Reading Anselm's Proslogion

The History of Anselm's Argument and its Significance Today

Ian Logan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351906647
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Anselm's Proslogion has sparked controversy from the time it was written (c.1077) to the present day. Attempts to provide definitive accounts of its argument have led to a wide and contradictory variety of interpretations. In this book, Ian Logan goes back to basics, to the Latin text of the Proslogion with an original parallel English translation, before tracing the twists and turns of this controversy. Helping us to understand how the same argument came to be regarded as based on reason alone by some and on faith alone by others, as a logically sound demonstration by its supporters and as fatally flawed by its opponents, Logan considers what Anselm is setting out to do in the Proslogion, how his argument works, and whether it is successful.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Back to the Text

Presenting an account of Anselm’s Proslogion argument, its background and its subsequent history in later thought is more than an exercise in intellectual archaeology. Work still needs to be done to understand what Anselm was trying to achieve and how he was trying to achieve it. Anselm’s argument presents an important paradigm for the history of ideas, since it has been treated directly or indirectly by so many different thinkers in subsequent centuries, and it provides a direct challenge to the way philosophy has been done over those centuries. That Anselm has been consistently misunderstood and misrepresented is a central thesis of this book. It is only by returning to and reading Anselm’s text that we can hope to establish what he was trying to say and understand how he was trying to say it. Anselm’s argument has fascinated and continues to fascinate philosophers and theologians, to such an extent that it is no longer possible in a single work to review exhaustively the history of its reception. Thus, the account of the reception in this book is selective, particularly in Chapter 8 where I limit myself in the main to its reception amongst modern English speaking philosophers. It is these philosophers who have been particularly concerned with the logical form, validity and soundness of Anselm’s argument, and to whom it is necessary to respond, if one wishes to discover whether Anselm still has something of philosophical interest to say to us in the Proslogion.

There has been a natural tendency amongst modern thinkers to adhere, wittingly or unwittingly, to a Whig view of history, to see the history of ideas as the steady progress of enlightened thought over benighted ignorance. The past is a bad or at best confused place, in which people concerned themselves ‘with a lot of outdated foolishness’, such as questions about the existence of God, which we now correctly consider to be irrelevant.¹ It is my hope that the study of Anselm’s argument and its subsequent reception will help to counter such views, not because everything in the past was good, but because some things were, and it may just be that some of those good things are what ‘we’ now consider outdated and irrelevant.

Anselm’s argument is frequently identified with later ontological arguments. It is one of my tasks in this work to show how that has happened, and that Anselm’s argument has to be addressed in its specificity, that ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ is the irreplaceable middle term of Anselm’s argument, which for Anselm functions as the ‘natural or proper word’ for God. This is not simply a question of scholarship, but also of philosophy, for in my view the latter is aided by the former. In this book I seek to create an ‘audit trail’ which stretches from (i) a prehistory of the text (Chapter 2) to (ii) the manuscript tradition and a translation which seeks to remain faithful to Anselm’s Latin text (Chapter 3), presenting the Latin and English texts in parallel to (iii) a commentary on the text (Chapter 4) to (iv) an exposition of the debate that immediately followed its ‘publication’ (Chapter 5) to (v) a review and evaluation of the historical and ongoing reception of the Proslogion (Chapters 6, 7 and 8). It concludes with an assessment of the signifcance of Anselm’s argument.

Anselm of Aosta, Bec and Canterbury

Anselm was born in Aosta, Italy, in 1033 and died in Canterbury in 1109. He arrived in Bec c. 1059 to study under its prior, Lanfranc, before joining the monastery in 1060. He became prior after Lanfranc left Bec in 1063, and then abbot after the death of the monastery’s founder, Herluin, in 1078. In 1093, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm had been teaching at Bec for seventeen years before he wrote his frst book, the Monologion, in 1076.² The Proslogion followed in 1077/78.

