leibniz's first theodicy

Leibniz's First TheodicyAuthor(s): R. C. Sleigh, Jr.Source: Noûs, Vol. 30, Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives, 10, Metaphysics, 1996 (1996),pp. 481-499Published by: Blackwell PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2216258Accessed: 19/08/2010 04:14

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Philosophical Perspectives, 10, Metaphysics, 1996

LEIBNIZ'S FIRST THEODICY

R. C. Sleigh, Jr. University of Massachusetts at Amherst

In 1710 the Amsterdam publisher, Isaac Troyel, brought out anony- mously a work entitled Essais de Theodicee sur la Bonte de Dieu, la Liberte de l'Homme et 1' Origin du Mal.1 Subsequent editions of the Theodicy (as it shall be called hereafter) identified the author. The Theodicy is the only philosophical book that Leibniz had published in his lifetime. It is ostensibly aimed at defending Christian orthodoxy against presumed assaults thereon contained in the writings of Pierre Bayle- assaults centered around the problem of evil. Actually, it goes well be- yond what that endeavor would require; it presents Leibniz's mature thought on all aspects of the problem of evil, although not always at the deepest level.2

Leibniz cogitated upon, and wrote about, aspects of the problem of evil throughout his entire philosophical career. There was a flurry of early activity, commencing with "Demonstrationum Catholicarum Conspectus" ("Sketch of Catholic Demonstrations") written in 1668 or 1669 (or both) and culminating in the Confessio Philosophi (the Confessio, hereafter) written in 1672 or 1673 (or both). Between these two Leibniz composed an important work on the relevant topic under the title "Von der Allmacht und Allwissenheit Gottes und der Freiheit des Menschen," ("On the Om- nipotence and Omniscience of God and Human Freedom," hereafter) written in 1670 or 1671 (or both).3 The point of this paper is to analyze Leib- niz's thinking, as presented in the Confessio, about one central aspect of the problem of evil-what I call "the author of sin" problem. The central thesis of the paper is that Leibniz formulated a solution to the author of sin problem in the Confessio that he came to believe to be inadequate and that recouping his losses subsequently involved him in tangled metaphysical considerations. I have no more than moderate confidence in this thesis. My main interest is in putting the problems of interpretation front and center for investigation. The thesis facilitates that project, and, although my confidence in it is moderate, still, I currently think it is true.

I begin with some general background.

482 / Robert C. Sleigh

I

In its most elemental form, the problem of evil revolves around the claim that the mere existence of evil is inconsistent with the existence of a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, and creator of the world-features usually ascribed to God. This is the general form in which the problem of evil is typically discussed today, although recent discussion has also focussed on the claim that even if the general consistency problem can be resolved, the amount and nature of evil that actually occurs in the world make it impossible, or at any rate, improbable that there is a being having the features Christians usually ascribe to God. The consistency problem was noted by Leibniz's Christian predecessors, but it was given short shrift, basically because it was regarded as so easy to resolve. St. Thomas provided a standard resolution in S.T.IaQ 2, a.3.4 Therein St. Thomas considered this objection:

... if God existed, no evil would be found. However, evil is found in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

Thomas's response refers with approval to St. Augustine:

As St. Augustine said: "Since God is the highest good, in no way would He permit any evil in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This, therefore, belongs to the infinite goodness of God that He permits evils to exist and from them produces good things.

This is a rudimentary form of what we might call the greater good defense, which utilizes the following presupposition: it is morally acceptable for an agent to permit, and, in some cases, even to cause, an evil state of affairs to obtain, provided that there is some good state of affairs such that the agent cannot bring about the obtaining of the good state of affairs without the obtaining of the evil state of affairs and provided further that it is better for both states of affairs to obtain than neither. When this presupposition is combined with the thesis that every evil state of affairs that obtains is such that there is some good state of affairs such that it is impossible for the latter to obtain unless the former obtains and such that it is better for both states of affairs to obtain than neither, then we have the makings of a defense relative to the general consistency problem.

But this was not the end of the problem of evil for Leibniz's Christian predecessors; it was more like the beginning. Thus Scholastic philosophers were inclined to think that a specific aspect of God's goodness, i.e., his holiness, would be compromised, were God causally implicated in unacceptable ways in creaturely sin, whatever valuable consequences were to ensue in virtue of the sinning. Indeed, were God causally implicated in unacceptable

Leibniz's First Theodicy / 483

ways in creaturely sin he would thereby be an author of that sin. At least since the Council of Orange (529), it has been de fide for Catholics that God is not an author of sin. Lutheran Leibniz never wavered from acceptance of the doctrine that God is not the author of sin. It is much easier to fix on where Scholastic philosophers, Leibniz, and various of his contemporaries stood on the doctrine in question than it is to locate its content. Roughly speaking, a free agent S is said to be an author of some sinful action A in case S is morally responsible with respect to sinful action A in virtue of the free exercise or free non-exercise of some causal power of S relative to the occurrence of A. There are a variety of ways in which an agent S becomes a candidate for bearing moral responsibility with respect to an action A in virtue of relevant free exercises or free non-exercises of S's causal powers, e.g., by performing A, by causing A's performance, and by permitting A's performance, i.e., by not causally preventing its performance in circumstances in which S knows that A will occur unless he prevents its occurrence and in which S knows that he can prevent its occurrence.

