SOURCE: Hinderer, Drew E. “Anselm's Ontological Argument: What's in the Fool's Understanding?” Michigan Academician 18, no. 2 (spring 1986): 271-77.

[In the following essay, Hinderer contends that Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God fails because its premise that “God exists in the understanding” is problematic and false.]

Anselm's ontological arguments have been the subject of very sustained philosophical interest from his own day through the present. The vast majority of those who have written about the arguments have treated them as proofs, i.e., as efforts to persuade unbelievers that the very nature of God's being is such as to make His nonexistence (in this universe) impossible, and hence that He not only exists, but is as Christians believe Him to be, a being than which no greater can be conceived, a being lacking no perfection. Philosophical attention has predominantly rested on the logical mechanics of Anselm's arguments, and, at least since Kant, on questions concerning the status of existence: whether existence is a “predicate,” whether it is a “perfection” or “great making property,” whether the idea of necessary existence is coherent, etc. These concerns are understandable only if we assume that readers are trying to decide, with Gaunilon, whether they are rationally justified, or even compelled, to believe in God on the basis of the ontological argument construed as an effort to establish God's existence “by the force of reason alone.”¹

It is surely fair to say that most of Anselm's philosophical critics have denied that the argument is a fully successful proof of the existence of God, though they have not all agreed as to why it fails. Many, if not most, have either followed Kant in locating the failure in the problem of proving existence by reason alone, or in finding fault with the logical apparatus of “necessary existence.” I accept the consensus that the proof as a proof does not work, but locate the problem elsewhere.

In the following pages, I shall argue that the failure of the ontological argument as a proof stems from Anselm's rightful insistence on the transcendence of God, that God is “the being than which no greater can be conceived,”² together with the unfortunate result that, if God is such a being, then it will be false that, as Anselm says, “This Very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak—a being than which no greater can be conceived—understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.”³ If God is not in the fool's understanding, then God does not, so far at least, exist “both in the understanding and in reality,”⁴ nor would Anselm's conclusion be “so evident, to a rational mind, that (God) does exist in the highest degree of all.”⁵ Put more simply, my point is that on Anselm's terms, the argument's initial premise, that “God exists in the understanding,”⁶ is false.

Spelling out Anselm's arguments in such a way as to make clear their logical structure is a complicated task. At least since Norman Malcolm's influential article it has been customary to differentiate two such arguments.⁷ The first, which appears in Chapter II, is an indirect proof which derives a contradiction from the supposition that the being than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone. The second, sometimes called the “modal version,” derives God's existence in reality from God's necessary existence in the understanding. Among Anselm's current supporters, it has been the second version of the ontological argument which has recently received the most persuasive defenses.⁸

However, both versions of Anselm's argument unavoidably involve the premise that God exists in the understanding (in intellectu), so that if my argument is correct, it applies equally to each formulation. Therefore, I have not taken pains in this paper to preserve the distinction between the indirect proof and modal versions of the ontological arguments, and refer to Anselm's work as a single proof.

Anselm defines “God” as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.”⁹ This definition, which is interesting for many reasons, is consistent with Anselm's assertions that “I have never seen thee, O Lord, my God; I do not know thy form,”¹⁰ and that “I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that,”¹¹ because it does not define God's sublimity in terms of human imagination at all. Instead, Anselm's definition is a criterion by which to determine that inadequate conceptions of God are not conceptions of God at all, but at best of something inferior.

Suppose the fool believes that God is the greatest being that he (the fool) can imagine, and that this being is one who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but nothing more. Such a fool, Anselm might say, mistakenly thinks he is thinking of God, but in fact he is using the expression “God” uncomprehendingly, without adequate attention to its true signification. To prove that the fool is not thinking of God, the fool need only ask himself whether he can imagine a being greater than the one which is faster than a speeding bullet, and so on, and of course he can: a being faster than a bolt of lightning, more powerful than an earthquake, and just barely able to leap Mt. Everest at a single bound (but nothing more) would be greater. But since God is the being than which nothing greater can be conceived, the first being (call him “Superman”) cannot be God. But is the second imagined being God? To answer that question, Anselm counsels, the fool must ask himself whether he can imagine a being greater than “Even More Superman,” and again, he certainly can; a being that is all that Even More Superman is, but who can leap Mt. Everest by a margin as high as the tallest building in Metropolis would be greater than Even More Superman.

Now suppose that the fool continues his imaginings up to the limit of his ability to imagine, so that he is now imagining the Most Superman Imaginable by the Fool. Again, Anselm would presumably suggest that if anyone, say the greatest human imaginer, could conceive of a being greater than that imagined by the fool, the Most Superman Imaginable by the Fool would not be God. But would the greatest being imaginable by the greatest human imaginer be God?

