Anselm's Philosophy

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beings (such as ourselves) depend on something else for their existence. One example of this is, that as a child we utterly depended on our parents for food, clothing, and shelter. Contingent beings therefore can begin to be or cease to be at anytime. They can, unlike God, be here today and gone tomorrow. Anselm uses the definition of God (the ontological argument), in which I have described above, to prove God's existence. As I mentioned, Anselm believes that God is the greatest being we can possibly think of. He does this by first trying to prove the opposite of what he really wants to prove. For example, lets suppose God does not exist in reality. We then could think of something greater, a being that has all the same virtuous characteristics as we think God as having, but also being able to exist in reality. He then tries to prove that this supposition leads to a conclusion which cannot possibly be true. Then the original God would not actually be the greatest thinkable ...

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not to exist. Anselm does this by stating that God cannot even be thought not to exist, not only is his existence a fact but his non-existence is completely impossible. He confirms this by saying "And indeed whatever exists except you alone can be thought of as not existing. You alone of all things most truly exists and thus enjoy existence to the fullest degree of all things, because nothing else exists so undoubtedly, and thus everything else enjoys being in a lesser degree." (Anselm Chapter 3) The nonexistence of all other beings is possible, but when it comes to the nonexistence of the most perfect thinkable being, it is not possible. The argument for God's existence is very similar ...

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