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Gottfried Leibniz

Born: 1646, Leipzig, Germany Died: 1716, Hanover, Germany

Major Works: Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), On the Ultimate Origination of the Universe (1697), Theodicy (1710), The Principles of Nature and Grace (1714), Monadology (1714), New Essays on Human Understanding (posthumous: 1765) Major Ideas: There is an infinity of individual substances. The irreducible, indivisible, indestructible unit of substance is the "monad." God is the ultimate, necessary being who is the sufficient reason for the existence of all other beings and who is the creator and orderer of all monads. Each monad is different from and independent of all others, but nonetheless linked together with all other monads in a universal and harmonious system. Since God is good, God will always act, both in creation and in providence, for the best. This order of creation is, therefore, "the best of all possible worlds" as evidenced by the order of the system as a whole.

The great transitional thinker between seventeenth-and eighteenth-century rationalism on the continent of Europe was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He was a man of wide interests-philosophical, mathematical, scientific, and theological--who had learned much from the study of the great philosophers of his time, Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Nonetheless, he found their systems to be arbitrary and incapable of dealing with the very problems they raised. His own philosophy attempted to retain the ground gained by rationalism but to move toward a philosophical theism capable of resolving the problem of Cartesian dualism without falling into a philosophical monism or pantheism like that of Spinoza and capable of being reconciled with traditional Christian views of God, world, and human responsibility. Leibniz's father, Friedrich, was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig and a staunch Lutheran. Leibniz demonstrated considerable precocity and entered the university at an early age to study law. When the university refused to grant him the degree of Doctor of Law on grounds of his age--he was twenty--he left Leipzig for the University of

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Altdorf, near Nurnberg. There he was received considerably more graciously, and he earned his degree for a dissertation On Difficult Cases in Law. It was during this period of Leibniz's life that he came under the influence of the "encyclopedists" of Herborn, Johannes Alsted, Johann Bisterfeld, and their pupil Johannes Comenius, later bishop and theological mentor of the Bohemian Brethren. Two of Leibniz's early works in particular manifest the influence of the Herborn school--the Dissertation on the Art of Combinations (1666) and the New Method for Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence (1666). From these thinkers Leibniz gained not only an entry into new currents of metaphysics in the seventeenth century but, more specifically, an interest in the issue of universal order harmony in relation to the existence and life of individuals. This latter issue was to remain a central concern of Leibniz's philosophical enterprise. During Leibniz's residence at Altdorf, his abilities attracted the attention of the archbishopelector of Mainz, who took the young Leibniz into his service as librarian and political adviser. The position was so congenial to Leibniz's own philosophical agenda that he refused academic offers, including a professorship at Altdorf. The elector was active in the international politics of the age, and Leibniz found himself sent on missions to the capitals of Europe, where, in addition to fulfilling his political duties, he was able to meet the great philosophers and scientists of the age--Antoine Arnauld, Nicolas Malebranche, Benedict Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, and Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society. In addition to engaging with these thinkers in philosophical correspondence, Leibniz also entered into an ecumenical dialogue with Lutheran, Catholic, and Calvinist writers, including the famous Bishop Bossuet, in an attempt to foster, on rational grounds, a reunion of Christendom. Three years after the death of the archbishop-elector in 1673, Leibniz left Mainz and entered the service of John Frederick, duke of Brunswick and Hanover. He remained in the service of the Hanoverians until his death in 1716. Although Leibniz was a systematic thinker in the larger sense, he never produced a major exposition of his thought as a whole. We have from his pen a vast series of short essays, responses to queries, an extensive correspondence, and contributions to the philosophical and literary journals of the day, from which his thought must be abstracted. Crucial essays, like the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology, serve not as full expositions of his "system" but as outlines or points around which discussion can crystallize. The Monadology and Discourse on Metaphysics In 1670 or 1671, Leibniz began to argue that the distinction between mind and matter was a distinction between something like a thought that can continue without moving or changing spatially and, on the other hand, something that must move or change to exist beyond the moment. This perspective enabled him to conceive of all things as essentially motion, albeit two different kinds of motion, and thereby to overcome the Cartesian dualism of thought and extension. In his Monadology, Leibniz attempted to identify "simple substances" in the form of monads or atoms as "the elements of things." These simple substances are noncomposite and do not come into existence by "natural means": They are, in short, the building blocks of the universe. God or "the Necessary Being" is "the ultimate unity" of the

