Guanilo and Kant

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A LOOK AT GUANILO AND KANT’S OBJECTIONS TO THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The moment we are born we begin to die. As unpleasant of a statement as that may be, it is indeed a morbid reality. The topic of death usually invokes a number of questions from us as human beings. Questions such as, “Is there a God?” and if there is, “Will I see him when I die?” While to some it may seem natural to simply question the existence of God, who is looked upon as the omnipotent creator of the universe, others have made it a life’s work to argue and dispute the existence of God all together. While the existence of God is certainly a debatable issue in today’s society, it is not a new debate to say the least. Many have long tried to both prove, and disprove the existence of God. One such man was St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). In the eleventh century, Anselm came up with one of the most famous arguments for the existence of God; this argument was known as the “ontological Argument.” Anselm’s ontological argument states, in modified text, that God possesses every perfection, existence is perfection, and therefore God must exist. While this is indeed a valid, deductive argument, there have been those who have rejected the ontological argument quite fiercely. Two such people were Kant and Guanilo. While both men do provide valid reasoning for their disagreement with the argument, both Kant and Guanilo fail in their attempts to discredit the ontological argument due to the failures in their own arguments. By examining both men’s objections to the ontological argument, we can easily see that neither Kant nor Guanilo soundly defeat the ontological argument.
Guanilo was a contemporary of Anselm and was the first of many to try and discredit the ontological argument. Guanilo used an argument similar to Anselms’ but instead used an example of a perfect island. His objection, titled, On Behalf of the Fool, fails howeve...