International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 19:87-93 (1986). 9 Martinus Ni]hoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Printed in the Netherlands.

NEWMAN, ANSELM AND PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

LESLIE ARMOUR Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5

In Cardinal Newman's notebook which contains the "Proof of Theism" on which Adrian Boekraad and Henry Tristram centred their book The Argument from Conscience to the Existence o f God, there is a list of six arguments for the existence of God. 1 The fifth item reads - cryptically - "St. Anselm's argument. (Qu. that our thinking implies the fact.)" The entry arouses curiosity both because Newman, as a thinker, seems distant from Anselm and because Anselm is usually read as supposing that the idea of God implies the existence of God and not that thinMng implies the existence of God or any other fact. Yet, if Newman's remark is given a meaning in the context in which we find it, it contains, I think, ingredients for an interesting argument for the existence of God. It is this which interests me here. I make no pretence of being able to draw the whole argument from Newman's notes and, of course, no pretence of being able to locate the finished argument in Anselm's writings. But some historical reflection will help to extract the context in which the argument becomes meaningful and I shall argue that, in the end, Newman's entry does make an association of ideas which is not absurd in a reflection on Anselm. To begin with Newman: Newman, for all "that he is difficult to classify either as a philosopher or a theologian has usually been seen as a moderate, inclined to anchor as much as possible in experience, rather given to common sense - close, in many ways to John Locke for whom he had a genuine affection and respect. 2 And one might surely think that Newman would not feel similarly at home with Anselm. And yet, in a latter addressed to Pope Leo XIII, he speaks of Anselm with respect. 3 Nor is the entry in Newman's list of useful arguments for the existence of God entirely forlorn. One other item in the list, the "argument from archetypal perfection" might share some logical typology with Anselm's argument as might in reality Bossuet's argument, also listed, which hangs on the ontological status of the moral law. 4 But we might explain Newman's fondness for those arguments on the ground that he thought the chief argument was, after all, the argument from conscience and the

88 others could be used handily along with it. The two remaining arguments in his list are the "congeniality and connaturality of the idea of God to the mind" and what Newman describes - adding a touch of mystery to his shorthand with a question mark - as "Dr. Clarke's a priori (a work implies a worker?) ''s But how can we explain the actual entry on Anselm with its addendum "thinking implies the fact"? Anselm does occasionally mention processes of thought and speech, 6 but Anselm's argument appears to have to do with an object "in intellectu", and with the question of whether or not God can exist there and not "in re". Newman, however, suggests that something more convincing may come from the process of thinking about God and from the question of whether in fact that process can go on if God does not exist. Newman obviously associated Anselm with attempts in general to pass from states of mind to the objective nature of reality and, in the notes which concern us here, he deals with another attempt to make that passage intelligible, Descartes' cogito,7 and with an apparent deficiency in the Cartesian position+ The deficiency has to do with the claim that I cannot think of myself alone. The suggestion, I think, is that this claim might be met and the implied deficiency in. the Cartesian position might be remedied if one passed from thinking to the existence of God rather than from thinking to the existence of the finite individual, and it will turn out, it seems to me, that if one pursues this line of thought one will certainly find oneself in a thought process which overlaps with Anselm's as well as with that of Descartes himself. Newman's version of the cogito is that we do not infer our existence from our "thinking" or reasoning processes as such, but that knowing that one is conscious (knowing that one is feeling, being aware or whatever) involves at one and the same time an awareness that one exists. It is not, he says, that I have faith in my own consciousness and proceed from there by some reasoning to the conclusion that I exist. For indeed (as Descartes would surely agree) I do not. Rather it is that "one and the same act of consciousness brings home to me that which afterwards... I draw out into two propositions. ''s But Newman insists: "That I am involves a great deal more than itself". 9 He begins by remarking that awareness is very complex: " I am a unit made up of various faculties, which seem to me parts of my being and to be as much facts as that being itself... ''1~ This discussion leads (via a discourse about the 'foolishness of saying things like "I have faith in my being") to the final assertion on the topic: "This only I say here, that consciousness and reasoning are those portions of the idea of being which are most essentially bound up with it. ''11 If we allow ourselves to build on this a little, it seems to lead to the suggestion that, if existence enters into consciousness in the way that the cogito suggests, it is natural to ask why it should be only my own existence which comes to me. The obvious answer is the traditional one: there is one and only one subject of consciousness at any given time, though there may be many objects. The empirical justification for this belief is, of course, that consciousness is always a unity, and the underlying justification probably includes the belief that, if I claimed more

