The fictionalized version of me I called “Jim Chase” in “One Day in 1969” spends some time during his big LSD trip mulling over the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God which was formulated by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century. What follows are some further thoughts on Anselm’s line of reasoning.
When Anselm writes about a being than which none greater can be conceived, he uses a common-sense distinction between existing only in the mind and existing in reality. I think we clearly understand this distinction when we understand claims like “Unicorns don’t really exist,” “There is no Santa Claus,” “A centaur is a mythical creature with the lower body of a horse and the upper body of a man,” etc. He makes the claim that existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind. What does this mean, and is it true? For one thing, something that exists in reality also exists in the mind whenever we consider it, so that its existence is more extensive than that of something that exists only in the mind. But I think we can go further than that. It is not only more extensive; it is also more effective, more powerful, more demanding of our attention. Consider the difference, for example, between, on the one hand, imagining that you are in a field that contains an angry bull some ten yards away who is staring at you, snorting, with head lowered, pawing at the ground with one forefoot, and, on the other hand, really being in such a situation. I think this is the kind of distinction Anselm has in mind when he contrasts existing only in the mind or imagination and existing in reality also and says that the latter is greater. It isn’t a matter, necessarily, of which we would prefer. I know I would rather be imagining a possible encounter with an angry bull than to be really confronting such a situation. But I think I can see what Anselm means when he claims that existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind. We care more about something that exists in reality than we do about something whose existence is imaginary.
Anselm asks us to contemplate the concept of a being than which none greater can be conceived. And now I think that, given the context of Anselm’s argument, the concept of “greater than” takes on a connotation of what is laudatory, as well as impactful. I take it that such a being would have every positive, desirable, satisfying quality that I can think of, to a greater degree than any other being, as long as none of those qualities exclude each other. And this is an advantage that the Ontological Argument has over the other classical arguments for the existence of God. A being than which none greater can be conceived would have all the qualities that God should have. In contrast, the Cosmological Argument just gets us a First Cause, which could be impersonal and not necessarily benevolent; the Teleological Argument purports to show there is a Designer with a Purpose, who presumably would be personal but, again, not necessarily benevolent. So, since a person is greater than a thing, and a benevolent person is greater than an indifferent or malevolent one, a being than which none greater can be conceived is personal and benevolent to the greatest degree possible.
There are a lot of interesting questions about the various qualities that would be possessed by a being than which none greater can be conceived. For example, is it greater to be sexual rather than asexual? And if so, is it greater to be male or female, or somehow both? If we conclude, as Anselm does, that God is the being than which none greater can be conceived, we might wonder whether it be greater to have the supreme perfection of sensory qualities or to have no sensory qualities at all. Does God smell better than anyone or anything else? Is God delicious? Is God more beautiful than any woman, more handsome than any man? Is God sexier than anybody else? Is it greater to have a body or not to have a body? Personally, I side more with William Blake than with Hume or with Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian ascetics on this. It is no more anthropomorphizing to conceive of God with human bodily characteristics in a superior form than it is to conceive of him as having human mental faculties in a superior form. Maybe it is that God can be human in the fullest sense whenever he or she wants to be, and when that happens, he or she is just as fully divine as ever.
The overriding question is whether this is all just a game of imagining or whether it is something serious, consequential, and real. Anselm’s argument, I think, cries out for an interpretation according to which if it is not something serious, consequential, and real; then we are not, after all, thinking about a being than which none greater can be conceived. Or else, we are saying that there is nothing greater than being frivolous.
It often occurs to people, when they first encounter Anselm’s argument, that he is simply defining God as existing and then deducing from that definition that he exists. “You can’t define something into existence,” they say. As I understand it, this is the purport of Kant’s objection in saying that existence is not a predicate. Now, it is true that it won’t do to define a unicorn, say, as “an animal that looks like a horse, has a single horn growing out of its forehead, and exists,” and then say that you have proved that unicorns exist. However, it is fine to define a unicorn as “a mythical beast that looks like a horse except that it has a single horn growing out of its forehead.” Why is this definition acceptable while the first one isn’t? Because unicorns exist only as the product of human imagination. They don’t exist independently of being imagined. Our definition of a term depends on our knowledge of the meaning of the term. One piece of that knowledge is whether the term refers to something that exists in reality or instead in the imagination only. A third possibility is that of being an entity that is theorized to exist, with a certain degree of probability. Because this matters to us, the definition of “unicorn” should include the information that it is mythical. Likewise, our conception of a horse includes the information that horses really exist and are not merely imaginary or theoretical. It doesn’t follow that the definition of “horse” should explicitly include that information, for we assume that unless a definition specifies that an entity is mythical, or theoretical, then it is not. But we didn’t learn from the definition that there are horses. We believe horses exist because we have seen them. If we hadn’t seen them, we might still believe they exist because people we believe to be honest and knowledgeable tell us so. We believe unicorns are mythical, not because we have canvassed the universe and found none of them grazing the plains or hiding in a dark forest, but because we have learned from our teachers that unicorns fall under the category of mythical beast.
Anselm reasons that the concept of a being than which none is greater is the concept of a being that exists in reality, and not in the imagination only, on the grounds that a being which exists in reality is greater than one that exists only in the imagination. I find the grounds persuasive, just as I would understand and be persuaded by the argument that horses are greater than unicorns because there really are horses, while unicorns are mythical. I would be construing “greater than” as “more important, more engaging, more worth caring about.” But is this, in effect, defining something into existence? In the case of horses versus unicorns, it isn’t objectionable for the definitions to include, implicitly in the case of “horse,” explicitly in the case of “unicorn,” the information as to whether such beings actually exist. However, this isn’t a matter of deriving the real existence or lack of it, from the definition. The definitions must match what we already know about horses and unicorns. Then and only then should we deduce anything from the definitions. But what about the concept of a being than which none greater can be conceived? Do we know that such a being exists in reality, as a horse exists, rather than existing only in the imagination, as a unicorn exists? Are we defining it into existence when we reason that in order to be such that none greater can be conceived, it must exist in this way; or are we finding out something about it which we should be careful to include, or at least not to contradict or exclude when we try to formulate a definition of it? Something potentially confusing about the issue is that the term “a being than which none greater can be conceived” sounds as much or more like an attempt at a definition of a term, of “God,” for example, than a term to be defined. Considering it as a term to be defined, we might come up with something like this: “an entity which Anselm argues must exist in reality and not in the mind only, on the grounds that existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind.” Anselm himself, or anyone else who is persuaded by the argument, could change the wording to “an entity which I argue must exist in reality and not in the mind only, on the grounds that existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind.” If this qualifying clause “which Anselm argues,” or “which I argue,” is left out, so that it would read “an entity which must exist in reality and not in the mind only, since existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind,” then it would be a question begging fallacy to argue that the existence of such an entity follows from the definition. But with the qualifying clause, the definition leaves us free to be persuaded or not by the argument, so that if we are persuaded by the argument, we aren’t guilty of making an illegitimate attempt to define such a being into existence.
I can imagine someone objecting that it isn’t always true that something that exists in reality is greater, more impactful, more important, more valuable than something that exists only in the imagination. A copy of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, which exists in reality and in which one can read of the exploits of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance and his squire Sancho Panza, is not greater than the fictional characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza themselves, who exist only in the imaginations of Cervantes and his readers. But in endorsing Anselm’s line of reasoning, I am not committed to the claim that you can pick anything you like that exists in reality and compare it with anything you like that exists only in the imagination, and you will find that the thing that exists in reality is greater than the thing that exists only in the imagination. The claim to which I am committed is that, for anything that exists only in the imagination, if there were a thing exactly like it except that it also exists in reality, the one that also exists in reality would be greater than the one that exists only in the imagination. So, I’m not saying that a copy of a book, because it really exists as a physical object, is necessarily greater than a fictional character whose fictional adventures are described in that book. But a copy of a book that exists in reality is greater than a copy of a book that exists in the imagination only. And I would say that a man who exists in reality and not in the imagination only—any man who really exists whether or not he resembles Don Quixote and whether or not he is capable of appreciating the literary worth of the fictional character of Don Quixote—is greater than Don Quixote.
A more fruitful objection than the one that says that existence is not a predicate is to argue that Anselm’s argument is too strong, in that it allows us to prove the existence in reality of the imaginary ideal version of any object or person we wish. For example, one could reason as follows: I can conceive of an island than which none greater can be conceived. And since it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind only, a greatest possible island exists in reality. In place of “island” one could put “house” or “wife” or “husband” or “pet” or anything else. The objection is fruitful because it invites the following response:
But the argument is not too strong. I admit and celebrate the supposedly disastrous consequence. An island than which none greater can be conceived must be an island that exists in reality and not just in the imagination. If it exists only in the imagination, it is not really an island at all. And the same goes for a house than which none greater can be conceived, and a wife, a husband, or anything else. So, there is an island than which none greater can be conceived? Yes, as long as there any islands at all. I don’t claim objective knowledge as to which one it is (or which ones they are, for I suppose there could be a tie), and I will admit that any two people who care enough about islands could have a great debate about it. Personally, I suspect that it is Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, and that the house than which none greater can be conceived is the one I live in, and that the wife than whom none greater can be conceived is named Mary Jo Call, and that there is a tie for the son than whom none greater can be conceived. The principle of the thing is objective, but the application of it is subjective. A claim about what can be conceived turns out to be a confession, after all, about what the person making the claim is able to conceive. And in order for something to qualify as one than which none greater can be conceived, not only must it exist in reality, but it must also be one with which the person making the claim is personally acquainted. The objection that the argument is too strong points to practical, aesthetic, and ethical implications of Anselm’s seemingly purely abstract reasoning about the real existence of a being than which none greater can be conceived. It doesn’t just lie there, as an empty abstract concept would. Just as in the more particular cases of the island, the house, the wife, etc., the ones than which none greater can be conceived are ones with which one is personally acquainted; so too, a being than which, of all beings, none greater can be conceived is one which falls within the realm of one’s own experiences of concrete instances. I know of no better literary expression of such experiences than some of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/poems-and-prose-penguin-classics_gerard-manley-hopkins/309199/?resultid=5b952e1d-94c7-4758-8a11-2ae41562138a#edition=3804489&idiq=1223549
For example:
Hurrahing in Harvest
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
As for the practical and ethical implications, I think the parables of Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like and his answer to the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” are the clearest expressions of what to do and why, given a conviction that a being than which none greater can be conceived falls under the category of concrete instances with which or with whom one is personally acquainted. For example:
Matthew 13: 45-46
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
