And what is that, this something than which nothing greater can be thought? Why it is God of course.

‘Now we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be thought’ (Anselm). Here is the stuff of philosophy, or at least of a certain sort of philosophy. Here are thoughts and things and relations between them, and God also. Anselm tied them together in such a complicated knot that thinkers have had difficulty untying them ever since. But perhaps Anselm’s knot is like the knot of the conjuror, a sleight of hand, and all one needs to do is to pull the rope taut and the knot will disappear?

Brian Davies (‘Quod Vere Sit Deus. Why Anselm Thought that God Truly Exists’, New Blackfriars, 72 (1991), 212—221) has also suggested that Anselm’s knot is often misunderstood, that, for example, Kant untied Descartes’ and not Anselm’s knot. But Davies still thinks Anselm’s knot a good one. When properly understood (tied) it works. Whether Davies has really untied and retied (understood and explained) Anselm’s knot or a similar but different one, just like Gaunilo, Descartes and Kant before him, is not here important. What matters is that Davies has an argument for God’s existence and that he thinks it is a good one.