Most of the arguments for God’s existence start with observations of the natural world, concluding a posteriori, after the fact, that God’s existence is the most probable explanation of those observations. As such, most arguments for God’s existence are inductive and so are subject to the problem of induction; even when these arguments are strong, they do not provide proof but only a high degree of probability. Their conclusions are always falsifiable if and when observations are found to be flawed or incomplete (and the premises of the argument thus shown to be untrue), as well as if and when a more probable explanation of these observations is suggested. Because of the limitations of arguments for God’s existence that start with observations, St Anselm sought to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone. In his Monologion (1075-6) he proposed a deductive argument based on the grades of perfection in things, arguing that the existence of God as supreme perfection is contained within claims that other things are more or less perfect. Nevertheless, Anselm’s argument was criticized by his predecessor as abbot of Bec, Lanfranc. Lanfranc argued that Anselm had not succeeded in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone, because the premises in his argument depended on observations, even though they did contain his conclusion. Because of Lanfranc’s criticism, Anselm determined to try to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone in the Prosologion (1078). Anselm developed two novel a priori arguments in this work and he remained confident of his own success, despite criticisms leveled during his lifetime, writing…
“I BELIEVE that I have shown by an argument which is not weak, but sufficiently cogent, that in my former book I proved the real existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived; and I believe that this argument cannot be invalidated by the validity of any objection. For so great force does the signification of this reasoning contain in itself, that this being which is the subject of discussion, is of necessity, from the very fact that it is understood or conceived, proved also to exist in reality, and to be whatever we should believe of the divine substance.” Concluding words of Anselm’s “Responsio” to Gaunilo
Nevertheless, history has shown that St Anselm did not succeed in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone.
In the Prosologion Book II St Anselm presents a simple version of what Kant later termed an Ontological Argument from God’s existence. He started by quoting Psalm 14:1 and claiming that atheists are fools because they accept that God is “that than which nothing greater conceived of” and claim that there is nothing by that definition that exists in reality, when existence is a perfection and so my definition a property of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”. For St. Anselm, if God only existed in the mind, it would always be possible to conceive of something greater, namely something that existed in reality, so existence in reality must be a property of God. This argument was criticised by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers in his wittily titled “On behalf of the fool.” Gaunilo objected to St. Anselm’s claim that Atheists accept his definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.” He argued that people can recognise a word without forming an idea of what it refers to in their minds and that is particularly likely in the case of God, because it is a word which refers to something that is unlike any other thing and which is beyond most peoples’ experience. Further, Gaunilo argued that it is possible to have in one’s minds all sorts of ideas of things which do not exist in reality. He then used St Anselm’s own example of a painter and a painting to reason that the idea of something in the mind must always precede understanding that that idea also exists in reality. St Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, arguing that if Atheists do indeed recognise the word God but not have any idea what it refers to then so much more are they fools! Later, Descartes’ examples of triangles and valleys support St Anselm’s reasoning here – how could somebody claim to recognise the word triangle without understanding its essential predicate of three-sidedness? St Anselm then reasoned that God is not like the idea of a unicorn or a Gruffalo, because unlike any other imaginary thing, the idea of God is of a being whose supreme nature logically contains existence in reality. He hit back at Gaunilo, claiming he never intended his example of the painter and painting to be used in the way that Gaunilo used it. Nevertheless and despite these responses, Gaunilo’s criticisms are effective. Having ideas “in intellectu” for words to refer to depends on experience, on having ideas about similar things to draw on. When an artist paints, they form an idea of what they want to paint in their minds that usually draws on experience before they then apply paint to the canvas and come to understand their painting as an object that now exists in reality as well as in the mind. When an artist paints a triangle, they have experience of three-sided shapes to draw on and if not that, then some experience of shapes full stop. However, if an Artist tried to paint God, they would have no comparable experience to draw on at all, so the idea of God in the artist’s mind would always be prior to and separate from the idea of God existing in reality. Atheists have no experience of God and so the word “God” is just a sound, a sign without anything to point towards. Later, St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo. While he accepted that God’s existence can be said to be self-evident and known through reason alone to somebody who really understands all that can possibly be known about the nature of God, Aquinas noted that in practice most people have little concept of what God is. In Summa 1,2,1 Aquinas wrote: “Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us…— namely, by effects.” In this way, St Anselm failed to demonstrate that Atheists are fools because God’s existence can be known from reason alone.
Further, a version of St Anselm’s argument in Proslogion II presented by Descartes was later criticised by Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell. Persuasively, Kant pointed out that St Anselm and Descartes are wrong to claim that existence is a perfection. Taking the example of a job interview, a candidate who exists is not more perfect than a candidate who does not, rather the application of the non-existent candidate is meaningless. Superficially, it might seem that Kant is nitpicking. A real chocolate cake, any real chocolate cake, will always be greater, more perfect, more tasty etc. than any imaginary chocolate cake, even an imaginary one with zero calories. No less authorities than St Anselm and Descartes saw this as a matter of common sense. Despite this, Kant’s point deserves deeper consideration. In logic, following Aristotle, there are two kinds of predicates – accidental predicates and essential predicates. Accidental predicates are properties that an object may or may not have – like cherries or cream in the case of a chocolate cake. Essential predicates are properties that an object must have or not be that object – like chocolate-flavour in the case of a chocolate cake. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant argues that existence is neither an essential predicate of anything, nor really an accidental predicate. Focusing for the moment on existence as an accidental predicate, existence cannot be seen as a quality that an object might or might not have in the same way that cherries or cream are qualities that a chocolate cake might or not have. To explain this point, Bertrand Russell used the example of a claim such as “the present King of France is bald” – it seems like a meaningful claim and capable of being true or false, but in fact because there is no present king of France the claim is meaningless. St Anselm implies that there is a scale of perfection, the idea of an imaginary God appearing lower down the scale, with Gods having more or less perfect attributes appearing alongside, with the real God at the top of the scale. In fact real existence is a precondition of appearing on the scale and being capable of comparison. Russell points out that when St Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” he begs the question and smuggles the existence of God as the object into the premises of his argument, reasoning that existence must de dicto be an accidental predicate of God. If there is no “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then predicating anything of it is meaningless. St Anselm needs to establish the existence of God before his demonstration of God’s existence will work, so the argument could only ever succeed for a person who had reason to believe already, on other grounds. For these reasons as well, St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.