Anselm was frst and foremost a monk of the Order of St Benedict. It is evident in his writings that Anselm’s worldview is shaped by the rhythms of the monastic life, in particular by the divine office and the lectio divina. As part of his training as a novice, he learnt by heart the Psalms and the prayers of the church and his monastery. They were constantly repeated during the years of his formation. He imbibed them, and when he came to write, their imagery and language infused his thinking. Anselm regarded intellectual activity as a form of meditation and he called the Monologion ‘an example of meditating on the rationality of the faith’.³ Anselm regarded his writings as pertaining to the study of scripture.⁴ Although he was concerned that what he wrote should be consistent with authority,⁵ he did not appeal to authority. Rather he sought to discover what he called ‘necessary reasons’⁶ for the beliefs of Catholics and was willing to operate ‘by reason alone’⁷ and ‘without reference to Christ’.⁸ This can mislead us into thinking that Anselm was simply a rationalist who believed that starting with a tabula rasa we can ‘discover’ revelation without God’s aid.⁹ Such a view is the opposite of the one Anselm actually held. We can see this in his use of the statement based on a reading of Isaiah 7:9: ‘unless you believe, you shall not understand’. Anselm operated within the context of God’s revelation and did not seek to depart from it, but rather considered that insofar as we can be properly rational (for we are limited and fallen), we can demonstrate with god’s help the reasonableness and even necessity of whatever the church teaches about God. Anselm, as a philosopher, fails to meet the criterion established by Wittgenstein that the philosopher does not belong to a community of ideas.¹⁰ Anselm was most definitely a member of a community of ideas, and when he could not understand what Catholic belief teaches about God he bowed his head in reverence, unlike those he called the ‘heretics of dialectic’.¹¹ But he was also a brilliant philosopher, who discovered and successfully articulated the wonderfully original argument of the Proslogion.

The Text

The texts of the Proslogion, Pro Insipiente and Responsio that are transcribed and translated in this work are taken from a manuscript originating from the scriptorium of Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, and now residing in the Bodleian Library in Oxford: Ms Bodley 271 (SC1938). It is made up of two manuscripts: one written on parchment in the early twelfth century, the works of Anselm; the other written on paper in the fifteenth century, an exposition of the ‘Song of Songs’ wrongly attributed to Anselm. The genuine Anselm manuscript equates to the first ii + 166 folios of Ms Bodley 271. From now on, when I speak of this part of Ms Bodley 271, I shall refer to it as B. The script of B is written mainly in the Christ Church hand.¹² My reason for employing this text rather than that contained in Schmitt’s edition¹³ is based on my belief that an edition of Anselm’s works was produced with the involvement of Anselm at the end of his life, and that B is to be identified with this edition.¹⁴ Thus, it is from this manuscript, probably written between 1107 and 1114 at Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, that the text is taken. In fact, the outcome of the attempt in the last century, led by Dom A. Wilmart and Dom F.S. Schmitt, to distinguish the authentic works of Saint Anselm of Canterbury from later accretions,¹⁵ following on from which Schmitt produced his critical edition of the works of Anselm, was to produce a set of works and a text which were virtually identical to that of B. B represents the closest thing we have to a definitive edition of Anselm’s works.

I have chosen not to include here the text of the Sumptum, which follows the Proslogion and precedes the Pro Insipiente, since it simply reiterates with some minor changes in punctuation the text of P2–4. It is important, however, to note the presence of the Sumptum in B, since it confirms that the Pro Insipiente was viewed as a response to P2–4, and not to the remainder of the Proslogion. The Pro Insipiente begins, ‘Quid adhaec respondeat quidam…’. ‘Haec’ here refers to the words of the Sumptum.

B contains all Anselm’s major writings, but not his correspondence. References to his letters follow the numbering contained in Schmitt’s edition.

The Transcription

The purpose of the transcription of that part of B that contains the Proslogion, the Pro Insipiente and Anselm’s Responsio is to convey accurately the original without expecting the reader to be experienced in reading medieval scribal hands or acquainted with scribal shorthand and punctuation. Thus, the transcription expands the shorthand, placing the expanded text in square brackets, e.g. e[st]. The punctuation as it exists in the manuscript is retained. It should be noted that medieval punctuation is not as grammatically or syntactically significant as modern punctuation. Throughout our text a ‘corrector’ has scratched out the punctus employed in the est/esse abbreviations. This will not be noted in the text.

Punctuation is transcribed thus:

Punctus on the line or medial punctus followed by capital letter – .

Medial punctus not followed by capital letter – ,

Double punctus – :

Punctus elevatus – ;

Punctus exclamativus – !

Punctus in10/28/2016 9:01AMterrogativus – ?

A characteristic feature of the text is the elision of a preposition with its object, e.g. ini...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Pre-text: The dialectical origins of Anselm’s argument
• 3 The Text
• 4 Commentary on the Proslogion
• 5 Anselm’s Defence and the Unum Argumentum
• 6 The Medieval Reception
• 7 The Modern Reception
• 8 Anselm’s Argument Today
• Conclusion: The Significance of Anselm’s Argument
• Bibliography
• Index