Proslogion: including Gaunilo Objections and Anselm's Replies

By St. Anselm and Matthew D. Walz

Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm’s Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm’s well-known argument for God’s existence in Chapters 2–4, which is often called the “ontological argument,” a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of “something than which nothing greater is able to be thought,” and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument – which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes – but a small portion of the whole. Preceding it is a profound but oft-overlooked opening chapter in which Anselm contemplates his all-too-human condition and disposes the reader to receive aptly his argument for God’s existence in the next three chapters. And following this argument are 20 chapters in which Anselm artfully unfolds the depth and breadth of God’s true existence as that than which nothing greater is able to be thought, showing God to be (among other things) able-to-sense, pity-hearted, just, good, and uncircumscribed. Indeed, if the reader is willing to give himself over to the work as whole, he will be compelled, under Anselm’s deft guidance, to “endeavor to straighten up his mind toward contemplating God,” which is how Anselm describes his own role in the work in his prefatory remarks.

This edition provides a faithful yet readable English rendering of the whole Proslogion, the objections raised to Anselm’s argument by his contemporary Gaunilo, and Anselm’s replies to those objections. (After responding to Gaunilo, Anselm himself requested that these objections and replies be included in subsequent editions of the Proslogion.) This edition also includes an introduction that contextualizes the Proslogion within the monastic, pre-Scholastic age in which it first made its appearance. In addition, by means of notes and commentary, this edition articulates how to contextualize Anselm’s famous argument in the Proslogion as a whole and in light of his replies to Gaunilo, how to appreciate the artistry whereby Anselm knit the Proslogion together into a coherent and concise unity, and how the work may be taught effectively to interested students. These features set this affordable English edition of the Proslogion apart from those currently available, which too often fail to capture accurately the beauty of Anselm’s prose, which often treat the work through the lens of either later Scholasticism or contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, and which take little note of the craftsmanship whereby Anselm constructed this masterfully integrated work that is remembered too often for too few of its 24 chapters.

Matthew Walz has taught in the interdisciplinary program at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781587316609

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Proslogion

Including Gaunilo’s Objections and Anselm’s Reply

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

Translated and Introduced by Matthew D. Walz

ST. AUGUSTINE’S PRESS

South Bend, Indiana

Translation copyright © 2013 by Matthew D. Walz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of St. Augustine’s Press.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033–1109. [Proslogion. English]

Proslogion: including Gaunilo’s objections and Anselm’s reply / St. Anselm of Canterbury;

translated and introduced by Matthew D. Walz. – 1st [edition].

pages   cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58731-659-3 (paperbound : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-58731-660-9 (e-book)

1. God – Proof, Ontological – Early works to 1800.

I. Walz, Matthew D., translator, writer of added commentary. II. Gaunilo, 11th cent. Liber pro insipiente. English. III. Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033–1109. Liber apologeticus. English.

IV. Title.

B765.A83P7613 2013

212’.1 – dc23                 2012039820

  ∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.

ST AUGUSTINE’S PRESS

www.staugustine.net

Sponsae formosae meae et matri filiorum nostrorum amanti,

TERESIAE

. . . quoniam caritas ex Deo est . . .

Introduction

In 593 AD, Pope Gregory the Great wrote the Dialogues. This work comprises four books recounting conversations between Gregory and a young man named Peter concerning the life and miracles of the Italian Fathers. The aim of the Dialogues, it appears, is to instill hope in Christians by providing models of the spiritual life. In other words, by means of examples, the work argues that holiness is truly possible in this life. In three of the four books, lives of numerous Italian Fathers are recorded; Gregory honors only one Italian Father with an entire book dedicated to recording his life and miracles. That man, of course, is Benedict of Nursia – or the man of God (vir Dei), as Gregory often names him. It is a fitting tribute to a man who, by his life and only a single written work, the Rule, shaped Western monasticism and by extension the development of Europe as a whole. To Gregory, who himself lived as a monk under the Rule prior to becoming the pope, Benedict stands out as a sign of hope in a world in need of Christian exemplars.

Medieval monks in the West, among whom Anselm of Canterbury is counted, studied Benedict’s Rule. More than likely they also read Gregory’s account of Benedict’s life in the Dialogues. They would have pondered, then, a marvelous event that took place near the end of Benedict’s marvel-filled life. Gregory recounts it thus:

While the monks were still resting, the man of God, Benedict, who was constant in keeping watch, rose up before the time of night prayer. Standing at the window and praying to the all-able God, and looking out at the hour of darkest night, he suddenly saw light being poured out from above, which made all the darkness of night flee and became bright with much splendor, so much so that this light radiating in the midst of the darkness would have overcome day itself. During this spectacular sight, moreover, an exceedingly wonderful thing followed, which Benedict himself told afterward: the whole world, gathered together as if under a single ray of the sun, was brought together before his eyes.¹

As Gregory points out, it was Benedict himself, a man of great humility throughout his life, who related this event to others. Presumably the man of God considered it an event worth telling.