Perhaps aware of the shortcomings of his argument in Proslogion Book II, in the Proslogion Book III St Anselm had already presented a different type of Ontological Argument, reasoning that it is greater to exist necessarily than only contingently, so necessary existence is a property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.” Here, St Anselm is arguing that existence is not just an accidental predicate of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” but is actually an essential predicate of God, to use Descartes’ later example as three-sidedness is an essential predicate of being a triangle. In his “On behalf of the fool” Gaunilo criticised this argument as well, trying to reduce it to absurdity by using the analogy of a perfect island. Nobody but a fool would believe that an island exists simply because somebody says that it is a perfect island, so existence (necessary or otherwise) must be predicated of it. In this last criticism, at least as applied to the argument presented in Proslogion III, Gaunilo fails to show that Anselm’s argument is flawed. As St Anselm wrote in the Responsio:
“I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality or in concept alone (except that than which a greater be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island, not to be lost again.”
St Anselm is right to remind Gaunilo that necessary existence cannot logically be said to be a property of islands, unicorns or gruffalos for that matter. Such things exist within time and space, contingently. No contingent existence can necessarily exist. Only God, who is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” has and must by definition have the unique property of necessary existence. Despite this, however, St Anselm assumes that the idea of necessary existence is possible. Persuasively, Immanuel Kant argued that because all our possible knowledge is of contingently existing things, any claims about necessary existence are like a “cupola of judgement”. For Kant, all existential claims must be synthetic, capable of being verified through sense-observations. We simply cannot claim to know that anything necessarily exists, so St Anselm’s argument is speculative and must fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone. Further, Kant argues that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything. He wrote:
“If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…”
Kant is effectively agreeing with Gaunilo, although supporting his argument rather better, in reasoning that existence is “out there” in the world of the senses and so incapable of being demonstrated analytically, through reason alone, and without reference to the senses. Today, the vast majority of people would side with Kant and Gaunilo in their understanding of what it means to exist, and for this reason St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s necessary existence from reason alone.
Nevertheless, after WWII Kant’s world-view started to be questioned and along with it his claims that all existential statements have to be synthetic and that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything. Perhaps drawing on those like Hegel who drew attention to cracks in the foundations of Kant’s critical philosophy early in the 19th Century, scholars such as Hartshorne and Quine pointed out how dogmatic Kant’s understanding of existence and meaning was. For Hartshorne, Kant’s criticism of seeing existence as an accidental predicate is fair, but ignores the possibility that necessary existence could be an essential predicate of God and only God. Hartshorne reasoned that either God’s existence is contingent (which it cannot be, by definition), or God’s existence is necessary and necessary existence is impossible or God’s existence is necessary and possible, in which case God exists. Rejecting Kant’s limited world-view, Hartshorne argued that God’s necessary existence is not impossible, so God necessarily exists. Of course, Hartshorne’s argument depends on his ability to reject the claim that necessary existence is an impossible concept. JN Findlay strongly disagreed with Hartshorne on this point, arguing that by showing that God’s existence can’t be contingent and can only be necessary when necessary existence is impossible,
“it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence…’ [First published in Mind, April 1948]
While others have agreed with and built on Hartshorne’s reasoning, including Norman Malcolm and later Alvin Plantinga, those who side with Hartshorne tend to be those who believe in God on other grounds. Again, attempts to revive the Ontological Argument serve to show that Anselm failed to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone to anybody who doesn’t already believe in God on other grounds.
In conclusion, St. Anselm’s arguments in the Proslogion fail to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone. Gaunilo, Kant and Russell among many other critics have shown how St. Anselm’s reasoning is problematic, firstly by showing how Atheists need not accept the first premise of the argument, that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and by undermining the whole attempt to demonstrate existence by analysing the concept of anything, and then by showing that existence is not a perfection or quality that can properly be accidentally predicated of anything and that necessary existence is impossible, because existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything. That is not to say that St Anselm’s arguments have no value. While they fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone, for those who already believe in God – or at least for those who already reject Kant’s critical world view with its limitation on possible knowledge and meaningful claims – the arguments remain an important part of articulating their faith and revealing the nature of God.
In his Proslogium Chapter II St Anselm quoted Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart there is no God” and then attempted to demonstrate that atheists are indeed fools in asserting a straight contradiction – that God (who necessarily exists by definition) does not exist. Gaunilo responded in his wittily titled “On behalf of the Fool”, using his famous “perfect island” analogy to reduce St Anselm’s argument to absurdity as part of a more sophisticated multi-pronged attack. Despite the fact that St Anselm attempted to refute Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that Atheists are not in fact fools.
Firstly, Gaunilo reduced Anselm’s argument in Proslogium II to absurdity, pointing out that “if a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists… either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself supposing I should allow him this proof or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainly the existence of this island…” Anselm was right to object, noting how God is not like an island or any other thing in time and space, so that while God is capable of necessarily existing, the island is not. “I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality of in concept alone (except that than which nothing greater can be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his island, not to be lost again…” However, in practice Gaunilo’s point still stands because asserting God’s necessary existence cannot take us beyond the world of words and ideas. As Kant (in his Critique of Pure Reason 1787) and later Russell pointed out, existence is not a predicate and adds nothing to the concept of an object to make it more perfect and therefore a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”. Kant wrote “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment.” Further, to exist means to exist within – or at least to have an effect within – time and space. As Kant later pointed out, contingency is of the essence of existence – having the capability to exist or not exist, to exist here and not there or now and not then. To use Kant’s words, all existential claims must be synthetic; he wrote “If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” While Kant’s criticism has been rejected by both Hegel and Quine for being “dogmatic” and based on assertion rather than proper argument, and while Norman Malcolm also rejected Kant’s claim writing “In those complex systems of thought, those “language games”, God has the status of a necessary being. Who can doubt that? I believe that we can rightly take the existence of those religious systems of thought in which God features as a necessary being as disproof of the dogma affirmed by Hume (and Kant of course) that no existential proposition may be necessary…”, in practice Kant’s criticism appeals to common sense, as Gaunilo’s did. It is unreasonable to claim that something exists when there is no way to see hear, touch, smell or taste it and when its effects are not observable on things that we can hear, touch, see, smell or taste either. It may be true that the meaning of words depends on how they are used rather than on what they refer to in some cases, but not when it comes to existence! Whatever people understand by the word gravity within a form of life will not change the fact that if you jump off a cliff you will fall to your death. Similarly, you can’t define something into existence; as Gaunilo rightly pointed out, to suggest otherwise can only be construed as “a charming joke” (Schopenhauer dismissed the Ontological argument for being such) or plain foolish. In this way, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that atheists are not in fact fools, but that advocates of the Ontological Argument might well be.
