Can anyone explain St. Anselm's Proslogion?

Question

what is it all about..

Answer 1

I should first mention that St.Anselm's argument was really a "work of art".

The idea is in setting the definition of GOD. God is the absolutely great Being that than which nothing greater can be thought of.

After setting this definition of God -which is true in referring to the absolute greatness of Him- anyone who can understand this definition (in his mind) has stepped forward in being able to believe in God, and that God now exists in his mind (at least as a concept)!

God being the GREATEST Being that than which nothing greater can be thought of should include the great property of "existing in reality" why?. Because ,in other words, God -according to His definition SHOULD include ALL great properties anyone can think of, and since "existing in reality" is a great-gaining property, then God having the "existing in reality" property is greater than God existing only in the mind since that God has all properties of a God in mind + being REAL.

Therefore, God cannot but exist in reality and in the mind.

Answer 2

St Anselm Proslogion

Answer 3

ANSELM ON GOD'S EXISTENCE
God's existence was to some extent obvious for medieval theologians. They simply knew he existed. Nevertheless, they attempted to prove his existence anyway, and the basic strategies employed by them are the ones used every since. Here two approaches are presented. The first, by Anselm, is perhaps the most puzzling. While it has not been all that popular with the average believer, it has fascinated philosophers, and even today there are respectable philosophers who accept it.

Anselm himself is equally fascinating, since he combined the seemingly disparate roles of saint, ecclesiastical leader, and major philosopher. He was born in 1033 near Aosta, which is now in Italy. At the age of twenty-three he quarreled with his father and began a period of wandering through France on what seems to have resembled an educational grand tour. After trying the schools at Fleury-sur-Loire and Chartres, he arrived at the Benedictine abbey of Bec, which was enjoying an excellent reputation thanks to Lanfranc, who served as both prior and master of its school. Anselm entered the abbey as a novice in 1060 and rapidly rose to eminence. When Lanfranc moved to the new monastery founded at Caen in 1063 by William, the Duke of Normandy, Anselm became prior at Bec, a position he held until he became abbot in 1078.

By that time William the Duke had become William the Conqueror and was in the process of reorganizing England. He had brought Lanfranc over as Archbishop of Canterbury, and when Lanfranc died William Rufus, who had succeeded William the Conqueror as king of England, imported Anselm to be the new archbishop. Anselm arrived in 1093 and almost from the moment he touched English soil he was fighting with William to gain ecclesiastical freedom from royal control. By 1097 he was conducting the battle from exile, and was allowed to return only in 1100, when William Rufus was succeeded by Henry I. He got along no better with Henry, however, and in 1103 was back in exile, returning only in 1107 when the stubborn king and equally stubborn archbishop worked out a compromise that became the standard formula for settling church-state quarrels in the twelfth century. Anselm died in 1109.

Answer 4

Anselm began with the idea that God is "that than which nothing greater can be thought" and from that, he argued that what exists in reality is greater than that which exists only in the mind; so it follows, as "God is that about which nothing greater can be thought", He exists in reality. Proslogium.