The Sufficient Reason for the Best Possible World
Leibniz, Classical Theism, and the Problem of Evil - Chapter 1 (part 4)
Greetings, subscribers. As followers of Theological Letters know, I’m working feverishly to finish my forthcoming book on Leibniz and the problem of evil, and I have have promised to post fresh installments of my progress every Sunday.
To date, I have posted the Introduction and parts 1, 2, and 3 of Chapter 1. Today, I post the final installment of chapter 1, The Sufficient Reason for the Best Possible World.
If you have yet to read the Introduction and the first three sections of chapter 1, I recommend you do so for context. This week, I made significant revisions to the Introduciton, so I recommend a fresh look at that, even if you have read the prior version.
Links to all prior sections are below. Be watching for the first installment of chapter 2 next Sunday. Enjoy!
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The Sufficient Reason for the Best Possible World
As the year 1712 neared its end, the Royal Society of London published a collection of correspondence under the title, Commercium epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de analysi promota (The Correspondence of Mr. John Collins, and Others on the Analysis Promoted).1 The report was occasioned by a heated dispute between Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton over the question, Which man is rightly credited with the discovery of calculus?2 The Royal Society determined to appoint a committee to investigate and settle the matter, with only one snag. Newton was the president of the Royal Society. Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that the Society’s investigation landed squarely in Newton’s favor. What may come as a surprise, however, is the animus with which the conclusion came down. The report accused Leibniz of plagiarizing Newton’s work, replete with false charges that Leibniz had access to materials by Newton on the matter, such as a 1672 letter. As Rupert Hall explains, “if proved, it would defame [Leibniz] as effectively as the worst crime of open theft: that he had first silently ignored, and later explicitly denied, Newton’s genuine right as first inventor.”3 Needless to say, the Society’s decision, which failed to quell the warring intellectual factions, left a bitter taste in Leibniz’s mouth.4
In November of 1715, Leibniz wrote a letter to an old friend: Princess Caroline of Ansbach (later to be queen of England), who greatly delighted in the life of the mind and harbored hopes that Leibniz might take up the position of court historiographer.5 In his letter, he cautioned her about the theological opinions of Newton and his disciples.6 What Leibniz did not anticipate was a reply from Newton. Roger Ariew recounts the events to follow:
… [B]y the end of the month, on November 26, 1715, he [Leibniz] had received a letter written by Samuel Clarke on behalf of Newton. This resulted in a series of four more letters by Leibniz and four more replies by Clarke, the exchange being cut short by Leibniz’s death on November 14, 1716. There is always a lingering question of authorship in Clarke’s letters: were they really Clarke’s or were they composed by Newton? Clarke was obviously Newton’s stand-in, but was he also merely a mouthpiece?7
More likely than not, Clarke was not a mere mouthpiece, though he was unquestionably Newton’s agent.8 But whether he was or not, the dispute provided Leibniz an opportunity to defend his theories of substance and causality, his views on free choice, and his notorious optimism.9
The last of these is the most important for our purposes. So what was the point of contention about Leibniz’s optimism? After all, Clarke, like Leibniz, was a strong advocate of PSR, and PSR leads Clarke to God as the ground of all existence.10
The point of contention concerned free choice. As Nadler explains, “Clarke had argued that unless God is arbitrary in the exercise of His will, He will have no real power of choice at all. Leibniz replied, as he had to so many others, that God always chooses for the best, and that to insist otherwise is to deprive God’s choices of their wisdom.”11 Leibniz argued that Newtonian cosmology and theology is suspect because its voluntarism makes God arbitrary and capricious, conclusions that are not only incompatible with Christian orthodoxy in all its forms but which also undermines PSR.12
For his part, Clarke believes PSR is satisfied by a rejection of the Platonic Demiurge (δημιουργός) doctrine, where God is a sculptor of matter that exists independent of him.13 On the Platonic account, God explains why matter has structure and order but not why matter exists. By appealing to the Christian doctrine of “creation out of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo), all things are traceable to a common First Cause, God.14 Hence, we have a sufficient reason for the existence of the world.
Leibniz, however, does not think the reply suffices. Certainly it tells us that God is powerful enough to produce all things and, in this sense, provides a singular source for the existence of the cosmos. But this does not tell us why God produced all things. So the explanation is incomplete. In his second letter to Clarke’s first reply, Leibniz explains:
The true and principal reason why we commend a machine is rather based on the effects of the machine than on its cause. We do not inquire so much about the power of the artist as we do about his skill in his workmanship. And therefore the reason advanced by the author for extolling the machine of God’s making, based on his having made it entirely without borrowing any materials from outside — that reason, I say, is not sufficient…. [T]he reason why God exceeds any other artisan is not only because he makes the whole, whereas all other artisans must have matter to work on. This excellence in God would be only on the account of power. But God’s excellence also arises from another cause, namely, wisdom … He who buys a watch does not mind whether the workman made every part of it himself … provided the watch goes right…. In like manner, he who will be pleased with God’s workmanship cannot be so without some other reason than that which the author has here advanced…. The bare production of everything would indeed show the power of God, but it would not sufficiently show his wisdom. (section 6, R 9)
So what would it mean for God to act, not by a mere show of power, but with a show of wisdom? Plainly, the alternative Leibniz wishes to advance is his firmly held belief that God always wills the best. Yes, how he produces all things is by his power displayed in an act of will, but why he produces what he does is because his wisdom has identified the things produced as best.