Secondly, Gaunilo is right to point out that Anselm’s claim that Atheists are fools because they hold a contradictory idea in their minds is mistaken. While Anselm suggests that the atheist conceives of God – who necessarily exists – not existing in much the same way as a fool might conceive of a five-sided triangle, through simply not understanding anything, Gaunilo points out that people can conceive of lots of non-existing things without being in the slightest foolish. Take the Gruffalo for one example… many people have an idea of this frightening creature in their mind, while also knowing that there is no such creature outside the pages of a storybook. He wrote “in my understanding, as I still think, could be all sorts of things whose existence is uncertain, or which do not exist at all…” Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo, writing “the opposite of the proposition “God exists” can be mentally admitted.” Summa Theologica 1:2:1 and much later, Kant also agreed that it is perfectly possible to conceive of God while rejecting any claim that God exists, writing “If then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” Anselm tries in this as well to distinguish between God and other things, writing “if that thing can be conceived at all, it must exist” because God alone, as that than which nothing greater can be conceived of, must necessarily exist. Later, Charles Hartshorne agreed with Anselm, pointing out that either God is impossible, or that he exists contingently or that he exists necessarily. The Ontological Argument shows that God cannot exist contingently – or He would not be worthy of worship or “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and Hartshorne argues that God’s existence is not impossible, leaving only the possibility that God exists necessarily. Nevertheless, Gaunilo points out that Anselm is mistaken in claiming that because we can only conceive of God necessarily existing, he necessarily exists. This is not how we conceive of things; the artist conceives of an object before they put brush to canvas, so the idea exists “in intellectu” before and prior it it being “in re” – the idea of an object and the object are two separate and separable things in all cases, including God. I could conceive of God as a necessarily existing being, but my conception of him would be something separate from his actual existence as what I have conceived of, leaving open the possibility that He could be only an idea in the mind, however apparently contradictory that might be. Again, as Kant wrote, “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence..” In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools.
Thirdly, Gaunilo argues that some atheists could recognise the word “God” without having an idea of what God is sufficiently for it to contain a contradiction, which is convincing. I might recognize the word “squircle” – and even begin to appreciate what concept it might refer to – while still unable to conceive of a square-circle properly. The squircle is therefore not “in intellectu”, let alone “in re” despite my accepting the definition of a squircle as a square circle. As Russell later pointed out, if I say “the present King of France is bald” it seems like I am making a sensible proposition that is capable of being true or false, but actually because there is no present King of France, the proposition is not capable of being either true or false and is therefore meaningless. Is it not possible that when the Atheist accepts that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” they do no more than you might in momentarily wondering if the present King of France is bald? On reflection they then conclude that there is no present King of France, so the question is meaningless. In relation to Anselm’s argument, the Atheist then reflects on the concept of necessary existence and concludes that it is impossible, so the concept of God is impossible and the Ontological argument meaningless. Here as well, Gaunilo showed that the Atheist is not a fool, but rather a person too sophisticated to be taken in by what Schopenhauer called Anselm’s “sleight of hand trick“.
Finally, Gaunilo points out that nobody can have a complete conception of the nature of God, because God’s nature is to be mysterious, unlike any other thing and greater than that which can be conceived of. It follows that – Atheist or not – without a clear idea of God it is impossible to analyse that idea and find existence or necessary existence within it. He explained “I do not know that reality itself which God is, nor can I form a conjecture of that reality from some other like reality. For you yourself assert that reality is such that there can be nothing else like it…” Later, Aquinas agreed, writing “because we do not know the nature of God, the existence of God is not self-evident” Summa 1.2.1 Although Anselm defends against this criticism vigorously, writing “It is evident to any rational mind, that by ascending from the lesser good to the greater, we can form a considerable notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable” and “If he denies that a notion may be formed from other objects of a being than which a greater is inconceivable… let him remember that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen…” Gaunilo’s point stands because Anselm’s reasoning reduces God to being the greatest of things, rather than that than which nothing greater can be conceived of. By Anselm’s own reasoning in Proslogion III God’s nature is not like the nature of other things and God’s greatness is not like the greatness of other things. While other things exist contingently, God exists necessarily, so it is not possible to “ascend from the lesser good to the greater” or to build an understanding of God’s nature from an understanding of created things. Further, in 1948 JN Findlay argued that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day, he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” If Anselm is serious in Proslogion III that necessary existence is a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then in addition to making it impossible for anybody to have sufficient grasp of the concept of God to analyse it and find existence within it, it also makes God’s existence impossible. As Findlay reasoned, a contingent being would not deserve worship & wouldn’t really be God, but a necessary being is a logical absurdity, meaning that Anselm’s argument proves that God’s existence is impossible. In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools… but JN Findlay showed that Anselm was!
In conclusion, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools. While Anselm easily heads off his “perfect island” criticism by pointing towards the more developed version of the argument he already presented in Proslogium III in his Responsio, Gaunilo’s full critique demonstrates that Anselm’s reasoning is unsound. While Anselm’s a priori definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is reasonable, Gaunilo showed that he is wrong to assume that accepting this definition entails having a clear enough idea of God to analyse and find necessary existence within. Gaunilo also showed that Anselm was wrong to ignore the existence of two separate stages in conceiving of any object, that of having an idea “in intellectu” and that of appreciating that the idea exists “in re.” As Kant later agreed, it is perfectly possible to have an idea of a necessarily-existing being (God) while appreciating that there is no instance of such a being, however contradictory that might seem, because the world of ideas and the world of existence are separate and separable and it is not possible to define something into existence or prove God’s necessary existence from reason alone.