What are we to make of this event? The world, which prima facie strikes us as greater than ourselves, appears small and comprehensible to the eyes and understanding of the man of God. As the Dialogues indicate, Gregory and Peter are amazed by this story, and Gregory attempts to unfold its significance to his young interlocutor. He says:

Hold firm, Peter, to what I say, because to the soul that sees the Creator, every creature is narrow. For no matter how slightly the soul looks forth from the light of the Creator, all that is created becomes little to it. This is because the bosom of the mind is opened up by the very light of its inmost vision and is expanded in God, in such a way that it exists as higher than the world; indeed, the very soul of the one seeing is also above itself. Since it is thus caught up above itself in the light of God, it is amplified in its interior. Thus lifted up, when it looks upon itself below itself, it comprehends how little it is able to comprehend when it is lowered. . . . What wonder is it, then, that the man of God saw the world gathered together before himself, who in the light of his mind was elevated outside the world? And although the world was gathered together before his eyes, yet heaven and earth were not contracted; rather, the soul of the one seeing is widened, who, caught up in God, can see without difficulty all that is under God.²

Thus was Benedict, "blessed [benedictus] both by grace and by name,"³ blessed by this unique vision in which were revealed both the greatness of God the Creator and the smallness of the world He created.

Why begin an introduction to Anselm’s Proslogion by recounting a marvelous event from the life of Benedict? Indeed, these two events – Benedict’s vision and the publication of the Proslogion – stand nearly half of a millennium apart. One reason is to call attention to the fact that even by his own account Anselm was first and foremost a Benedictine monk, a vocation and state that defined him as a person and a thinker. Anselm was a monastic, not a scholastic, even though the Proslogion is often read as if Anselm should be numbered among the Schoolmen. Now, it would carry us too far afield here to spell out the relevant distinctions between monasticism and scholasticism.⁴ For the sake of this introduction, it suffices to note that Anselm’s intellectual life in the monastery (before becoming a bishop) was essentially communal; hence, what he wrote was intended chiefly for the intellectual and spiritual benefit of his brethren. He was not, therefore, a professional theologian who lectured at a city university, but a monk who conversed daily with his brethren about divine matters. To understand the Proslogion, then, it behooves us to acknowledge Anselm’s purpose in writing it as well as the intellectual and spiritual climate within which it came to birth.

Another, more specific reason I begin with a story from Benedict’s life is to suggest a reading of the Proslogion that looks forward from Benedict to Anselm rather than backward from Kant or Descartes (or even Aquinas) to Anselm. Perhaps more than any other work in the history of philosophy, the Proslogion has become encrusted with layers of (mis)interpretation. Most recent interpreters operate under the assumption that Anselm was the first proponent of what Kant first termed an ontological argument for God’s existence. Interpretations along these lines even depict Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion – usually identified only with Chapters 2, 3, and 4 – in the language of symbolic logic, modal operators, and the like. Ripping these chapters untimely from the womb of the Proslogion, however, issues in abortive accounts of Anselm’s thinking. But if one reads the work looking forward from Benedict, one is less likely to analyze the Proslogion according to the presuppositions of modern philosophy or scholasticism and more likely to see it as a concise synthesis of an intelligently focused monastic worldview that bears fruit in insights into the reality of God. Indeed, as I would like to suggest, the Proslogion derives from and accords with the sort of experience that Benedict had while keeping vigil at his window late that night as his brethren slept, an experience that derives from a perspective on human existence and the existence of the world attained by one dedicated to an ascetic manner of living, i.e., a life of physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual self-pruning. And even if we readers are unlikely to enter into Anselm’s asceticism, we must be willing at least to give ourselves over to keeping constant watch with him as he thinks the reality of God in the Proslogion. Anselm has crafted this work with great care, and he invites his reader to experience what he himself experienced with regard to God within the liberating confines of his monastic existence.

There is, finally, a third reason why I draw attention to Benedict’s vision here, namely, to suggest a particular manner of reading the Proslogion. As Anselm indicates in its Preface, this work recapitulates an intellectual (perhaps even mystical) experience that he himself underwent. This experience culminated in the reception of a thought, a cogitatio, which Anselm first articulates in Chapter 2 as aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit (something than which nothing greater is able to be thought), the Proslogion’s best-known but oft-misunderstood phrase. By recalling Benedict’s miraculous vision, I want to suggest that the thought that offered itself to Anselm in a moment of despair is comparable to the sun’s ray along which Benedict gazed upon the entire world – even if Anselm gazed along

Reviews for Proslogion

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anselm is recognized as revolutionary for the contemplative style of prayer that he wrote in a time when theology required something very different. Moreover, he provided a step in the direction toward a more rational (logical) approach to theology and faith. His Proslogion is not a prayer but instead instructive about the nature of God, man, sin, and faith. Chapter 14 and 17 are especially worth reading. His writing style, in the Latin, is remarkable for the word choice and structure, both emphasizing the depth of feeling. It's especially enjoyable Latin to read aloud.