There is a standard Scholastic framework with respect to sin, which we need to note. Creaturely sins result from free exercises of the will; the resulting bodily action, e.g., those associated with an act of adultery, to pick the most prominent, standard example, are sinful, but derivately so. Fundamentally, the sin is associated with the free choice to commit the adultery. The relevant bodily movements are the act said to be commanded by the agent; the choice to commit the adultery is an act said to be elicited by the agent. Given this way of thinking about sin there are three basic ways in which God might be construed as an author of some sin: i) by freely eliciting a sinful choice; ii) by causally contributing to some creature's freely eliciting some sinful choice; and iii) by freely choosing not to prevent some creature from freely eliciting some sinful choice.

It was common among Scholastics to suppose that a sin arises when an agent freely chooses to perform an action that is prohibited by divine law, and the God can not author sin in this fashion. Hence the action with respect to the author of sin problem tended to focus on the possibility of divine involvement in categories ii) and iii). Leibniz's Christian predecessors held that God causally contributes in some fashion to every creaturely action, and that each eliciting of a sinful choice that occurs is such that God could have prevented it from occurring, had he so chosen. So defenses with respect to categories ii) and iii) focussed on providing an account of God's causal contributions and permissions that explained how God could act in the ways specified in the account without thereby being besmirched by the resulting sinful choices. Leibniz's Scholastic predecessors had formulated elaborate theories of divine and human action in an effort to satisfy these requirements. The main point of the Confessio was to formulate a simple, unified theory that filled the bill, without involving what Leibniz (and many of his contemporaries) took to be Scholastic excesses.


II

In "On the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God and Human Free- dom" Leibniz presented the author of sin problem as a combination of category ii) and category iii) problems in the usual way-category ii) problems are alleged to arise because of God's providing circumstances that causally contribute to human sin; and, category iii) problems are alleged to arise because of God's failure to prevent human sin. Leibniz closed paragraph 15 by claiming that neither category had received a satisfactory resolution. In particular, he noted two solution that he attributed to the Scholastics, which he regarded as unsatisfactory. I consider them in the reverse of the order in which Leibniz presented them.#

In section 19 Leibniz considered the prospects of solving category ii) aspects of the author of sin problem by accepting a libertarian account of human free choice of the sort he usually attributed to Molina. Leibniz therein rejected this solution for three reasons, the first two of which were standard fare among Molina's Scholastic critics, the third of which was not. First, Leibniz argued that the very strategy, central to a libertarian theory in this context, of attenuating God's causal involvement in creaturely free choice, yielded an unacceptably tepid notion of divine providence. Second, Leibniz argued that a libertarian theory generates serious difficulties in accounting for God's certain and infallible knowl- edge of true counterfactuals of freedom, i.e., true propositions stating what an agent would have freely chosen in circumstances that do not obtain. And, third, in paragraph 17 Leibniz clearly committed himself to a theory of causal determinism and compatibilism that he took to be inconsistent with incompatibilist libertarianism of the sort he attributed to Molina.

In section 18 Leibniz considered critically another Scholastic strategy for solving category ii) problems. The basic idea of the strategy is to treat evil as a privation-a lack of a feature that is natural to a thing, and to claim that God is the ultimate cause of the positive features of each creature, but not necessarily of the creature's privations.

My interest is in a variant of this theory that was scorned by some early modern philosophers, e.g., Hobbes as well as Leibniz. It was common to suppose that this variant was contained in the works of St. Thomas. In De Potentia Q3, a.6, ad 20 Thomas considered the objection that if God operates as a first cause with respect to a creature's will, then the defects (sin included) of voluntary actions must be ascribed to God. Thomas replied:

... in a sinful action, whatever there is of entity . is reduced to God as its first cause, but what there is therein of deformity is reduced to [creaturely] free choice as its cause.


An elaboration of this account may be found in S.T. IaIIaeQ79, a.2, ad 2. Thomas held the view that God causally contributes to each and every sinful action, but without contributing to the defect accompanying the action in virtue of which it is sinful. He considered this objection: Since a creature causes sin. to obtain by causing a sinful act to obtain, therefore, were God to causally contribute to a sinful act's obtaining, He would thereby cause sin to obtain. Thomas responded that the creature causally contributes to the obtaining of both that act that is sinful and the sinfulness of the act. But not so, God; Thomas concluded:

... man is the cause of sin. But God is a cause of the act in such a manner that He is in no way the cause of the defect accompanying the act; and, hence, He is not the cause of the sin.