The Ontological Argument was first proposed by St Anselm in 1078. In the Proslogion he tried to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone, first by defining God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”… as existence “in re” rather than only “in intellectu” makes something greater, God must therefore exist, and then by claiming that necessary existence is greater than contingent existence and so must be a property of God. The Ontological Argument soon attracted criticism, first from Gaunilo of Marmoutiers whose “on behalf of the fool” suggested that it seems like a joke to suggest that something must exist just because it is perfect, and then from Aquinas, who pointed out that “because we do not know the nature of God, His existence is not self-evident to us.” Nevertheless, while most people are sceptical of Anselm’s argument, as Bertrand Russell pointed out “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” As it happens, the argument – while containing some logical fallacies – does not depend on these so that they cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument… the question of its soundness depends on one’s worldview.
Firstly, it could be said that both versions of Anselm’s argument depend upon the logical fallacy of bare assertion, as in they assert that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” without proper argument. Nevertheless, all a priori arguments start with a priori premises, definitions which depend on a priori knowledge (reason alone) and often cannot be argued for using evidence. For example, if I argued that as bachelors are unmarried men and Simon is unmarried, that Simon must be a bachelor, it is not reasonable for you to demand that I demonstrate that bachelors are unmarried men from observations before proceeding. Similarly, if I argued that 2+2 = 4, I must begin with a priori knowledge of the numbers 2 and 4 and the concept of addition. It is not reasonable to ask for an argument that 2=2 and 4=4 before accepting that 2+2 = 4… because any sane person knows what 2 and 4 refer to and what the concept of addition entails. Anselm pointed out that anyone who claims that God is not “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” must be a fool. How can anyone think that there could be something greater than God… if they do, then they have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of God. In this way, while Anselm does assert his premises, he is justified in doing so and this “logical fallacy” is not a serious criticism of the ontological argument. Similarly, Anselm’s argument could be accused of begging the question, meaning that his conclusion of God’s necessary existence is contained within the premises. Yet surely this is the whole point of a deductive argument! Nobody criticises the argument 2+2 = 4 because the concept of 4 contains the concept of 2 twice. What Anselm is trying to do is to clarify that our concept of God includes His necessary existence, so it is unreasonable to expect Anselm’s conclusion not to contain his premises. In both these ways, Anselm’s Ontological Argument does not depend on any logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.
Secondly, it could be said that Anselm’s argument is guilty of being ad hominem and of appealing to authority. Anselm certainly attacks atheists as fools and quotes from Psalm 14:1 as part of his argument. Nevertheless, neither Anselm’s colourful language nor his Biblical allusion are part of his reasoning, so his argument could be stated without either quite easily. More seriously, addition, Anselm could be accused of asking a loaded question of atheists. Is God “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”? The atheist is railroaded into answering yes, in which case they have already admitted the conclusion, or no, in which case they are a fool… Yet as Bertrand Russell pointed out, asking a question about the properties of a non-existent object is meaningless. If I asked you “is the present King of France bald?” I feel bound to give a yes or no answer, when in fact I can’t give either because there is no present King of France. Similarly, in asking atheists to answer the question “is God that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”, Anselm could be bamboozling the atheist into answering yes or no, when either option would mean that they cede their point. This seems a lot like the either-or fallacy as well, with Anselm excluding options other than yes or no. However, it is clear that everybody, atheists included, have a concept of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in their minds, meaning that He undoubtedly exists “in intellectu” in a way that the present King of France, perfect islands etc. do not. As Anselm pointed out in his “Responsio” to Gaunilo, there is a difference between islands and God, in that islands can only exist contingently whereas God exists, if he exists at all, necessarily. This means that Russell’s point about the present King of France is not relevant to the Ontological Argument, as when Anselm asks “is God greater than that which can be conceived of”, he is justified in assuming that the knowledge of God exists a priori in intellectu, when the knowledge of contingent things – whether Kings or Islands – can only be a posteriori and synthetic. Kant is right to say “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…” when it comes to any and all contingently existing things, but as Anselm pointed out, God is not like other things, so the ontological argument could only ever apply to God. It seems that Anselm’s argument survives the accusation of depending on these logical fallacies as well.
On the other hand, Kant argued that Anselm creates the whole category of “necessary existence” to get around Gaunilo’s obvious criticism that what applies to perfect Gods should apply equally to perfect islands, unicorns and such. In this way, Anselm’s argument would depend on special pleading. Kant argued that existence involves having the potential to be and not be, so necessary existence is a contradictory concept like a square circle and so impossible. He reasoned that because existence must include having the potential to be and not be, existence cannot be used as an essential predicate of anything. Later in 1948 JN Findlay went further, claiming that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” For Findlay, if there are three options – God is impossible, God may or may not exist or God necessarily exists, then the Ontological Argument serves to show that God must be impossible and necessarily not exist, because if God may or may not exist He wouldn’t be God and necessary existence is impossible. Nevertheless, Hartshorne rejected this, arguing that if Findlay says that necessary existence is impossible, so must be necessary non-existence. Further, Kant’s definition of existence applies to contingent existence only, as does his claim that existence cannot be an essential predicate, necessary existence does not include the potential to exist and not exist by definition and so it could be an essential predicate of God. For Hartshorne, there is nothing impossible about necessary existence. We can conceive of God necessarily existing in much the same way as we can conceive of a three-sided triangle, when we cannot conceive of a square circle. As Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have pointed out, if God’s necessary existence is even possible – in the way that a unicorn or a Gruffalo is possible but a five-sided triangle is not – then God exists necessarily in every possible world. Of course, Kant would reject this, pointing out that we have no experience of “necessary existence”, making it a “cupola of judgement”, being outside our possible existence and entirely speculative. Nevertheless, although Kant’s criticisms are coherent with and conclusively destroy the Ontological Argument within his worldview, Kant’s worldview has been criticised by Quine for depending on dogmas and is not shared by everybody. As Norman Malcolm pointed out, it is clear that “necessary existence” is possible and not contradictory within some “forms of life” and their language games. This suggests that at least within these forms of life, necessary existence is not an impossible or invented category of existence, so Anselm’s argument does not depend on special pleading.
