Table Of ContentNew Studies in the Philosophy of Religion
General Editor: W. D. Hudson, Reader in Moral Philosophy,
University of Exeter
This series of monographs includes studies of all the main
problems in the philosophy of religion. It will be of particular
interest to those who study this subject in universities or colleges.
The philosophical problems connected with religious belief are
not, however, a subject of concern only to specialists; they arise
in one form or another for all intelligent men when confronted
by the appeals or the claims of religion.
The general approach of this series is from the standpoint of
contemporary analytical philosophy, and the monographs are
written by a distinguished team of philosophers, all of whom
now teach, or have recently taught, in British or American
universities. Each author has been commissioned to analyse
some aspect of religious belief; to set forth clearly and concisely
the philosophical problems which arise from it; to take into
account the solutions which classical or contemporary philoso
phers have offered; and to present his own critical assessment
of how religious belief now stands in the light of these problems
and their proposed solutions.
In the main it is theism with which these monographs deal,
because that is the type of religious belief with which readers
are most likely to be familiar, but other forms of religion are not
ignored. Some of the authors are religious believers and some
are not, but it is not their primary aim to write polemically,
much less dogmatically, for or against religion. Rather, they
set themselves to clarify the nature of religious belief in the light
of modern philosophy by bringing into focus the questions about
it which a reasonable man as such has to ask. How is talk of
God like, and how unlike, other universes of discourse in which
men engage, such as science, art or morality? Is this talk of
God self-consistent? Does it accord with other rational beliefs
which we hold about man or the world which he inhabits? It
is questions such as these which this series will help the reader
to answer for himself.
New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion
IN THE SAME SERIES
Published
D. Z. Phillips Death and Immortality
Richard Swinburne The Concept of Miracle
Vernon Pratt Religion and Secularisation
W. W. Bartley III Morality and Religion
Jonathan Barnes The Ontological Argument
Thomas McPherson The Argument from Design
T. R. Miles Religious Experience
Ninian Smart The Concept of Worship
In preparation
D. J. O'Connor The Cosmological Argument
Humphrey Palmer The Concept of Analogy
I. T. Ramsey The Problem of Evil
Kai Nielsen Scepticism
David Jenkins The Authenticity of Faith: Existentialist Theology
and the Problem of the Knowledge of God
W. D. Hudson Wittgenstein's Irifluence on the Philosoph:J of
Religion
Michael Durrant The Logic of 'God'
The Ontological Argument
JONATHAN BARNES
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Oriel College, Oxford
Palgrave Macmillan
© Jonathan Barnes 1972
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1972
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published 1972 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
Library of Congress catalog card no. 72-785 72
SBN 333 10495 1
ISBN 978-1-349-00775-2 ISBN 978-1-349-00773-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00773-8
Contents
General Editor's Preface Vll
Author's Preface Vlll
1. The Arguments 1
1 Anselm's Argument 2
II Descartes' Argument 15
III The Modal Arguments 18
IV Gaunilo's Island 26
2. Necessary Existence 29
3. Existence and Predication 39
1 Logical Predicates 39
II 'Everything Exists' 45
111 Logical Nihilism 50
IV Existence and Quantification 55
v The Ambiguity of 'Exist' 59
VI The Meaning of 'Exist' 62
vu Summary 65
4. 'God' 67
1 Names and Definitions 68
11 The Grammar of 'God' 70
III The Logical Form of the Ontological Argument 71
IV The Sense of 'God' 81
v Postscript 85
Appendix A: Chronology of Anselm's Life 87
Appendix B: Anselm's Reductio 88
References 91
v
General Editor's Preface
Is there an argument for the existence of God which amounts to
conclusive proof? Anselm thought that he had discovered such a
proof and propounded it in what has come to be known as the
Ontological Argument. Not surprisingly, his argument aroused
interest and controversy at the time. That it has continued to
do so through the centuries down to the present time is evidence
of the importance of the subject and the fascination of the in
tellectual issues involved.
Mr Barnes in this scholarly and penetrating monograph
reviews the moves and counter-moves which have been made in
discussion of the Ontological Argument by all the important
thinkers who have given their minds to it. Anselm, his contem
porary Gaunilo, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and our own
contemporaries, Findlay, Hartshorne, and Malcolm, all receive
careful consideration.
The exposition is clear and precise and the author's analysis
of essentially relevant concepts such as necessity, predication,
existence, etc., is throughout detailed and illuminating. Mr
Barnes is not only critical of Anselm but of much that has been
regarded by other critics as either the unchallengeable pre
suppositions or the irrefutable conclusions of their criticism.
The Ontological Argument is important for at least two
reasons. It provides a paradigm case of a philosophical argu
ment and will therefore be illuminating to anyone who wishes to
understand philosophy. In that it concerns the existence of God,
it is moreover about a matter which could scarcely be of higher
concern to anyone given to serious reflection. This monograph
will interest not only the scholar and the student but all who
feel that it is important to make up one's mind about religious
belie£
W. D. HuosoN
University of Exeter
Vll
Author's Preface
The Ontological Argument has been debated for eight centuries,
and never more energetically than in the last decade. The
present essay is less concerned to break new ground than to
harrow land already ploughed. Thus Chapter 1 expounds, per
haps rather more particularly than is customary, some of the
chief versions of the Ontological Argument; while Chapters
2-3 attempt to appraise and then to outflank the two main
manreuvres which opponents of the Argument have essayed.
