Anselm's Ontological Argument and the Philosophers
Saint Anselm of Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury, perhaps during a moment of
enlightenment or starvation-induced hallucination, succeeded in formulating an
argument for God's existence which has been debated for almost a thousand years.
It shows no sign of going away soon. It is an argument based solely on reason,
distinguishing it from other arguments for the existence of God such as
cosmological or teleological arguments. These latter arguments respectively
depend on the world's causes or design, and thus may weaken as new scientific
advances are made (such as Darwin's theory of evolution). We can be sure that
no such fate will happen to Anselm's Ontological Argument (the name, by the way,
coined by Kant).
In form, Anselm's arguments are much like the arguments we see in
philosophy today. In Cur Deus Homo we read Anselm's conversation with a skeptic.
This sort of question-and-answer form of argumentation (dialectic) is very much
like the writings of Plato. The skeptic, Boso, question's Anselm's faith with
an array of questions non-believers still ask today. Anselm answers in a step-
by-step manner, asking for confirmation along the way, until he arrives at a
conclusion with which Boso is forced to agree. This is just like Socrates'
procedure with, say, Crito.
Later philosophers have both accepted and denied the validity of
Anselm's famous ontological argument for the existence of God, presented in both
the Proslogium and Monologium. Anselm did not first approach the argument
with an open mind, then examine its components with a critical eye to see which< ...