Further, other critics suggest that Anselm’s argument takes advantage of the useful ambiguity in the word “necessary”, thus depending on the fallacy of equivocation. The word necessary can mean de re necessary, in the sense it is used in Aquinas’ third way, meaning that God is self-explaining, doesn’t depend on anything, fully actual. The word necessary can also mean de dicto necessary, in the sense that it means that God’s existence is part of the concept of God so God’s non-existence cannot be asserted without contradiction. For example, saying “this triangle has five angles” would be to assert a contradiction, because the word tri-angle necessarily and by definition entails having only three angles. Could it be that the word “necessary” means two different things and that Anselm shifts from one meaning to the other to bamboozle us with a what Schopenhauer called a “sleight of hand trick?” While the concept of necessary existence is confusing and while the word “necessary” is used in both senses in the argument, the argument does not depend on ambiguity or equivocation because there is what Hegel called a “unity of thought and of existence in the infinite.” While there are two meanings to the word “necessary” these are related in that de dicto necessity refers to concepts and the rules of logic that originate in and depend on God’s de re necessity. Of course, Aquinas’ criticism of the attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone is apt here. Given that most – if not all – people struggle to “conceive of” God’s nature, how can we analyse that nature to find necessary existence – another almost inconceivable idea – within it? Aquinas as right that while God’s existence may be self-evident, it is not self-evident to us, and therefore that it is better to demonstrate His existence from what is known, observations. Nevertheless, the question asks whether the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome and the answer to that must be that it does not. There is no equivocation or fundamental ambiguity on which the argument depends.
In conclusion, Russell was right to say that “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” The Ontological Argument does not depend on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument, but depends for its soundness on the particular worldview or form of life within which it is advanced.
The Ontological Argument was first so-called by Immanuel Kant, who sought to destroy the attempt to establish God’s existence a priori that had been made by Leibniz, Descartes and first by St Anselm. In basic terms the Ontological Argument suggests that since
P1. God is supremely perfect and
P2. Existence in reality is better than existence only in the mind
C. God therefore must exist.
The argument contends that real existence is a necessary part of the concept of God and thus that attempts to deny God’s existence are foolish. Anselm quoted Psalm 14:1 and concluded that atheists assert a straightforward contradiction, in effect saying “God (who by definition must exist) does not exist”. While the argument seems like “a charming joke” (as Schopenhauer put it), as even the Bertrand Russell remarked, it is much more difficult to show how it fails. Nevertheless, the Ontological Argument does fail for the reasons set out by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant aimed his critique at Descartes’ version of the Ontological Argument, although his points do relate to other versions as well. Descartes developed his argument in several places, but the most well known version is in his Fifth Meditation, where he reflected that the existence of a supremely-perfect being was as undeniable and necessary as three sides are to a triangle or valleys are to hills. Like Anselm, Descartes suggests that existence is part of the definition of God as supremely perfect (as Anselm put it “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”). Kant rejected this absolutely. For Kant all knowledge claims are either synthetic or analytic. Synthetic claims refer to experience and so add to our knowledge of the world, but they always contain the possibility of being true or false. Analytic claims are based on logic, reason. The relationships between concepts – if valid they provide certainty, proof, but they are tautologous and do not add to our stock of knowledge, they just clarify our understanding and so provide insight. Kant argued that the Ontological Argument analyses the concept of God and claims to find existence within it. Although it is analytic, it makes an existential claim. Kant argues that this is impossible – all existential claims must be synthetic – and this is highly persuasive. Analytic statements cannot expand our knowledge of what does or does not exist in the real world. As Gaunilo remarked in response to Anselm in his essay “on behalf of the fool,” it is absurd to try to define something into existence. If somebody suggested that a perfect island exists just because by definition it has to, nobody would book tickets to go there on holiday! Kant’s division of knowledge into synthetic and analytic is still widely accepted, as is his argument that all existential claims must be synthetic, despite WV Quine’s criticism of Kant’s understanding of knowledge. Quine claimed that the division of all knowledge into synthetic and analytic was a “dogma of empiricism” and only true within Kant’s own limited worldview.
Kant went on to show how the Ontological Argument makes the assumption that existence is a perfection. Both Anselm and Descartes argue that it is better, more perfect, to exist in reality (in re) than just in the mind (in intellectu) but, as Kant points out, there is no difference between the concept of a real $100 and an imaginary $100 – the concept remains the same whether the money is in my pocket or in my head. Existence does not add a single penny to the concept, it just tells me where (and if) the concept has been actualised. Related to this is Kant’s famous observation that existence is not a predicate and that the Ontological Argument rests on poor grammar. A predicate is a word that describes an object. Although superficially it seems that existence adds to our knowledge of an object, in practice it is the basis on which any claims to knowledge about an object make sense. Take a job interview. If there are two candidates, equally well qualified, but it later emerges that only one exists it is not a case of saying that the real candidate is better than the fictitious one but it is a case of saying that the contest was a joke. As Bertrand Russell remarked, if I ask you “has the present King of France got blonde hair and blue eyes” I smuggle the assumption that there IS a present King of France into my question. Actually, there is no present King of France so my question is meaningless and can’t be answered either correctly or incorrectly. This is a difficult point to deny and seems to conclusively destroy the Ontological Argument’s claim to proving God’s existence. Although there is an intuitive human appeal to the idea that a (any?) real chocolate cake, island – or God – is better than one that only exists in the mind, in practice that cannot be sufficient basis for a claim that God exists.
Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument show that it fails in its object of proving God’s existence. Of course that does not mean that God does not exist. Just because the Ontological – or any – argument for the existence of God is found to be unsound has no effect on the existence or non-existence of God, although it does take away one support for Propositional faith. Is it fair to say that as a failed argument the Ontological Argument really is a “charming joke” then? Absolutely not. Anselm originally titled the Proslogion “Fides quaerens intellectum”; in the process of faith seeking understanding the Ontological Argument succeeds in clarifying our understanding of the nature and limits of human knowledge. As such, the argument continues to have great significance. Further, as both Karl Barth and Iris Murdoch suggested, the argument invites believers to reconsider what they mean by existence, particularly when it comes to God. Do believers really expect God to be real in the way that a perfect island might be real, or do they have a different sort of reality in mind?
