- ^ An entry concerning Anselm's parents in the records of Christ Church in Canterbury leaves open the possibility of a later reconciliation.[18]
- ^ Anselm did not publicly condemn the Crusade but replied to an Italian whose brother was then in Asia Minor that he would be better off in a monastery instead. Southern summarized his position in this way: "For him, the important choice was quite simply between the heavenly Jerusalem, the true vision of Peace signified by the name Jerusalem, which was to be found in the monastic life, and the carnage of the earthly Jerusalem in this world, which under whatever name was nothing but a vision of destruction".[82]
- ^ Direct knowledge of Plato's works was still quite limited. Calcidius's incomplete Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus was available and a staple of 12th-century philosophy but "seems not to have interested" Anselm.[141]
- ^ Latin: Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam.
- ^ Other examples include "The Christian ought to go forth to understanding through faith, not journey to faith through understanding" (Christianus per fidem debet ad intellectum proficere, non per intellectum ad fidem accedere) and "The correct order demands that we believe the depths of the Christian faith before we presume to discuss it with reason" (Rectus ordo exigit, ut profunda Christianae fidei credamus, priusquam ea praesumamus ratione discutere).[94]
- ^ Latin: Negligentise mihi esse videtur, si, postquam confirmatius in fide, non studemus quod credimus, intelligere.
- ^ Anselm requested the works be retitled in a letter to Hugh, Archbishop of Lyon,[154] but didn't explain why he chose to use the Greek forms. Logan conjectures it may have derived from Anselm's secondhand acquaintance with Stoic terms used by St Augustine and by Martianus Capella.[153]
- ^ Although the Latin meditandus is usually translated as "meditation", Anselm was not using the term in its modern sense of "self-reflection" or "consideration" but instead as a philosophical term of art which described the more active process of silently "reaching out into the unknown".[156]
- ^ See note above on the renaming of Anselm's works.
- ^ As by Thomas Williams.[168]
- ^ Various scholars have disputed the use of the term "ontological" in reference to Anselm's argument. A list up to his own time is provided by McEvoy.[169]
- ^ Variations of the argument were elaborated and defended by Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Gödel, Plantinga, and Malcolm. In addition to Gaunilo, other notable objectors to its reasoning include Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, with the most thorough analysis having been done by Oppenheimer and Zalta.[176][177][178]
- ^ The title is a reference to Anselm's invocation of the Psalms' "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'".[180][181] Gaunilo offers that, if Anselm's argument were all that supported the existence of God, the fool would be correct in rejecting his reasoning.[168]
- ^ Southern[185] and Thomas Williams[32] date it to 1059–60, while Marenbon places it "probably... shortly after" 1087.[141]
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