The Impassable Path of A Priori Reasoning: Analysis of Hume’s Critique of the Ontological Argument and Its Foundations

Abstract

Hume’s criticism is not specifically directed against the ontological argument, but rather against all attempts to demonstrate a priori the existence of God. But as Kant saw, this argument occupies a central position within this species of proof, for if it were valid, it would at once solve two problems which are inseparable for religious consciousness.¹ As its name suggests, it would establish simultaneously the essence and existence, not of any God or first cause, but of a Being that a religious person can always unconditionally accept as the genuine object of worship.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), Dialetic, II, III, sect.4, “The Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God,” (A 596–597, B 624–625), p. 503.