Immanuel Kant criticised what he first termed the Ontological Argument at the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Focussing on the argument as presented by Rene Descartes, which suggested that existence is a perfection and thus a necessary attribute of God, who is a supremely perfect being, in the way that having three sides is a necessary property of a triangle or having valleys is a necessary property of being a hill – Kant concluded that the argument was “so much labour and effort lost”. For Kant, existence is not a perfection and is wrongly used as a predicate. He used the example of a sum of money – the difference between a real and imaginary sum is not that the real sum is worth more, just that the real sum might be in my pocket. Existence is not a predicate and does not describe the properties of an object, it just informs me whether there is such an object in the real world. Bertrand Russell developed this point, using the example of the claim “the present King of France is bald”. Russell pointed out that although the claim seems sensible, as if it is referring to the properties of the King of France’s head and might be either true or false, in actual fact, the claim is meaningless because there is no present King of France for the claim to refer to and thus no way that the claim is either true or false. Existence is not a predicate, it is not just another property that the present King of France does or does not have, it is the ground of meaning on which all sensible claims must be made. Michael Palmer used another example to explain this; that of two candidates applying for a job. If a panel is faced with two CVs listing the “perfections” of the candidate A and candidate B, it would be ridiculous to list “exists” as one of them – existence is neither a perfection nor properly used as a predicate, rather it is what makes the analysis of the CV and the contest between the candidates meaningful. Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument were highly influential and following the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, scholarly interest in the Ontological Argument declined steeply. Nevertheless, developments in the second half of the 20th Century showed that Kant’s criticisms are far from conclusive and reawakened scholarly interest in the Ontological Argument for God’s existence.
While Kant’s criticisms were directed at Descartes’ Ontological Argument, they are often applied to the arguments of St Anselm of Canterbury, presented in his Proslogion (1078). Anselm argued that if God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then God must, a priori, exist because it is greater to exist in reality than just in the mind, so if God existed only as an idea in the mind (as he must, if Anselm’s definition was accepted) then something greater could conceivably exist… something that existed in reality as well as in the mind. If God is, therefore, the greatest conceivable being then God must exist in reality, because existence is a perfection which makes something greater. Clearly, Kant’s arguments that existence is not a perfection and that existence is wrongly used as a predicate seem to undermine Anselm’s argument fatally. As Gaunilo of Marmoutiers had observed in his “On behalf of the fool”, the idea that the perfect island has to exist just by virtue of being the perfect island is absurd; nobody is going to book a ticket to go there on the basis of an argument like that. Nevertheless, that ignores how Anselm developed his argument in the next chapter of the Proslogion, a point that he made in response to Gaunilo’s attack by restating this part of the argument in his Responsio. In Proslogion Chapter 3 Anselm reasons that it is better to exist necessarily than to exist only contingently, therefore necessary existence – not being able to not exist – must be an attribute of that than which nothing greater can be conceived of. This development of the Argument could defeat Kant’s standard criticisms, in that while existence is not a perfection or rightly used as a predicate, that does not necessarily apply to necessary existence, which is a total state of existence either possible or impossible, not a property which might or might not be added to a object that could only ever contingently exist.
Norman Malcolm argued that Anselm’s argument in Proslogion 3 can be presented in terms of modal logic. Either God’s necessary existence is impossible – as in it contains a formal contradiction – or possible. If God’s necessary existence is possible, then it is necessary. Remember, necessary existence is not existence in the sense that we could encounter through our senses. The world of sense is a world in which things exist contingently and might or might not exist, as St Thomas Aquinas observed in his Third Way to God (Summa Theologica I.II QIII). To exist necessarily is to exist in a different way, a way that is by definition beyond anything that we could experience through our senses. For Kant, because necessary existence is beyond possible experience, then it can only be speculative to even speak of it. Kant called necessary existence a “cupola of judgement” meaning that it strays so far beyond possible knowledge to be a flight of fancy or a castle in the air. Nevertheless, this assumes Kant’s world view and the primacy of sense-experience. For rationalist philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz and later Malcolm, what is real cannot be limited to what can be experienced through the senses. The world of sense is faulty, partial, subjective and limited; empirical knowledge is contingent and ever-changing. For Descartes and Leibniz, rational knowledge should be primary because it is none of these things. A clear and distinct idea, an idea which contains no contradictions, is certain, complete, objective and constant. Just as we know that 1+1=2 without resorting to a posteriori reasoning based on experiences with apples and oranges, we know that God necessarily exists a priori because he is supremely perfect. Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have developed this line of reasoning, using the device of possible worlds. A concept is possible if it could be instantiated in any possible world. A unicorn is a possible concept; although unicorns (at least in the sense of being live horses with single horns!) don’t exist in this world, it is not inconceivable that they might exist in a multiverse. The concept of a horse with a horn is not contradictory, it is possible. On the other hand, a square circle is impossible and could not exist in any possible world because the definition of a square is to have four straight sides, something which directly contradicts the definition of a circle. God’s “maximal greatness” – which must include Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence – is possible not impossible and, because maximal greatness precludes the possibility that God might or might not exist in any one universe, God must necessarily exist in every possible world, including this one. In essence, Plantinga and Craig show that Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument fail because they rely on an impoverished epistemology.