Anselm's criterion will not decide this question, for it defines God as the being than which nothing greater can be conceived, not the being than which nothing greater can be conceived within the limits of human imagination. But there is also independent reason to suppose that Anselm would deny that God could be conceived, even by the greatest human imaginer. This is because sin prevents us. As Anselm says of himself, “I am bowed down and can only look downward. … My iniquities have gone over my head … and, like a heavy load, they weight me down … Lord, I acknowledge and I thank thee that thou hast made me in this thine image … but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrongdoing. …” Indeed, even if “thou renew it, and create it anew,” the best that can be hoped for is “to understand in some degree thy truth.”¹² Again, Anselm asks,

What, O most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee? What shall thy servant do, anxious in his love of thee, and cast out afar from thy face? He pants to see thee, and thy face is too far from him. … He desires to seek thee, and does not know thy face. Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, and never have I seen thee. It is thou that hast made me, and hast made me anew, and hast bestowed upon me all the blessing I enjoy; and not yet do I know thee.¹³

Thus does Anselm deny that he can adequately conceive God, for sin blinds him. But Anselm's definitional insight is that being unable to conceive adequately what God is does not render Anselm or man generally unable to determine what God is not. Anselm's definition, that God is the being than which nothing greater can be conceived, provides a conclusive test by which to eliminate inadequate conceptions, but it is entirely independent of particular people's abilities to imagine.

In light of all this, what does Anselm mean when he asserts that “this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak—a being than which nothing greater can be conceived—understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist”?

Anselm offers two accounts of what it is to have something in one's understanding. These I shall refer to as the “linguistic account” and the “artistic account.” It is unclear precisely what the relation is between these accounts, in that whatever Anselm may have intended, the latter artistic account may or may not be an elaboration or explanation of the former linguistic account. Because of this ambiguity, I shall treat each separately.

Anselm's linguistic account runs as follows.

But at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak—a being than which nothing greater can be conceived—understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist. … Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood exists in the understanding.¹⁴

Subsequently in Section IV, Anselm elaborates this linguistic account to suggest that it is only if what the fool says in his heart is said either “without any, or with some foreign signification”¹⁵ that saying that “(Christians believe) God exists” does not entail “God exists.” So long as the expression “God exists” is used meaningfully, then, “he who thoroughly understands this, assuredly understands that this being so truly exists, that not even in concept can it be nonexistent.”¹⁶ (For the sake of this paper, I shall assume that Anselm's expression “he who thoroughly understands” means “he who has used the expression in question meaningfully.”)

Here, Anselm may be alluding to a difference he employs elsewhere between the colloquial use of words (usus loquendi), in which a speaker might make the mere “breath of an utterance” (flatis vocis) without relevantly connecting an expression with its mental or physical referent, and the use of words with strict attention to their significance (significatio per se).¹⁷ Thus the fool's initial inability to see that “(Christians believe) God exists” entails “God exists” might be due to the fool's “breathing an utterance” without giving it any signification, or perhaps, as Anselm says, a “foreign” one.

While Anselm's exact theory of meaning is a much disputed question, it does seem likely that he insists upon an objective referent for words used meaningfully, according to which, once he thoroughly understands what he says in his heart, the fool must link his utterance to the “being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” But what would such an objective referent be?

There seem to be only two plausible possibilities. One is that “God” refers to God, and that in order to use the expression “God” meaningfully, the fool must relevantly connect his utterance of the sound “God” with God. This, however, requires that the fool somehow already know God with sufficient accuracy and vividness that the referent to which he links his utterance cannot be confused with something else, say Superman. For if the fool lacks such knowledge, if, for example, he is unable to distinguish between God and Superman, then his use of the term “God” does not strictly mean God, but rather “a being indistinguishable from Superman.” In this case, if the fool lacks such knowledge, what the fool has in his understanding is not God, but the being indistinguishable from Superman.

Moreover, it is doubtful, in light of Anselm's earlier remarks, that the fool would be able to see God's face or know God any more successfully than Anselm, since the fool, like Anselm, is in sin, and his sin must blind him as effectively as Anselm's. I therefore conclude that when the fool utters “there is no God,” he does not have God in his understanding, and that on this interpretation, Anselm's premise is false.

The other natural explanation is that the referent of “God” is a kind of mental image of God, and that Anselm's artistic account is his explanation of the linguistic account. The artistic account runs as follows.

