62. For agent and patient in Aristotle's natural philosophy in general, see S.
Anselm on modality
53. Fragments, 347.5–8; for Anselm's semantic program, see Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," 121–30 and Henry, The Logic of Saint
Anselm, 17–21.
54. See, for example, D. Walton, "Logical Form and Agency," Philosophical Studies 29 (1976), 75–89, and K. Segerberg, "Getting Started: Beginnings in the Logic of Action," in G. Corsi et al. (eds.), Atti del Convegno internazionale di storia della logica. Le teorie delle modalit`a (Bologna,
CLUEB, 1989), 222–24.
55. Fragments, 346.22–25.
56. See Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," 130–44.
57. See Cur Deus Homo 2.5 (S ii: 100.20–28) and 2.17 (S ii: 123.27–30) for the necessities and impossibilities in God.
58. Cur Deus Homo 2.17 (S ii: 123.31–124.2); for the necessity of God's immortality and justice, see Cur Deus Homo 2.10 (S ii: 108.3–8), De
Conc. 1.2 (S ii: 247.6–11).
59. Prosl. 7 (S i: 105.24–27): "When someone is said to have a power (potentia) to do or undergo something which is not his advantage or which he ought not to do, then what is understood by 'power' is impotence, because the more he has this power, the more adversity and perversity have power over him, and the more impotent he is against them"
(translated in Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," 155, n. 49).
60. De Ver. 8 (S i: 188.18–22); Cur Deus Homo 2.17 (S ii: 123.15–20).
61. De Lib. Arb. 5 (S i: 216.29–217.6).
62. For agent and patient in Aristotle's natural philosophy in general, see S.
Waterlow, Passage and Possibility: A Study in Aristotle's Modal Concepts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 159–203.
63. De Casu Diab. 27 (S i: 275.25–33), 28 (S i: 276.14–15).
64. De Lib. Arb. 12 (S i: 224.6–22); De Conc. 3.3 (S ii: 265.26–266.23).
65. Pace Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," 141.
66. Reply to Gaunilo (S ii: 131.18–22).
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brian leftow
Anselm's perfect-being theology Philosophy and theology both ask what sort of being God is. One way toward an answer begins from the idea that God is in all respects perfect, and fills out the concept of God by reasoning about what a perfect being would be like. Anselm's is perhaps the name most associated with this program. The perfect-being project had a long history before Anselm. Plato, Aristotle, and such Stoics as Zeno and Cicero all offered perfect-being arguments.1 But Anselm probably had no access to these. It is likely that passages in Augustine and Boethius suggested the perfect-being project to him.
Anselm took up the perfect-being project in Monologion 15. Prior to this, the Monologion has argued that there is something "through which all good things are good" (Mon. 1) – something that plays the role of a property of goodness all good things share. But, Anselm suggests, whatever it is that makes all good things good must be a great good itself. (This suggestion is not backed up. Perhaps Anselm had some such thought as this in mind: delete this thing from reality, and all goodness goes with it. Perhaps an item's goodness is in some proportion to how much less good things would be without it.) If this thing is good, it must be good through itself, as it is that through which all good things are good. So there is, Anselm thinks, a good thing whose goodness is entirely due to its own intrinsic character – not a function of its relations to anything else. Anselm asserts that this is the best of all goods, just because it is not good through anything other than itself (Mon. 1). The highest good turns out to be the efficient cause of all things other than itself (Mon. 7). So while it plays the role of a property of goodness, it is not after all a property.
Properties are not causes. When you see a red thing, it is not redness, the property, that reflects light into your eyes, but the thing that is
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Anselm's perfect-being theology
red; when the brightness of the light makes you blink, strictly speaking it is the light which makes you blink, in virtue of its brightness.
Rather than be coy, let us just call this supremely good thing God: for Anselm, while the terms "God" and "goodness" differ in sense, they refer to the same thing. In Monologion 15 Anselm asks what sort of being God might be intrinsically – what makes God so very good. Anselm frames this as a search for "names" or "words" that "apply to the substance" of God.
Anselm does not mean to imply by his talk of words "applying to the substance" that God is a substance, at least in any ordinary sense (Mon. 26–27). Nor does Anselm mean to limit his search to words from the Aristotelian category of substance – words that ordinarily either name particular things (words for "first substances") or express kinds into which things fall (words for "second substances"). For he obviously does not do this. Rather, he ends up applying to God words from the categories of quality ("true,"
"just," "living") and quantity ("omnipotent," which concerns how much power God has). Anselm argues that words that imply relations between God and other things do not apply to or express God's
"substance" (Mon. 15). Rule out such words, and only words that give intrinsic descriptions are left. A description is intrinsic just in case an item's satisfying it (or not) depends entirely on the item, not on anything beyond or outside it. Thus if a description is intrinsic, one could satisfy it regardless of what (outside oneself) one did or did not at some time coexist with (or bear any other relation to).2 If being human is intrinsic, I can be human coexisting with whales or with centaurs, and could equally well be human if I did not coexist with anything, that is, if the created universe ended at my skin. (Granted,
I would not last long.) So Anselm's talk of words "applying to the substance" is meant to focus us on intrinsic descriptions.3
Such descriptions as "creator," "creator of Adam" and "knowing that Adam lives" are not intrinsic. For nothing can be a creator if has not made a creature. If it has made one, then while that one existed, its creator coexisted with it. Again, nothing can know that Adam lives if it does not coexist with Adam. So if Anselm is seeking only intrinsic descriptions of God, he is not seeking a way to determine what God knows or does to, for, or with other things. Anselm does not think that perfect-being theology will let him reason "here is the most perfect thing God could have done, and so since He is perfect,
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brian leftow He has done it." Perfect-being theology (he thinks) tells us about God, not things outside God. Roughly speaking, Anselm is trying to find descriptions that apply to God and would still have described
Him even if only He existed.
Anselm seeks "names" or "words" – bits of language. He is being careful when he says that he seeks these rather than seeking properties that God has. There are at least two reasons to speak this way. One can be traced to the Monologion's first argument for God's existence. This proceeds, again, by first arguing that something plays the role of a property of goodness. "Good" applies to anything other than the property of goodness because it has a property distinct from itself, namely goodness. "Good" does not apply to goodness because it has a property distinct from itself, for goodness is not distinct from itself. "Good" applies to anything else because it has a relation of real dependence on goodness. If it applies to goodness, it does so because goodness is identical to goodness. Identity to goodness and real dependence on goodness are distinct attributes. Nothing can have both. So while one term, "good," applies to goodness and other good things, it applies in virtue of different attributes. But really, there is an even deeper problem here. What makes goodness good is not a property that goodness has. It is instead the property that goodness is. If intrinsic attributes are by definition "things had" and distinct from the item having them, goodness has no intrinsic attribute of goodness. Nor then does Anselm's God, who is identical with goodness. "Good" applies to Him, and is a purely intrinsic description. But it does not apply in virtue of an attribute at all. It applies due to what God is, not what He has.
This problem is not localized to "good," either. For Anselm, it infects all other intrinsic descriptions we would like to apply to God.
Anselm argues that God is identical with the wisdom we want to ascribe Him, the mercy we want to ascribe Him, and so on (Mon. 17).
So there is a sense in which Anselm's God has no intrinsic attributes at all. Anselm wants to describe the way God intrinsically is. All he has to work with are materials provided by our knowledge of other things. So he must try to transfer to talk about God words we learn to understand by experiencing and thinking about other things. But just as God does not have the attribute that makes any other good thing good, God does not have the attribute that makes any other just thing just, and so on. If Anselm seeks attributes common to God
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