To explain this, for Kant, all existential claims have to be synthetic, they have to refer to something in the world of sense-experience and therefore contain the possibility of being either true or false. If I say “unicorns exist” I am making the claim that there are such things as unicorns in the world – if I saw a unicorn I would know that the claim was true and if no evidence of unicorns has ever been found it is probably fair to say that the claim is false. Making the claim “God exists” does not refer to anything in the world of sense experience and it is not possible, therefore, for the claim to be either true or false… in the terms of the Logical Positivists, it is a meaningless claim. In 1951 American Philosopher WV Quine attacked the basis of Kant’s objections to the Ontological Argument in his essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Like Karl Popper and AJ Ayer, as a young man, Quine had spent time with the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists, but by 1950 Quine came to reject their approach, not only to establishing meaning in language but also to bigger questions about epistemology – “what can we know?” and “what does it mean to say that something exists?” Logical Positivists were Positivists, that is to say that they approached philosophy on the basis that scientific, empirical observation is the only source of knowledge and that metaphysics is a waste of time. Positivism formally began with the work of French philosopher Auguste Comte, but looked back to Kant and before that to Hume and Locke. Locke rejected continental rationalism and argued that human beings have no innate ideas, being born as tabula rasa and gaining all their knowledge and understanding from experience. Hume agreed to a large extent, although he acknowledged the limitations of sense-experience as well. Kant said that Hume “awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers and gave a new direction to my philosophical enquiries” and adopted Hume’s fork, the categorisation of possible knowledge into either what is known analytically or what is known from sense-experience, dismissing any other claimed knowledge – including most metaphysical and religious claims – as speculative. Scientific method drew on the work of Locke, Hume and Kant in that it came to focus on sense-experience as the source of all new knowledge and limiting the role of reason to one of analysis and clarification. It is fair to say, therefore, that the Logical Positivists were empiricists. Quine rejected empiricism, and the Logical Positivism of his youth, arguing that in embracing Hume’s fork Kant had awoken from one set of dogmatic slumbers only to fall into another set of dogmatic slumbers. On what basis, Quine asked, did the Logical Positivists claim that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge? The Logical Positivists failed to provide an adequate explanation of why meaningfulness should depend on either sense-experience or logic and on nothing else. This point was later developed by Alvin Plantinga in his “God and Other Minds” when he pointed out that the Verification Principle is itself unverifiable and therefore self-defeating. Quine also questioned the lack of any adequate explanation for the authority of logic, pointing out that you have to accept logic in order to defend why you should accept logic, which is circular. The same applies to the authority of the empirical senses, Quine argued. On what basis do we say that the sense-experience are the only source of new knowledge without just appealing to sense-experience? This is pure reductionism and again, the justification for Positivism is circular. The answer is that the Logical Positivists adopted Kant’s world-view without much thought, ignoring the fact that Hume (not to mention Descartes) had already outlined the serious problems with relying on the senses in that they are faulty, limited in scope and that data always needs to be interpreted through reason anyway. If Quine is correct and Kant’s epistemology is more dogmatic than critical, then his criticisms of the Ontological Argument start to collapse. On what basis did Kant claim that all existential claims have to be synthetic? For Quine, he had no adequate justification for assuming the authority or primacy of sense-experience, other than by appealing to that same sense experience. Without any proper justification for his epistemology, it seems that Kant’s criticism of the Ontological Argument is on shaky ground indeed.
Further, to say that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge is to relegate whole fields of study, discussion and indeed human experience to junk status. The fact that the Verification Principle proposed by the Logical Positivists as the gold standard of meaning had to be liberalised through the 1930s and 1940s shows that the claim that discussions about topics such as Ethics, History and Aesthetics (let alone Religion) are meaningless is unworkable and runs against what most people believe and experience. Quine proposed an alternative holistic approach called Ontological Naturalism, which moved away from the attempt to define the meaning of individual statements in terms of their reference and towards assessing their meaning in terms of cohering with and contributing to the whole field of science as an explanatory framework. Popper also rejected Verificationism, proposing another, more generous and inclusive, approach to meaning in scientific terms in the Falsification Principle. Both were influential and contributed to a decline in Logical Positivism to the extent whereby by 1960 it was declared “dead, or as dead as any philosophical movement can be.” The decline of Logical Positivism demonstrates the inadequacy of Kant’s world-view for the modern world. What place has a system which claims that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge in a world of Quantum science and particle-Physics, in which the very act of observing particles changes their state? Long gone is the idea that the senses offer human beings a transparent window on the external world, even the world of matter and energy. Today, the whole field of theoretical Physics would have to be declared “meaningless” by Schlick, Ayer and Carnap… and yet the insights it yields offer humanity unthought of technological advances… they work. Further, Physics suggests that what appears “real” to our senses is far from being solid and as it appears. On the Planck scale no matter exists… if I hit the table the contact I experience is really the interaction of charges in the fields which make up the vast majority of each atom in the wood and in my hand. The universe, which appeared like a vast machine to Kant and which still appears eternal to the amateur start-gazer has been revealed to be infinite while still having edges, a shape and a colour and while expanding at an increasing rate… into nothing. All of this suggests that reason – mathematics – can yield new knowledge and confidently move past anything we can hope to observe through our senses, to a much greater degree than either the Logical Positivists, or Kant, allowed.
On the other hand, even theoretical Physicists admit the need to test their theories through experiments. Very recently, different theories on black holes were tested when radio-telescopes were linked together to take a photograph of a black hole. The photograph – an observation – was necessary to check analytical calculations and prevent them from being purely speculative. This supports Kant’s claim that all existential claims must be synthetic. Physicists theorise about black holes, but it is not possible to say that or how they exist unless and until we take a photograph or make some other observation to verify (or falsify) the theories. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Physics – as there are aspects of Theology – which resist any possible observation. By definition, it is not possible to observe God’s necessary existence, because by definition it must be outside of the matrix of time and space in which our senses operate. Similarly, it is not possible to observe what caused the Big Bang which created the space-time continuum, or to experience conditions in a multiverse. The extent to which cosmological theories like cosmic inflation and string theory are pseudo-scientific (to use Popper’s phrase) because they are not falsifiable or subject to normal scientific method has been a matter of controversy on the letters’ page of Scientific American since 2017. Nevertheless, this should not stop Physicists (or Theologians) from using reason, the other source of knowledge available to them, to push forward the boundaries of knowledge. While Kant was right to be cautious and to warn against metaphysical speculation – because after all, the greatest obstacle to finding something is being convinced that you already have it – his world-view with its focus on the senses as the arbiter of possible knowledge is too restrictive for the 21st Century in the way that the world-view of the Logical Positivists became too restrictive for the 20th Century. It also sits ill with both developing insights about the way in which our senses work and rely on our brains and pre-existing ideas and with insights about the different reality beyond how things appear to our senses, on the Planck scale. While Popper’s Falsification Principle is more flexible than the Verification Principle, it still limits what can be said scientifically to that which can be falsified in relation to observations, it still assumes a Kantian world-view, and herein lies the problem for particle Physics and Cosmology with Scientific Method as it is conceived today. It seems that Kantian epistemology and the assumed world-view within which science has operated since the 1790s is on the verge of being rejected; to use Thomas Kuhn’s phrase, the Positivist scientific (and philosophical) paradigm is shifting and giving way to a paradigm which is more open to reason providing new knowledge which cannot be checked by observation. Given this, it seems that Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument will lose a great deal of their power. As William Lane Craig has pointed out, the Ontological Argument (as he presents it) is valid. If it is accepted that an argument can also be sound – its propositions can be said to be true – even when they cannot be verified or falsified empirically, then the Ontological Argument is much more persuasive.
