Reply to Gaunilo

Answering the monk who spoke up for the fool, Anselm offers to hand over the Lost Island to anyone who can make his proof fit something other than God.

by Anselm of Canterbury21 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: Liber apologeticus contra Gaunilonem
First published: 1078(aged 45)
Original language: Latin

Report a rights issue

Overview

Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutier near Tours, read the Proslogion and took up the case of the fool, the man in the Psalm who says there is no God. He proposed an island somewhere in the ocean, richer than every other land and called lost because no one can find it. A listener understands the description well enough; by Anselm's reasoning, Gaunilo argued, it would follow that the island must really exist, which is absurd. Anselm answered in a short treatise of his own. It opens by observing that his critic is not the fool but a Catholic speaking for the fool, and that it is enough to answer the Catholic. Its main charge is that Gaunilo had attacked something Anselm never said. The Proslogion had spoken of a being than which nothing greater can be thought, not of a being greater than everything that exists, and only of the first can it be shown that it cannot even be thought not to exist. Whatever can be thought not to exist can be thought to have a beginning and an end; an island can, and the greatest conceivable being cannot. Then Anselm made Gaunilo an offer. If anyone could find something other than that being to which his reasoning applied, he would find the Lost Island and give it to him, never to be lost again. Rather than suppress the attack, Anselm asked that Gaunilo's objection and his own reply be copied with the Proslogion. Whether the reply disposes of the island is still disputed. Nicholas Wolterstorff, the American philosopher, is among those who think Gaunilo's objection decisive, while the logician Gyula Klima and others have built replies on Anselm's behalf.

Key concepts

What is the Lost Island objection?

Gaunilo’s objection is that Anselm’s reasoning would prove the existence of anything described as the greatest of its kind. His example is an island richer than every other land, called lost because nobody can find it. We understand the description, so the island is in our minds, and by Anselm’s logic it must then exist in reality too. Since that is absurd, Gaunilo concludes, something is wrong with the argument.

What does “necessary existence” mean in the Reply to Gaunilo?

Necessary existence means existing in such a way that it cannot even be thought not to exist. Anselm argues that only the greatest thinkable being has it. Anything that can be thought to begin or end, or to be whole in one place or time but not in another, can be thought not to exist. That covers every island, star and person, so the argument does not carry over to them.

Why does Anselm reject the phrase “greater than everything that exists”?

Anselm insists that his phrase was never “greater than everything that exists” but “that than which nothing greater can be thought”. The difference matters. A being greater than everything that exists could still be imagined not to exist, so nothing follows from it. Only a being that sets a limit on thought itself leads to the conclusion that it exists, because thinking it away would make something greater thinkable.

How can anyone form the idea of something nothing greater than which can be thought?

We reach the idea of the greatest thinkable being by climbing from lesser goods to greater ones. Every good thing we know, however small, is like a greater good in so far as it is good. Seeing that, any reasonable mind can work out what something would be like than which nothing greater can be thought, without ever having seen it. So Gaunilo is wrong that the phrase stays empty.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Only One Thing the Proof Fits

Does the Proslogion’s reasoning prove too much, conjuring up a perfect island as easily as God? Anselm insists that it fits one being only and dares his critic to find a second.

Anselm’s reply rests on a test the island fails. Whatever can be thought to begin or end, or to be present in one place or time and absent from another, can be thought not to exist; an island, however rich, is such a thing, and the greatest thinkable being is not. He also catches a misquotation: “greater than everything that exists” is not his phrase and proves nothing. As for whether the phrase can be understood at all, he answers that the mind climbs to it from lesser goods, and that something can be understood without being fully grasped.

ontological argument
necessary existence
contingency
existence
greatness
objections
understanding
conceivability
comprehension
negation
time and space
reason and faith

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 21
distinct concepts: 34
by passages held, corpus-wide: #772

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “necessary existence” and “ontological argument”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 6 pairings. 16 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
necessary existence	ontological argument	9
existence	ontological argument	3
ontological argument	understanding	3
existence	understanding	2
existence	necessary existence	1
necessary existence	understanding	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1076 Monologion
The earliest of Anselm's books about God and the longest he wrote at Bec, composed in the mid-1070s while he was still prior there.
LA
1078 Proslogion
The book by which Anselm is known: twenty-six short chapters composed at Bec in 1077 and 1078, a year or two after the Monologion.
LA
1078 Reply to Gaunilo (Liber apologeticus contra Gaunilonem) you are here LA
1080 De Grammatico (De grammatico)
The odd one out on Anselm's shelf: a short exercise in logic for beginners, of disputed date, which he refused to count among his dialogues on Scripture.
LA
1080 On Truth (De veritate)
The first of three dialogues Anselm wrote at Bec in the 1080s and later arranged as a set, with On Freedom of Choice and On the Fall of the Devil.
LA
1085 On Freedom of Choice (De libertate arbitrii)
Builds on the definition of justice reached in On Truth, and supplies the account of the will that On the Fall of the Devil then tests on the first sin of all.
LA
1085 On the Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli)
The longest of the three dialogues from Bec and Anselm's fullest account of evil, worked out on the case of the angels who fell.
LA
1094 On the Incarnation of the Word (Epistola de incarnatione Verbi)
A letter turned treatise, begun by the abbot of Bec around 1092 and finished by the Archbishop of Canterbury two years later, addressed to the pope.
LA
1098 Why God Became Man (Cur Deus homo)
The founding text of the satisfaction theory of the atonement, in two books, completed during Anselm's first exile from England.
LA
1099 On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato)
A sequel to Why God Became Man, written a year later for Boso, the questioner of that dialogue, to give a second answer to a question it had raised.
LA
1102 On the Procession of the Holy Spirit (De processione Spiritus Sancti)
Given first as a speech at a council and written up four years later: the treatise in which Anselm argues not with a pupil or a critic but with another church.
LA
1107 De Concordia (The Compatibility of God's Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Human Freedom) (De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio)
Anselm's last completed treatise, written in 1107 and 1108 after his second exile, and his answer to a question the student had raised in On Freedom of Choice more than twenty years before.
LA

— or open another of their works