Renown rationalist G. W. Leibniz (in)famously answered the problem of evil by insisting that our world is the best of all possible worlds. I’ve just finished my book on Leibniz’s “optimism” for Cambridge University Press. As shocking as his claim is, my book argues that Leibniz’s reasoning is virtually impossible for classical theists to avoid.
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Chapter 4
Rethinking Leibniz on Freedom
For my part, I used to consider that nothing happens by chance or by accident…. So I was not far from the view of those who think that all things are absolutely necessary; who think that security from compulsion is enough for freedom, even though it is under the rule of necessity, and who do not distinguish the infallible … from the necessary. But I was dragged back from this precipice by a consideration of those possibles which neither do exist nor will exist, nor have existed.
— G. W. Leibniz (Careil 178)
The above statement is particularly noteworthy when considering Leibniz on freedom. For he admits that he was, at some point, a determinist.1 He held that nothing happens by chance. He made no distinction between truths infallibly known by God that could be otherwise and truths known because they cannot be otherwise. And he considered freedom from compulsion to be an adequate definition of freedom.
This last point is of particular interest. For what Leibniz describes in this phrase is compatibilism: Even a choice that could not be otherwise is “free” if uncoerced. And Leibniz tells us he was dragged away from that precipice. In this statement, we have his own testimony that he is neither a determinist nor a compatibilist.
Yet, nearly without exception, Leibniz is read as a determinist — and for good reason. He supplies ample fodder for such a reading, much of which we outlined in chapter 2. Is there any getting around it? Can Leibniz be read in accord with his testimony as one who rejects determinism? I believe so.
A Rare Reading of Leibnizian Freedom
In his 1992 essay, R. Cranston Paull defends an exceedingly rare thesis: Many of Leibniz’s claims that are thought to require determinism are compatible with libertarian freedom.2 The thesis builds on a statement in Leibniz’s NCT. The passage reads,
But free or intelligent substances … in a kind of imitation of God … are not bound by any certain subordinate laws of the universe, but act as it were by private miracle, on the sole initiative of their own power, and by looking towards a final cause they interrupt the connection and the course of the efficient causes that act on their will. (C 20-1)
Paull focuses on the claim that free choice is a private miracle. For the metaphor is anti-deterministic.
In a chain of physical causes, such as a string of falling dominoes, the effects are foreseeable. Each domino is bound by the laws of physics. So, one need only trace the chain of causes to know the outcome. The one caveat Leibniz would add is barring a miracle — that is, the chain of causes tells you the outcome unless God performs a miracle.
By way of background, Leibniz’s defense of miracles is based on his distinction between necessary (a priori) and contingent (a posteriori) truths, discussed in chapter 1. Recall that necessary truths (e.g., a square has four sides) cannot be negated without contradiction while contingent truths (e.g., two people are in my kitchen) can. Leibniz points out that scientific “laws” are in the latter group. Take, for example, the physical law: If an object is more dense than water, it will sink in water. This law describes a hypothetical that reliably predicts what happens in certain conditions. So, we project into the future and say this will always happen and call it a law. Yet, there is no contradiction in negating this hypothetical. This square has only three sides contains a contradiction, but Jesus walked on water contains no contradiction. Why? Because the four-sidedness of a square is logically necessary while the sinking of an object more dense than water is not.
This is precisely why miracles pose no logical problem. Physical laws are amongst the a posteriori truths that PSR traces to the will of God. These laws describe rules God has ordained for the world. However, God can make exceptions to these rules without contradiction (C 19; G 6:51-4).3 Miracles are rare because these rules are the normative order of things. But Leibniz, being a Christian, believes there are times when God considers a certain end worthy of an exception. And this we call a miracle.
The relevance to freedom is this. Leibniz presumes that physical laws accurately describe how a chain of causes will unfold unless God interrupts that chain by miracle. Let’s say that God determines that his purposes (what Leibniz calls looking to a final cause)4 require that he stop a chain of falling dominoes by miracle. One domino is struck and should fall, according to the laws of physics, but it does not. Looking to a final cause, God interrupts the ordinary course of efficient causes. And this, Leibniz says, is precisely what free creatures do when exercising free choice.
