Anselm’s Other Argument by A. D. Smith (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Anselm’s Other Argument by A. D. Smith Sandra L. Visser A. D. Smith. Anselm’s Other Argument. Cambridge-London: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 244. Cloth, $49.95. Reading Smith’s Anselm’s Other Argument can be puzzling if one neglects to first read the introduction in which Smith explains that this book arose from work he was doing on a different book on Spinoza. Understanding that helps one understand why it might be that most of the chapters begin where contemporary scholars might rarely choose to begin, with Norman Malcolm and Charles Hartshorne, and why it takes a long, but inadequate and incomplete (at least for those who are conversant with the current literature), detour into considerations of omnipotence, while it examines the relevant passages of Anselm’s Proslogion arguments, before ending with the defense of a different argument that Anselm makes explicit in his Reply to Gaunilo. Despite this at times unhelpful approach to Anselm’s work, at each step of the way, Smith’s scholarship is careful, fair, and very good. Most of the discussions are highly illuminating and typically convincing. The criticisms of Malcolm, Hartshorne, and Katherin Rogers, the one contemporary Anselm scholar Smith treats at length, are nuanced and persuasive. Yet the route that Smith takes in his research, and that appears duplicated in his book, is probably not the one others would find most profitable when considering Anselm’s arguments for the existence of something greater than which cannot be conceived. One of the two central arguments of Smith’s work is that there is no modal ontological argument in Anselm’s Proslogion. Smith closely analyzes the most commonly referenced arguments offered as candidates, namely, those found in Proslogion 3 and Anselm’s Reply to Gaunilo. In each case, Smith argues that the arguments are not properly understood as modal ontological arguments. Smith’s arguments in this section of the book rest on three key premises, which he defends throughout the course of the book. My presentation does not do the subtlety of his arguments justice, but I believe these are fair statements of them. First, conceivability is not possibility. It is important for Anselm that inconceivability entails impossibility; however, one cannot conceive anything that contradicts reason. Second, because conceivability is not possibility, Anselm’s arguments require substantive metaphysical claims. The most important of these metaphysical claims is that “a thing that does not exist is able not to exist is true . . . because and only because there is something that actually exists that has a power over the thing’s existence” (112). It is because nothing has power over something than which nothing greater can be conceived that it is not conceivable for that thing not to exist. Third, modal ontological arguments do not require such substantive metaphysical claims in order for their inferences to go through. Smith concludes that Anselm’s arguments are not modal arguments at all. Smith convincingly argues that Anselm’s arguments cannot be easily translated into an argument that relies on a system of modal logic without loss of information. The care that Smith takes on this point requires some rather technical discussions of contemporary modal systems including S5 and B. The sometimes dense discussion helps the reader appreciate in what ways Anselm’s modal concepts do not map onto our own. But Smith’s argument [End Page 781] might also lead the reader to believe that there is a bigger gap between Anselm’s arguments and ours. That is misleading. There is some very heavy metaphysical work going on in the premise necessary for a contemporary modal argument that it is possible that God exists. In fact, in order to defend that premise, many of Anselm’s arguments and premises from his own arguments might be philosophically helpful. What of Anselm’s other argument and the second central piece of Smith’s work? The argument Smith examines is an interesting one Anselm offers in the Replies. Anselm uses the argument to clarify or further unpack why it is that Anselm believes that something than which a greater cannot be conceived exists. It is an argument that starts from the claim that such a being...