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Existence as a Perfection: A Reconsideration of the Ontological Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Leroy T. Howe
Leroy T. Howe
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Central Michigan University
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Extract

Anselm's two ‘ontological’ arguments rest upon three fundamental assertions:

(1) The idea of God is the idea of a being than which nothing more perfect is conceivable.

(2) Whatever exists in the understanding and outside the understanding is more perfect than whatever exists in the understanding alone. (Prosologion 2)

(3) Whatever cannot be conceived not to exist is more perfect than whatever can be conceived not to exist. (Proslogion 3)

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , October 1968 , pp. 78 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

page 78 note 1 Anselm, Proslogion, translated by Deane, Sidney Morton (La Salle, Illinois. Open Court Publishing Company, 1961).Google Scholar While Anselm aimed at a single proof, it is clear that the Proslogion proffers two relatively autonomous arguments. Recent examinations confirm this judgement. See Barth, Karl, Fides Quarens Intellection: Anselms Beweischer Gottes in Zusammenhang (Muenchen, 1931);Google ScholarHartshorne, Charles, ‘Ten Ontological or Modal Proofs for God's Existence’, in The Logic of Perfection: Essays in Neo-Classical Metaphysics (LaSalle, Illinois. Open Court Publishing Company, 1963);Google Scholar and Malcolm, Norman, ‘Anselm's Ontological Arguments’, reprinted in Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures by Norman Malcolm (Englewood Cliffs, New York. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963).Google Scholar

page 78 note 2 While Anselm presupposed this broader assertion, he did not state it explicitly. The first to articulate the proposition in this form was William of Auxerre in the Summa Aurea. (Hartt, Julian N., The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1940.)Google Scholar

page 79 note 1 Gaunilo, In Behalf of the Fool, translated by Deane, op. cit., p. 148.

page 79 note 2 Aquinas, Thomas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, translated by Pegis, Anton C. (New York. Doubleday, 1955), I, 11, p. 82.Google Scholar

page 79 note 3 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Smith, Norman Kemp (London. Macmillan and Company, 1961), pp. 500–7.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 For Anselm, ‘understanding’ consisted not in the perception of intelligibles in God by virtue of divine illumination, as it did for Augustine, but rather in the demonstration of a belief's necessity, in the sense of its entailment from intuitively evident propositions. On this point, see especially Gilson, Etienne, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

page 80 note 2 Anselm, Proslogion, op. cit., I, pp. 5–6.

page 82 note 1 Especially had he employed the earlier argument De Grammatico, that use is a sufficient criterion for meaning, specified by reference to contexts of usage and not objects denoted. See Henry, D. P., ‘Saint Anselm's “De Grammatico”’ (Philosophical Quarterly 10:111–26, 04, 1960)Google Scholar for further exposition of this point. The implication is obvious: ‘ordinary language’ treatments of the ontological argument, such as Malcolm's, faithfully duplicate one context, although an earlier one to be sure, of Anselm's reflections.

page 82 note 2 Anselm, Reply to Gaunilo, op. cit., VIII, p. 168.

page 83 note 1 Kant, op. cit., Bxviii, Bxxvii, B166 n.

page 84 note 1 Kant, op. cit., A242, B148, B178, B300, B306, B308, B311.

page 84 note 2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922), 5.043.Google Scholar

page 85 note 1 Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth, and Logic (London. Victor Gollancz, 1946), second edition, p. 103.Google Scholar

page 85 note 2 Quine, Willard, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, reprinted in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

page 86 note 1 Leibnitz, , New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, translated by Langley, Alfred (LaSalle, Illinois. Open Court Publishing Company, 1949), p. 504.Google Scholar

page 86 note 2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, translated by Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York. Macmillan Company, 1953), I, 517.Google Scholar

page 86 note 3 Hartshorne's recent examinations also take Leibnitz' problem to be the central difficulty with Anselm's proof. For a fuller evaluation of both views, see my ‘Conceivability and the Ontological Argument’, Sophia 5:3–8, 04, 1966.Google Scholar

page 87 note 1 Malcolm makes this same mistake, and is criticised with considerable justification by Matthews, Gareth, ‘On Conceivability in Anselm and Malcolm’, Philosophical Review 70:110–11, 01, 1961.Google Scholar

page 87 note 2 Malcolm regards Gassendi as the first to raise the question of whether existence can be regarded properly as a property of things. But Gassendi contended only that existence, which is God's essence, is not analogous with properties of other things. Attributes of God, such as omnipotence, are comparable with some attributes of things, such as the equality in the magnitude of angles in all triangles. But God's existence, constituting his essence, does not bear the same relationship to that essence as properties do to finite essences, for properties do not constitute the essence of a finite thing. Thus, Gassendi's point is not that existence is not a property in general, but only that it is not a property of God. In the light of this, Descartes’ reply is quite appropriate: ‘Here I do not see to what class of reality you wish to assign existence, nor do I see why it may not be said to be a property, taking the word property as equivalent to any attribute or anything which can be predicated of a thing, as in the present case it should by all means be regarded. Nay, necessary existence in the case of God is also a true property in the strictest sense of the word; because it belongs to Him and forms part of His essence alone.’ (The Philosophical Works of Rene Descartes, translated by Haldane and Ross (Cambridge University Press, 1934), 2, pp. 185–90.)Google Scholar

