The Forms

The Forms are hard to describe. More or less, they are the most pure representations of our concepts but are embodied in the world independently of human thought. Thus, our idea of goodness is a mere approximation of the Form of Goodness, which is the perfect ideal of Goodness. But the Form of Goodness exists independently from what humans believe about them. The Forms are an idea of Plato's that Anselm makes great use of. The Forms are God's ideas, on Anselm's view. However, God is also identical with the Forms, which are themselves ultimately identical with one another.

Conceivable Ideas

Conceivable ideas are those ideas humans are capable of imagining. There are, in fact, inconceivable ideas, ones that either cannot be imagined at all or can only be imagined in part or negatively. Conceivable ideas play a foundational role in Anselm's ontological argument and in...