Anselm's Argument For The Existence Of God

Descartes would agree with Anselm’s conclusion that God exists but he would likely attack Anselm’s method of reaching this conclusion with the Fool. The arguments share a major commonality in their reliance upon the human mind in proving God’s existence. In both arguments, God’s existence becomes evident when reflecting on an idea of God. In both cases, possessing an idea of God is enough to prove God’s existence. These similarities, however, are not be enough to protect Anselm from Descartes’ hypothetical criticism of the method by which Anselm gets the Fool to admit that God exists. Descartes’ would take issue with the role that the mind plays in Anselm’s argument. In Descartes’ argument, the mind plays a necessarily passive role in understanding

Importantly, the Fool must be able to understand the idea of “that than which nothing greater can be thought” without yet conceding that God exists. By contemplating the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” the Fool generates an idea of God that ultimately requires him to accept that God exists. To be clear, Anselm is not arguing that God depends upon the Fool’s ideas, but rather that the way in which we go about conceiving of God as “that than which nothing greater can be thought” reveals that He must exist. In an analogous conceptual process, we understand that circles are necessarily round after learning the definition of a circle. Likewise, we understand that God exists after learning what constitutes “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” In this way, the mind plays an active role in this argument because it is the tool by which one can reveal the necessity of God’s