Nevertheless, even if Kant was too cautious about using reason as a source of new knowledge, it could be fair to say that the Ontological Argument pushes things too far. St Thomas Aquinas made just this point in his Summa Theologica I.II question 1 (1264) when he wrote “because we do not know the essence of God, the truth of God’s existence is not self-evident to us.” Aquinas dismissed the Ontological Argument because to suggest that any human being can have a “clear and distinct idea” of God to use Descartes phrase from the Meditations, sufficient to analyse that idea and find necessary existence – a unique property of God – within it, is arrogant. God is, to use Augustine’s words “other, completely other”, outside time and space, so even if we have innate ideas – as Descartes and Plato argued – it stretches credulity to rely on those ideas being so complete in relation to God so as to make the Ontological Argument plausible. Clearly, what it means for God to be perfect or great is not what it means for human beings to have a perfection or be called great. Aquinas even rejected the idea that it could just be a matter of scale, with God at the top of the scale and people (and other created things) at the other. If God is timeless then God’s perfection and greatness must also be timeless and cannot include any potential for God to be other than he is, to change or to choose. Aquinas’ saw claims about God’s nature as necessarily analogical. Yes, our greatness depends on God’s greatness, but in the way that the healthiness of a yoghurt depends on the healthiness of somebody who eats it. Healthy people are slim, muscly and bounce around… healthy yoghurts are none of these things! For Aquinas, God’s nature can be described (and known) positively, but only in a very limited sense, not completely enough to support an ontological demonstration of God’s necessary existence from an a priori definition of His nature. Nevertheless, St Anselm and Descartes on one hand and Karl Barth and Iris Murdoch on the other would all reject this argument, with reasons that also serve as criticisms of Kant’s approach to the Ontological Argument.
For Anselm it is true to say that God’s attributes are not the same as human attributes, because God is timelessly perfect, nevertheless it is possible to understand enough about God’s greatness to deduce that necessary existence is a necessary property of it. This is because, according to the a posteriori argument in Anselm’s Monologion, God is the best explanation for our ability to judge things in this world as more or less perfect. God creates us with an innate conception of perfection, the top of a scale which we use to measure things in this world every day. Indeed, Aquinas – although he still denied that this would give people a clear enough concept of God to analyse and find necessary existence within – included a similar argument as his fourth way to God in Summa Theologica I.II question 3, arguing that claims about God’s nature can be understood as analogies of proportion as well as as analogies of attribution (as above). This suggests that Aquinas’ rejection of Anselm’s approach was more about the degree to which we can conceive of the essence of God and a matter of interpretation, rather than about Anselm’s whole methodology in the Monologion, which he later used to support his reasoning in the Proslogion. Descartes “trademark” argument in the Meditations supports Anselm’s belief that God creates us with an innate idea of God’s existence and there have been other, similar arguments in the work of scholars from St Augustine to CS Lewis, arguing from the experience of believers, their desire for and innate awareness of God, a posteriori to the conclusion of His existence. It seems that many believers could accept the idea that we have an understanding of God’s supreme greatness even if we cannot completely conceive of what that might entail. It seems, therefore, that Aquinas’ dismissal of a priori attempts to argue that God’s existence is self-evident is rather hasty. Just as Aquinas’ rejection of the idea that God’s existence is self-evident and exclusive focus on arguments from observation as the only approach to defending God’s existence rationally does not fit with believers’ experience of God as an innate idea, Kant’s rejection of both a priori and a posteriori arguments for God in the Critique of Pure reason does not fit with the imperative to believe in God which he himself expressed in strong terms, most completely in “Religion within the bounds of Reason alone” (1794). While Kant dismisses all the rational arguments for God’s existence, including the Ontological Argument, he argues that God is a necessary postulate, an assumption that it is our rational duty to make, to explain the existence of the moral law which we know as a synthetic a priori. Kant reasons, therefore, that we know the moral law a priori, before experience, although it is supported in all respects by experience as well. The moral law is, furthermore, necessarily explained by God. On what basis can Kant argue that Descartes is wrong to claim that we know God’s existence a priori, something which is supported in all respects by experience as well, but proceed to make a similar claim about the moral law. It is worth asking, is Descartes concept of God actually different from Kant’s concept of God? All that Descartes attempts to demonstrate through his Ontological Argument is that Supreme Perfection necessarily exists… he makes no claim about the Ontological Argument proving anything about the nature of that Supreme Perfection, stopping short of listing attributes like being male, being the father of Jesus etc. Is it fair to claim that the moral law can be known a priori – as Kant does – and reject the idea that the necessary existence of Supreme Perfection cannot be known a priori, when both seem equally borne out by experience.
Further, Karl Barth (and later Iris Murdoch) pointed out that the Ontological Argument, although not conclusive as a proof of God’s existence for the non-believer, it is deeply persuasive for the person with faith. In Barth’s “Faith Seeking Understanding” (1930), far from pre-empting Norman Malcolm’s claim that the Proslogion was an exercise in modal logic (a claim that has been accepted by Hartshorne, Plantinga and Craig), Barth argued that Anselm’s work had been wrongly characterised as a philosophical treatise and argued that it was really a prayer, a deeply spiritual meditation on contingency and necessity and the nature of reality. If Barth is correct then Kant’s criticisms of the argument, at least as they are applied to Anselm rather than their intended target, Descartes, are misplaced. To say that Anselm’s work is “so much labour and effort lost” misses the point that he may not have intended to formulate a deductive proof such as to convince a non-believer at all. Further, while the philosophical intent behind Descartes’ arguments in the Meditations is difficult to deny, it is worth mentioning that this work too was written from the perspective of pre-existing faith. Descartes too had “faith seeking understanding” and was not engaged in a work of Christian apologetics. Kant’s criticisms approach Descartes’ ontological argument for God in isolation and attempt to dismantle it from the perspective of a radically different world-view and epistemological framework. Given the doubt that has been cast on the possibility of attaining objective Truth and a grip on ultimate reality – a doubt that was adopted by Kant from Hume but which was often subsequently ignored – the idea that Kant’s world-view and epistemological framework, which as has been explained rests on as many assumptions as does Descartes, should have the authority to dismiss Descartes’ Ontological Argument is unconvincing. Today, most philosophers have to look to coherence rather than to correspondence to find meaning, and thus have to be open to the possibility that an Ontological argument might be both valid and sound within one form of life and simultaneously valid but not sound in another form of life.
In conclusion, Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument are effective only if his epistemology and world-view are accepted.