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“Whoever understands this …”: On translating the Proslogion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ian Logan
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Abstract

In this paper I seek to address the question of the interpretation and translation of the Proslogion and to understand why the text of this major work is repeatedly mistranslated. Having identified the various strands in the interpretative tradition and taken as my paradigm case an analysis of a passage from Proslogion, 4, I suggest that the reason for the errors to be found in the various attempts at translating this passage is to be found in the fact that the translators are influenced by the interpretative tradition and translate in accordance with it, even when this leads to ‘obvious’ mistranslation. I ask whether there can be a definitive interpretation and translation of the Proslogion, and answer this question in the negative, primarily because important elements of Anselm's thought are not available to us. Nevertheless, I suggest that it is possible to avoid errors of interpretation and translation by remaining within the constraints of the text. Finally, I attempt to lay some ground rules for those readers who are interested in an accurate reading of the Proslogion.

Keywords

AnselmProslogionontological argumenttranslationinterpretation
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 89 , Issue 1023 , September 2008 , pp. 560 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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References

1 Davies, B. & Evans, G.R. (Edd.), Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, Oxford/New York 1998Google Scholar. My own translation of the Proslogion will appear in I. Logan, Reading Anselm's Proslogion: The history of Anselm's argument and its significance today, Ashgate (forthcoming).

2 The translation used is taken from Charlesworth, M.J., St. Anselm's Proslogion, Oxford 1965Google Scholar. In this earlier work Charlesworth provides an influential commentary, which appears to run out of steam as he progresses through the Proslogion. Thus, there is no comment on chapter 14 and the final eleven chapters merit nine lines. Yet, for H. de Lubac, chapter 14 is of key significance. See Lubac, H. de, ‘“Seigneur, je cherche ton visage”: Sur le chapitre xive du Proslogion de saint Anselme’ in Archives de Philosophie, 39 (1976) 201–225, 407–425Google Scholar. Charlesworth's attitude is, I think, symptomatic of a commonly held, but mistaken, view that only certain parts of the Proslogion are relevant to understanding Anselm's argument.

3 Gilson, E., ‘Sens et nature de l'argument de saint Anselme’ in Archive d'Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 9 (1934) 5–51, p. 5Google Scholar.

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5 See Eadmer, , The Life of St. Anselm, edited and translated by Southern, R.W., Oxford 1972, p. 29 n. 3Google Scholar. It should be noted that this 20th Century position marks an advance on previous centuries, in which a few lines from chapter 2 were deemed to sufficient to indicate Anselm's meaning.

6 There is more to be said about Kant's use of the term ‘ontological’. See my paper, ‘Whatever happened to Kant's ontological argument?’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74 (2007) 346–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Proslogion, Preface.

8 Küng, H., Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today, London 1980, p. 531Google Scholar.

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10 See Oppy, pp. 8–20.

11 Gaunilo, Pro Insipiente, 4.

12 Anselm, Responsio, 5: “nusquam in omnibus dictis meis invenitur talis probatio.”

13 Morris, T.V., Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology, Notre Dame, 1987, p. 12Google Scholar.

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17 Barth, p. 14.

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20 For confirmation of this point, in addition to the usage in the Responsio, see De Grammatico, 3, 8 & 9; De Veritate, 13; De Casu Diaboli, 11; De Incarnatione Verbi, 11; Cur Deus Homo, I, 2, 7, 18 & II, 13; De Conceptu Virginali, 24 & 26; De Processione, 9; De Concordia, III, 1 & 6.

21 C. Hartshorne, ‘What did Anselm Discover?’ in Hick & McGill, 321–333, p. 321.

22 C. Hartshorne, Anselm's Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Proof for God's Existence, La Salle 1965, p. 14.

23 N. Malcolm, ‘Anselm's Ontological Arguments’ in Hick & McGill, 301–320.

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27 Hendley, Brian, ‘Anselm's Proslogion Argument’ in Miscellanea Mediaevalia, Vol 13/2 Berlin/New York 1981, pp. 838–846Google Scholar. Even Hartshorne for all his strictures about failures to read the text, focuses on chapters 2 & 3 to the detriment of a reading of the whole text of the Proslogion. See Anselm's Discovery, passim.

