ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I shall look at Anselm’s defence in the Responsio of his argument against the objections presented in the Pro Insipiente, a work traditionally ascribed to a monk named Gaunilo. My purpose here is not to reiterate the text of the debate, but to shed light on what Anselm was doing in the Proslogion. The Responsio shows that:
(i) the Proslogion was intended as a ‘philosophical’ argument, the understanding of which was accessible to anyone who possessed the power of understanding; (ii) the identity of God and X is central to the argument of the Proslogion; (iii) God as X is a special case, which creates a problem for objections employing a similar logical form; (iv) terms which are perfectly legitimate in themselves when applied to God, e.g. ‘greater than everything’ and ‘necessarily existent’, cannot be substituted for the terms that Anselm uses, such as X and ‘that which cannot be thought not to exist’; and (v) the argument of the Proslogion is concerned with the act of thinking about God and not merely with an analysis of the concept of God.
