Anselm's Ontological Argument
The
evidences for the existence of God that we've considered in this series of arguments for the existence of God so far have
all been a posteriori—proofs in which the reasoning has been from
the effect to the cause. The ontological argument follows the
opposite, a priori, method. Just as in geometry we argue a priori
from the nature or essence of the figure, as expressed in its
definition, to its various properties, so certain thinkers have
sought to argue from the nature of God to the fact of His existence.
God, it must be remembered, exists necessarily. To exist belongs to
His very essence. In this He differs from all finite things. Their
existence is contingent. Their natures can be expressed in concepts,
whether they exist or not, and the concepts throw no light on the
question of their existence. However, if we could arrive at a
knowledge of the Divine essence, we couldn't represent it thus apart
from its real existence. Existence isn't something extraneous to its
nature as such, but enters into the nature as a necessary
constituent. And this it is which has led men to believe that it is
possible to argue from the concept of God's nature
to His actual existence, precisely as we argue from essence to
property. Those who made this attempt failed to realize that though
God's nature demands existence, yet our human intellect is incapable
of knowing the Divine essence as it is. We're on a lower plane of
being, and our powers are proportional to our nature. Of natures that
are above us we posses a meager and inadequate knowledge, reached
through abstraction and discursive reason. We know something about
them, but can't really be said to know them. For this reason,
Aristotle made his well-known comparison of the human intellect to
the eyes of bats, saying that as bats are blinded by the daylight,
but see in the dusk, so man has but a dim and imperfect cognition of
the things which in themselves are such as to evoke the clearest
knowledge; and that he knows best those sensible objects, which by
reason of their material nature are incapable of being apprehended
otherwise than obscurely. Yet though the proof, as we will see, is
invalid, two thinkers of great eminence—Anselm of Canterbury, who
first propounded the argument, and, subsequently, Descartes—have
not only regarded it as sound reasoning, but as the most secure of
all the demonstrations of God's existence, while Leibniz also gave it
his approval. It thus possesses great historical interest, and can't
be passed over in silence. Anselm knew that there must be some simple
yet cogent argument, demonstrating both that God exists, and that He
is the supremely perfect Being in whom all perfections are found. The
argument is developed in the first chapters of the work to which
Anselm gave the name 'An Address on God's Existence'. It may
be thus summarized: The term God signifies that than which nothing
greater can be conceived. Even the fool, when he denies the existence
of God, has an idea corresponding to the word 'God'; and his
idea is what we've just stated. That is, that of a nature than which
nothing greater can be conceived. However, a nature which is of this
kind is a necessarily existing nature. If it only existed in the
mind, we could conceive something greater. That is, a nature so great
as not merely to exist in the mind, but to be exigent of real
existence as well. God, therefore, exists. Such an argument stated like this is
invalid. It is true that a nature conceived as that other than which
nothing greater can be thought of, must be conceived as necessarily
existing, exists at all. The point at issue is, is there
such a nature? Couldn't it be that it is pure imagination? If so,
although when we conceive it, we conceive it as self-existent, it
won't really exist outside our imagination. Many skeptics have seen
no more in the argument than a sophism, and have countered that any
person of intelligence could have been deluded into regarding it as a
valid argument. Such was the attitude of Anselm's contemporary, the
monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. He argued that in this way he could
prove the existence of a fabled Lost Island, which was supplied with
all riches and all conceivable delights. “Let it be granted,"
he argued, “that the idea of that island is of a land which
excels all others, and you must own that my fabulous region exists:
for otherwise the idea of some really existing land would excel it.”1
And to this day it is often thought sufficient to dismiss the
reasoning in similar fashion. Yet careful consideration might well
suggest that one of the most profound intellects of his age wasn't
likely to have been misled by a childish fantasy; that there was
probably something deeper in the argument than appears at first
sight. That this was so, in fact, is shown by Anselm's reply to his
critic. He there states definitely that his argument is specific to
the infinitely perfect being, and that to apply it to anything finite
is to have completely misunderstood its significance. This sheds a
new light on Anselm's intention. It is, in fact, evident that a being
possessed of infinite perfection must be self-existent. If He
receives existence from another, He's dependent on that other, and
not infinite at all. In other words, self-existence is part of the
essential nature of the infinitely perfect. Now let's assume that
there is nothing contradictory in an infinitely perfect nature, and
that no impossibility is involved in the idea; that it is capable of
actual existence. It follows of necessity that it exists. Here,
though not in other cases, possibility implies existence. In all
other cases, if we say that a nature is possible, we mean that there
is no internal contradiction involved, and that consequently, given
an adequate efficient cause, the nature might be realized. But here,
as we've seen, there is no question of dependence on an efficient
cause. The nature is its own sufficient reason. If it is possible, it
exists actually. It would be a contradiction in terms for such a
nature to merely be possible—to be capable of existence and yet not
to exist actually, since self- existence belongs to its essence.
Anselm's real error is in the assumption that an infinite nature
involves nothing contradictory, and that its possibility is not open
to question. It is one thing to be able to affirm of some essence
that we can fully apprehend, that we can see its possibility, but it
is another to have to content ourselves with saying, with regard to a
nature obscurely and imperfectly known, that we don't detect its
impossibility. The latter is our case with regard to the infinite.
