Anselm’s Ontological Argument and its criticism by Kant

In this paper, I will describe the argument used by Saint Anselm to prove the existence of god and Immanuel Kant's criticism of these arguments. Furthermore, I will try to analyze the soundness of Kant's criticism and establish that Anselm was unable to prove the god's existence in his ontological argument. This paper will not try to prove or disprove the existence of god but will be limited to discussing the lack of soundness of Anselm's argument and the soundness of its criticism by Kant.

In his work Proslogion, Saint Anselm of Canterbury gives an argument for the existence of God. His argument is the following.

1. God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.

2. A God that exists is greater than the one that does not exist.

3. If God does not exist, God is not that than which nothing greater can be thought.

4. From the third and first premise by using modus tollens we infer that God cannot, not exist.

5. Therefore, God must exist. (Reading 2)

In the first premise, Anselm defines God as “being than which no greater can be conceived” (in Anselm). This premise is an analytic statement which establishes the meaning of 'God' for this argument. The second premise in this argument is a conceptual claim that is logically correct as anything that exists will be greater than any non-existent thing. The third premise is a conditional proposition where "God does not exist" is the antecedent and "God is not that which nothing greater can be thought" is the consequent. (Reading 4) From the first premise, we know that the consequent is false. Since the consequent is necessary for the antecedent, using modus tollens the antecedent "God does not exist" must also be false. This implies that God does exist which is the conclusion of Anselm's argument. This argument has a truth-preserving structure and therefore must be valid. If all the premises of this argument are true, then this argument must be sound.

Immanuel Kant in his book "Critique of Pure Reason", questions the soundness of Anselm's ontological argument. His criticism of Anselm's argument primarily stems from the first premise in which Anselm says, "God is that than which nothing greater can be thought". Kant argues that this has to be either an analytic or a synthetic proposition. Thus, it must either be a definition, or inference from an observation of the physical world. It cannot be synthetic since one cannot observe God or any of its properties in the physical world. So, it must be analytic which implies that Anselm is giving a definition of god for this particular argument. Kant further says that a definition can take the form of a conditional proposition. When an object is defined as having a particular characteristic property, it means that if something is that object it will have that particular characteristic property. Thus, the first premise in Anselm's ontological argument can be rewritten as "If something is God, then it is that than which nothing greater can be thought". (Reading 4) Regarding the antecedent in this conditional proposition ie the following part, "If something is God", Kant says that in order for the first premise to be true one has to assume that there is a god and rest of the argument is built on it. According to Kant, Anselm's argument is sound if one makes the assumption that there is a God but if one makes that assumption than the argument is essentially begging the question. If we assume that there is a God and then eventually prove that there is a god based on that assumption than we are not actually proving anything. In other words, Anselm's argument is saying that if there is God then there is a god. Immanuel Kant says that Anselm's ontological argument is unsuccessful in proving the existence of God if we assume that there is no God. Since the argument set out to prove that there is a God irrespective of what one assumes, it is inconclusive and therefore a bad argument for the existence of god according to Immanuel Kant's evaluation.

The criticism of Anselm's ontological argument by Immanuel Kant is a good philosophical objection. Although an argument that begs the question is not invalid, it renders the argument inconclusive. Kant's evaluation clearly shows that Anselm's argument is only sound if one makes the assumption that there is something that is God in the first premise. A good ontological argument should not be dependent on this assumption to prove the existence of God but should prove it even if one assumes that there is no God.

While criticizing Anselm's ontological argument Immanuel Kant does not try to make an argument for the non-existence of God. His criticism is restricted to Anselm's argument and thus goes on to show it is not a good argument to prove the existence of God. There were other arguments known to Immanuel Kant that could be good to prove the existence of God (in Stang), but he does not mention them in his criticism of Anselm's ontological argument. Thus, there is no way for us to infer if he should have believed in God's existence from the facts given here. The philosophical reasoning does not go from believing in something to constructing an argument for that belief. Instead, a philosopher should come up or encounter an argument first and then decide what to believe in based on the soundness of that argument. Just because Kant was criticizing an argument for the existence of God does not in any way indicate that he believed that God does not exist. It just shows that he believed that Anselm's argument does not conclusively prove God's existence.

A person will be epistemically justified in believing either that God exists or that God does not exist depending on what sound ontological arguments or argument against the existence of God that they are aware of. If a person is not aware of any sound ontological argument than they will not be justified in believing in the existence of God. Similarly, if a person is not aware of any sound argument against the existence of God, they will not be justified in believing that God does not exist. If a person is not aware of any sound argument either for or against the existence of God, they cannot be justified in holding a belief either way and should be agnostic.

The ontological argument presented by Anselm proves to be inconclusive when faced with evaluation by Immanuel Kant. The failure of Anselm’s argument does not prove the non-existence of God neither does Kant present an argument for it here. Furthermore, a philosopher’s belief in the existence of god should be determined by the arguments known to them and not the other way around. Finally, a person who believes in the existence of god based on the Anselm’s argument and who is aware of its criticism by Kant is not justified in their belief.

Works Cited

Anselm, St., Proslogion, in St. Anselm’s Proslogion, M. Charlesworth (ed.), Oxford: OUP, 1965

Stang, Nicholas F. “Kant’s Possibility Proof.” History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3,

July 2017, pp. 275–294., philarchive.org/archive/STAKPPv1.