Finally, Chapter 4 outlines and advocates a more elementary
plan of attack.
My goal has been to state, as plainly as I can, what the
Ontological Argument is, and what is and is not most wrong
with it. But I have tried to keep in mind a secondary objective,
and to provide some intimation of a few of the wider philo
sophical issues which the Argument raises. For even those
philosophers who are sceptical of the merits of the Argument
itself must allow that it has inspired and stimulated some con
siderable work in philosophical logic, and that it still offers a
pointed introduction to a number of peculiarly recalcitrant
problems.
The literature on the Ontological Argument is of daunting
magnitude, and it swells almost daily: I am acutely conscious
of broad lacunae in my reading, especially of the more theo
logically inclined matter. Nevertheless, my debts to the pub
lished thoughts of others are frequent and heavy; I have tried
to acknowledge the most important in the text.
Anthony Kenny is responsible for my writing this book;
Martin Hughes provoked and criticised my first ideas about
the Argument; and I have been greatly helped by many pupils
and friends at Oriel, particularly by Nicholas Measor and by
Robert Delahunty, who perused and generously annotated a
draft of the whole manuscript. I thank all these people warmly.
jONATHAN BARNES
Oriel College
29 February 1972
Vlll
The Arguments
1
In the preface to his Proslogion Anselm audaciously claims dis
covery of 'a single formula which needs no other to prove itself
but itself alone, and which by itself suffices to establish that God
truly is, and that he is the greatest good needing no other, and
that which everything needs if it is to be and be well, and what
ever else we believe about divine being' (93.6-10). Anselm pub
lished his argument in 1077 or 1078. The dispute immediately
kindled was bright but brief; and after Anselm's death his
argument lay fallow for some hundred years. Then, in the
thirteenth century, it was widely debated, and widely accepted
(Daniels; Charlesworth, pp. 3-7), until it received the author
itative disapproval of StThomas Aquinas.
In the seventeenth century Descartes discovered and vigor
ously defended an argument for the existence of God which was
plainly similar to and allegedly identical with Anselm's argu
ment. Controversy over the Cartesian argument culminated
with Kant; in a section 'On the Impossibility of an Ontological
Argument for the Existence of God' in the Critique ifP ure Reason,
Kant performed for Descartes the service Aquinas had rendered
Anselm. Incidentally he gave the argument a title, imposing,
universally adopted, and wholly opaque.
Mter Kant's assault the argument again languished - for the
Hegelian claim to have revived it is specious (Ryle [3]). In
recent years, however, philosophers and theologians have
again looked with favour, or at least attention, on the Onto
logical Argument. In this renaissance of interest a new version
of the argument has been brought to birth; Norman Malcolm
and Charles Hartshorne, its independent obstetricians, both
maintain that the new version, unlike the old, does provide a
proof of the existence of God.
This outline of the historical fortunes of the Ontological
Argument suggests a convenient expository plan: I shall look in
turn at Anselm, at Descartes, and at the recent production of
1
Malcolm and Hartshorne. I shall spend most time on Anselm's
argument; partly because his is the most complex and the most
debated version of the Ontological Argument, partly because
Anselm is after all the fans et origo of the whole enterprise.
I
In his biography of Anselm, Eadmer relates how his master
conceived the Ontological Argument in a sudden moment of
illumination, one night during Matins (Eadmer, I 19; cf.
Anselm [2] 93.16-19). The tract in which Anselm set down his
discovery first appeared anonymously under the title Fides
Q.uaerens Intellectum (Faith in Search of Understanding); later, on the
urging of his friends, Anselm put his name to it, and gave it the
title Proslogion (Allocution) (Anselm [2] 94.6-13-Anselm wrote
as a matter of course in Latin).
Soon after copies of the treatise circulated abroad there
appeared a reply to sections II to IV, entitled 'On Behalf of the
Fool' and composed by Gaunilo, a monk from Marmoutier near
Tours (Charlesworth, pp. 83-4). Gaunilo's piece was sent to
Anselm 'who read it with pleasure and, thanking his critic,
wrote his reply to it which he attached to the piece which had
been sent to him, and returned to the friend who had passed it
to him, requesting him and any others who deigned to possess his
treatise to write out at the end of it the criticism ofhis argument
and his reply to the criticism' (Eadmer, I 19). The two appen
dices have survived and offer useful glosses on the arguments
of the Proslogion itself. In none of his many later philosophical
writings did Anselm reconsider his Ontological Argument (nor,
it may be remarked, did he return in them to the heightened
and ornate prose style which embellishes the Proslogion).
Here is a literal translation of the second section of the
Proslogion:
101.3 Therefore, Lord, who grant understanding to faith,
grant me that, in so far as you know it beneficial, I
understand that you are as we believe and you are
5 that which we believe. Now we believe that you are
something than which nothing greater can be
imagined. Then is there no such nature, since the fool
2