A human is a physical being in a physical world. So, he is part of the chain of causes. Without free choice, this chain would press in on him, cycle through him, and produce a predictable effect, just as with our dominoes. But Leibniz says a human being has a God-like power to perform a private miracle. We can reason about our choices, look to a final cause, and choose to act in a manner contrary to the chain of causes. In doing so, our choice has the character of a miracle, interrupting the chain causes that precede it.5
Such a description of free choice is utterly contrary to determinism. Determinism describes choice in the opposite manner: There are conditions that precede our choices that are sufficient to determine those choices. Leibniz says precisely the opposite. The chain of causes that precede a choice are not determinative because freedom is the power to interrupt that chain.
A very similar picture emerges in Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding. There, Leibniz says the following:
But the freedom of spirit, opposed to necessity, concerns the naked will, and in so far as it is distinguished from the understanding. This is what is called free choice and it consists in this, that we will that the strongest reason or impressions which the understanding presents to the will do not prevent the act of the will from being contingent, and do not give it an absolute, and, so to speak, metaphysical necessity (E 252).
Here, we see two things. The first is Leibniz’s commitment to MFP, with its distinction between the intellect and will. The second is his insistence that inclining influences (“the strongest reason or impressions”) never necessitate the choice to follow.
Now, the standard reading of Leibniz would say he is playing semantics. There’s no logical necessity in Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but Caesar acts on his strongest inclination. So crossing the Rubicon is inevitable. But this reduces free to uncoerced. As we saw in the epigraph, Leibniz rejects this view.6
If we dig deeper in New Essays, we find instead the miraculous freedom of NCT. After the above passage, Leibniz discusses inclining influences. He admits that rational beings act in accord with dominant inclinations (E 261-2),7 but this does not mean that one’s choices are inevitable. Why? Because the mind has the power to affect the chain of causes — the miraculous power described in NCT.
Unlike David Hume, where the mind is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions … [that] are in a perpetual flux and movement,”8 Leibniz sees the mind as something that transcends the chain of causes. It can observe its own thoughts, passions, and inclining influences. The importance of this transcendence is that a rational being can observe where a train of influences will land if unimpeded. The conditional is critical. What guards against inevitability is the mind’s power to slow the chain of influences, redirect it, and stir competing inclinations (E 261-2). Without this power, Leibniz admits sin would be inevitable. But sins are never inevitable because we have the power to “stop the effect of our desires and passions” (E 262).
I see no other way to make sense of Leibniz’s distinction between inclining and necessitating influences (e.g, G 6:127-8). Leibniz speaks often about influences that incline the will but never necessitate its choice. The distinction is not his invention. Early Christian writers, from whom Leibniz draws, regularly speak about the passions that assail the will, inclining it but never determining it. For the will is, by nature, self-determining (το αὐτεξούσια).9 In chapter 2, we saw Loemker attack the distinction because Leibniz believes the dominant inclination always wins, so inclining influences are necessitating influences. But if the mind transcends the causes that act upon it — including inner reasons and passions — then the charge is false. No inclining influence necessitates choice, and every influence can be interrupted and redirected. Whatever influence rules the day is not inevitably dominant. The mind has a part to play in its own inclinations.
Now, Paull is aware that a libertarian Leibniz is novel. But he suggests that Leibniz’s seemingly determinist claims are compatible with the view. To prove the point, Paull looks at three common touchstones for the determinist reading.
The first is Leibniz’s claim that one’s nature is the reason for his actions. We saw this in Russell, who reads Leibniz as a psychological determinist for this very reason: Rational beings act spontaneously, but they choose as they do because of their nature. Paull admits that Leibniz says as much. In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he writes, “all things that happen to [substances] are only consequences of their nature” (A 6.4, 1554).
Yet, Paull makes an obvious but important point: “even miracles are in accord with a substance’s nature.”10 In other words, if a being’s nature is to choose in a way that could be otherwise, then libertarian freedom is in accord with that being’s nature. The determinist reading, therefore, begs the question, presuming that operating in accord with one’s nature means making choices that could not be otherwise.11 But this does not follow.
