BASA

Anselm's debate with Gaunilo 33 he take to be the relationship between this definition and Gaunilo's point in Section 7 to the effect that « properly speaking, unrealities cannot be understood »? At first it might be supposed that Anselm regarded this statement as just the obverse side of the inconsistency which he attributed to Section 2. For although, on his reading, the definition in Section 2 is consistent with the statement in Section 7, that statement itself is inconsistent with the assertion in Section 2 that sometimes unreal things can be understood. Nonetheless, since Anselm never mentions this additional inconsistency, we must be cautious about inferring that he believed there was one. 14 Indeed, had he held this view, it would have been easy for him to point out that in Section 7 Gaunilo need not have made an issue of our not being able to understand God not to exist; for nothing at all (let alone God) would be able to be understood not to exist, since the expression « understood not to exist » would be self-contradictory (given Anselm's construal of Gaunilo's definition of « understand »). Accordingly, it begins to appear more likely that Anselm realized something which present-day commentators ·seem to have overlooked, viz., that Gaunilo's point of view changes in the middle of Section 7, 15 where he begins speaking for himself, the believing monk, and stops speaking on behalf of the Pool, as he had been doing up to then. In Section 7 he writes: « I understand indubitably, that that being which is supreme, viz., God, exists and cannot fail to exist ». Obviously he is not speaking for the Pool. Rather, he is remarking: the Pool thinks a proposition which you and I, Anselm, regard as a falsehood, viz., that God does not exist; consequently, the Pool cannot understand this falsehood because, strictly speaking, only truths can be understood. So Gau– nilo at this stage is identifying with Anselm's point of view and recommending a precision which he feels Anselm had neglected. Because of this shift in viewpoint Gaunilo's statement in Section 7 is not viciously inconsistent with the passage in Section 2 (i.e., there is no self-contradiction). Anselm probably realized this and 14 N. B. Repty to Gaunilo 4 addresses itself to On Behatf of the Foot 7; Repty to Gaunilo 6 takes issue with On Behatf of the Foot 2. " This change begins at S I, 129: 10 with the sentence « Cum autem dicitur... ».