Anselm's Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Proof for God's Existence Argument
by Charles Hartshorne

Preface

In a thesis written at Harvard in 1923 I termed the Ontological Argument invented by Anselm “an incomparably brilliant and cogent course of reasoning.” I was already familiar with Kant's famous refutation. Since that time frequent re reading of Kant and examination of scores of other refutations have failed to convince me that the Argument is a mere fallacy. However, I now think that both the standard criticisms and the older defences, including mine of forty years ago, are all seriously—even disgracefully—defective. In 1923 I had, like so many others, failed to read Anselm with scholarly care; and I certainly took my self-appointed task of rebutting Kant far too casually. Today, instead of brashly asserting, as I recall doing in another student essay, that the Argument “sums up what is most sound in philosophy,” I should make a qualified statement. I still hold that there is no shorter way to an under standing of essential metaphysical issues than the careful consideration of the challenge that Anselm issued to his contemporaries and successors. However, I have come to see that the simple acceptance of the reasoning as Anselm left it (were this today still possible) is no better calculated than its simple

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rejection to give us this understanding. There are ambigui ties to be removed and issues to be weighed which have been almost unnoticed by both sides in the long dispute. In this present work I have tried to specify these ambiguities and issues with precision, and to show how, as I believe, they are to be most reasonably overcome or resolved, and with what philosophical consequences.

In Part One a view of the Proof will be presented that is neither simply Anselm’s nor that of any of his better-known defenders, but which claims to be a higher synthesis of doctrines, assigning an element of validity to each of the principal attitudes which have been taken on the subject. Whatever its defects, this discussion does take Anselm’s proposal seriously and does try to criticize it, partly at least, on grounds which he might conceivably have found pertinent and cogent—as he manifestly did not find Gaunilo’s (and probably would not have found most of Kant’s). The analysis also takes ancient and modern criticisms seriously in just those respects that are left standing when it is what Anselm wrote and the whole of what he wrote on the subject which forms the target of the criticism. In order to meet these relevant criticisms, it is found necessary to revise, not so much the Argument as the precise ‘Idea of God’ from which it sets out. This revision Anselm might have rejected, but he could scarcely have found it so inconsequential as he (in part rightly) found the counterarguments of Gaunilo. An important point of the analysis is the inadequacy of the dichotomy essence-existence. A third term is needed, ‘actuality’. An essence exists if there is some con crete reality exemplifying it; ‘existence’ is only that an essence is concretized, ‘actuality’ is how, or in what particular form, it is concretized. The particular form, the actuality, is always

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contingent—here opponents of the Proof have been right—but it does not follow—and here they have been in error—that the existence is contingent. For existence only requires the non emptiness of the appropriate class of actualities, and a class can be necessarily nonempty even though it has only contingent members. How this applies to God can hardly be obvious to the reader, unless his training in philosophy has been very unusual. But I hold that it does apply. (See Part One, Sections 8, 11, 23; and Part Two, Section 17.) Essence, existence, actuality—this triad is the minimum of complexity which must be considered if the famous Proof is to be correctly evaluated. As Peirce said, the thinker in mere dichotomies is a crude fellow, trying to make delicate dissections with an ax. So long as philosophers persist in confusing existence and actuality, just so long will they be but bumbling amateurs in a matter in which they have long been claiming competence. It is hoped that the reader will be brought to a realization of the depth of the issues and the unworthiness of any simple short cut to a definitive conclusion. He will be encouraged to think his way through the Anselmian problem, and not (as is customary) around it, as though the Saint’s little book had been lost just after Gaunilo saw it, and we had been de pendent upon this one careless expositor for all of our knowledge of the Anselmian idea.

Part Two surveys, partly through substantial quotations, the history of important or representative reactions to the Argument, from Gaunilo’s to those of some of our contemporaries, and evaluates these from the standpoint of Part One. The reader of these discussions will have at his command, in outline, something like the entire historical context of a fundamental technical problem in philosophy and theology.

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Among other results, it will be shown that most of those who have attacked, and many who have defended, the reasoning of the Proslogium have literally “not known what they were talking about” since, according to all probability, they were reacting to a document they had not read, even in 2 competent paraphrase.

Concerning the length and complexity of my treatment of a well-worn and seemingly restricted topic, some remarks may be in order. I see myself as combating nine centuries of error piled upon error about Anselm, and among these errors is the notion that the problem which he posed is a simple one. In my view it is, like all metaphysical questions, the metaphysical question put from a particular standpoint. The defenders of the Proof, if they have understood themselves, have had a metaphysics; and so have its attackers. However, my own stand point in speculative philosophy has not been expressed in any treatment of Anselm (by others than myself) with which I am acquainted. It is not any of the better-known theistic or nontheistic positions. Several of the more traditional types of metaphysics have been presented a hundred times; students of philosophy are familiar with and influenced by them, whether they know they are or not, and whether by way of rejection or of acceptance. To make headway simultaneously against so many prejudices, some of them reinforced by almost endless repetitions, I have felt forced to put my understanding of what Anselm discovered (and of what he failed to discover) in similarly many ways, and to defend it against many objec tions. This does not mean that the reader is given but one way of looking at Anselm. Allowing for the greater familiarity, and also greater simplicity, of other views, I venture to think that the main possibilities are here made available.

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I am grateful to Dr. Eugene Freeman, Editor-in-chief of the Open Court Publishing Company, for having suggested this commentary, and for his patience as it outgrew the volume for which it was originally designed, The Basic Writings of Saint Anselm. For that a much briefer version had to be written. I have also profited by discussions with my son-in-law, Nicolas D. Goodman, which have helped me to mitigate the consequences of my insufficient training and skill in formal logic. I suspect that the future of the ontological problem lies largely in rather technical developments in formal logic (including modal logic or, perhaps I should say, metalogic) or in such studies in the philosophy of logic as only those who know the logic can promote or adequately judge. The stage of mere ‘talkietalk’ about this matter is probably nearing its close. Those who wish to add something may have to be better equipped than I to explore in a formal manner the logical niceties of the problem of existential contingency and necessity.

C. H.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS