G. W. Leibniz - Theodicy

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Theodicy

Essays on
the Goodness of God
the Freedom of Man and
the Origin of Evil

G.W. LEIBNIZ

Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College,
Oxford

Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the Collected
Philosophical Works, 1875-90

Open [Logo] Court

La Salle, Illinois 61301

* * * * *

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OPEN COURT and the above logo are registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark
Office.

Published 1985 by Open Court Publishing Company, Peru, Illinois 61354.
This edition first published 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited,
London.
Second printing 1988
Third printing 1990
Fourth printing 1993
Fifth printing 1996

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.
Theodicy: essays on the goodness of God, the
freedom of man, and the origin of evil.

Translation of: Essais de Theodicee.
Includes index.
1. Theodicy--Early works to 1800. I. Title.
B2590.E5 1985 231'.8 85-8833
ISBN O-87548-437-9

[5]
* * * * *

CONTENTS

* * * * *

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION page 7
PREFACE 49
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH 73
REASON
ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE 123, 182, 276
ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS
APPENDICES
SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS 377
EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, Sec. 392 389
REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN 393
ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL', 405
PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON
CAUSA DEI ASSERTA 443
INDEX 445

[7]
* * * * *

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

* * * * *

I

Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his
head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for
him. Not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a
mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics,
he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of
looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as
aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after
system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative
reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could
be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means
a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A
professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the
duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at
all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing
them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical
philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is
taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.

Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through
philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods
of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and [8]
such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a
case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to
open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical
position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed
starting-point, it will have to be historical.

The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If
metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination
must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is
no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider
Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _Theodicy_, for
two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be
published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct
influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the _Theodicy_.
Then in the second place, the _Theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in
historical material. It reflects the world of men and books which Leibniz
knew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation
which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century.

Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He was a
gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and
frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The librarian
might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer his own
contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his active
life the learned and confidential servant of the House of Brunswick; when
the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to research into
ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in literature, it was history
rather than philosophy. He was even more closely bound to the interests of
his prince than John Locke was to those of the Prince of Orange. The Houses
of Orange and of Brunswick were on the same side in the principal contest
which divided Europe, the battle between Louis XIV and his enemies. It was
a turning-point of the struggle when the Prince of Orange supplanted
Louis's Stuart friends on the English throne. It was a continuation of the
same movement, when Leibniz's master, George I, succeeded to the same
throne, and frustrated the restoration of the Stuart heir. Locke returned
to England in the wake of the Prince of Orange, and became the [9]
representative thinker of the regime. Leibniz wished to come to the English
court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the duties of his
librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was then an old man, and
before the tide of favour had turned, he died.

Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious
toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was
political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less
personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry,
or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But they had too
much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free thinking or to
make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their stand on a
fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they
repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and Spinoza.

The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences.
The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and of Christian
morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason, without aid
from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down by the general
sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this. 'Scriptural doctrine is
reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason, but it goes beyond them. We
believe the Scriptures, because they are authenticated by marks of
supernatural intervention in the circumstances of their origin. We believe
them, but reason controls our interpretation of them.' There remained the
most forward and the most hazardous line: the special positions which a
Church, a sect, or an individual might found upon the scriptural
revelation. A prudent man would not hold his advance positions in the same
force or defend them with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind
them. He could argue for them, but he could not require assent to them.

One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall
back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle
line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with perfect
seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption, but it
hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is
not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of [10]
us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic
policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from
Christian revelation.

In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz
differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for the
minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious enough
matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in Germany. For
Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants; effective toleration
must embrace them both. English toleration might indulge a harmless
Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic regime as the embodiment of
intolerance. But this was not practical politics on the Continent; you must
tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with Catholic
regimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the Pope with true Protestant
fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles
were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own
church. On some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from
Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint Catholic-Lutheran
front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's writings suggest that
the important decisions cut across all the Churches, and not between them.

Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel?
And could not the Christian alliance be cemented by theological agreement?
Hence Leibniz's famous negotiation with Bossuet for a basis of
Catholic-Lutheran concord. It was plainly destined to fail; and it was
bound to recoil upon its author. How could he be a true Protestant who
treated the differences with the Catholics as non-essentials? How could he
have touched pitch and taken no defilement? Leibniz was generally admired,
but he was not widely trusted. As a mere politician, he may be judged to
have over-reached himself.

It has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that Leibniz[11]
the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not
at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency.
We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established
harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as though Leibniz were
a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. Yes, but
equally, everything happens as though Leibniz were a philosophical
theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. His appreciation of
Catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his dogmatic ancestry is to
be looked for in Thomism and Catholic humanism as much as anywhere. Above
all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind. It gave him pleasure to
appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to discover a soul of truth
in every opinion.

From the moment when Leibniz became aware of himself as an independent
thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. Sometimes he called it 'my
principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established
harmony'. It could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to
oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an
enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. The doctrine
may have been in Leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every
department of human speculation or enquiry. It provided a new alphabet of
philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be expressed
in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and Leibniz showed tireless
energy in working out restatements of standing problems.