Here, we reach the critical question. Why is Leibniz convinced that God always does the best? First, we should dispel the notion that Leibniz’s theory is based on experience. The philosopher of Leipzig does not build his optimism on observations about his happy estate or about the bliss of those around him or by contemplating the intricacies of creation. As Rutherford points out,
Unlike many advocates of the argument from design, Leibniz does not attempt to premise proof of divine justice solely on our everyday experience of the created world. Instead, he is inclined to grant the point that to the untutored senses the world often seems a chaotic and unintelligible place, and to argue on account of this that we can only begin to appreciate the underlying perfection of the world once we have transcended the senses and learned to use our reason in an effort to understand reality as it is in itself.15
Leibniz’s case is a priori, following negatively from the alternative and positively from the concept of God. The alternative, Leibniz believes, is simple: “God wills something without any sufficient reason for his will” (3rd letter §7, R 16). Such a conception of freedom is known as equipoise, according to which the will is absolutely indifferent and spontaneously acts without any internal inclination.16 Leibniz believes such a picture of freedom is an ill-defined fantasy of confused minds, or what he calls an “impossible chimera” (e.g., C 25; G 6.127-30). For such a picture would mean that free acts are without sufficient reason. Still worse, because all contingent truths find their grounding in divine choice, this would mean that the world itself is without a sufficient reason for being so and not otherwise. Taking PSR to be axiomatic (3rd letter §7, R 16), the proposal is dead on arrival.
So what, then, is the nature of divine choice? Here, Leibniz seeks to avoid a ditch on either side of the question. Advocate freedom as wild-eyed voluntarism of the kind found amongst Newtonians (as well as Cartesians) and one undermines PSR, robbing God of wisdom and the world of a sufficient reason. Yet, overcorrect and one slips into a ditch on the other side, where all things are necessary and choice becomes meaningless. On this side of the road looms the necessitarianism of Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza.17
So what is the narrow road that Leibniz seeks to walk? The answer is this. God — and other rational creatures — display genuine choice, which means the thing chosen could be otherwise. However, the exercise of the will in choice is an extension of reason. Far from operating randomly, then, rational beings operate according to a prevailing reason, according to what he sees as good. He writes,
There is always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and for the maintenance of freedom of the will it suffices that this reason should incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of all the ancients, of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is never prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails over the opposite representations. This is admitted even in relation to God, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is acknowledged that they are none the less free in consequence of that. (G 6.127-8/H 148)
Here, we find the positive reasons for Leibniz’s commitment. Just as the ontological argument, if successful, tells us “God exists,” so Leibniz believes there is one further analytic truth about God that is essential to satisfying PSR: God always wills the best (G 6:49-50, 106-7, 127-8; 7:309-10; C 21). If we understand what God is, then we understand this principle. And the pairing of these two analytic truths — that God exists and always does the best — offers a sufficient reason for every contingent truth. Our world, its laws, and its events God wills for one reason: Because they are best. Or to quote Leibniz, “The true cause why certain things exist rather than others is to be derived from the free decrees of the divine will, the first of which is to will to do all things in the best possible way” (G 7:309-10). Only this answer can satisfy PSR.
To see how the principle follows from the idea of God, we must look at medieval faculty psychology (MFP), which sits in the background of Leibniz’s case. Leibniz’s writings on freedom are replete with echoes of MFP.18 — His distinction between intellect and will, between judgment and choice, the role of spontaneity, of final causality, of perception of the good, of appetite, means, and ends, the question of indifference and equipoise, the question of whether the will can reject the final judgment of the intellect, and his discussion of moral necessity all echo MFP. — When considering the question of divine choice in the light of MFP, we can see why the theory of the best naturally follows from the concept of God.
In chapters 3 and 4, we’ll look more carefully at the nuances of and disputes about MFP, but for the purpose of understanding Leibniz’s optimism, a rough sketch will do. In the most basic sense, MFP suggests that rational agents have a faculty of intellect and a faculty of will. The intellect is the judging faculty while the will is the choosing faculty that moves the agent into action. All beings have a natural inclination, appetite, or desire for the good, and in rational creatures, this means a desire for happiness, which is pursued by means of perceived goods.19 Rational deliberation, therefore, is based on the intersection between the desire for good and the perception of the goods available, which occasion the intellect’s assessment of which available goods are best and the will’s spontaneous act of choice.
When, for example, our body tells us we are hungry, we must judge whether eating or abstaining is the greater good. A monk may conclude that fasting is best because turning the soul away from lower goods to the highest good, God, is more conducive to happiness than filling the stomach. A glutton, by contrast, may conclude that eating — and eating in excess — is best because the pleasure of food is the best means to happiness. And still another may land somewhere in between. Wherever one lands, a series of more specific judgments follow. If one determines to eat, he must then judge what to eat, how to get it, how much, and so on. Each judgment forms a chain of means and ends, stretching from the chief end, happiness, down through various subordinate ends and means. The end result is the rational agent’s final judgment about what is best.
According to MFP, making such judgments is the job of the intellect. The will, by contrast, is the acting faculty. We all know what it is like to arrive at a judgment, such as “I should exercise,” and not do it. MFP recognizes that judgments do not necessarily translate into action. An act of will is required. As we will see, the medieval scholastics dispute whether the will must follow the judgments of the intellect — some say Yes, others No. But let it suffice for now that both sides agree that if the will acts, it acts on a judgment about the perceived best.
So, what prevents a rational agent from doing the best? According to MFP, there are only two reasons. First, the person is corrupt, esteeming lower goods higher than he ought through some type of malformation. Such bent desire can draw the will, the intellect, or both away from higher goods. Second, he may rightly esteem a good — say, health — but be mistaken about how to get it. In short, the only reason a person might fail to do the best is corruption or ignorance. I trust the case for the best is quickly becoming clear.