89 than one subject for consciousness I would inevitably turn all but one of the subjects into objects. But how can I justify the claim that this rather empty, formal subject is me and not, say, being itself? In 1860, Newman added a note to his reflections "Clearer still thus: - If our consciousness or perception of our existence is to be taken as true and trusted, then our consciousness or perception of something external to us, answering both the phenomena and to typical principles or ideas is true and to be trusted. ''12 What this implies is that no one can know his own existence without knowing something else. I do not know how Newman might have filled in this remark, or even exactly how he meant it to be taken. It begins, after all, with "if". But there is an obvious reason for the claim that, to know myself, I must know something else. If all I knew was my own existence - if, i.e., all my experience was of states of myself then I could not answer the question of whether I was or was not the whole of reality. The question: "Should I identify myself with the whole of the universe, with some part of it or with none of it?" would admit of no answer. For if there is only one subject of experience and all the evidence is within experience, then anything or everything or nothing may correspond to the objective identity which I give myself, But in that case, the question of " m y " existence could never, in fact, get a footing. It would be meaningless. Of course, we may try to sustain the single subject hypothesis by somehow bringing in evidence from outside my immediate consciousness. But that will not help. My existence is meaningful to me only in some context. And that context is either within the consciousness in which the question of identity arises or outside it. But if it is outside it, it is irrelevant to the claims of direct experience. The question of whose consciousness it is can only arise from the inside. If my next door neighbour claims to be the real subject of my consciousness, he has, per impossibile, to appear within that consciousness as subject and not merely as an object. But if I cannot fred an "owner" for my subjectivity outside my consciousness and I cannot claim to identify myself within it without some internal way of limiting myself, it seems to follow that I can only talk about my own existence as an affair of direct experience if the question of my existence arises, in fact, in the context of a shared consciousness. One of the ways in which this context appears to us is indeed in conscience and it is the appearance of it in and to conscience which is most important to Newman. 1 decide w h a t I ought to do. In so doing I put, as Newman thinks, some proposition to myselL But I am aware that the proposition I put to myself is under review. There seems to be a shared consciousness. He says "in (the) order of nature, ... it (the existence of God) is more intimately connected with the nature of the human mind than anything else..."J 3 Newman appears to fred a duality of myself and God within consciousness and the rest of his own discussion is connected with the problem of conscience and its force in the "proof of theism". Conscience, which at first sight seems an aberration which we might think to be delusional, now seems as though it m a y be a manifestation of a duality within consciousness which is -

90 necessary if any self is to be identified as the subject of consciousness. But Newman's list of other arguments suggests that he suspected that he might be in need of reinforcements. One might, indeed, claim that his line of argument simply provides a deus ex machina to avoid what is the right conclusion. Perhaps the right conclusion is that thinking about oneself as subject is simply impossible, that the idea of self-as-subject is a philosopher's delusion. For, on the face of it, the obvious objection is that thinking seems both to imply and not to imply my existence. Consider: (1) If thinking implies the existence of a subject which thinks and if what I mean by " I " is the self which thinks then I cannot think that I do not exist. This reveals what is at issue. Thinking does imply a "thinking subject" if what we mean by "thinking" is an activity which is directed to some end and is reflective. But: (2) It seems that I cannot identify myself with this subject for, though it has been shown that there is at least one subject, if I claim that I am that subject, it follows that, for the claim to have meaning, there has to be some alternative. If I identify myself as the subject of thinking in general, then thinking in general will become a kind of meaningless jumble. Each thought presented to me as a desire, a hope, a plan of action, a passing whim, a temptation, comes with equal authority. If I am equally the author of them all, if none of them represents my nature, my character, or the result of my considered judgement, then there is ultimately no sense to claims about who or what I am. I am everything and nothing. One who actually took such a view would, I suppose, be a candidate for psychiatric enquiry. But certainly, if we are to accept the inevitability of such a view whether as a point of practice or just as a point of logic - if, that is, I should regard myself this way even though I arbitrarily take a different view - then, certainly, we have made no progress with the problem of the cogito. If I really can identify myself, then, it is by all of the jumble of "voices" amidst which I find myself and, for that to be possible, it must be possible to find some objective structure against which I can define myself. Still, it is here that we can begin to see the glimmer of a connection with Anselm's problem. For Anselm's idea of God is the idea of a being whose existence cannot be limited to any pre-ordained category or set of categories. God cannot exist only in intellectu. If He exists at all, He exists in all modes of being. Yet it is by contrast with such a being that I can think of myself as finite and limited. I can think of myself as a subject of consciousness only if I can limit myself. But what could limit a subject of consciousness except another subject of consciousness? The subject of consciousness appears in the picture as a source of direction, an origin of meaning, a point of decision. It is not a thing within the field of consciousness, but a structure making sense of that content. Furthermore, the only source of a real as opposed to an arbitrary limit to a subject of consciousness has to be an unlimited subject of consciousness. For a limited subject of consciousness