Such a reply has ample precedent in Christian thought. The most relevant example is in Augustine’s City of God. There, Augustine considers Cicero’s objection to divine foreknowledge. Cicero worries that foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian choice.12 What is noteworthy about his case is its resonance with the problem Leibniz addresses with miraculous freedom. Cicero worries that foreknowledge implies a fixed order of causes, and if the will is part of this order of causes, then its choices are inevitable.13 What is equally noteworthy is Augustine’s reply, which is precisely what Paull posits in defense of Leibniz: “Our wills themselves are in the order of causes.”14 Augustine argues that the will is by nature free and self-determining. God can no more make a will void of such powers than he can make a square without four sides.15 So the only necessity that binds the will is the natural necessity that it is free.16 While it is true, then, that God foreknows the order of future causes, this order includes voluntary causes by free beings.
This passage is noteworthy not only because of the parallels with Cicero but because of what we find in Leibniz’s essay, “Middle Knowledge.” In this essay, Leibniz discusses divine foreknowledge, which includes knowledge of voluntary causes. He closes the point by saying this was understood by “all true philosophers and Augustine” (C 26). Paull’s reply is thus true to Leibniz’s influences.17
Paull next considers PEH. Recall the picture painted in chapter two: Every monad in our world moves itself, and all its movements are tacitly within it at its creation, as if programmed by God. Or to quote Liebniz, “Each of these substances [i.e., monads] contains in its nature a law of continuation of the series of its own operations and everything that has happened and will happen to it” (E 107). How could such a picture leave room for libertarian freedom?
The answer is the same as the previous point. Leibniz says the pre-established movements of a monad reflect its nature. If a monad is free by nature, then its movements will reflect that freedom. Or, as Paull puts it, “this pre-established harmony … is perfectly compatible with the (Leibnizian) fact that some intelligent monads sometimes have miraculous thoughts.”18
The point intersects with the above discussion of foreknowledge. Leibniz understands pre-established harmony to be based on foreknowledge, including foreknowledge of voluntary causes. God knows what free monads will freely do, and he programs other monads to harmonize with these free operations.
Leibniz illustrates the point in a thought experiment about PEH. Let’s say that one man, Bogart, miraculously knows everything his friend, Julian, will freely ask of his servant. Drawing on this foreknowledge, Bogart builds a servant robot, and he programs it to perform every request Julian will make precisely when he makes it. Julian calls for the robot, and it comes. He bids it to make him eggs, and it agrees. As he calls that he has changed his mind, now wanting pancakes, the robot pauses and agrees to the new request. And on the interaction goes. Yet, the robot does not actually hear Julian; it is not responding to him. It only appears to be responding to him because it has been perfectly programmed to play its part relative to Julian’s requests (G 6:137).
The thought experiment is meant to demonstrate two things. The first is the way monads appear to interact, even though they are self-moving. The second is that the pre-programming of the robot in no way undermines Julian’s spontaneous choices. And so it is with PEH. God’s programming of the monads does not undermine freedom; it’s based on freedom. God sees the order of causes, including voluntary causes, and establishes the movement of monads to reflect these choices. Were our choices otherwise, the ordering of monads would be otherwise (G 6:138-9).
This point, too, is in keeping with what we find in Augustine contra Cicero. Augustine points out that foreknowledge presumes a subject-object relationship — God knows something about a creature. For this very reason, Cicero’s worry falls into contradiction, namely, if God knows what contingently transpires in the will, then nothing contingently transpires in the will.19 Foreknowledge, as understood by Christians, including Leibniz, does not deny free choice; it requires free choice.
This is precisely why Leibniz distinguishes what is infallibly known by God from what is necessary (Careil 178). Foreknowledge is an infallible certainty of what a free being will do, though they could do otherwise. A necessity denies the contrary possibility. God’s decrees reflect his infallible certainty, not a necessity.20
The point reflects the standard Christian distinction between what God wills and what God permits, discussed in chapter 3. The distinction is central to the antecedent-consequent will distinction in John of Damascus, which is pervasive in Leibniz. God infallibly knows what a free creature will do, and even if God does not approve of the choice antecedently, he may permit it consequently. The mistake of the determinist reading, then, is the same as Cicero. It presumes that a foreknown order of causes requires a deterministic order of causes. Yet, Leibniz, with Augustine, insists that this order of causes includes voluntary causes, and whatever God has foreordained in this chain of causes, his designs aim at preserving the choices he foreknows.
