Ontological Argument

An Ontological Argument is a philosophical argument, made from ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organization is true, God must exist.

The first ontological argument in Western Christian tradition was proposed by St Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work, Proslogion (Discourse on the Existence of God), in which he defines God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived," and argues that such being must exist in the mind, even in that of the person who does not believe in the existence of God. From this, he suggests that if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality, because if it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible -- one who exists both in mind and reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality.

Since its initial proposal, few philosophical ideas have generated as much interest and discussion as the ontological argument. Nearly all of the great minds in Western philosophy have found it worthy of their attention. Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes employed a similar argument to St Anselm's. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centers in the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept.

Just as the ontological argument has been popular, a number of criticisms and objections have also been mounted. Its first critic would be Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a contemporary of St Anselm's. Gaunilo, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove almost anything, uses the analogy of a perfect island. Such would be the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show the absurd consequences of the ontological argument. Later, St Thomas Aquinas rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know God's nature. David Hume also offered an empirical objection, criticizing its lack of evidential reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist necessarily. 

Meanwhile, Immanuel Kant's criticism was based on what he saw as the false premise that existence is a predicate, arguing that "existing" adds nothing (including perfection) to the essence of being. Thus, a "supremely perfect" being cannot be conceived to exist. Finally, philosophers such as C.D. Broad dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering "maximally great being" incoherent.

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