91 is merely another one of the arbitrary voices discerned within the field of consciousness. If, therefore, I can think clearly about myself as limited, it is only in the context of an unlimited subject of consciousness. Well and good, but still there has to be some rather concrete reason for taking this step. It does not follow as a matter of formal logic. All that follows as a matter of formal logic is that either I accept the existence of an unlimited being who shares my consciousness, or I admit that the idea of a subject of consciousness is meaningless. We may make it sound a little more concrete if we notice that the argument may be seen to run rather nicely alongside Anselm's imaginary encounter with the fool. The fool says "in his heart" that there is no God. He knows what he says because (he thinks) he knows who he is. But he cannot do that, so the argument now runs, if there is no God. To invoke oneself in this way is, in fact, to invoke God and one should be able to see the logic of it in the concrete situation. Yet this is still very abstract and might be regarded as philosophers' verbiage. For we now expect God to manifest Himself in some way. Newman thinks He does so in conscience. We may suppose that what makes it seem important that the problem of self-identity should be solved internally for each person by himself is that there may be something which each person, once identified, ought to do. There is a continual itch from somewhere which keeps each of us reflecting on the question of what values he should give to his life. And we can now invoke the problem of conscience in another way. The problem is whether or not each person knows that he exists as a directed subject of consciousness. If each of us does know that he is such a subject of consciousness, then each of us is involved with morality. For then there is something that we ought to do. For, even if one denies Newman's certainty that there is something objectively which it is one's duty to do, it is still at least possible that one is a selfdirected subject of consciousness, and that there is something which is one's duty. And if it is possible that there are correct moral judgements to be made, then it is actually one's duty to try to make them. For if one does not try, one cannot find out if one ought or ought not to do something. But if there is something which absolutely one ought to do -- to try to make correct moral judgements for instance - then one has a duty to identify one's own existence as a particular agent. But that, we have seen, is only possible if there is a being who shares one's consciousness and is unlimited. It is natural, then, to continue in this quasi-Kantian vein: Suppose I consider my own case. It is widely supposed that it cannot be my duty to do anything if I really cannot do it. But even if one rejects the general proposition that "ought implies can" it seems that we have here a special case. For it cannot be my duty to do anything if I cannot locate myself definitively, for I must identify myself before I can accept the duty. Of course, the mere fact that I can define the problem and carry the analysis this far is evidence enough that I am a subject of consciousness capable of directhag my activities. For to mount arguments intelligibly is, indeed, to direct one's consciousness.

