eater cannot be conceived would not be that than which a greater cannot be conceived. Therefore, something than which a greater cannot be conceived so truly is that it is impossible even to conceive of it as not existing. [God exists, and it is impossible to conceive otherwise.](Anselm 21) The reason I wish to consider this version of the argument is that it poses the existence of a being with the quality of necessary existence. Unlike Anselm’s more famous argument in which he says that that which exists is greater than that which is merely conceived, this argument is not susceptible to the charge that Anselm means existence to be a perfection. Rather, this argument depends only upon God defined as a necessarily existing being. The reason for preferring the one over the other, then, is not that it may not be possible that existence is a perfection, but that it does not depend upon defending that premise in addition to the premise regarding necessary existence. This second version of Anselm reduces the question of God’s existence to the question of necessary existence.Main challenges to this argument have come from those who claim that there is nothing that can be conceived such that it cannot be conceived as not being. These arguments have come from such philosophers as Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell. The crux of the dispute over Anselm’s argument along those lines is whether existential propositions can be necessary propositions. Anselm’s definition of God is a necessary existential proposition. Kant and Russell both claim that no existential proposition is a necessary proposition.What are the boundaries of existential propositions, and, specifically, can an existential proposition be a necessary proposition? In this paper, I shall examine the question of existential propositions, specifically the argument between those who claim that all existential propositions can be necessary and those who claim that al...
