ABSTRACT
Some things, like cabbages and kings, exist only contingently. It is possible that they should not have existed at all. Does God exist only contingently? Anselm thought not, for a being would be greater if it existed in such a way that it logically could not fail to exist. By defining the concept of maximal greatness in a certain manner, Alvin Plantinga is able to boil down his version of the argument to the assertion of a single premise: that there is a possible world in which the property of maximal greatness is instantiated. Another merit of Plantinga’s version is that it makes use of the idea of possible worlds, thus reducing the logic of the modal argument to its most intuitive level. Plantinga prefers to state his modal version of the ontological argument in terms of whether a certain property—the property of being maximally great—is instantiated in any possible world.
