Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T20:43:41.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The relevance of Kant's objection to Anselm's ontological argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2010

CHRIS HEATHWOOD
CHRIS HEATHWOOD*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, 232 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0232
*
e-mail: heathwood@colorado.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The most famous objection to the ontological argument is given in Kant's dictum that existence is not a real predicate. But it is not obvious how this slogan is supposed to relate to the ontological argument. Some, most notably Alvin Plantinga, have even judged Kant's dictum to be totally irrelevant to Anselm's version of the ontological argument. In this paper I argue, against Plantinga and others, that Kant's claim is indeed relevant to Anselm's argument, in the straightforward sense that if the claim is true, then Anselm's argument is unsound.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 345 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Robert Merrihew (1971) ‘The logical structure of Anselm's argument’, Philosophical Review, 80, 28–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anselm, (1903) Proslogium, Sidney Norton Deane (trans.), (Chicago IL: The Open Court Publishing Company).Google Scholar
Barnes, Jonathan (1972) The Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Peter (2007) Kant on God (Aldershot: Ashgate).Google Scholar
Davies, Brian (2004) ‘Anselm and the ontological argument’, in Davies, B. & Leftow, B. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 157–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everitt, Nicholas (1995) ‘Kant's discussion of the ontological argument’, Kant-Studien, 86, 385–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forgie, J. William (2008) ‘How is the question “Is existence a predicate?” relevant to the ontological argument?’, International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, 64, 117–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, James Frankin (2002) Analytic Philosophy of Religion (Dordrecht: Kluwer).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1929) Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith (trans.), (London: Macmillan).Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1970) ‘Anselm and actuality’, NoÛs, 4, 175–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2007) ‘The ontological argument’, in Meister, C. & Copan, P. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge), 331–340.Google Scholar
Lycan, William G. (2008) Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn (New York NY: Routledge).Google Scholar
Matthews, Gareth B. (2004) ‘The ontological argument’, in Mann, W. E. (ed.) Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion (Malden MA: Blackwell), 81–102.Google Scholar
Millican, Peter (2004) ‘The one fatal flaw in Anselm's argument’, Mind, 113, 437–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oppenheimer, P. & Zalta, E. (1991) ‘On the logic of the ontological argument’, in Tomberlin, J. (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives 5: The Philosophy of Religion (Atascadero CA: Ridgeview), 509–529.Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (1995) Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (2009) ‘Ontological arguments’, in Edward, N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2009 edn, URL=<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/ontological-arguments/>.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1966) ‘Kant's objection to the ontological argument’, The Journal of Philosophy, 63, 537–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1974a) God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co.).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1974b) The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Sobel, Jordan Howard (2004) Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Van Cleve, James (1999) Problems from Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar