On Anselm’s Argument and That Which Cannot Be Conceived

Abstract

I intend to show in this paper that, rather than a definition, in Anselm of Canterbury’s argument “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is the meaning of God’s name. According to the argument, ignoring the exigences of the apophatic character attributed to the name of God and refusing to practice the ascesis required to access his own mind and to put it away from anything other than God, the insipiens abdicates the rationality of the thought. In such a manner, estrange to the fact that the Anselmian discussion is proposed in the form of a mediaeval quaestio, posterior commentaries to this text, and especially the contemporaries, fail to show that, inspired by Augustin of Hippo, Anselm developed in his discussion what himself deliberately took as a Philosophical Program: move away from the senses and turn to the intellect, “natural place for the contemplation of the truth”.