ABSTRACT
Early in the second chapter of The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter, Fourfold Root ), Schopenhauer concisely argues that the ontological argument for the existence of God is at best “a most beloved piece of nonsense” (FR 10). In his view, the ontological argument confuses the “two foremost meanings of the principle of sufficient reason” and is as such nothing but a “conjurer’s trick” pulled on philosophy (FR 10). The ontological argument establishes that the logical definition of a certain concept at the same time includes the cause of its existence. In other words, the existence of the object is included in the predicates that analytically apply to this concept and so, according to Schopenhauer, begs the question by already including the predicate ‘existence’ in the definition of the subject of predication.