As a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, Leibniz may be
compared to Bishop Berkeley. There was never any more doubt that Leibniz
was a Leibnitian than that Berkeley was a Berkeleian. But there is no
comparison between the two men in the width of their range. About many
things Berkeley never took the trouble to Berkeleianize. To take the most
surprising instance of his neglect--he assured the world that his whole
doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. But what sort of a theology?
He scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. He preferred to
keep on defending and explaining his _esse est percipi_. With Leibniz it is
wholly different; he carries his new torch into every corner, to illuminate
the dark questions.

The wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to its
inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will find it less[12]
surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the
start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon
him? What was he _not_ thinking of? He had a many-sided mind. If the
origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications
were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly
tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of Leibniz's principle,
and one source of its origin. We will here give an account of the matter
which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make
no claims to sufficient interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.

Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science
was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and
there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.

It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we all
know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had done
his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to philosophize at
all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on
from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us that he was
raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with Descartes's
opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they
might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors.

The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of Cartesian
writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist
Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in
the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an
enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The new systems
did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. At the
same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the
limits of human credulity.

[13]
There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific
thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws of motion
could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general
view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for
the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more strictly
metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of metaphysical
adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? His own
disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from Reason
herself; but the answer will not pass with us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed,
but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he
had. His conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic
training had made it.

There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught,
although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher. Among them
is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and sympathetic
thinker. He had more sense of history than his contemporaries, and he was
instinctively eclectic. He believed he could learn something from each of
his great predecessors. We see him reaching back to cull a notion from
Plato or from Aristotle; he even found something of use in the scholastics.
In particular, he picked out the Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in
the philosophy of his own age.' What this form of statement ignores is that
Leibniz _was_ a scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes
before him, to revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was,
indeed, a piece of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which
it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions.
'Entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an
individual thing. Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name
of 'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation
of the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the
scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz
wanted a term with a more general sound. 'There is an _X_', he wanted to
say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am going
to give a new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for _X_, the
more so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of scholasticism.

Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of [14]
scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
_something_ in it; he could not settle down in the principles of Descartes
or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital _something_. Since the
requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer
scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which
entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side by side.

If one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the
'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied,
'Substantial form'. Let us recall what was rejected under this name, and
why.

The medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we may
call common-sense biology. Biology, indeed, is the science of the living,
and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all physical
bodies with life. What they did do was to take living bodies as typical,
and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. Such an
approach was _a priori_ reasonable enough. For we may be expected to know
best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate, are alive.
Why not argue from the better known to the less known, from the nearer to
the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula of our own being,
and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their degree of unlikeness
to us?

Common-sense biology reasons as follows. In a living body there is a
certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive motions,
and a certain range of characteristic activities. The pattern, the sheer
anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a
refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and
digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent
support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only
breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark
at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the
characteristic acts together express dogginess; they reveal the specific
form of the dog. They _reveal_ it; exactly what the specific form
_consisted in_ was the subject of much medieval speculation. It need not
concern us here.

Taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology proceeds
to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say in the dog Toby. [15]
Before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was displayed
in each of his parents. And now it looks as though the form of dog had
detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up anew on
its own account. How does it do that? By getting hold of some materials in
which to express itself. At first it takes them from the body of the
mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment, and what the
dog eats becomes the dog.

What, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the dog-form
which assimilates them? Before assimilation, they have their own form.
Before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it by its
place in the body of a sheep. What happens to the mutton? Is it without
remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? It loses all its
distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the
dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may be, let
us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they
belong to or compose a common material nature.

The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own
principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much or that we
know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it is capable
of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is not essential
to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it
would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming either, according as
it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. So the voters
who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, Englishmen; they
are essentially neither Socialist curs nor Conservative sheep, but
intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either
system of party organization.

According to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the
relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization
capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be
seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. It is heavy,
then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist
intrusions. But considered as material for organization by higher forms, it
is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the
sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the [16]
dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is
going to capture it. No amount of study bestowed on the common material
nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of
the higher organizing form. The only way to discover that is to examine the
higher form itself.

Every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. The form
of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that merely
happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences from sheep
to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a science of
probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. Again, the common
material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it will need
a science of itself, which we may call hylology. Each of these sciences is
mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how puzzlingly
they overlap! So long as we remain within the province of a single science,
we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be 'tight'. But as soon
as we consider border-issues between one province and another, farewell to
exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. We can think out hylology till we
are blue in the face, but we shall never discover anything about the entry
of material elements into higher organizations, or how they behave when
they get there. We may form perfect definitions and descriptions of the
form of the dog as such, and still derive no rules for telling what
elements of matter will enter into the body of a given dog or how they will
be placed when they do. All we can be sure of is, that the dog-form will
keep itself going in, and by means of, the material it embodies--unless the
dog dies. But what happens to the matter in the body of the dog is
'accidental' to the nature of the matter; and the use of this matter,
rather than of some other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of
the dog.