28 Anselm, Responsio.

29 Thus, Campbell entitles it “Conclusions re-asserted”. See Campbell, R., From belief to understanding: A study of Anselm's Proslogion argument on the existence of God, Canberra 1976, p. 9Google Scholar.

30 Even more remarkable perhaps is the failure of some to even note the existence of Proslogion 4 and consequently the summary in their ‘interpretations’ of Anselm.

31 Anselm, Proslogion, 4.

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33 Hick & McGill, p. 8.

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47 Hopkins, 22f. See Schufreider, G., An Introduction to Anselm's Argument, Philadelphia 1978Google Scholar.

48 See G. Schufreider, , Confessions of a Rational Mystic: Anselm Early Writings, 1994, p.236 n.55 & p. 329Google Scholar.

49 Hopkins, p. viii. It should be noted that Hopkins also criticises Campbell for construing charitably (p. 15) and Anscombe for being “too sympathetic” (p. 33).

50 Hopkins, p. viii.

51 Nida, E.A., Toward a Science of Translating, Leiden 1964, p. 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Rahner, K., Spirit in the World, London/Sydney 1968, p. liCrossRefGoogle Scholar. The roots of the moral, spiritual dimension of this intellectual heuristic principle are to be found in Rahner's Ignatian spirituality. In fact, virtually the same statement can be found in the Spiritual Exercises, s. 22. Rahner is in his usual, astute way promoting the virtue of humility here.

53 That Anselm takes the whole of the Proslogion to establish the identity of ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ and God is an insight, the significance of which I will address in a forthcoming paper on Anselm's argument and the leibnizian principle of the identity of indiscernibles.

54 Barth, p. 8.

55 Hopkins, p. 33.

56 ibid., p. 215.

57 See, in particular, his comment in the Prologue to the Monologion, that it should be judged according to Augustine's De Trinitate.

58 J. McIntyre, , ‘Cur deus-homo: the axis of the argument’ in Kohlenberger, H. et al. (Edd.), Sola Ratione, Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt 1970 111–118, p. 111Google Scholar.

59 de Lubac, pp. 214–216.

60 Schmitt, F.S., ‘Anselm und der (Neu-)Platonismus’ in Schmitt, F.S., Kohlenberger, H. et al. (Edd.), Analecta Anselmiana: Untersuchungen über Person und Werk Anselms von Canterbury, Volumes I-VI, Frankfurt 1969–1976, I, 39–71, p. 39Google Scholar.

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62 See De Incarnatione Verbi, 1: “dialecticae haeretici”.

63 Rogers, K.A., The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury, Lewiston/Queenston/ Lampeter 1997, p. 253Google Scholar.

64 Rogers, p. 99.

65 See Monologion, 16 & 25; De Grammatico, 16; De Veritate, 2; and Cur Deus Homo, II, 19.

66 For these catalogues, see Becker, G., Catalogi bibliotecharum antiqui, Bonn 1885, pp. 199–202 & 257–266Google Scholar. Gasper, G., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance, Aldershot 2004, pp. 206–209Google Scholar, attempts to identify the books in the library at Bec in the eleventh century.

67 Thus, we do not even know why Anselm changed the title of his work to Proslogion. He refused to explain this to Hugh of Lyons, in the name of brevity. See Epistolarum liber primus, 109; Opera Omnia, III, pp. 241f.

68 See Eadmer, The Life of Saint Anselm, p. 31. We part company here from Davies & Evans, who state that Anselm's Responsio“is, effectively, a commentary on the Proslogion from its author” (p. xiv). Anselm makes it clear at the beginning of the Responsio that he is addressing the Catholic, who accepts God's existence, whereas in the Proslogion he addressed the fool, who denied God's existence. The important ‘canonical’ Anselm manuscript in Oxford, Ms Bodley 271, places an excerpt from the Proslogion, called the Sumptum (chapters 2 to 4), before Gaunilo's Pro Insipiente. Gaunilo's work is introduced with these words: “Quid ad haec respondeat quidam pro insipiente.” This indicates that he was replying to the Sumptum, not to the Proslogion. For the importance of this manuscript, see my article, ‘Ms Bodley 271 – Establishing the Anselmian Canon?’ in The Saint Anselm Journal, 2.1 (Fall 2004) 67–80Google Scholar.