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monads and "the original simple substance" capable of exerting a "force" that creates, regulates, and directs the monads. Leibniz denied the existence of absolute rest. The force that accounts for all change, although variously distributed, remains constant in Leibniz's universe as the law that supplies the rationale for our changing world. From this view--as opposed to Descartes's deduction concerning his own existence--Leibniz can assert the basic principle of philosophy as "the principle of sufficient reason"--that is, "everything has a reason" or, negatively, nothing exists without there being sufficient reason for its existence. We see here not only a more logical and, indeed, a more self-evident first principle than the Cartesian cogito, but also a truly objective foundation for a basic philosophy of the universe and God. As Leibniz commented of the cogito, it "is valid... but it is not the only one of its kind." There are many "primitive truths"--not necessary propositions of logic, but propositions that rest on "immediate experience": I exist, I am a unity, I know that there is such a thing as "substance," substance is a unity, individualities exist and are substantial, and the like. None of these propositions is purely logical, but all are undergirded by the principle of sufficient reason. Leibniz's emphasis on the theme of universal harmony led him not only to postulate individualized substances and to refuse to divide the world into two ultimate categories like physical and spiritual, body and soul--or in the Cartesian language, extension and thought--it also led him to postulate an infinite series of gradations in substance, a continuity of things and causes throughout the universe. There are no duplications and no sudden gaps in the order: There may be and are more than a single instance of each substance but there are not two substances that are identical--diversity, in other words, is not a delusion. All is not simply extension, as the Cartesians claim; truly different things exist because of substantial differences. This must be so because of the principle of sufficient reason: Two substances, identical in every respect, would not have "sufficient reason" for their distinction in the divinely appointed order. Leibniz thus poses a fundamental argument against the Cartesian dualism: The problem is the attribution of reality to both thought or notion and extension. Extension is not truly reality, it is combination or aggregation. It is not the aggregate that is real but its component parts--and, moreover, the material aspect of aggregates can be divided infinitely without coming to any end--so that substance or reality is not to be identified with extension by any account. The absolute individuality, the real substance or Monad, is the locus of the force behind things and therefore of the inner law that determines the conditions of change and motion. Leibniz identifies the soul with the "monad," the underlying substance of the individual, which cannot be divided and which holds the key to change and development. By the fact of our relation to other existence, we recognize other monads underlying phenomena. Phenomena are real in the sense that they derive from the monads and represent the direction of movement from present to future. What Leibniz has said in this doctrine of monads is, ultimately, that individual things are genuinely individual--that reality is the vast interconnected system of real individualities that cannot be reduced either to a Cartesian dualism or a Spinozistic monism.

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This language of the monadic structure of reality, so seemingly foreign to the perspectives of traditional theology and philosophy, was in fact an attempt to overcome problems inherent in the new science and the rationalist world-view for the sake of a traditional emphasis on the value and integrity of the individual. The pantheistic tendencies of rationalism, as clearly manifest in the thought of Spinoza, and the consideration of the world as an ordered system of nature governed by unbreakable laws, as taught in the new science, both tended toward the philosophical and scientific negation of the cosmic or ultimate importance of the individual human being. Scholastic philosophy had argued that man was a microcosm mirroring and, in a sense, summing up the universe; traditional theology had stressed the place of the individual in the divine plan. Leibniz endeavored to have the best of both worlds: the universal order and harmony of the new and, by way of his doctrine of monads, the emphasis on individuality within the order characteristic of the old. The problem for Leibniz, having thus overcome the problem of Cartesian dualism, was to explain the relationships of these monads, centers or souls, to all things. Each monad is isolated; as Leibniz put it, "The monads have no windows." The connection, of course, is God: It is God who creates the individual monads, who gives them the "sufficient reason" for their own existence, and who alone bears in himself the sufficient reason for His own existence. God provides the power or force that gives life to all things and God guarantees the inter-relationship and the movement of things. In effect, what Leibniz has done is to accept many of the views of modern science but--as he set out to do--merge them with a system of the universe compatible with the older philosophical tradition. He has overcome Descartes's autonomous ego, not by denying it, or refuting it, but by it to be logically and physically incomplete: It cannot be the sole starting point of the system, and it is not the only proposition immune to doubt. Leibniz has also placed God in the center of the system rather than at the periphery as the result of a logical deduction; in fact, Leibniz's God who guarantees the ongoing interrelationships of things and the harmony of the universal order is little more than a scientifically more sophisticated version of Aristotle's First Mover. This is not to imply anything artificial or arbitrary in the construction of Leibniz's system: The position of God in the system as the creator and orderer of all things is central to Leibniz's philosophical and theological program. God is, according to Leibniz, the selfexistent and self-actualizing substance upon whom the possibility of all other existences rests. God, then, is the perfect being, perfect in his being and in his knowledge and wisdom in whom the ideas of all other substances subsist eternally: God... is the ground of what is real in the possible. For the Understanding of God is the region of the eternal truths and of the ideas on which they depend; and without Him there would be nothing real in the possibilities of things, and not only would there be nothing in existence, but nothing would even be possible. Leibniz on the Existence of God In view of the importance given to God in Leibniz's philosophy, it is not surprising that Leibniz devoted considerable space to the proofs of the existence of God. Elements of these