One study suggests that this problem was thought about considerably earlier than in Gassendi's time. See Rescher, Nicholas, ‘A Ninth-Century Arabic Logician on: Is Existence a Predicate?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 21: 428–30, 07 1960.Google Scholar

page 89 note 1 Barth, Hartshorne, and Malcolm have ferreted out these modalities in Anselm's own formulations with considerable success. But Descartes’ statement of the point is clearest: ‘In the idea or concept of a thing existence is contained, because we are unable to conceive anything except under the form of an existent; that is, possible or contingent existence is contained in the concept of a limited thing, but necessary and perfect existence in the concept of a supremely perfect being… To say that something is contained in the nature or in the concept of anything is the same as to say that this is true of that thing…. But necessary existence is contained in the nature or in the concept of God. Hence it is true to say of God that necessary existence is in Him, or that God exists.’ (Second Reply to Objections, op. cit.)

page 89 note 2 Quine, Willard, ‘Reference and Modality’, reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, p. 155.Google Scholar

page 90 note 1 Alston, William, ‘The Ontological Argument Revisited’, Philosophical Review, 69:452–74, 10, 1960.Google Scholar

page 91 note 1 Weiss, Paul, Modes of Being (Carbondale, Illinois. Southern Illinois University Press, 1958), esp. p. 439.Google Scholar Barth's commentary is excluded from discussion because its import is primarily theological rather than philosophical. (Barth himself requests that his Anselm study be read as a prologue to the Church Dogmatics) While Anselm's arguments can be read as reflections within the circle of faith rather than as reasoned inquiry relevant outside the faith, it is dubious that Anselm himself would have agreed to such an interpretation, which would have conceded Gaunilo's demur to the effect that the argument is not an argument at all. Neither can the ontological argument be defended properly by currently fashionable appeals to sui generis ‘religious’ arguments. Anselm surely hoped for a wider appeal than merely to religious language-games rather than to theistic ones. The approach under development here takes serious issue with those who hold that religious beliefs can be grounded only in religious arguments.

page 92 note 1 Anselm, Monologion, op. cit., VI, pp. 46–9 esp.

page 92 note 2 For an interesting discussion of the concept from a seven-fold perspective, see Sontag, Frederick, Divine Perfection: Possible Ideas of God (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962).Google Scholar The following analysis merely assumes that Sontag's types are reducible further; it is not to the purpose of the present inquiry to engage in full elaboration of this issue.

page 94 note 1 Hartshorne's proof employs two meanings for ‘perfection’ also, especially in his distinction between God's existence and his actuality. The definition of divine perfection in terms of modal coincidence is one excellent expression of the infinity model, freedom for and openness to unrealized possibilities. But only God's actuality could be perfect in this sense; his existence, if subject to presently undetermined possibilities, would not be deducible, invalidating the ontological argument. God's existence is perfect, but in the sense of complete and intelligible; only this meaning can constitute the link to ‘God exists’ via the proposition ‘Necessary existence is a perfection’.

page 95 note 1 Leibnitz, Animadversiones in partem generalem Principiorum Cartesianorum, as cited by Latta, Robert, The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings (London. Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 276.Google Scholar

page 95 note 2 Descartes, Principles, op. cit., I-14.

page 95 note 3 Descartes, Reply to Objections IV, op. cit.

page 95 note 4 Spinoza, , Ethics I-11 in Selections, edited by Wild, John (New York. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930).Google Scholar

page 95 note 5 Leibnitz, On the Ultimate Origin of Things, Latta, op. cit., p. 340. The point is expressed in a less cumbersome manner in the Principles of Nature and Grace: ‘…as possibility is the principle of essence, so perfection or degree of essence…is the principle of existence.’ (Ibid., p. 341.) And in the Monadology: ‘…for perfection is nothing but amount of positive reality’. (Ibid., p. 240).

page 96 note 1 Malcolm, op. cit., p. 144.

page 96 note 2 Weiss, op. cit., 4.39, Italics mine.

page 97 note 1 Sontag, op. cit., p. 137.

page 98 note 1 Malcolm, op. cit., p. 160.

page 99 note 1 Malcolm, op. cit., p. 161.

page 99 note 2 Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy (Westminster, Maryland. The Newman Press, 1960), I, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 99 note 3 Burnet, John, Early Greek Philosophy (New York. Meridian Books, 1961), p. 9.Google Scholar

page 100 note 1 Martin, Gottfried, An Introduction to General Metaphysics, translated by Schaper, Eva and Leclerc, Ivor (London. George Allen and Unwin, 1961), p. 119.Google Scholar