What we might call the "anomie" version of this theory was a subject of ridicule by Hobbes and the young Leibniz. In section 22 of chapter 46 of the Latin edition of Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes outlined the anomie theory,.which he attributed to the Scholastics, this way: Sin, in itself, is anomie, i.e., the failure of some act to be in accord with some relevant law; this failure is a negation and ". . . not a deed or any sort of action." Hobbes formulated how this theory is supposed to work and his criticism of it, as follows:

Recognizing . . . that God is the cause of every act and every law, they deny that He is the cause of the inconsistency, as if someone were to say when he drew two lines, one straight and the other curved, he made both of them, but that someone else made their lack of congruity.6

In section 18 Leibniz characterized the anomie theory in much the same way and formulated a counterexample, strikingly similar to that provided by Hobbes. Leibniz's full scorn for the anomie theory is contained in a paper entitled "L'Auteur du Peche" (The Author of Sin), written at about the same time as the Confessio. Therein Leibniz referred to the anomie theory by name and formulated it as follows:

Touching this great question of the author of sin, it is commonly believed that the difficulty is avoided by claiming that sin in its essence is only a pure privation without any reality, and that God is not the author of privations. Toward that end, the famous distinction between the physical aspect and the moral aspect of sin was introduced.

Leibniz, then, considered an example of a sinful act, i.e., a robbery, noting that on the Scholastic account the "physical" aspects included not only the physical actions of the thief, but the intentions and choices of the thief as well, i.e., what we might call the natural properties of the


agent and act. He concluded in a criticism as biting as is to be found in Leibniz:

Where then is this moral aspect of sin of which so much is said? Perhaps it will be said that it consists in anomie, as Holy Scripture calls it, i.e., in the lack of conformity of the action with respect to the law, which is a pure privation. I agree with that, but I do not see what that contributes to the clarification of our question. For to say that God is not the author of sin because He is not the author of a privation, although He can be called the author of everything that is real and positive in sin-that is a manifest illusion. It is a left-over from the visionary philosophy of the past; it is a subterfuge with which a reasonable person will not be satisfied.7

Leibniz went on to provide another counter-example, once again strikingly similar to that provided by Hobbes. Leibniz did not ridicule, or even deny, the distinction between the natural components of an action and its moral aspect. What he ridiculed was the use to which Scholastics put it. The idea of the criticism seems to be that if you admit that God causally contributes to every natural component of an action then it is too late in the game to absolve God from causally contributing to its moral aspect, hence, in relevant cases, to its sinfulness.

By the close of paragraph 19 of "On the Omnipotence and Omni- science of God and Human Freedom" Leibniz believed that he had dis- pensed with the leading moves of his predecessors concerning the problem of the author of sin. We might expect Leibniz's positive contribution to be located in section 20, the last section of the work. Here is that section in its entirety:

20. Damit wir aber ... (But in order for us ...

The positive solution was the work of the Confessio; we turn to it.

III

Consider the following passage from the Confessio:

... although God is the ground [ratio] of sins, nevertheless He is not the author of sins, and if I may be permitted to speak in the manner of the Scholastics, the ultimate physical cause of sins, as of all created things, is in God; but the moral cause is in the sinner. I suppose that this is what is meant by those who have said that the substance of the act is from God, but nevertheless not the evil aspect, although they have been unable to explain how it is that the evil aspect does not result from the act. [Confessio 121]


Given the context in which this passage occurs in the Confessio, it is clear that Leibniz intended therein to assert that God makes a causal contribution to sinful actions, indeed, that God is the unique ultimate cause of sinful actions but that God is not morally responsible for sinful actions-the sinner is. This latter point is, of course, exactly the bottom line outcome that Scholastics wanted; a decent question is-how did Leibniz aim to achieve this result? Leibniz's solution is contained in the continuation of the passage:

They [the Scholastics] have said more correctly that God contributes everything to sin except will, and, accordingly, He does not sin. I think, therefore, that sins are not due to the divine will, but rather to the divine understanding, or, what amounts to the same thing, to the eternal ideas, i.e., the nature of things.

This alleged solution to the author of sin problem requires some unpacking. Consider the following pair of propositions:

(1) For any state of affairs a, if a obtains then God is the ultimate ground (ratio) of a's obtaining.

(2) For any state of affairs a and agent S, S is an author of a's obtaining if, and only if, S causes a to obtain by willing that a obtain.

Textual support for (1) may be found at Confessio 125; for (2), at Confessio 127. Being an author of the obtaining of a state of affairs is one way in which God is an ultimate ground. But, since God is not an author of sin, there must be another way. According to Leibniz in the Confessio 123 there is. At Confessio 121-22 Leibniz wrote the following about states of affairs that he took to obtain of necessity, e.g., that three times three equals nine:

God brings these things about not by willing them, but by understanding them and He understands them by existing .... Therefore, you see that there is something of which God is the cause, not by His will, but by His existence.

What Leibniz needed, of course, is the claim that sins fall in the category of things God causes to exist by understanding them. And at Confessio 123 Leibniz asserted what is needed:

Sins occur because the universal harmony of things . . . brings them forth this way. However, the universal harmony is not a result of the will of God, but of idea or intellect, i.e., the nature of things. Therefore, sins are to be ascribed to the same thing; accordingly, sins are a consequence of the existence of God, not the will of God.

