Assess the Argument Put forward by St. Anselm in the Pros

The first argument put forward by Anselm appears in chapter II of the Proslogion. He begins by concentrating the monotheistic concept of God into the formula, “a being than which no greater can be conceived”. He goes on to sa

y that even a fool can conceive of the above definition of God (it is the Psalmists’ fool to whom he refers, who says “there is no God”’ (Psalm 14:1)). He goes on to say that it if ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’ were to exist in the mind alone, then a greater being could be conceived – that same being but existing in reality as well as in the mind. As Anselm puts it “…If that, than which no greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible.” (Proslogion, chapter II) Therefore, Anselm claims, ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’ exists both in the understanding and in reality. Anselm appears to have made God’s non-existence logically impossible; he has defined God into existence. The argument is bound up in itself by logic.

A reformulation of the ontological argument was put forward by René Descartes, ‘the father of modern philosophy’. He explicitly treats existence as a predicate. He argues that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the three angles of a triangle be separated from the essence of a triangle - “A triangle without its defining properties would not be a triangle, and God without existence would not be God.” (Hick, 1963, p18) Using another analogy, Descartes stated “…It is no more possible to separate existence from the essence of God than…the idea of a mountain from that of a valley”. (Descartes’ Philosophical Writings)

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) developed a similar argument to that above, distinguishing between ‘first-‘ and ‘second-order’ predicates. First-order predicates, he says, tell us something about the nature of something. Second-order predicates tell us about concepts. Frege’s objection to Anselm and Descartes is that they both seem to use existence as a first-order predicate, whereas it is actually a second-order predicate.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a major critic of the ontological argument. He focused on Descartes’ representation, and firstly stated that although it is true that if there is a triangle, it must have three angles, it is not illogical to reject both the subject and its properties. So in the case of God, one can say that if there is a God, he necessarily exists. But this does not go anywhere towards proving that there is a God. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states “To posit a triangle and yet to reject its three angles, is self-contradictory; but there is no self-contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its three angles. The same holds true for the concept of an absolutely

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