[In the following essay, Smart argues that Anselm's ontological argument offers a combination of rational proof and spiritual revelation about the existence of God.]

In this paper I propose to consider two possible interpretations of Anselm's ontological argument. According to the first interpretation the argument is purely rational; according to the second, reason and faith together form the foundation of the argument.

The ontological argument, as understood by the first interpretation, runs as follows: The concept of God is the concept of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. This latter concept includes the concept of a being which exists necessarily, for necessary existence is one of the perfections of an absolutely perfect being; that is, the concept of God is the concept of a being which exists necessarily. God then must be conceived as existing necessarily, and hence we must attribute to his essence necessary existence. According to the first interpretation, this inference from concepts alone constitutes the whole of the ontological argument. The argument is thus analytic and purely rational.

The second interpretation to be considered here admits the correctness of this interpretation, so far as it goes. Reason can proceed to the required conclusion in the way suggested by the first interpretation, but only upon a prior basis given by faith. According to this interpretation, Anselm's attitude is radically misunderstood if it is thought of as being purely philosophical and theoretical. His real aim is practical, polemical, apologetic. He is engaged in combatting scepticism—the scepticism of the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God”. Against this position Saint Anselm advances the view that not only does God exist, He exists with an absolute necessity which excludes the possibility of His being even conceived correctly as possibly not existing. In pursuit of such a purpose Anselm might legitimately use any order of cognition he thought sound and he might therefore be expected to depend on faith at least in part; only had his end been pure philosophic speculation would such an appeal to the supra-rational have been out of court.

We may consider the evidence in the text for this second interpretation of Anselm's argument. In the first place the interpretation seems to receive support from Chapter II of the Proslogium: Quod vere sit Deus, etsi insipiens dixit in corde suo: Non est Deus. This title would seem to suggest that the chapter is intended as a piece of Christian apologetic; and the suggestion is especially important because this chapter contains what the first school of interpretation regards as the essence of the ontological argument.

The argument as well as the title of the chapter suggests an apologetic purpose. Anselm first states what he would like to believe:

Ergo, Domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi, ut, quantum scis expedire, intelligam quia es, sicut credimus; et hoc, quod credimus. Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid, quo nihil majus cogitari possit.¹

Then Anselm states the purpose of his ontological argument—to maintain this position against the doubt raised by the atheist:

An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia dixit insipiens in corde suo: Non est Deus?²

In the rest of this chapter Anselm is concerned to answer the fool. Thus his animus is that of a Christian apologist, not that of a philosopher pure and simple.

The same conclusion is suggested by the preceding chapter, which is not to be understood as having no relation to the argument from the idea of God which follows this chapter. The concluding passage is especially significant:

Non tento, Domine, penetrare altitudinem tuam; quia nullatenus comparo illi intellectum meum, sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et amat cor meum. Neque enim quæro intelligere, ut credam; sed credo, ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam.³

This attitude seems clearly to be that of a defensor fidei—a defender whose apologetic proceeds rationally from faith, not by reason alone. It is not likely that, after thus making faith fundamental to reason, Anselm immediately went on to present his ontological argument as a purely rational argument; if such an interpretation is made, it requires special evidence.

The relations of the passage quoted to what goes before it should also be noticed. The passage is the culmination of a section which shows that the ontological argument is in part the product of anguish and prayer:

Quid faciet, altissime Domine, quid faciet iste tuus longinquus exsul?⁴ … Anhelat videre te et nimis abest illi facies tua …

Heu! quid perdidit, et quid invenit??⁵ … Perdidit beatitudinem ad quam factus est, et invenit miseriam propter quam factus non est⁶ …

Doce me quærere te, et ostende, te quærenti; quia nec quærere te possum, nisi tu doceas, nec invenire, nisi te ostendas.⁷

It thus appears to be a mistake⁸ to separate Anselm's proof from its history, for its history is in reality an essential part of it; unless God reveals Himself to us, we cannot truly conceive the necessity of His existence.