When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.¹⁸

(That Anselm is here assuming a procedure of artistic creation that is extremely implausible need not concern us here.)¹⁹

But Anselm cannot consistently suppose that the fool has or could have vividly in his understanding the sort of mental image of God which Anselm here compares to the image had by a painter who imagines his unpainted picture to himself. As we have already seen, Anselm thinks sin obscures the divine image, so that man cannot see God's face nor know God. But also, Anselm, like Plato in the Seventh Letter, must recognize that to have an image of God in one's understanding, however vivid, is a very different thing from having God in one's understanding, and that insofar as it is an image, it is a falsification of God's true nature and an obstacle to knowing God Himself, quite apart from the inadequacies of the foolish imagination.²⁰ As Plato says,

For everything that exists there are three classes of objects through which knowledge about it must come, the knowledge itself is a fourth, and we must put as a fifth entity the actual object of knowledge which is the true reality. We have then, first, a name, second a description, third, an image, and fourth a knowledge of the object. … Furthermore these four do as much to illustrate the particular quality of any object as they do to illustrate its essential reality.²¹

This, of course, is an expression of a common problem in mystical epistemology, namely how one penetrates through language, descriptions, images, and knowledge itself to a direct apprehension of God. The fact that it confronts Anselm has led scholars such as Frederick Sontag to try to rescue the ontological argument by denying that it is, or was intended to be, a proof, claiming instead that “Anselm's central point (is only that) ‘that being than which no greater can be conceived’ is not such a simple phrase as you might at first expect, and that, the longer you consider it and what it involves, the more you will be led to change both the disarmingly simple wording of the phrase and your own first feeling of easy optimism over your ability to understand it.”²² While I cannot pursue the issue further here, I think a fairer assessment is only that, as a proof, Anselm's argument fails.

But suppose Anselm replies to the foregoing objections as follows. Granted that the being than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived, either in the understanding of the fool or in the understanding of the (sinful) believer, still even the fool must realize that God must be a being that exists (or exists necessarily) because anything less would not be the greatest being that can be conceived, much less a greater being still. Even if man's sinbound powers of conception cannot provide him with a fully adequate mental picture of God, a more adequate mental picture of God than the one often foolishly entertained is sufficient to entail that God must exist.

Unfortunately, however, this fallback position is unavailable to Anselm. This is because, according to Anselm's criteria for meaningful language use, if the expression “the being than which nothing greater can be conceived” cannot be used meaningfully, neither can “the being greater than the greatest being that can be conceived by sinful man,” nor even “the greatest conceivable being” (except by the greatest human imaginer), which, in any case, Anselm would certainly reject as an adequate conception of God. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly for Anselm's argument, the greatest being conceivable by the fool may or may not include existence in reality as a perfection (still less “necessary existence” if the fool can imagine this) because ideal but unactual perfections may be greater than mere existence in this universe.

I conclude, then, that if we wish to give Anselm the credit he may deserve for anticipating in his definition of God the limits of human imagination, we must recognize that, by either criterion Anselm offers, it will be false that “even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” But if this premise is false, the proof, as a proof, fails.

Notes

1. St. Anselm, in St. Anselm, Basic Writings, Proslogium, Monologium, Cur Deus Homo and Gaunilon's In Behalf of the Fool, trans. S. N. Deane. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962) p. 38.

2. St. Anselm, Proslogium, p. 7.

3. Ibid., p. 7.

4. Ibid., p. 8.

5. Ibid., p 9.

6. See William L. Rowe, “The Ontological Argument,” in Reason and Responsibility, ed. Feinberg. (Belmont, CA: Dickenson Publishing Co., 1965) p. 8.

7. Norman Malcolm, “Anselm's Ontological Arguments,” Philosophical Review 69 (1960).

8. See Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1974).

9. St. Anselm, Proslogium, p. 7.

10. Ibid., p. 4.

11. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

12. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

13. Ibid., p. 4.

14. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

15. Ibid., p. 10.

16. Ibid., p. 10.

17. St. Anselm, The De Grammatico of Saint Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy, Latin and English text with discussion, D. P. Henry (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame, 1964).

18. St. Anselm, Proslogium, p. 7.

19. For an extended discussion of Anselm's assumption, see E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960).

20. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, ed. Hamilton and Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), Letters VII, 342a9ff. By citing Plato as the author of the Seventh Letter, I do not wish to commit myself to asserting his authorship; I merely use “Plato” to refer to the author of the Seventh Letter.

21. Plato, Seventh Letter, 342a9 ff.

22. Frederick Sontag, “The Meaning of ‘Argument’ in Anselm's Ontological ‘Proof,’” The Journal of Philosophy; LXIV (15) (August 10, 1967):474.