In virtue of these texts, and passages in their vicinity, we may be tempted to ascribe the following propositions to Leibniz:


(3) For any state of affairs a, God causes a to obtain by understanding a, if and only if it is not possible that God exists and a does not obtain.

(4) For any state of affairs a, if a obtains then either God causes a to obtain by willing that a obtains or God causes a to obtain by existing, i.e., it is not possible that God exists and a does not obtain.

(5) For any sinful state of affairs a, if a obtains then it is not the case that God causes a to obtain by willing that a obtains.

(6) For any sinful state of affairs a, if a obtains then God causes a to obtain by existing, i.e., it is not possible that God exists and a does not obtain.

The texts indicate that (4) provides the content for (1) and that the two mechanisms of divine causation noted in (4) were construed by Leibniz to be jointly exhaustive. Given this result, and given Leibniz's commitment to the thesis that God is not the author of sin, Leibniz had no choice but to affirm (6). But surely if (6) takes us out of the author of sin frying pan, it lands us in a theodicean fire.

At this point the interlocutor in the dialogue that constitutes the Con- fessio has his best lines:

... but see whether it does not follow, first, that in addition all the remaining things, even good things, as well as sins, result not from God's will, but from his nature, or what is the same, are to be ascribed to the nature of things; second, that sins are necessary. (Confessio 124)

In Section IV I concentrate on Leibniz's response to the first of the interlocutor's objections, and in section V, his response to the second.

IV

Some of Leibniz's remarks appended in the margins of the Confessio manuscript may suggest that the interlocutor's first criticism is based on a serious misreading of Leibniz's position. So I begin with some textual matters that bear on that suggestion.

As noted, the best estimate is that Leibniz first drafted the Confessio in 1672-73. Like many of Leibniz's philosophical writings, the manuscript was altered at various times by its author. From 1677 until 1680 Niels Stensen served as apostolic vicar to the Court of Hanover, working on various church reunion projects. During this period Leibniz presented Stensen with the manuscript of the Confessio; Stensen appended critical comments in the margin, to which Leibniz responded in the margins. Stensen and Leibniz discussed the topics of the Confessio in December


1677; Leibniz's record of the outcome, "Conversaton with Stensen," may be found in Grua 268-73. Leibniz's responses to some of Stensen's criticisms may suggest that I (in common with Stensen) have misconstrued the theory of the original Confessio. I concentrate on one case.

In a marginal comment to Confessio 123 Stensen argued as follows. Leibniz's argument for the thesis that sins depend for their existence on the divine understanding and not the divine will may be extended to reach the conclusion that the entire series of created entities depends on the divine understanding, not the divine will. But this is unacceptable. Leibniz responded as follows:

The series of things is not posited because God is posited, but only because God, who is the most wise being, wills nothing but the best ... (Confessio 123)

Let 'W' designate the actual world. Consider the following:

(1) If God exists, then W obtains. (2) If God wills nothing but the best, then W obtains. (3) God exists if and only if God wills nothing but the best.

On the basis of the original Confessio texts Stensen attributed (1) to Leib- niz. In his response Leibniz denied accepting (1), but affirmed (2). My view is this. Stensen's interpretation of the original Confessio looks like a fair reading. Moreover, if Leibniz accepted the necessity of (3) then (1) and (2) are equivalent. But a close reading of the original Confessio suggests that Leibniz then did accept the necessity of (3). My diagnosis is this. By 1677- 78, when he responded in the margin to Stensen's criticisms, Leibniz realized that crucial aspects of the Confessio solution to the problem of the author of sin were not viable. He was then confronting the major problems involved in his mature treatment of the problem of evil, e.g., the modal status of (3) and the modal status of 'W is the best possible world.' Leib- niz's response presupposed a hybrid position, combining his then current position with what he then took to be salvageable from the original Con- fessio. I think there is something to be gained from studying his original defense in the original Confessio.

We may formulate the interlocutor's first objection as follows. Ac- cording to Leibniz, the features in virtue of which one state of affairs is more valuable than another are such that judgments of relative merit are either necessarily true or necessarily false. And the judgment that a given state of affairs is sinful has the same modal character. This is Leibniz's basis for claiming that sins are to be attributed to God's existence, not his will. But, the interlocutor argued, good states of affairs are in the same boat. Hence, they ought to be attributed to God's existence, not his


will-contrary to Leibniz's position.8 Leibniz's response is exiguous. He reiterated his assertion that God wills those things that are good in themselves, but not sins, and that, hence, the required asymmetry is preserved. The interlocutor's initial response is lethargic. "Your doctrine is im- mensely pleasing." (Confessio 125). But, as is typical in this surprisingly forthcoming dialogue, he returned to the fray, attempting to show that Leibniz's own principles lead to the conclusion that God wills sins. The interlocutor argued as follows:

On the contrary, it seems that God wills them [sins]. For the harmony of things is pleasing to God, and the existence of sins arises from the harmony of things. Moreover, according to your definition, we will the existence of that which delights us. Therefore, God must be said to will sins. (Confessio 130)

Leibniz responded as follows.

That is an illusion of reasoning: even if harmony is pleasing, nevertheless it is not an immediate consequence that whatever arises from this harmony is pleasing. Given that the whole is pleasing it does not follow that each part is pleasing. Even if the entire harmony is pleasing, the discordant aspects of it nevertheless are not pleasing in themselves ...

In this passage Leibniz was attempting to firm up the position he staked out in his original (exiguous) response to the interlocutor's objection. Leibniz wrote:

Sins are not among the things that God wills . .. , because these are things that, taken one by one, or per se, he does not find good.... However, he must be said to will the entire series, not just permit it ... (Confessio 124).

So Leibniz was firmly committed to the idea that God wills the obtaining of that maximally consistent state of affairs that is the actual world. The interlocutor's argument may be put this way: Let W be the actual world and a, any sinful state of affairs that obtains in W. W's obtaining entails that a obtains. According to Leibniz's position God wills that W obtain, hence, God wills that a obtain, contrary to Leibniz's claim. Leibniz's response is this: The interlocutor's argument presupposes that the willings of a rational agent are closed under entailment (or, perhaps, known and cogitated upon entailments). But this presupposition is false.

Here is my diagnosis. It is natural to suppose at this point that in the original Confessio Leibniz ran together varieties of willing, which, in his mature work, were assiduously kept apart. There is, first, the notion of antecedent willing, which is concisely formulated by Leibniz in a letter to Naude (Grua 502):


Every wise person has a real inclination toward each good that is an object of his cognition and his power, with the result that he would produce it if he were not prevented from doing so by other, more powerful, considerations. This is what is called antecedent will.

Assuming that we restrict consideration to possible states of affairs and that God is essentially omnipotent and omniscient, we reach the conclusion that God antecedently wills the obtaining of all and only those states of affairs good in themselves.

Assuming that not all states of affairs good in themselves are com- possible, God's antecedently willing that a obtain does not entail that a obtains. By contrast, what God wills consequently is what is best, all things considered. Moreover, consequent willing produces its objective, if the agent has the requisite power. Hence, if God consequently wills that a obtain, then a obtains.9

With these distinctions and attendant theses in mind, let's return to the Confessio. At Confessio 127 Leibniz formulated some characterizations that border on definitions. He wrote:

To will in favor (velle) is to be delighted by the existence of something; to will against [nolle] is to be sad concerning the existence of something, or to be delighted by its non-existence. To permit is neither to will in favor nor to will against, but nevertheless to know. To be the author of something is by one's own will to be the ground [rationem] of another.

I think that velle and nolle here are cases of antecedent willing, while the notion of being the author of is intended to do duty for consequent willing. Now consider this passage from the Confessio (133):

... having posited that we believe something good, it is impossible that we do not will it, and having posited that we will it and at the same time know that the external aids are available, it is impossible that we do not act.

In this passage Leibniz seems to run together an idea that applies only to antecedent willing, i.e., that we will (antecedently) whatever we believe to be good in itself, and an idea that applies only to consequent willing, i.e., that if we will (consequently) something that we then know to be in our power to bring about, we then do bring it about.

I think that the interlocutor has provided considerable evidence that Leibniz has only shown that God does not antecedently will the obtaining of sinful states of affairs, and that he has not shown that God's consequent will does not involve God in the causation of sin in ways inconsistent with the claim that God is not the author of sin. Or, perhaps more accurately, the interlocutor has provided evidence that Leibniz's account in the origi-


nal Confessio has the following, surely unacceptable, consequence: Every state of affairs that obtains is caused to obtain by God's understanding, and, hence, that there really is no such thing as God's authorship because his willings are an expression of his causally idle preferences.

A not all together implausible interpretive strategy at this point would be to claim this as the theory Leibniz really wanted to hold. True, some of Leibniz's remarks suggest that he viewed the divine understanding and the divine will as not only jointly exhaustive sources of divine causation, but mutually exclusive sources as well-each with it own non-empty domain. But that, according to the interpretation being considered, is not really Leibniz's opinion. In fact, the divine understanding is the ultimate divine cause (and, hence, ultimate cause) of every state of affairs that obtains. God's "authorship," on this account, amounts to his causally idle delight in some, but not all, of those states of affairs whose obtaining he causes, namely, those good in themselves. This interpretation may be presented as a natural extension of Leibniz's idea, articulated in the Confessio, that no exercise of the will is an ens a se, i.e., that every exercise of a will, the divine will included, is the result of factors exterior to the will.10

By my lights, this is not an account that Leibniz would have accepted at the time of the composition of the Confessio; it is too close to the views of the dreaded Spinoza. And, as a solution to the traditional problem of the author of sin, there is little to be said for it. In any case, it is clearly inconsistent with views that Leibniz expressed subsequently concerning divine freedom and the role of the divine will in creation.

