BASA

Anselm's debate with Gaunilo 51 (P): For any object x, if x exists in the understanding and in reality, then x is greater than if x exists only in the under– standing. I would imagine that he felt no more compunction about (P) than about the generalized premise (Q): Being unable to be thought not to exist is greater than being able to be thought not to exist. At any rate, whether Anselm presupposed (P) or (6,b), he has a valid argument in Proslogion 2. 51 We are now in a position to notice the difference between Proslogion 2 and Reply 1. The former presupposes that existing in reality is greater than existing only in the understanding and not existing in reality. The latter presupposes that existing without a beginning is greater than existing with a beginning (Argument 1), and that not being able not to exist is greater than being able not to exist (Arguments 2 & 3). These differences have often been as it occurs is more perfect than the dream as merely surmised. But the dream would exist in the way that dreams do, viz., in the mind. Anselm recognizes that the notion of reality is context - dependent. The very fact that in Proslogion 2 he contrasts esse in re with esse in intellectu shows that he has restricted his domain of reference. He further indicates the boundaries of his discussion by taking as his example the case of an artist and his painting. Not even Lochhead's comment that a real slum is worse than an imaginary one (p. 122n.) overthrows (P); for a real slum is a better slum than is an imaginary one. The main motive for wanting to deny that Anselm subscribed to (P) is that, given (P), he has no way fault Gaunilo's perfect-island argument. For if the island than which no greater island can be conceived did not exist in reality, it would be an island than which a greater island could be conceived, etc. Anselm failed to recognize the forcefulness of Gaunilo's reasoning. He failed not because he did not regard existence as a perfection for any being other than N (as Lochhead suggests) but because of the considcrations alluded to in n. 23 above. The closest Anselm cornes, elsewhere, to comparing a thing as conceived with that thing as existing in reality is Monologion 36: «For no one doubts that created substances exist in themselves much differently from the way they exist in our knowledge. ln themselves they exist by virtue of their own being but in our knowledge their likenesses exist, not their own being. It follows, then, that the more truly they exist anywhere by virtue of their own being than by virtue of their likenesses, the more truly they exist in themselves than in our knowledge ». Also note Reply 5 (S 1, 135: 14-16). 51 Moreover, the logical structure of this argument is not subject to La Croix's counterinterpretation, which entails the conclusion that N does not exist (p. 126).