Rethinking Leibniz on Freedom
Leibniz, Classical Theism, and the Problem of Evil - Chapter 6 (1 of 4)
Greetings, subscribers. As followers of Theological Letters know, I spent much of this last year writing a forthcoming book on Leibniz and the problem of evil, and I have been posting fresh installments from that work every Sunday.
To date, I have posted the Introduction and Chapters 1-5. Today, I post the first installment of Chapter 6, Rethinking Leibniz on Freedom.
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 second installment of Chapter 6 next Sunday. Enjoy!
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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)
Like his Christian predecessors, Leibniz wishes to prevent his optimism from dragging God and our world into the abyss of necessity. The fact is evident to all, despite the overwhelming consensus that the philosopher of Leipzig fails. To offer only a handful of examples, Leroy Loemker acknowledges that “For nearly forty years, Leibniz showed his uneasiness about this [compatibilist] conception of freedom and made efforts to explain or modify it.”1 When making his case for superessentialism, David Blumenfeld admits Leibniz’s desire to deny his key premise that God necessarily creates.2 Bertrand Russell, when building his case for determinism, admits Leibniz’s refusal to concede this outcome: “The whole doctrine of contingency might have been dropped with advantage. But that would have led to a Spinozistic necessity, and have contradicted Christian dogma. Accordingly he held ... that all existential propositions and all causal connections are contingent, and that consequently, though volitions have invariable causes, they do not follow necessarily from those causes.”3 Likewise, Nicholas Rescher explains, in no uncertain terms, the importance of freedom to Leibniz’s project: “This question of contingence is a crucial issue for Leibniz’s metaphysic, and lies at the very heart of his philosophy, for there is one group of occurrences in nature whose contingency is a life and death matter for Leibniz: man’s choices, decisions, and free actions.”4
Equally well-recognized are the various ways in which Leibniz tries to stay the hand of necessity — his distinction between inclining and determining influences, his distinction between the infallibly certain and the necessary, his claim that divine choice is only a hypothetical necessity, and so on. But for reasons already explored, Leibniz’s interpreters see such “solutions” as offering little help in breaking the hold of determinism and the necessity that results. In short, what is in question is not the sincerity of Leibniz’s commitment to freedom and contingency, but the potency of his efforts to preserve them.
On the one hand, I am sympathetic to this conclusion. I believe that if the traditional reading of Leibniz is correct, then his efforts to halt necessity and protect contingency fail. Phrased more starkly, I believe that if the traditional reading is correct, then Leibniz introduces a host of distinctions meant to preserve freedom and contingency, both of which are indispensable to his project, but these very distinctions are utterly indefensible within his rationalism. In a word, the result is incoherent.
Take Leibniz’s distinction between inclining influences upon the will and determining influences. As Loemker points out, the distinction is of no help in softening his determinism. If the will functions like a balance scale, as Leibniz analogizes, and that scale is never in a state of equilibrium, given his rejection of indifference, then an inclining influence is a determining influence.5 Perhaps if Leibniz qualified the point, suggesting that, unlike a simple machine, we can resist inclining influences, then the distinction would make sense. But Leibniz states the opposite: We always operate in accord with our dominant inclination (e.g., E 261-2; G 6:127-8). So the distinction proves not only unhelpful but incoherent. To incline is to determine.
Another version of the same problem emerges with Leibniz’s talk of moral necessity. While Leibniz admits moral necessity in God and the Saints, he rejects any such necessity in matters of sin. In the years after publishing his Theodicy, Leibniz explains to his Jesuit friend, Des Bosses, that there was no moral necessity at work in the sin of Adam or in the sins of anyone else (G 2:418-20). We see the same point in his case concerning God’s offer of saving grace, explored in chapter 4. Leibniz believes that God supplies grace to all, a grace sufficient to bring about salvation if one makes a right use of it. The latter point is critical because Leibniz admits that if the grace were deficient — that is, somehow inadequate for repentance — then the reprobate could rightly blame God, rather than his own resistance, for damnation (G 6:166-7/H 186). The claim echoes Augustine. Unclear is whether Augustine believes that God supplies grace to all, giving everyone an opportunity to be saved. — Such would be the medieval controversy between Peter Aureol and Gregory of Reminini. — But what is clear in Augustine is that when God’s grace is supplied, if one casts off grace and sins, the reason is never because the grace was inadequate. In other words, the fault is located entirely in the free choice of the recipient, never in a defect in the grace supplied.6 Such is the case that Leibniz echoes.
The difficulty is that the argument only functions with libertarian freedom. If one has the power of contrary choice, such that he might do other than he in fact does, then we can understand the point. God supplies grace, which is sufficiently potent to open the door to sinless choices. But because the will retains its power of self-determination, the recipient of grace can embrace sinlessness or cast off grace. If, however, one is a determinist, then “sufficiently potent” can only mean grace that results in not sinning. For, once again, if the will functions like a balance scale, the only inclining influence that is sufficient for a choice is one that tips the scale. If the grace supplied fails to incline the will — evident in its embrace of sin — then the grace is inadequate. The sinner is no more to blame than a scale for not tipping. Like in Leibniz’s talk of inclining influence, then, his rejection of moral necessity in Adam and others proves indefensible. For the claim requires a power of contrary choice that Leibniz appears to deny.
Yet another example is Blumenfeld’s case that the creation of our world is necessary, given Leibniz’s commitments. Leibniz more than admits that the a priori concept of God leads to the theory of the best — his entire philosophy depends upon it. Relatively uncontroversial, then, is that God necessarily exists, he necessarily knows the best, and he necessarily does the best. So, how can Leibniz possibly evade the conclusion that the best possible world necessarily exists? His answer is that optimism offers only a hypothetical necessity — if God creates, then he creates the best possible world. But “it does not follow that to choose is necessary” (A 6.4:1652). Once again, such a caveat makes sense for a libertarian, but Leibniz’s surrounding commitments seem to undermine the point.
One such commitment is the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). Leibniz often speaks about the lack of formal contradiction when negating a choice, and from this he infers that the opposite is logically possible — that is, free of contradiction. But as Rescher points out, he cannot possibly mean that a given choice might not have followed from its sufficient reason.7 The point is no less true for God than for creatures. If God chooses to create, there must be a sufficient reason why he creates rather than not. What is that reason? As Russell argues, having rejected freedom of indifference, the sufficient reason must be the nature of the acting agent.8 Again, the point applies as much to God as to any, and as Blumenfeld points out, Leibniz’s only explanation for God’s actions are his attributes, which are essential to his nature.9 So, whatever the reason God chose to create, that reason is found in his essence, which is absolutely necessary. In what sense, then, can we say God might have not created?