V

The interlocutor formulated his second objection as follows:

What is your response going to be to the argument proposed above. The existence of God is necessary; the sins included in the series of things follow from this. Whatever follows from something necessary is itself necessary. Therefore sins are necessary. (Confessio 127)

Leibniz initially responded as follows:

I reply that it is false that whatever follows from something necessarya is itself necessarya.... Why not a proposition that is contingent from a proposition that is necessary.a But I will establish this from the very notion of necessity. Now I have defined the necessary as that the contrary of which cannot be conceived; therefore, the necessity and impossibility of things are to be sought in the ideas of the things themselves, and not outside those things, by examining whether they can be conceived or whether they imply a contradiciton.c Therefore, if the essence of a thing can be conceived, provided that it is conceived clearly and distinctly . . . then surely it must be


held to be possible, and its contrary will not be necessary, even if perhaps its existence is contrary to the harmony of things and the existence of God (Confessio 127-28)

Subsequently, Leibniz altered the manuscript by making insertions as follows:

a. 'per se'

b. 'or necessary on the hypothesis of another'

c. 'For in this place we call necessary only what is necessary per se; namely, that which has the reason for its existence and truth in itself. The truths of geometry are of this sort. But among existing things, only God is of this sort; all the rest, following from the presupposed series of things, i.e., from the harmony of things or the existence of God, are contingent per se and only hypothetically necessary ...

In the remainder of this paper I offer an interpretation of what is going on in these passages.11 The interpretation offered is substantially un- derdetermined by the evidence supplied by the relevant texts. Still, I think that it is on target. I refer to the draft without the insertions as the original version, and the draft with the insertions as the emended version.

In an important text dated December 1675, hence, quite likely between the original and emended versions of the Confessio, Leibniz formulated a distinction between two types of metaphysical modality as follows:

Impossibility is a two-fold concept: that which does not have an essence, and that which does not have existence, i.e., that which neither was nor is nor will be, because it is incompatible with God.... 12

This same distinction, presumably from the same time period, explained in much the same way, but formulated with unusual terminology, may be found written and then struck from the margins of the Confessio:

The impossible is that whose essence is incompatible with itself. The incongru- ous or rejected (such as what was not, is not, nor will be) is that whose essence is incompatible with existence, that is, with the Existent thing, i.e., the first of existent things, i.e., that which itself exists per se, i.e., God. (Confessio 128)

In these texts Leibniz intended to distinguish two varieties of metaphysical modality, not two distinct styles of characterizing the same notion. Let us call the second of these the unqualified modality (so, we may speak of unqualified necessity, unqualified possibility, etc.) and the first, the per se modality (so, we may speak of per se necessity, per se possibility, etc.). Since the


expression 'unqualified' does not add much qualification, usually I will de- lete it. Still, the term matters. We need a metalanguage of our own in which to treat Leibniz's modal object language. Otherwise we run serious risks.

The distinction between the unqualified and the per se modalities is important for Leibniz. Here is an effort to gain some clarity with respect to it. Let us say that a sentence S expresses a proposition that is per se possible just in case there is no set of sentences K (in a sufficiently rich language) such that:

(i) every sentence in K expresses a proposition that is metaphysi- cally necessary; and

(ii) no sentence in K contains a device of singular reference refer- ring to some individual not referred to by the devices of singular reference in S; and

(iii) The conjunction of S with the elements of K formally implies a formal contradiction.

By contrast, we obtain a characterization of unqualified possibility by delet- ing (ii) from our characterization. Note that whereas possibility implies per se possibility, the converse fails, and that while per se necessity implies necessity, its converse fails. The following points prove to be relevant to the development of our topic. The inference from the conjunction of 'it is necessary that if p then q' and 'it is necessary that p' to 'it is necessary that q' is a good one; it is a case where necessity of the consequence yields necessity of the consequent. But the inference from the conjunction of 'it is necessary that if p then q' and 'it is per se necessary that p' to 'it is per se necessary that q' is not a good one. Its failure is a key to one of Leibniz's uses of the distinction between per se and unqualified modality.

In a letter to Wedderkopf, written in 1671 Leibniz wrote:

. . . whatever has happened, is happening, or will happen is best and therefore necessary . . .13

From this we may extract the following:

(1) For any proposition p, if p is true then p is necessarily true.

We know that Leibniz came to reject this necessitarian position. He wrote a note on his copy of the letter saying so.

What about the Confessio? I recommend the following interpretation. In the original Confessio Leibniz did not work with a distinction between per se and unqualified modalities. In fact, he is best understood as therein purporting to utilize the standard, unqualified modalities, which he therein characterized in the terms we have employed to charac-


terize the per se modalities. So, according to my interpretation, although the 'per se' terminology is not therein employed, this is, in a sense, the purest use of the per se modalities you will find in Leibniz; in the original Confessio Leibniz took them to be the unqualified modalities. So, unlike the emended Confessio, in the early Confessio Leibniz affirmed the following:

(2) There is some proposition p such that p is true and p is contingent, and hence, p is not necessary.

