Page 15 - GALIET ARGUMENTUM DIVINUM: Ergo IV

than just imagination, St. Anselm concludes that the greatest conceivable being, God, exists in our imagination and reality. While Descartes defended this position with a modified version: “God exists because he is a being with every positive perfection and beings that don’t exist lack something,”8 Hume, Kant and Kurtz object to Anselm’s and Descartes’ propositions. Hume believes that any affirmative existence-proposition is contingent.
Similarly, Kant affirms that “existence” or “being” can’t be a real predicate or concept of a thing and that there can’t be a separation between the thing and the existence of the thing; for both, according to Hume, are or share the same reality. Therefore, the proposition that “something exists” is not aggregated to a predicate. Kurtz also contends that the mere idea of God doesn’t presuppose his existence; he asserts that ontologists, including 20th century Anselmians, Malcolm and Harthstone, therefore, beg the question. In addition, the Haights’ Ontological Argument for the Devil9 by parity of reason, serves as the most feasible objection to St. Anselm’s Argument: if God or greatest being exists, so does evil or worst being exists. The Haights’ counter-argument is the most
8 Mautner, Thomas. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Penguin, 1997.
9 Haight, David and Marjorie. An Ontological Argument for the Devil. I.C.5. Reprinted from the Monist, vol 54 (1970) pp. 218-20, by permission of the Hegeler Institute, La Salle, Ill. (course materials)
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