Classical arguments of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, the logics of which are implicitly of quantifiers and descriptions, definite and indefinite, and not modalities, are not valid. These able philosophers were, it seems, taken in by equivocalities of Latin forms corresponding to ambiguities and amphibolies in English of definite and indefinite articles. An argument of Charles Hartshorne, which improves on one of Norman Malcolm and which agrees with one of Alvin Plantinga, stays clear of those difficulties, and indeed of every strictly logical difficulty, as the first ontological argument did. It is essentially the ‘major part’ of that first argument in clarifying modern dress. The preliminary argument of Proslogion II is similarly transcribed by the modern company, as is Gaunilon's main objection to it, which benefits most of all from the modern modal framework in which the debate can now be conducted.

NORMAN MALCOLM'S ARGUMENT

Norman Malcolm says that Anselm maintained not only that existence contributes to greatness, and is in Descartes's terms a perfection, but also, in Proslogion III, that ‘necessary existence’ is a perfection:

Speaking of the being a greater than which cannot be conceived, he says: ‘And it so truly exists that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist.’ (Malcolm 1960, p. 45)