Anselm of Canterbury gave the first "ontological" argument for God's existence as necessary. Yet philosophers have mostly neglected to examine what modal concep

Some commentators claim that Anselm’s writings contain a second independent “modal ontological argument” for God’s existence. A. D. Smith contends that

In recent years, the ontological argument and theistic metaphysics have been criticised by philosophers working in both the analytic and continental traditions.

This book re-examines Anselm’s famous arguments for the existence of God in his Proslogion, and in his Reply. It demonstrates how he validly deduces from plau