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Anselm's Argument For The Existence Of God

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Anselm was a Greek philosopher who was born in 1033 in Aosta, Italy. He was a Benedictine abbot in France who went into self-imposed exile to protest King William II of England and he was also a disciple of Augustine and he promoted a lot of Augustine’s teachings and beliefs. Anselm held the office of archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, because in 1109 Anselm died. After his death in 1109 he was canonized as a saint, and his feast day is on April 21. Anselm believed that it was not possible to think of absolutely nothing. He also believed that God is the greatest possible being, God exists in the understanding (mind), and that a being that exists in reality and understanding is greater than understanding by its self. Anselm also believed that God had a necessary existence instead of a contingent existence. I do not agree with Anselm when …show more content…

God’s existence is not dependent on anything else because God existed before anybody else did. Humans would not exist if God did not exist. I also agree that a being that exists in the understanding and in reality is greater than just existing in only the understanding or reality because if a being does not exist in both places then it does not seem real. For example, if we did not have the bible and churches it would be hard for a lot of people to believe that God is real because we would only know the stories that has been shared by others that over the years could get misconstrued so, his existence would only be in the understanding, and that is why a being who exists in reality and the understanding is greater. I agree with mostly all of Anselm beliefs except for his belief that you cannot think of “nothing” at any time because you are always thinking of something. But overall, I think that Anselm is a great

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What phrase does Anselm use to designate God? Explain why he formulates his designation in this way. Do you think this is an appropriate way to speak of God? The Phrase he used was “God is that than which no greater can be conceived”. There are two reasons as to why Anselm words this the way he does, reason one is the idea that “ no greater can be conceived” he doesn’t want you to be able to think about something greater hence the idea that no greater can be thought of by a person.

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In order for us to have understanding and think up our representation of the divine God there must be existence of him. How else would we be able to imagine a perfect holy being that is above all? If there is understanding of this being, the knowledge to imaging this being up had to come from somewhere, and this is how Saint Anselm tries to prove Gods existence.

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The definition of God is the greatest being. A thought of something that exists is greater than a thought of something that does not exist. That means if God is just a thought that does not exist, there must be a being greater than Him. This would contradict the definition of God. Therefore, God must exist so that the definition would be true.

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Descartes gave a few arguments that God exists and is real. Desocrates believed our idea of God is that God is a perfect being, he believed he is more perfect to exist than not to exist. Desocrates also believed that God is a infinite being. Descartes idea would be that God gave us this idea to type this paragraph about him so he must be real. When he thinks negative of an idea or thought he wonders if an evil demon plotted those thoughts.

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2001 p. 180). To fully understand Anselm’s argument, a series of steps needs to be understood. The first step towards understanding Anselm’s argument is that one must first accept the fact that God is the greatest possible being. The second fact or point to note is that God exists in the human mind or understanding. The third point, step, or fact to accept is that if God exists only in the human mind, then God is not the greatest possible being (McGrath & OverDrive, Inc. 2001

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Secondly, the lack of complete understanding of a God that is greater than any other is the basis of Anselm’s argument. In other words, one needs not understand how it is that no other greater God exists, because it is not possible to do that. It is the concept of understanding that such a being exists that is important. As long as it is possible to have such a state, then the definition given by Anselm is

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In other words, Anselm stipulates that God must exist since we can’t think of something greater than God but Descartes says the main reason why God exists is because he is a perfect being. St. Anselm and Descartes arguments are without doubt the most important arguments to the existence of God. They formed the basis for further discussion both by those that agree to these schools of thought as well as those that saw the arguments as weak and decided to show why. Both philosophers agreed that the comprehension of the concept of God was sufficient for anyone to believe in the existence of God even though Anselm argument was skewed towards our inability to conceive a more powerful being while Descartes mainly concentrates on the perfect nature in

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The claim of God being one means that God is independent of any other being. He lacks nothing and does not require anything else to help or to complete himself. The act of being One is a Claim to supremacy, as the only entity responsible for all other existence. In the sense that he is a simple composite of himself only and not made of anything more. He first must exist so His earlier argument for whether god has existence trumps the doubt of God’s existence.

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If we think god is perfect and superior than everything we know then anything greater than god can’t be imagined. If we think god as not

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Anselm says that God is the being which nothing greater can be conceived. This is the base of the argument. He says let’s assume God exists as an idea in the mind, there is a possibility that God exists only in our understanding. On the other hand, one can imagine that God is exists in our understanding as well as in reality. St. Anselm’s theory also says that a being which has all the properties of God and exists also in reality then this would be greater than the being which exists only in our understanding.

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