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Ontological Arguments
First published Thu Feb 8, 1996; substantive revision Wed Feb 6, 2019
Ontological arguments are arguments, for the conclusion that God exists, from premises which are supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone. In other words, ontological arguments are arguments from what are typically alleged to be none but analytic, a priori and necessary premises to the conclusion that God exists.
The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century C.E. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., God—exists.
In the seventeenth century, René Descartes defended a family of similar arguments. For instance, in the Fifth Meditation, Descartes claims to provide a proof demonstrating the existence of God from the idea of a supremely perfect being. Descartes argues that there is no less contradiction in conceiving a supremely perfect being who lacks existence than there is in conceiving a triangle whose interior angles do not sum to 180 degrees. Hence, he supposes, since we do conceive a supremely perfect being—we do have the idea of a supremely perfect being—we must conclude that a supremely perfect being exists.
In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz attempted to fill what he took to be a shortcoming in Descartes’ view. According to Leibniz, Descartes’ arguments fail unless one first shows that the idea of a supremely perfect being is coherent, or that it is possible for there to be a supremely perfect being. Leibniz argued that, since perfections are unanalysable, it is impossible to demonstrate that perfections are incompatible—and he concluded from this that all perfections can co-exist together in a single entity.
In more recent times, Kurt Gödel, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga have all presented much-discussed ontological arguments which bear interesting connections to the earlier arguments of St. Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz. Of these, the most interesting are those of Gödel and Plantinga; in these cases, however, it is unclear whether we should really say that these authors claim that the arguments are proofs of the existence of God.
Critiques of ontological arguments begin with Gaunilo, a contemporary of St. Anselm. Perhaps the best known criticisms of ontological arguments are due to Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason. Most famously, Kant claims that ontological arguments are vitiated by their reliance upon the implicit assumption that “existence” is a real predicate. However, as Bertrand Russell observed, it is much easier to be persuaded that ontological arguments are no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with them. This helps to explain why ontological arguments have fascinated philosophers for almost a thousand years.
In various ways, the account provided to this point is rough, and susceptible of improvement. Sections 1–6 in what follows provide some of the requisite embellishments, though—as is usually the case in philosophy—there are many issues taken up here which could be pursued at much greater length. Sections 7–9 take up some of the central questions at a slightly more sophisticated level of discussion. Section 10 is a quick overview of very recent work on ontological arguments:
1. History of Ontological Arguments 2. Taxonomy of Ontological Arguments 3. Characterisation of Ontological Arguments 4. Uses of Ontological Arguments 5. Objections to Ontological Arguments 6. Parodies of Ontological Arguments 7. Gödel’s Ontological Argument 8. A Victorious Ontological Argument? 9. St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument 10. Ontological Arguments in the 21st Century Bibliography Primary Texts Other Texts Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries
1. History of Ontological Arguments| 1078: | St. Anselm, Proslogion. Followed soon after by Gaunilo’s critique In Behalf of the Fool. | | 1264: | St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa. Criticises an argument which somehow descends from St. Anselm. | | 1637: | Descartes, Discourse on Method. The argument of Discourse 4 is further elaborated in the Meditations. The Objections—particularly those of Caterus and Gassendi—and the Replies contain much valuable discussion of the Cartesian arguments. | | c1680: | Spinoza, Ethics. Intimations of a defensible mereological ontological argument, albeit one whose conclusion is not (obviously) endowed with religious significance. | | 1709: | Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. Contains Leibniz’s attempt to complete the Cartesian argument by showing that the Cartesian conception of God is not inconsistent. | | 1776: | Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Part IX is a general attack on a priori arguments (both analytic and synthetic). Includes a purported demonstration that no such arguments can be any good. | | 1787: | Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Contains famous attack on traditional theistic arguments. Three objections to “the ontological argument”, including the famous objection based on the dictum that existence is not a predicate. | | 1831: | Hegel, Lectures of 1831. In these lectures, Hegel says that “the ontological argument” succeeds. However, he does not make it clear what he takes the premises of “the ontological argument” to be; and nor does he make it clear what it would be for “the ontological argument” to succeed. Some scholars have claimed that the entire Hegelian corpus constitutes an ontological argument. | | 1884: | Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic. Existence is a second-order predicate. First-order existence claims are meaningless. So ontological arguments—whose conclusions are first-order existence claims—are doomed. | | 1941: | Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God. Defence of modal ontological arguments, allegedly derived from Proslogion 3. | | 1970: | Lewis, “Anselm and Actuality”. A key critique of ontological arguments. All ontological arguments are either invalid or question-begging; moreover, in many cases, they have two closely related readings, one of which falls into each of the above categories. | | 1974: | Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity. Plantinga’s “victorious” modal ontological argument. | | 1995: | Gödel, Collected Works Volume III. Gödel’s ontological argument. | | 2004: | Sobel, Logic and Theism. Detailed critique of ontological arguments. See, especially, chapters 2–4, pp. 29–167. |
For a useful discussion of the history of ontological arguments in the modern period, see Harrelson 2009.
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