The textual evidence for this reading is not overwhelming, I admit. In the passage from Confessio 127-28, which appears at the beginning of this section of the paper, where I claim that Leibniz identifies the per se modalities with the unqualified modalities the Latin verb in the passage translated

" . I have defined the necessary . . 99 is the formal 'definivi'. My claim is that in the emended Confessio Leibniz cam to the conclusion that this identification is a mistake. In the added passage c., then, he was calling attention to the fact that throughout this section of the text 'necessary' must be taken to refer to one variety of metaphysical necessity, namely, per se necessity. The main verb in the passage translated. ". . . . In this place we call necesary only what is necessary per se . .. 9" is 'appellatur'. Hence a meaning is being stipulated.

Consider the following modal principles:

(3) If p is necessary and it is necessary that if p then q, then it is necessary that q.

(4) If p is per se necessary and it is necessary that if p then q then it per se necessary the q.

Leibniz sharply distinguished 3) from 4) in the emended Confessio and then denied 4). I take it that part of his point in distinguishing 3) from 4) resulted from his coming to the conclusion that 3) must not be denied. I am placing a lot of importance on the passage, written in December, 1675 (i.e., probably between the two versions of the Confessio) in which Leibniz wrote that "there are two notions of impossibility," i.e., the per se notion and the unqualified notion. The passage contains this remark:

Whatever is incompatible with what is necessary, is impossible.14

Utilizing the usual notation this amounts to:

(5) If it is not possible that both p and q, and it is necessary that p, then it is not possible that q.


But 5) is equivalent to 3). So my diagnosis is this. By 1675 Leibniz realized that it is a mistake to deny 3); still, he saw that if the unqualified modalities are identical with the per se modalities, then 3) would be equivalent to 4), which is worthy of denial. His solution consisted in a careful distinction of the unqualified modalities from the per se modalities. Prior to a clear formulation of the distinction Leibniz may have taken the per se modalities to be the unqualified modalities, and, hence, believed that the per se modalities provided an escape from necessitarianism. But once the distinction is made, then the claim that some propositions are per se contingent is consistent with 1). Supposing that I am on the right track, it will be evident that unpacking various of Leibniz's pronouncements in the emended Confessio-where a distinction between the per se versus unqualified modalities is operative-is delicate work. Here is an instance, along with a proposed unpacking.

In the emended Confessio, in the process of denying 4), Leibniz asked (rhetorically):

Why can't something contingent, i.e., necessary on the hypothesis of another [ex alterius hypothesi necessarium], follow from something per se necessary. [Confessio 127-28]

It becomes clear from the text that the "alter" that interested Leibniz here is God.

We might characterize the matter as follows:

(6) p is necessary ex alterius hypothesi if and only if p is not per se necessary, but the proposition rif God exists then p' is necessarily true.

But now we may twist the knife on behalf of the interlocutor. In the Confession Leibniz seems committed to the following:

(7) For any proposition p, if p is true then either p is per se necessary or the proposition rif God exists then p' is necessarily true.

That is, to:

(8) For any proposition p, if p is true then either p is per se necessary or p is necessary ex alterius hypothesi.

But since Leibniz regarded the proposition that God exists as necessarily true, we reach (1) again.

The terminology 'necessarium ex alterius hypothesi' is a forthcoming aberration in Leibniz's terminology. Thereafter what is here called neces-


sary on the hypothesis of another, came to be included within what Leibniz called necessary ex hypothesi, i.e., hypothetically necessary. Leibniz often distinguished between a proposition p that he termed absolutely necessary from another, say q, that he termed absolutely contingent, and only hypothetically necessary. We must be on our guard for the possibility that what this amounts to is the claim that whereas p is necessary per se, q is contingent per se, although q is necessary in the unqualified sense. In other words we must be on our guard for the possibility that necessitarianism is alive and well behind Leibnizian assertions that sound otherwise.15

We have examined in some detail two of the interlocutor's objections to Leibniz's theory, as expressed in the original Confessio. The viable idea of the first objection is that Leibniz's theory reduces the divine will to God's causally idle preferences; the idea of the second objection might be put this way on the interlocutor's behalf-for all the complexity introduced by such terms as 'per se' and 'ex alterius hypothesis' Leibniz's theory still entails necessitarianism.

I believe that Leibniz came to see the inadequacy of the Confessio in the areas just noted. In particular, he struggled thereafter with major problems that the Confessio purported to resolve: i) how to apportion causal activity betwixt God and creature so as to absolve God of unacceptable complicity in sin; and ii) how to make room for real contingency while respecting the divine nature and the universal applicability of the principle of sufficient reason. Crafting an acceptable answer to i) led Leibniz quite close to the Scholastics whom he ridiculed in "The Author of Sin," and also closer to Occasionalism than most commentators have realized. 16 Leibniz's struggles with ii), i.e., with necessitarianism, have been the subject of much scholarly study. Suffice it to say here that in the period just after the conversation with Stensen concerning the Confessio his problems were exacerbated by commitment to the concept containment account of truth. Then, according to Leibniz;

A new and unexpected light finally arose in a quarter where I least hoped for it-namely out of mathematical considerations of the infinite.17

The "unexpected light" based on "mathematical considerations of the infinite" was the doctrine of infinite analysis.18

Notes

1. The following abbreviations are used in citations: A = German Academy of Science, ed. Gottfried Wilheim Leibniz:

Sdmtliche Shriften und Briefe. Darmstadt, Leipzig, and Berlin, 1923-. Cited by series and volume.