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proofs appear in the Monadology, the New Essays, and the short treatises On the Ultimate Origination of the Universe and On the Cartesian Demonstration of the Existence of God. Just as the being and will of God are the "principle of things"--the sufficient reason for the existence of things--so is knowledge of God the principle of all the sciences. According to Leibniz, the ontological argument (based on an account of God's nature) lacks one element: It identifies God as the most perfect being, argues that existence is necessary to perfection, and concludes that God, to be perfect as defined, must exist. Leibniz allows the realist or idealist logic of the argument, including the assumption that existence is a predicate, but claims that the argument, in order to be complete, must demonstrate the possibility of the perfect being. This is accomplished teleologically, using the basic premise of Leibniz's philosophy, the principle of sufficient reason. Individual, finite things do not contain in themselves sufficient reason for their own existence: They are the effects of a greater cause. Such contingent things point away from themselves toward a non-contingent or necessary ground of their existence, a self-contained sufficient reason that is also the sufficient reason for its own existence. The argument can also be constructed from the universal harmony of the independent monads: There must be a sufficient reason for the harmony but no single monad, within the order, can explain the order itself. As the orderer of the whole, the self-existent being is also independent; pantheism is avoided. The perfect being, thus, is possible and, as possible, necessary. Theodicy Leibniz is perhaps most famous for his work entitled Theodicy ( a term he invented), indicating a "justification of God" in the face of the existence of evil. The central theme of Theodicy, for which Leibniz is famous or, when misunderstood, infamous, is the assertion that this is "the best of all possible worlds." Voltaire, who read Leibniz's theories as proposing a blatant cosmic optimism, accepted the concept of a "best of all possible worlds" until the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 convinced him that to show the goodness of an allcausing God in the face of evil (natural disaster) was not the easy enterprise he had originally thought it to be. Candide is Voltaire's satirical rejection of Leibniz. Arthur Schopenhauer, in the nineteenth century, also rejected Leibniz, and he did so in no uncertain terms: This, said Schopenhauer, is the worst of all possible worlds and is, in and of itself, the great and insuperable objection to the idea of a benevolent creator--God. "This world," comments Schopenhauer, "is the battleground of tormented and agonized beings who continue to exist only by devouring each other." Correctly understood, however, Leibniz's definition escapes the facile criticisms of virtually all its detractors. Leibniz began with the concept of a good God who, as good, will always act for the best. In an absolute sense--and here we have a reflection of Scotus--God could have created a different world, but in a moral sense, God as good--here a reflection of Aquinas's Aristotelianism--could create nothing but the best world possible. The root problem addressed by Leibniz's theodicy is the obvious contradiction between the God who wills and therefore creates all things for the good and the obvious existence of evil in the world. Leibniz does not intend either to ignore or to under-estimate evil: He only

