Born in Aosta, in the Alps, in 1033, Anselm entered the famous Benedictine monastery of Bec, in Normandy, where he became an admired master, and later became Archbishop of Canterbury, amid harsh conflicts with the English kings over the authority of the Church. He is called “the father of Scholasticism” for having inaugurated the systematic effort to use reason to penetrate the contents of faith. His motto sums up the whole medieval program: “fides quaerens intellectum” — faith seeking understanding. In the Proslogion he radicalizes it: “I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand” — a formula that gathers up the “crede ut intelligas” of Saint Augustine.
His most famous contribution is the ontological argument, an a priori proof of God’s existence. God is defined as “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” Now — argues Anselm — if this being existed only in the mind and not in reality, then we could think of something greater (the same being, but actually existing), which is contradictory. Therefore God exists necessarily. The argument proceeds from the pure concept, without recourse to experience.
Few philosophical proofs have had so fertile a destiny. Already in his own century a fellow monk contested it, and Thomas Aquinas would reject it; but Duns Scotus defended it, Descartes and Leibniz reformulated it, and Kant held that he had refuted it definitively — though the debate about it remains alive in contemporary logic and philosophy of religion. Anselm also wrote Cur Deus Homo, on the reasons for the Incarnation, profoundly marking Western theology.
Key Concepts
- Ontological argument: God = “that than which nothing greater can be thought”; if it existed only in the mind it would not be the maximum conceivable → God exists in reality (Proslogion)
- A posteriori proofs: degrees of goodness, greatness and perfection lead to the supreme being
- Realism of universals (Augustinian position)
- Redemption: Cur Deus Homo — why God became human
Influenced by
- Saint Augustine — fides quaerens intellectum
- Plato — via Augustinian neoplatonism
- Boethius — logic and the dispute over universals
Influenced
- Thomas Aquinas — criticizes the ontological argument
- Duns Scotus — defends the ontological argument
- Descartes — reformulates the ontological argument
- Leibniz — perfects the argument
- Kant — definitively criticizes the argument
Works
Monologion; Proslogion; Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Human).
See also
Medieval Philosophy