trans. Norman Kemp Smith
Now [the argument proceeds] 'all reality' includes existence; existence is therefore contained in the concept of a thing that is possible. If, then, this thing is rejected, the internal possibility of the thing is rejected -- which is self-contradictory. My answer is as follows. There is already a contradiction in introducing the concept of existence -- no matter under what title it may be disguised -- into the concept of a thing which we profess to be thinking solely in reference to its possibility. If that be allowed as legitimate, a seeming victory has been won, . . . but in actual fact nothing at all is said: the assertion is a mere tautology. We must ask: Is the proposition that this or that thing (which, whatever it may be, is allowed as possible) exists, an analytic or a synthetic proposition? If it is analytic, the assertion of the existence of the thing adds nothing to the thought of the thing; but in that case either the thought, which is in us, is the thing itself, or we have presupposed an existence as belonging to the realm of the possible, and have then, on that pretext, inferred its existence from its internal possibility -- which is nothing but a miserable tautology. The word 'reality', which in the concept of the thing sounds other than the word 'existence' in the concept of the predicate, is of no avail in meeting this objection. For if all positing (no matter what it may be that is posited) is entitled reality, the thing with all its predicates is already posited in the concept of the subject, and is assumed as actual; and in the predicate this is merely repeated. But if, on the other hand, we admit, as every reasonable person must, that all existential propositions are synthetic, how can we profess to maintain that the predicate of existence cannot be rejected without contradiction? This is a feature which is found only in analytic propositions, and is indeed precisely what constitutes their analytic character.
I should have hoped to put an end to these idle and fruitless disputations in a direct manner, by an accurate determination of the concept of existence, had I not found that the illusion which is caused by the confusion of a logical with a real predicate (that is, with a predicate which determines a thing) is almost beyond correction. Anything we please can be made to serve as a logical predicate; the subject can even be predicated of itself; for logic abstracts from all content. But a determining predicate is a predicate which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it. Consequently, it must not be already contained in the concept.
'Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, 'God is omnipotent', contains two concepts, each of which has its object -- God and omnipotence. The small word 'is' adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. If, now, we take the subject (God) with all its predicates (among which is omnipotence), and say 'God is', or 'There is a God', we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit it as being an object that stands in relation to my concept. The content of both must be one and the same; nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses merely what is possible, by my thinking its object (through the expression 'it is') as given absolutely. Otherwise stated, the real contains no more than the merely possible. A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it. My financial position is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real thalers than it is by the mere concept of them (that is, of their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept. . . .
When, therefore, I think a being as the supreme reality, without any defect, the question still remains whether it exists or not. For though, in my concept, nothing may be lacking of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is still lacking in its relation to my whole state of thought, namely, [in so far as I am unable to assert] that knowledge of this object is also possible a posteriori. And here we find the source of our present difficulty. Were we dealing with an object of the senses, we could not confound the existence of the thing with the mere concept of it. For through the concept the object is thought only as conforming to the universal conditions of possible empirical knowledge in general, whereas through its existence it is thought as belonging to the context of experience as a whole. In being thus connected with the content of experience as a whole, the concept of the object is not, however, in the least enlarged; all that has happened is that our thought has thereby obtained an additional possible perception. It is not, therefore, surprising that, if we attempt to think existence through the pure category alone, we cannot specify a single mark distinguishing it from mere possibility. . . .
The attempt to establish the existence of a supreme being by means of
the famous ontological argument of Descartes is therefore merely so much
labour and effort lost; we can no more extend our stock of [theoretical]
insight by mere ideas, than a merchant can better his position by adding
a few noughts to his cash account.
A period of intense activity in philosophy of religion was inaugurated in 1960 when the Philosophical Review published an article by Norman Malcolm in which Malcolm claimed to have found a sound version of Anselm's Ontological Argument for God's existence. Anselm (1033-1109) had held that God, understood as the being than which nothing greater can be conceived, must exist; for the assumption that God does not exist leads to the absurdity that it is conceivable that there is something which is greater than the being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Malcolm was willing to concede, as most philosophers at the time thought, that this version of the argument was refuted somehow by Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) claim that "existence is not a predicate." Malcolm held, however, that there was a second argument in Anselm's Proslogion, one according to which the logical impossibility of nonexistence is a perfection. Thus, if God is a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, he must exist necessarily, if at all. So either God's existence is necessary or it is impossible. According to Malcolm, God's existence is impossible only if the concept of God is self-contradictory or nonsensical. Malcolm denied that the concept of God is in this way impossible; accordingly, God exists necessarily.
Charles Hartshorne had presented a similar argument twenty years earlier, but his work had not attracted the same attention. By contrast, more than a hundred articles were submitted to the Philosophical Review in response to Malcolm's piece, of which the journal published a handful before enforcing a moratorium on the topic. Work on the argument continued, nevertheless. David Lewis applied insights derived from possible-world semantics for modal logic--an interpretation of claims about necessity and possibility in terms of logically possible worlds--to a version of Anselm's argument, a version that Lewis claimed to be defective. Alvin Plantinga proposed another modal version, which, though he claimed it to be sound, he conceded did not succeed as a proof. Nevertheless, Plantinga insisted that such an argument could demonstrate the rationality of belief in God, since someone could be rationally believe its premiss and rationally recognize that the conclusion that God exists follows from it.