Ontological argument

In the Ontological argument, you're starting with the simple concept of God. Does God exist? St. Anselm's theory tries to come to a conclusion about this question. St. Anselm goes on to make two major points in his argument. One being that there is a difference between existence in reality and existence in understanding. Existence in reality is a basic notion, that things that physically exist do, and things that don’t, don’t. Existence in understanding means that anything can exist if we want…

Chad Dubin Many philosophers have used the ontological argument to try to prove the existence of God. Descartes and Anselm are two examples of philosophers who have done so. Both use the concept of having the idea of God to try to prove his existence. However, the ontological argument for the existence of God is unsuccessful in proving his existence. Descartes uses the idea of existence being a property and an aspect of perfection to try to prove God’s existence while Anselm uses the concept…

The Ontological argument, written by philosopher St. Anselm of Canterbury in his book the Proslogion in the eleventh century, is a metaphysical argument for the existence of God in reality. In this essay I will discuss the validity of this argument. In this text Anselm states that the concept of God has the necessary and sufficient condition of being maximally perfect- ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’- and that, since existing in reality is greater than existing only conceptually,…

There are various systems and arguments for proving God’s existence; created by a plethora of theologists, psychologists, and philosophers, but I will be focusing on one: The Ontological Argument for God’s existence. The basic structure for the Ontological argument is set up as a reductio ad absurdum argument, which is essentially an argument which derives a solution by presenting the opposition to the desired solution, then formulating that it is absurd, or illogical, then in turn proves the…

The argument for the existence of God will always give rise to infinitive points of view. St. Anselm (c. 1033- April 21, 1109) was distinguished philosopher, scholar, theologian and an Italian monk who later went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. His thinking and writings about God and the disposition of faith has influenced and fascinated scholars and philosophers since the Middle Ages—some would even say he is the most important Christian thinker of the 11th century. In his highly…

Throughout the history of Philosophy the topic that is filled with the most arguments is the existence of a perfect being. Many people believe that a “perfect being” is capable of existing while others believe that the “perfect being” only exists in the form of God. Philosophy is flooded with arguments for and against the existence of God. I chose the photograph of The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci because the picture itself is of a man who seems to be completely proportional, a man who is…

the Teleological and Ontological arguments, one controversial issue is whether existence is a predicate or not. On one hand, the Ontological argument contends that existence is a predicate to perfection. On the other hand, Kant disputes that existence is not a “real predicate” to perfection because it does not give attributes to explain the existence of God, therefore, making existence a special case. I will be discussing the idea of a special case and how the Ontological argument fails to…

up with an argument which attempts to prove the existence of God by proving the apparent absurdity of the atheist opinion. Anselm contrasts the ideas of existing in the understanding and existing in reality to show that God must truly exist in reality. The earliest critic of the ontological argument is a monk from Marmoutier named Gaunilo who believed that we can use logic to prove things that we have no reason to believe to be true. Gaunilo believed that he could construct an argument with…

St. Anselm, an Italian monk, first initiated the ontological argument. He was a firm As a firm believer in God and hoped to prove and share his strong faith on God’s existence by using logic and reason. He defines God as ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought.’ Anselm states that there is a difference between understanding God as a concept and understanding him to exist. To back up this claim he uses the analogy of a painter. He elaborates that the first step a painter takes is by…

The ontological argument, first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury, is an argument that uses premises and reason to prove that God exists. In this paper, I will explain Anselm’s arguments for the existence of God and Guanilo’s response against Anselm’s reasoning. I will then evaluate the arguments given by both Anselm and Gaunilo. In his work, Proslogion, Anselm uses reductio ad absurdum to argue that God exists. Reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument where a premise is disproven by following…