92 Again, this would make no sense, would literally, perhaps, have no meaning, but for the fact that a problem does exist. Human beings generally face this duality. The voice which urges them on against their own interest to get things right does not seem to be identical with the subject who is being urged on by that voice. They either, then, accept the challenge and so accept that they do exist in the way supposed, or they ignore it and at the same time give up their claim to have established even the first approximation to their self-identities. At least, this is their predicament if the argument so far has been sound. Again the whole argument I am advancing might be written off as a delusion - the hearing of voices to sustain us in the dark and the verbal creation of an empty business of finding personal identities and missions in the world - if there were no objective institutions whose continuing existence was predicated on a conjunction of those voices to form a community with moral claims. We do not write it off, in short, because we think that there is a whole army of human beings like ourselves, struggling to make intelligible their relations with conscience. It is not, of course, Newman's claim that we are ever sure that we have got conscience straight. Indeed, there is every reason to think that we need, in conjunction with one another, to keep trying to hear the message better. That is Newman's account of the history of the Church. One may disagree. One may find in the struggles of religion evidence, precisely, that the voice of conscience is delusional. But there is still Matthew Arnold's theory of culture as the continuing struggle for the best, a best sought, again, despite the unlikelihood of personal gains and even despite the unlikelihood that the pursuit of the best will enhance the survival chances of one's society. Why do composers, musicians and poets go on seeking to do better when they would grow rich more quickly imitating what is already admired? If they have infinite egos to be flattered - or, on our counter-thesis, imaginary identities to be inflated by the waffle of crowds composed of beings who do not know their own identities - they will do better to imitate. Yet the artist whom Arnold admires goes on seeking the best in spite of everything, leaving the ignorant armies (an image quite possibly borrowed from Newman) 14 to struggle by night on the darkling plain. Does this not show that we are driven, as Arnold thought, by The Eternal (or some unbounded power) to get it right? Would it not be, by contrast, nonsense to identify that power with our egos in some perverse reflection? All we need, after all, is enough empirical content to make our formal argument meaningful and to take it from the realm of verbal tricks into the arena in which human beings actually find themselves. And either Newman's claim about the Church or Arnold's claim about culture seems enough for that.

93 NOTES 1. Adrian J. Boekraad and Henry Tristram, The Argument from Conscience to the Existence of God (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1961). The entire notebook has been published under the title John H. Newman, The Philosophical Notebook, Edward J. Sillem, ed., revised by A.J. Boekraad, 2 vols. (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 197.0). (The actual text is in Volume II). 2. See, e.g., An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (New York: Image Books, 1955), p. 137. 3. Newman wrote (and may have sent) a letter to Pope Leo XIII thanking the pontiff for the encyclical in which St, Thomas was recommended to the faithful. In it he says that the teaching of the Church should be "substantially one with the teaching of St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Anselm and St. Thomas as those great doctors in turn are one with each other." Whether he was being innocent or ironic or really claiming a hidden but fundamental unity one must guess for oneself. It is quoted in Boekraad and Tristram, op.cit, p. 46. 4. See Jacques-Bgnigne Bossuet, Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-mgme, in Oeuvres Choisies: Tome I, Oeuvres Philosophiques (Paris: A. Roger et F. Chernoviz, n.d.), p. 152. 5. "Dr. Clarke" is surely Samuel Clarke (1675-1742) as Tristram and Boekraad, op.cit., p. 133, suggest. They note that "a priori" is a popular "misnomer" for Clarke's clearly a posteriori argument. 6. Anselm's formula, after all, concerns "that than which nothing greater can be thought" (Proslogion II). The argument does hang, in some measure, on the notion that it is quite different to think, really think, that the being greater than which none can be thought exists, than merely to say it as the "fool" does. As for what the fool "sayeth in his heart" we shall have occasion to examine that later. 7. The "Proof of Theism", Boekraad and Tristram, op.cit., pp. 104ff., begins with a long discussion of Descartes and the "cogito". 8. Boekraad and Tristram, op.cit., p. 105. 9. Ibid.,p. 103. 10. Ibid., pp. 102-104. 11. Ibid.,p. 106. 12. Ibid., p. 103, footnote. 13. Ibid.,p. 109. 14. The imagery may Well have come from one of Newman's Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford (London: Longmans Green, 1898)see p. 201. Newman's "night battle" matches Arnold's and there are other possible connections with Newman in On Dover Beach. Other possible sources, however, are Thucydides, Clough, and Carlyle. For a discussion see David J. DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England, Newman, Arnold, and Pater (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1969), p. 22.