Anselm's Elusive Argument: Ian Logan Reading the Proslogion

In his recent book Reading Anselm's Proslogion, Ian Logan develops an original interpre-tation of what Anselm's "argument" consists in and of what it is worth. I discuss Logan's rea-ding of the Proslogion (P) and present my own ideas on the sub-ject matter. Thus, I ques-tion Lo-gan's understanding of Anselm's claim that God 'cannot be thought not to exist', and argue that in P3, Anselm seeks to establish that it is necessary (essential) for God to have logically necessary existence, i.e. to exist in every possible world. I also put forward views different from Logan's of the relationship between the reasoning in the second and that in the third chapter of P, and of the relation of Anselm's ontological ar-gument(s) to its best known mo-dern coun-terpart, that of Descartes. I make a different pro-po-sal as to the nature of the 'sin-gle ar-gu-ment' mentioned by Anselm in the preface of P and, consequently, as to the over-all plot of Anselm's work. Finally, I try to adduce further evi-dence for Logan's claim that An-selm does not say anything incoherent when, in P15, he pro-ves that God as 'something a greater than which cannot be thought' is also 'something grea-ter than can be thought'.