Leibniz on the Principle of Plenitude
Leibniz, Classical Theism, and the Problem of Evil - Chapter 2 (part 4)
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To date, I have posted the Introduction, Chapter 1, and the first three parts of Chapter 2. Today, I post the fourth installment of Chapter 2, Leibniz on the Principle of Plenitude.
If you have yet to read all that comes before, I recommend you do so for context. Links to all prior sections are below. Be watching for the first installment of Chapter 3 next Sunday. Enjoy!
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Chapter 2
Leibniz on the Principle of Plenitude
Before closing out this chapter and leaving behind Leibniz’s being-filled cosmos, we face one final issue. When considering just how insistent Leibniz is on filling up the world with as much being as possible, a question naturally arises in the minds of those familiar with the history of Great Chain of Being philosophy: Does Leibniz advocate (what has been called) the “Principle of Plenitude”?
By way of context, ancient pagan advocates of a being-filled world often embraced this principle. As Arthur Lovejoy explains, the claim is:
… that the universe is a plenum formarum [plenum of forms] in which the range of conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified, but also any other deductions from the assumption that no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled, that the extent and abundance of the creation must be as great as the possibility of existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a “perfect” and inexhaustible Source, and that the world is better, the more things it contains.1
Strange as it may sound, the principle suggests that whatever can exist does exist. The rationale naturally follows an earlier point. Recall that only the Christians saw God’s act of creation as free and voluntary. Amongst the pagans, “creation” is really “emanation,” an involuntary overflow of God’s super-abundance of Being. By eliminating divine choice from the equation, the conclusion follows that any and every expression of God that is possible must exist somewhere.
The Christian reception of such a notion was mixed. Augustine of Hippo, the most formative thinker in the Latin West,2 was heavily influenced by Platonism — specifically, the NeoPlatonism of Plotinus.3 Augustine, with the Latin Christian tradition after him, unquestionably echoes Chain of Being reasoning. For example, he writes,
For among those beings which exist, and which are not of God the Creator’s essence, those which have life are ranked above those which have none; those that have the power of generation, or even of desiring, above those which want this faculty. And, among things that have life, the sentient are higher than those which have no sensation, as animals are ranked above trees. And among the sentient, the intelligent are above those that have not intelligence — men, e.g. above cattle. And among the intelligent, the immortal, such as the angels, above the mortal, such as men.4
In these and other remarks, we see something of the Principle of Plenitude. Augustine certainly thinks: “He who says that a thing ought to be different from what it is, either wants to add something to a higher creature already perfect, … or he wants to destroy the lower creature,”5 and again, “from things earthly to things heavenly, from the visible to the invisible, there are some things better than others; and for this purpose are they unequal, in order that they might all exist.”6 Augustine is plainly a defendant of the completeness and perfection of the chain God has created. Yet, whatever sympathy Augustine has for the notion of plenitude, such sympathies never overtake his doctrine of creation, yielding the conclusion whatever can exist does exist.7 What God has created, he has created by choice and not by necessity. Such was the consistent balancing act in the Latin West after Augustine,8 with only rare exceptions that were eyed with suspicion of heresy.9
We might expect Leibniz's optimism to push him toward the fringes of Christian orthodoxy, aligning with the pagans or heretics over historical Christianity on the question of plenitude. After all, Leibniz believes that the a priori concept of God requires the conclusion that our world is the best of all possible worlds, and if “best” indicates optimal being, then the pagan conclusion that all that can be is appears to have strong footing. Surprising though it may be, however, Leibniz rejects a strong theory of plenitude with extreme prejudice.