Rethinking the Ontological Argument,A Neoclassical Theistic Response
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loginThree key moments in the history of the ontological argument can beidentified. First, in the eleventh century St. Anselm stated the argu-ment in an explicit way for the first time, or at least one could arguethat this is the case. Second, in the eighteenth century the criticismsof the ontological argument by Hume and Kant struck what seemed tobe the death knell of the argument. And third, in the middle decadesof the twentieth century several thinkers – most notably CharlesHartshorne, Norman Malcolm, and John Findlay – breathed new lifeinto the argument by claiming that Hume and Kant criticized only theweaker version of the ontological argument, found in Ch.2of Anselm’sProslogion, not the stronger modal version, found in Ch.3. To be precise,Hartshorne is the one who discovered two versions of the argument inAnselm’sProslogionin1953(see Hartshorne2000,96–97). Seven yearslater Malcolm wrote his justly famous article (Malcolm1960). Further,Hartshorne was the first to give a formalized version of the argumentusing the calculus of modal logic (Hartshorne1961b;1962,50–51).
