this see R.W. Southern, Anselm and his Biographer, pp.90-1, who tells us of a work of Gilbert Crispin, a friend of Anselm's, which tried to answer the objections of certain London Jews to the doctrine of the incarnation).
In Readings, p.38, read Chapter 1. Notice that this work is a dialogue between the author and Boso, who was a monk of Bec who joined Anselm in England and may have helped write the book. Now read the rest of the extracts in the Readings, with the notes in Supplement, p.96.
To evaluate the whole argument you would need to read the whole book; the extracts in Readings may be enough to arouse your interest. In the history of Christian theology Anselm's book is of major importance. If you regard the argument as successful then it is also of major philosophical importance, as showing by philosophical reasoning that God had to become man and die. But even if the overall argument is not successful, it is philosophically interesting for its analysis of important ethical notions. See for example, Readings, p.40, right hand side, p.41 RH., p.42 RH, p.46.
Anselm's work is the high-water mark of the general confidence of medieval Christians that their faith is reasonable. As Augustine wrote (Przywara, passage 104, in Supplement p.104):
God forbid that we should think that he hates in us that in which he has created us superior to the other animals [i.e. reason]. God forbid, I say, that we should believe there to be no need to accept or to seek a reason for what we believe, since it would not even be possible to believe if we had not rational souls.Anselm's project was to offer compelling reasons for all the main items of Christian belief - the existence of God, the trinity, the incarnation, the redemption, the immortality of the human soul, eternal reward and punishment, the necessity of faith. Later medieval philosophers also sought reasons for their belief but they did not claim to have found compelling reasons for all of those items of belief - only for about as much as Plato believed, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul. For the rest, they held that it is reasonable to believe on the authority of God's revelation, given in the bible and in the traditional teaching of his Church, things for which no compelling philosophical reasons can be given (though reasons of "fitness" can sometimes be found), and against which there are no sound philosophical objections.
I don't think Anselm's argument works. I think the wording needs to be tightened up, and when that is done it loses its plausibility. Open the Proslogion, chapter 2 (Readings, p.26), and look at it. "And surely that than which etc cannot exist in the mind alone"; more accurately, "cannot be thought of as existing in the mind alone". "For if it is thought to exist solely in the mind, it [rather, another being exactly like it in other respects] can be thought to exist in reality also, which is greater." The comparison of great and greater is between two thinkables, not between something in the mind and something in reality. That is why I say that "that than which etc cannot exist" should be amended to "cannot be thought of as existing". And the conclusion, correspondingly, will be that it must be thought of as existing both in the mind and in reality. And it seems quite true that if we want to form a thought of the greatest thinkable being it must be the thought of something existing. But it remains to be proved that that something really exists.
At another point the argument also needs to be worded more accurately. "If that than which etc. exists in the mind alone, this same that than which a greater cannot be thought is that than which a greater can be thought". Isn't it rather that what at first we supposed was the greatest thinkable being has turned out not to be the greatest, because we can think of a greater? There is nothing absurd about that. Perhaps what I thought was John Smith approaching turns out to be someone else; that doesn't mean that John Smith is not John Smith.
Medieval logicians said something similar. For example, Ockham says (Summa logicae II.14) that "The Chimera is the Chimera" is not true, because it implies something false, viz. that there is such a thing as the Chimera (just as modern logicians would say that "The present king of France is the present king of France" is not true, because there is no king of France). Similarly Aristotle had said, "neither 'Socrates is ill' nor 'Socrates is well' is true if Socrates does not exist at all" (Categories 13 b18).
Turn now to Readings, p.104-5, and read Thomas Aquinas's comment on Anselm's argument (Summa theologiae, 1, q. 2, a. 1, ad. 2). See the first article, "whether the existence of God is self-evident", objection 2; and then, on p.105, the answer to objection 2. "Nor can it be argued that it actually exists unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which" etc. He expects his readers, trained in logic, to know that propositions about this being used as premises in the argument cannot be true unless the being exists. "And this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist". In other words the argument is a petitio principii, it "begs the question". I've noticed recently that people say that something begs a question when they mean that it raises the question. In philosophical jargon to beg the question is to assume as a premise what the argument is supposed to prove, which is fairly pointless. It is a mistake more easily made than you might think. If Anselm uses a premise that is not true unless the greatest thinkable being exists to prove that the greatest thinkable being exists, then he begs the question.
Many other objections have been made; for a survey see McGill's article. Some of the traditional objections don't seem very telling. For example, it is sometimes said as an objection that you can't prove the real existence of something starting from a mere thought in the mind. But this is merely a generalisation based on the refutation of attempts to construct such a proof. Unless you can produce a specific refutation of Anselm's argument then the generalisation does not hold. The refutation of other similar arguments might establish a presumption against Anselm's, but maybe his is different from the others, maybe it works, in which case the presumption is defeated.
Another objection is summed up in the slogan "existence is not a predicate". But Anselm nowhere says it is, so some further argument is needed to turn this slogan into an objection relevant to his argument. The first place to look for an elaboration of this objection is Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, section B620-131 (pp.500-7 in N. Kemp Smith's translation). Kant is criticising what he calls the ontological argument, which is a version of an argument by Leibniz, based partly on arguments of Descartes and Duns Scotus, and only rather remotely on Anselm. Kant's critique includes a number of points some of which may be sound; but some don't seem to be. For example, he says:
"Being" is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing... the real contains no more than the merely possible. A hundred real dollars do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible dollars.True, the difference between the concept of a real 100 dollars and the concept of 100 imaginary dollars is not that the first is a concept of 101 dollars, but still the two concepts differ in some other way. The thought of an imaginary 100 dollars is different from the thought of a real 100 dollars, somehow. Similarly the thought of a greatest thinkable being that actually exists is not the thought of a greatest thinkable being that is merely thinkable, whether existence is a real predicate or not.
Besides the works we have looked at, the Monologion, Proslogion and Cur deus homo, Anselm wrote a dialogue on Truth, a dialogue on Free will, a dialogue on The Fall of the Devil, a letter On the incarnation, and a dialogue The harmony between God's Foreknowledge, Predestination, Grace and Free Choice. His collected works would be well worth extended study; he is a philosopher and theologian of great intelligence, courage and originality.
Among his contemporaries, in the early twelfth century, there were a number of other remarkable writers: Gilbert de la Poree, John of Salisbury, Hugh of St Victor, Peter Abelard, and the great antagonist of Gilbert and Peter, St Bernard of Clairvaux. The twelfth century, even before the arrival of the new translations from Arabic and Greek, was a period of great intellectual activity. Most of it we will have to pass over because of the shortness of this course. You can read about it in Gilson's History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, p. 139 ff. In the next two tapes I will talk about two more twelfth century authors, Peter Abelard and whoever wrote the Abbreviatio Montana.
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