Our concept of the infinite is negative. It gives us no insight into
the essential nature of the one infinite Being, but simply asserts
absence of limits. Indeed, that the possibility of an infinite nature
isn't immediately self-evident appears from the fact that at the
present day some Modernist philosophers and theologians are prepared
to maintain the thesis of a finite God. That position leads to all
sorts of contradictions, and is incapable of reasonable defense.
However, the possibility of an infinite being must be established by
logical arguments. And this is done by demonstrating a posteriori
that a First Cause exists, and then that He must be infinitely
perfect. Since the infinite exists, we know that such a being is
possible. It follows from this that the argument fails for the reason
which we first gave. Inasmuch as our notion of the infinite doesn't
assure us of its internal possibility, we can draw no conclusion
other that an infinite nature must be conceived as existing
necessarily, if it exists at all. We can't prove that it does exist,
since we lack the power to frame an idea of the essential nature of
the infinite.
It isn't too much to say
that few of Anselm's critics have understood his argument. They think
it is sufficient to adopt an illustration employed by Kant, and to
say that we can't prove the existence of a hundred dollars from the
idea of them, no matter how good the dollars are supposed to be. This
refutation of Anselm's argument really misses the point of that this
is an effort to discriminate between the idea of God and all other
ideas. Gaunilo's objection comes closer to the point than Kant's
does. Anselm argued that existence must belong to one idea, though to
one only, namely, the idea of that other than which nothing greater
can be conceived. To say, as Kant does, that the idea of a hundred
dollars doesn't involve their existence, is quite irrelevant, since
we can easily conceive greater things than a hundred dollars. On the
other hand, Gaunilo's idea of a perfect island was at least the idea
of something perfect or complete of its kind. Nothing greater of its
kind could be conceived. We can, however, conceive something of a
greater kind—perfect of its kind, and of a kind more perfect.
Scotus, and, long
afterwards, Leibniz, both put their finger on the weak spot, and
pointed out that the argument was inconclusive because the mind can't
affirm with certainty that an infinite nature is possible.
Descartes Weighs In
Descartes' version of the
argument isn't materially different from that of Anselm. It is
worthwhile, how-ever, to see how it takes its place in his system.
According to him, the concept of God is an innate idea. He denied, as
is well known, what appears to be so evident, that through
sense-perception we possess direct cognition of the external world,
and held that the direct object of knowledge is always internal and
spiritual; that we have no immediate knowledge of anything except the
ideas within the soul. These ideas he distinguishes into
'adventitious' and 'innate.'
Adventitious ideas
include all particular perceptions. These appear to inform us of the
existence of a material world outside us; yet it would be rash to
accept their testimony on this point without further guarantee. As
innate we must reckon our universal ideas, and all common notions,
i.e., axiomatic truths. These can't come from without: no particular
impression can be the cause of a universal idea. Are, then, these
innate ideas capable of giving us valid knowledge? And if so, what
can we gather from them? He answers this question by the application
of his criterion of truth, viz., clearness of conception. If the
innate ideas are tested by this criterion, it appears that they
convey perfectly valid knowledge, but in reference only to possible
existence, not to real. The note of possible existence is attached to
every nature thus intellectually conceived. Any one of them could be
actualized in a real external order of things. Yet there is among
them one that differs from the rest—the idea of God. This contains
the note, not of possible, but of real existence. It is the idea of a
supremely perfect Being, and a Being can't be conceived as supremely
perfect unless it is really existent. God, therefore, exists. The
argument can be stated thus:
- Every note which is contained in the clear idea of any nature belongs in fact to that nature.
- Real (and not merely possible) existence is contained in the clear idea of God.
- Therefore, God really exists.
In God's existence he
finds a satisfactory basis for certainty regarding the reality of an
external world. Since adventitious ideas must come from myself, from
God, or from an external corporeal world. They don't come from
myself, since they come often against my will. They don't come from
God, since He wouldn't deceive me. There is, therefore, an external
world. The criticism of Anselm's form of the argument is true here.
Our idea of the supremely perfect being containing the note of
necessary existence isn't obvious in the sense that is necessary for
the validity of the reasoning. We can form such ideas of geometrical
figures. The intellect knows beyond all doubt that these contain no
contradictory elements, and that, therefore, possible existence can
be argued, but we have no such certainty regarding the concept of
supreme perfection. For all we know, some impossibility might be
involved in such a nature. That this isn't the case must be
demonstrated. Descartes' contention that the idea isn't gathered from
created things, but forms part of the soul's initial endowment, seems
to lend some clarity to his conclusion that the idea can't be a
figment of our own minds, but must represent objective reality.
However, as we've previously pointed out, his whole theory of innate
ideas is baseless. The idea of God, the perfect Being, stands in no
need of recourse to any such hypothesis. We reach it without
difficulty by considering the finite perfections of the created
world, and then forming a negative idea, in which perfection is
conceived without any limit.
1In
Behalf of the Fool, Guanilo's response to Anselms address.
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