Inaccessible Light : Marginalia to Anselm's Argument

Abstract: Since its inception in 1078, the ontological argument has continued to fascinate philosophers for almost a millennium. It continues to elicit genuine interest from analytic philosophers even today. Several recent studies and anthologies on the argument have been produced in the past few years, and the debate is as lively as ever.  With these current developments in mind, it is worth revisiting the argument from the perspective of the history of philosophy, to see how these modern projects of interpretation harmonize with the argument Anselm formulated in chapter 2 of his work Proslogion.   The purpose of this paper, then, is a historical and hermeneutical one. To assess the cogency of an argument, one must first know what the argument in question is. I will argue that this is exactly what we do not know about Anselm's argument. The standard interpretation that has dominated readings of Anselm fits awkwardly with the rest of the Anselmian project. More specifically, I will focus on the question of how the interpretation of Anselm's argument as "ontological" (which has dominated modern readings since Kant) can be harmonized with Anselm's commitment to the idea that all talk about God must be "negative" (or, as it is also called, "apophatic"): that is to say, that God can only be described through negations rather than "positive" predications.  I will argue that these two cannot be brought into harmony, which in turn points to the need of an alternative reading of the argument, one more faithful to Anselm's historical predicament.