Anselm of Canterbury

Background

Anselm (1033–1109) was a Benedictine monk of the Norman abbey of Bec — where he rose from student to prior to abbot — and from 1093 Archbishop of Canterbury, an office he held through repeated conflict and exile under two English kings. He is the pivotal figure of early scholastic theology, and his motto fides quaerens intellectum — faith seeking understanding — names the program this entire wiki's natural-theology section descends from: argument offered not instead of faith but from within it, addressed to God in the form of prayer.

His permanent philosophical legacy is the Proslogium's single argument: "we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived," and such a being "cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater" (Anselm, Proslogium ch. II). Chapter III extends the proof to necessary existence: "it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist" (Anselm, Proslogium ch. III) — the germ of the modal argument revived nine centuries later.

Positions held in this wiki

• The Ontological Argument — author of the original a priori proof, and its first defender: against Gaunilo of Marmoutiers' lost-island parody he replied that "if a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is in any understanding, it does not exist in the understanding alone" (Anselm, Apologetic ch. II), wagering that no one could adapt his reasoning to anything except that than which a greater cannot be conceived — "I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island, not to be lost again" (Anselm, Apologetic ch. III).

Key works in our corpus

• Proslogium; Monologium; Gaunilo's In Behalf of the Fool; Cur Deus Homo (Deane trans. 1903) — in corpus. The complete dialectical exchange: Proslogium chs. II–IV (the argument), Gaunilo's appendix, and Anselm's Apologetic (the reply). A catalog record of the same corpus is held at CCEL.
• Cur Deus Homo (Wikisource edition) — in corpus. The satisfaction theory of the atonement; Anselm's other enduring contribution, awaiting a dedicated wiki article.

Principal critics

• Gaunilo of Marmoutiers — the contemporary parody objection, bound with the Proslogium itself in our corpus.
• Thomas Aquinas — the weightiest insider critic: God's existence is knowable "by effects," not a priori (Summa I q.2 a.1).
• David Hume and Immanuel Kant — the Enlightenment batteries: no existential claim is demonstrable a priori; existence is not a real predicate.
• Graham Oppy — the leading contemporary critic and taxonomist of ontological arguments.

See also

• Augustine of Hippo — the theological wellspring of Anselm's Platonism and of fides quaerens intellectum.
• René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — the early-modern heirs of the a priori proof.
• Alvin Plantinga — the modal revival built on Proslogium III.