The last objection Paull considers is PSR. We saw, in chapter 2, that PSR contributes mightily to the determinist reading. Leibniz needs a sufficient reason why a being chooses as he does. And so, Russell, Loemker, et al. conclude that there must be determining influences, whether within or without the being. Paull, however, notes that a thing’s nature is a sufficient reason for its doing. If a being has libertarian capacities of choice and it chooses in a libertarian manner, then the sufficient reason for its libertarian choosing is its nature.21
We might think of the point this way. Let’s say that God deemed it best that the world contain a being that acts randomly. The randomizer’s actions would be utterly undetermined. The sole sufficient reason for its actions would be its randomizing nature, which is traceable to God willing the best.
The same is true of free beings. If a being has libertarian powers of choice by nature, then the sufficient reason for its libertarian choosing is its libertarian nature. To quote Paull, “the fact that the chooser has the specific [nature] that he does provides a sufficient reason for the miraculous choice.”22 If God deems free beings to be part of the best, then PSR is satisfied. And Leibniz has described free beings as having libertarian powers.
On the one hand, Paull’s answer to PSR is true. A libertarian nature is a sufficient reason for libertarian choices. On the other hand, Leibniz insists that rational beings act for a reason. We are not randomizing machines. Leibniz can say that we redirect or interrupt causal chains, but we must do so for a reason. Is Leibniz trying to have it both ways, insisting that we can reshape our inclinations but the choice to do so is based on inclinations? Or is there a way to reconcile Leibniz’s insistence that we have libertarian powers with our rational nature?
I believe there is a way. To see it, however, we must look at what I believe is the central error in Leibniz interpretation for the last three hundred years. Freedom of indifference.
Equipoise, Freedom, and (Mis)Reading Leibniz
A consistent touchpoint for determinist readings of Leibniz is his rejection of indifference. Leibniz uses Archimedes’ definition of equilibrium — equal weights at equal distance from a common center — to illustrate that no movement is possible in such a state. The will must have inclinations in order to act (C 518-23).23 And it always has them. The mind never looks out into the world and sees two equally desirable halves with nothing to differentiate them, which is precisely why equipoise is a “chimera” (C 25; G 6:127-30; 183-4, 218-20). Yet, this stance leads Leibniz’s readers to paint him as a determinist. For if the will moves by inclination, like a balance scale, then choice is nothing but a mechanical expression of inclining causes.
This interpretive trend predates those discussed in chapter 2. Equipoise has been a centerpiece of deterministic readings for the last three centuries. In the 1700s, many began to equate indifference with equipoise, thereby deeming it essential to libertarian freedom. Any who deny equipoise deny freedom. We can see the trend in two prominent figures, Voltaire and Thomas Reid.
In addition to mocking Leibniz’s “optimism” in Candide, Voltaire expresses distaste for Leibniz’s compatibilism.24 When discussing the differences between Newton’s God and Leibniz’s God, Voltaire raises the worry that PSR threatens the indifference of the will, which Voltaire sees as indispensable to libertarian choice.25 Elsewhere, Voltaire discusses Leibniz’s claim that “liberty of indifference is a term void of meaning”26 and argues that without indifference, every act is just an expression of the underlying nature. So our choices are inevitable, if not necessary.27
Reid displays similar leanings. He recognizes that Leibniz’s opposition to equipoise is rooted in the “schoolmen” (i.e., scholastics), a point we will return to shortly.28 Like Voltaire, Reid thinks that without equipoise, the sufficient reason for a choice is the chooser’s nature, which leads to determinism.29 And this line of argument continues to pervade readings of Leibniz from the 1700s on into the present.30
Reid’s observation that Leibniz echoes the scholastics is both correct and critical. For the reduction of indifference to equipoise by such critics fails to understand the scholastic discussion. In the evolution of scholastic views on freedom, several forms of indifference are discussed. Equipoise is one of many. And there are plenty who affirm libertarian freedom while rejecting equipoise.