A+G = G. W. Leibniz-Philosophical Essays. Edited and translated by


Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis and Cambridge. Hackett Publishing Company, 1989.

FC = G. W. Leibniz. Nouvelles lettres et opuscules inedits. Edited by Louis Alexandre Foucher de Careil. Paris, 1857. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1971.

G = Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Edited by C. J. Gerhardt. 7 volumes. Berlin, 1875-1890. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965. Cited by-volume.

Grua = G. W. Leibniz-Textes inedits. Edited by Gaston Grua. 2 volumes. Paris, 1948. Reprint. New York and London: Garland, 1985.

L = G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters. Edited and translated by Leroy Loemker. 2d ed. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969.

Summa = G. W. Leibniz. De Summa Rerum: Metaphysical Papers, 1675- Rerum 1676. Translated with introduction and notes by G. H. R. Parkin-

son. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. T = G. W. Leibniz. Theodicy. Cited by section number as in G/6.

Translated by E. M. Huggard, Theodicy. New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1952. Reprint. Lasalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1985.

Each citation includes a reference to a source containing the cited passage in the original language, followed by a citation in parentheses containing a published translation of the passage into English, where such a translation is available. In the case of quoted passages the English translation cited may not match the translation displayed.

2. On the subject of the depth of Leibniz's treatment in the Theodicy see section four, "On Leibniz's Sincerity," in the first chapter of Robert Adam's Leibniz- Determinist, Theist, Idealist (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1994).

3. "Demonstrationum Catholicarum Conspectus," A/6/1/494-500 and A/6/2/ 571-72; Confessio Philosophi, A/6/3/115-149; "Von der Allmacht und Allwis- senheit Gottes und der Freiheit des Menschen" - A/6/1/537-546 and A/6/2/ 579-580.

4. I refer to St. Thomas's work in the usual way. Thus "S. T. la Q2, a.3" refers to article three of question two of the first part of the Summa Theologica. And the designation 'S.T.I.aIIaeQ79, a.2, ad2, 'which occurs later in the paper, refers to Thomas's reply to the second objection considered in article two of question seventy-nine of the first part of the second part of the Summa Theologica.

5. When Leibniz referred to the Scholastics he sometimes used the expression as we tend to use it and he sometimes used the expression to refer to those who taught in the universities of his time.

6. Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Edited with introduction, notes, and selected variants from the 1668 Latin edition by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1994: 475-476.

7. A/6/3/150-151. 8. With some plausibility, the interlocutor's argument may be generalized to


reach the same conclusion that Stensen reached in the margin of Confessio 123; namely, that on Leibniz's view, the entire series of created entities depends for its existence on the divine understanding, not the divine will. The interlocutor need only assume that each state of affairs that obtains is either good, bad, or indifferent.

9. See, for example, T ?22 and ?282, and Grua 287. 10. See Confessio 120. 11. Like anyone who deals with these questions now, I am much in the debt of

Robert Adams's pioneering research. See chapter one, "Leibniz's Theories of Contingency," of his book cited in footnote two.

12. A1613/463 (Summa Rerum 7) 13. A/2/1/117 (L147) 14. A1613/464 (Summa Rerum 7) 15. For a discussion of related matters see Fabrizio Mondadori, "Necessity ex

Hypothesi," in The Leibniz Renaissance, published by the Centro Fiorentino Di Storia e Filosofia Della Scienza, 1989: 191-222.

16. On Leibniz's scrape with Occasionalism see the section entitled "Divine Con- currence," in my book, Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on their Corre- spondence, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1990): 183-185; and pages 94 through 99 of Robert Adam's book cited in footnote 2.

17. FC 179-180 (A+ G 95) 18. Various pieces of early versions of this paper were presented to departmental

colloquia at the University of Connecticut, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; and to meetings of the Leibniz Society of North America, and the Massachusetts Society for the study of Early Modern Phi- losophy; and to the following conferences: The Virginia Polytechnic Institute Conference on Leibniz in the 90's; the Stanford conference on Early Modern Philosophy; and the Dartmouth Early Modern Philosophy Conference honor- ing Willis Doney. I thank all those who were willing to bear with me on those occasions. I am indebted to the following for help on particular points: Robert Adams, David Blumenfeld, John Carriero, Daniel Garber, Michael Griffin, Christia Mercer, Michael Murray, Alan Nelson, Eileen O'Neill and Margaret Wilson.

Some of the research for this paper was accomplished while I was sup- ported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Univer- sity Teachers. This seems like an especially appropriate time to express thanks to the Endowment; I do so.

leibniz's first theodicy

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