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attempts to explain it in the context of his philosophy of a good God and a harmonious world order. There are three kinds of evil, according to Leibniz: "Evil may be taken metaphysically, physically, and morally. Metaphysical evil consists in mere imperfection, physical evil in suffering, moral evil in sin." Like Augustine and the Scholastics (and here we encounter yet another evidence of the deep traditionalism of Leibniz and the reason for the amenability of his philosophy in its Wolffian form with the orthodox system), Leibniz viewed evil as a privation, something without an efficient cause, a deficiency in good things. God, who is the first efficient cause of all things, does not will evil--only permits it. Here Leibniz adds an original feature to the scholastic argument. Whereas God permits moral evil--that is allows the free activity of moral agents in the world--he is not even said to permit physical evil or suffering. This he wills "hypothetically": There is in God no absolute will that evil events should happen and suffering occur, only a will resting on the "hypothesis" that greater good will come out of the suffering, such as the moral perfecting of the sufferer. The question still remains, however, as to the existence of the deficiencies in things, the imperfections that lead to physical and moral evil: In other words, we come finally to the question of metaphysical evil. Here Leibniz offers, initially, the standard explanation found in those thinkers from Augustine to the present who would maintain the postulate of a good creator and a good creation: Imperfection belongs, by nature, to all finite things. All created being is finite things are imperfect (even when they are as good and as relatively "perfect" as any finite thing can be), and the resident imperfection in things is the source of all privations of the good, of all error, misunderstanding, partial truth, and therefore of evil. The source of evil, for Leibniz, as for virtually all who hold the idealist (or realist) conception of a good absolute, lies in the very nature of finite things. Leibniz asks, "We, who derive all being from God, where shall we find the source of evil?" "The answer," he continues, is that it must be sought in the ideal nature of the creature, in so far as this nature is contained in the eternal verities which are in the understanding of God independently of his will. For we must consider that there is an original imperfection in the creature before sin, because the creature is limited in its essence; whence it follows that it cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other errors. In other words, Leibniz recognizes and states (far more clearly and bluntly than Augustine or the Scholastics) the limitation of God in his creation of the world: The ideal natures of creatures exist in God's mind, independent of His will. God cannot will that finite things exist without their imperfection--their forms are eternally determined as independent universals. Is God then the cause of evil simply by being creator? Leibniz says no, for the reason that existence itself is a good--it is better to exist than not to exist. The final explanation of the relationship of God to the created order is made in terms of a Scholastic distinction between God's antecedent and consequent will: Antecedently, God wills the good and only the good, because he is God and he is good--his antecedent good will rests only on his goodness. But the good of existence for things that God wills

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antecedently is limited by the imperfection of the ideal or universal, the eternal pattern, as it were, of the creature in the mind of God. God's antecedently good choice to create, therefore, is bound up with the problem of necessarily imperfect created things. What God creates is good not in the antecedent sense of a total and perfect good: God must create imperfect beings. According to his consequent will, unable to create the good in an absolute sense, God wills to create the best possible. Comments Leibniz, "God wills antecedently the good and consequently the best," that is, the best possible. Imperfection there will be, but it will belong to the universal order. The order itself and the lessons it teaches are good. For Leibniz, therefore, "the best of all possible worlds" is not a world without evils but a world in which evil appears as the necessary result of the existence of finite things and is, ultimately, overshadowed by the good, as manifest in the underlying harmony of the world order. An underlying thread in this system, related both to the proofs and to the theodicy, is Leibniz's optimistic determinism. God, as the perfect Being, has created according to his perfectly good will the best of all possible worlds: Optimism is the only possible result. But this also implies determinism. God has created the best of all possible worlds and no other. His choice of this world comprehends all possibilities in it--and there can be no defection from the divine order. Even the imperfection that we experience as evil results necessarily from the divine choice. Leibniz's determinism, however, does not imply a denial of free will and the imposition of necessity or constraint upon all choice. The divine determination of all things determines them to be what they are substantially but, in the case of spiritual substances, does not impose necessity; rather, the divine determination assures that voluntary acts will occur on the basis of natural inclination or rational judgment. We will not fall short of the mark if we characterize Leibniz's thought as the most consistent and noblest attempt of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century to draw together into one grand totality the most consistent rationalism of the day and the most advanced mathematical and scientific concepts with a philosophical construction of the relationship of God and world that would prove useful and acceptable both to the scientific and to the religious mind of the era. Leibniz had in fact hoped not only to effect a reunion of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism but also to complete the conversion of the world to a rational and scientific system of belief through logical persuasion. At the very least he had hoped to produce a form of rational theism that could function in the context of the new scientific and mathematical view of the universe and that would not encounter the angry response accorded to the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza. Further Reading Broad, C. D. Leibniz: An Introduction. Edited by C. Lewy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. A distinguished thinker is prompted by Leibniz's ideas to venture out on his own. The result is a lively account that is both illuminating and critical. Rescher, Nicholas. The Philosophy of Leibniz. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. A superb study that stands as perhaps the most convincing recent attempt to reconstruct the Leibnizian "system" out of the vast array of tracts, treatises, and letters.

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Russell, Bertrand. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. 2d ed. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937. The classic reconstruction of Leibniz's philosophical system. Muller, Richard A. ________________ This article is by Richard A. Muller and is taken from Great Thinkers of the Western World, Edition 1992 p237(6). COPYRIGHT HarperCollins Publishers 1992.

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