In the Preface also Anselm suggests that for him reason is subordinate to faith; here he speaks of himself as having written the Proslogium “sub persona … quærentis intelligere quod credit.”⁹ The same subordination is also suggested by the original title of the Proslogium: fides quærens intellectum.¹⁰

One further consideration seems to suggest that Anselm's ontological argument has a religious basis. In the Monologium, where Anselm seems to argue from reason alone concerning the existence of God,¹¹ he thinks it necessary to preface his treatise by the explicit statement that in this particular work he proposes to use reason alone.

quatenus auctoritate Scripturæ penitus nihil in ea persuaderetur; sed quidquid per singulas investigationes finis

assereret, id ita esse plano stylo et vulgaribus argumentis, simplicique disputatione, et rationis necessitas breviter cogeret, et veritatis claritas patenter ostenderet.¹²

But in the Proslogium Anselm makes no such statement. Instead, he begins with prayer and supplication, and it seems that he thus proceeds because he has found the rationalistic method of the Monologium to be inadequate. Hence his desire for something better:

… cœpi mecum quærere si forte posset inveniri unum argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum, quam se solo indigeret: et solum ad astruendum quia Deus vere est …¹³

The unum argumentum of the Proslogium satisfies Anselm because it is not a merely rational argument, such as those of the Monologium, but is rather a rational working out of what is implied in the certitudes of faith.

The crux of Anselm's argument, therefore, seems to be this: the argument is not about the concept God, but about His idea, which is something very different. Anselm does not argue from the concept of God as an absolutely perfect being to the concept of God as a being which cannot be conceived not to exist. Rather, when he has a clear and distinct idea of the essential nature of God—obtained through purification and the grace of God—he is able to affirm that His nature is such as to involve His necessary existence. The fool is such, not because he does not have a concept of a necessary being, but because he does not have an idea of such a being—he is a fool because he is a conceptualist. It is true that Gaunilon and Kant, among others, consider Anselm to be a conceptualist and condemn his argument on the ground that it argues from a mere concept to real existence. But one may ask whether such critics have not read their own theory of universals into Anselm. If it be agreed that Anselm stands in the Platonico-Augustinian tradition¹⁴ and that both Plato and Augustine are strong anti-conceptualists who regard all true knowledge as a mental apprehension of what is not mere concept, one may well wonder at the frequent easy assumption that Anselm's ontological argument is conceptualistic. That interpretation, if it is to be maintained, calls for a special proof demonstrating that in this special case Anselm departs from his general theory.

Anselm does not make the presuppositions of his ontological argument as clear as might be desired, but on the whole the evidence of the text seems to indicate that the argument is best interpreted as being based upon both reason and faith and not upon reason alone.

Notes

1. Patrologiæ latinæ, Migne, tom. CLVIII. col. 227.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., col. 225.

5. Ibid., col. 225-6.

6. Ibid., col. 226.

7. Ibid., col. 227.

8. As Gilson suggests it is. “Certes, sa formule se déploie tout entière sur le plan de l'entendement, mais c'est le cœur qui l'a trouvée: pour en faire une res per se nota, il faut le considérer en dehors de ce qui le prépare et le rend intelligible: purification du cœur, foi, appel à Dieu, illumination de la pensée par grâce. La res per se nota que critique la Somme, c'est la peau morte de l'argument de saint Anselme, ce qui en reste lorsqu'on l'isole de son milieu naturel, l'augustinisme, pour le transporter dans l'intellectualisme de saint Thomas” (É. Gilson, Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien, p. 218).

9. Patrologiæ latinæ, Migne, tom. CLVIII. col. 224.

10. Ibid., col. 225.

11. Chapters I-V.

12. Ibid., col. 143.

13. Ibid., col. 223.

14. I might in particular suggest, although I cannot here work out the suggestion in detail, that Anselm's religious quest for the idea of God rather closely resembles the Platonic Socrates' quest for the divine Ideas.