In the Proslogion, St. Anselm presents his famous “ontological argument” for the existence of God. Most commentary on the Proslogion focuses on dismantling the logic of this argument or debating whether Anselm meant it to convince skeptics to accept the tenets of faith or to help the faithful understand what they already believe. In this short essay, I argue that the narrow focus on the ontological argument has obscured the broader aim of the Proslogion to encourage rational contemplation of the divine, understood in a Platonic sense.

Here’s a rough summary of the ontological argument in chapter two of the Proslogion: God is that than which nothing greater can be thought — the greatest possible being that we can imagine. Since we understand the meaning of the words “that than which nothing greater can be thought”, God exists as an idea or concept in the mind. All things being equal, something that exists in the real world is greater than that which exists in the mind alone. Therefore, if God exists only in the mind, then we can think of something greater than God: namely, a being who actually exists in the real world. But it is not possible to think of something greater than that which nothing greater can be thought. Therefore, God exists in reality.

For those who doubt that God exists, the argument is likely to provoke confusion and suspicion. It may come across as mere wordplay, as though Anselm has jumped from a conceptual definition of God to a conclusion that such a being must be instantiated in reality. For those who already believe in God, the proof may get more sympathy – although some of Anselm’s toughest critics such as Aquinas and Kant have been devout Christians – but it’s still not very informative about the nature of God. It tells us only that a being that is greater than any other we can think of must exist. If the argument is neither likely to persuade the non-believer nor provide illumination for the believer, what did Anselm intend the Proslogion to accomplish?

This is where I think it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. Many critics dive straight into assessing the logical validity and soundness of the ontological argument. Or, they start by considering whether the argument is intended for those who already have faith or those who do not. These are both important questions for any reader of the Proslogion. However, this narrow focus on the ontological argument tends to gloss over the chapters that come before and after it. In doing so, it underplays the broader context of the ontological argument as part of a spiritual mediation, which Anselm describes as “faith seeking understanding” and a “rousing of the mind to contemplation of God”. This “rousing of the mind to contemplation” is a meta-aim of the Proslogion that is at least as important as the result of that contemplation — the ontological proof itself. 

Contemplation is a key aim and motivation for the Proslogion. In the Preface, Anselm says that after reflecting that his previous work, the Monologion, consisted of a chain of interdependent arguments, he sought “to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists”. He did this “from the point of view of one trying to raise his mind to contemplate God and seeking to understand what he believes”, hence giving his work the original title of Faith in Quest of Understanding. While Anselm indeed claims to have discovered a self-evident proof of God’s existence, the context for this discovery is the quest for understanding of God through “silent reasoning within himself”.  In keeping with his training as a Benedictine monk, Anselm believes that meditation and silent reasoning are essential to the good life and the practice of faith.

Why does Anselm think that contemplation is so important to living a virtuous life? He explains this in chapter one, entitled “A Rousing of the mind to the contemplation of of God.” This chapter is a prayer for God to enlighten Anselm and help him to see the true image of God. Anselm invites us to abandon our worldly thoughts and cares for a while and turn inward to search for God, shutting out everything else from the soul, for human beings were made in order to know God. “I was made in order to see You, and I have not yet accomplished what I was made for.” 

The goal of knowing the supreme being is complicated, for we have been cast down into darkness and the true image of God hidden from us by our own benighted ignorance and sinfulness. “Your image is in me…but this image is so effaced and worn away by vice, so darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do what it was made to do unless you renew it and reform it.” For Anselm, then, rational mediation is necessary to see the light of God’s truth to the extent that is possible for mortal beings. Faith is not the product but the prerequisite for understanding. “For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.” 

Anselm’s focus on rational contemplation as a means to gain a clearer image of God is a reflection of his Neoplatonic worldview, which he inherits mainly from St. Augustine. To get a better picture of this view, it is helpful to turn to one of its origins in Plato’s Republic. In Book VII of the Republic, Socrates discusses how the soul can be educated to make progress along “the rough, steep, upward way” toward knowledge of the Good through the use of dialectic.  In the same way that Anselm invites us to abandon our worldly cares and turn our attention inward to contemplation of God, Plato describes the necessity of turning the soul away from the sights and sounds of the physical world toward contemplation of eternal beings through reason or logos:

The instrument with which each of us learns—just as an eye is not able to turn toward the light from the dark without the whole body— must be turned around from that which is coming into being together with the whole soul until it is able to endure looking at that which is and the brightest part of that which is. And we affirm that this is the good, don’t we? (Republic, 518 c)

This “turning around” of the soul is the first step in the practice of dialectic, by means of which one gradually comes to know the good over years of hard practice and dialogue: “so when a man tries by discussion — by means of argument without the use of any of the senses — to attain to each thing itself that is and doesn’t give up before he grasps by intellection itself that which is good itself.” (532a) This dialectical pursuit of the good itself — the constant posing of questions about virtue and vice and the attempt to give a rational account of one’s beliefs — is central to Plato’s notion of a virtuous and happy life. 

In a Christian context, the Proslogion offers an example of dialectical meditation on being itself — the type of being that cannot be thought not to exist and on which all other beings depend for their own existence. The dialectical character of the Proslogion is especially clear in the chapters that follow the ontological argument. Here, Anselm explicates the key attributes of God that can be deduced from the first principle that God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought”. In true dialectical form, most of these chapters find Anselm trying to resolve puzzles or contradictions about God’s nature — that he is both perceptive and incorporeal, that he is both omnipotent and incapable of doing the logically impossible, that he is both just and merciful, etc. These chapters are often overlooked because their arguments lack the originality and import of the ontological proof. But this lack of attention means that Anselm’s method often goes unnoticed. 

There is nothing new about the claim that Anselm takes much inspiration from Plato via his reading of St. Augustine. Nor is it news that Anselm was heavily influenced by the Aristotelian logic that he learned from Boethius. However, I have tried to show that the Platonic dimension of Anselm’s thought in the Proslogion has been under-appreciated, in that the ontological argument has overshadowed his broader aims to foster dialectical contemplation as a path toward virtue. That is, what counts for Anselm is not just the success or failure of the ontological argument. The argument is only a product of the rational contemplation that he hopes to engender in his readers.

For Anselm and Plato, it is the transformation of the soul through contemplation, not any of the specific arguments that results from this activity, that promises the “fullness of joy” that Anselm describes at the end of the Proslogion. In the moving final chapter, Anselm asks God to let him see the truth, so that his “joy may be complete”. “Until then,” he says, “let my mind meditate on it, let my tongue speak of it, let my heart love it, let my mouth preach it. Let my soul hunger for it, let my flesh thirst for it, my whole being desire it, until I enter into the ‘joy of the Lord’”  This meditative pursuit, which involves our whole being and continues for our whole lives, is paramount for Anselm. Even those who reject the ontological argument, or deny the existence of God altogether, can benefit from Anselm’s invitation to practice contemplation of that than which nothing greater can be imagined.