This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Leibniz’s form/matter defense of omnipotence is paradoxical, but not irretrievably so. Leibniz maintains that God necessarily must concur only in the possibility for evil’s existence in the world (the form of evil), but there are individual instances of moral evil that are not necessary (the matter of evil) with which God need not concur. For Leibniz, that there is moral evil in the world is contingent on God’s will (a dimension of (...) divine omnipotence), with the result that even though it is necessary that God exerts his will, there are particular products of his will that are contingent and unnecessary—including human moral evil. If there are instances of evil which are contingent on God’s will and yet unnecessary, then the problematic conclusion for Leibniz’s view must be that human evil depends upon divine concurrence, not just for its possibility in the world (which is necessary) but for its instance (which is contingent). If the form/matter defense of omnipotence contains a true paradox, then God concurs in the form as well as the matter of evil. To assuage this difficulty for Leibniz, I will argue that he could either give up an Augustinian notion of evil, or rely upon a distinction between *potenta absoluta* and *potenta ordinate*, which was popular among important thinkers in the medieval period. (shrink)

Evil poses a particular problem to early modern thinkers. Late scholasticism, while itself variegated, provided a number of resources for dispelling concerns about the justice of God raised by the existence of evil. With much of the metaphysics of the scholastics rejected, the new philosophers needed either to find inventive ways to make the old solutions fit into their new systems, to come up with new resources for dispelling the difficulties, or to accept the difficulties as insurmountable, likely via fideism (...) or atheism. Leibniz, I claim, provides a provocative mixture of the first two approaches. Many readers think Leibniz's solution to the problem of evil can be summed up in as little as a page, perhaps even a compound sentence, that sentence being, "God created the best possible world, and so He cannot be blamed for the existence of evil." My primary purpose is to show that this conception is false. Not only does Leibniz offer a complex response to the problem of evil which involves a unique combination and reinterpretation of components from the history of philosophical thinking about evil, but his solution changes a number of times throughout his career. And how could it not? It is nearly uncontested that Leibniz's metaphysics underwent important changes between the early 1670s and the mid 1680s. The thesis that Leibniz's metaphysics changed significantly at least once between the mid 1680s and the end of his life is becoming more and more accepted among scholars. Given the importance of theology to Leibniz's metaphysical thinking and the importance of metaphysics to Leibniz's theological thinking, it could hardly be the case that Leibniz's thought on the problem of evil could remain unchanged throughout these changes. What follows is structured as three developmental stories each revolving around the role of one conceptual tool used by Leibniz as a part of a solution to the problems posed by evil--these conceptual tools being the doctrine that God created the best possible world, the distinction between willing and permitting (in particular as it relates to God's relationship to evil), and the doctrine that sin is a privation. Each chapter highlights the way Leibniz's conception and use of the particular tool changed throughout his life and the differing ways these concepts interact with each other. I begin by examining the doctrine that this is the best possible world. Early in his career (in particular in the Letter to Magnus Wedderkopf of 1671) Leibniz thought that this doctrine was sufficient for explaining the goodness of God in spite of the evils in the world. In that letter he explicitly denied that divine permission was possible, and within a few years explicitly denied that the doctrine that sin is a privation was of any use in securing the goodness of God. The doctrine that God created the best possible world itself went through a few changes as Leibniz's thought developed. Of most significance is the change from seeing God's creation of this world as necessary to holding that it is a contingent fact that God created the best possible world. Shortly after this change occurs and, I argue, partly because this change occurs, Leibniz begins to see the problem of evil split in such a way that it is no longer sufficient for procuring divine goodness to point out that God has a good reason for bringing evils about. It must now be argued that God brings evils about for a good reason and remains morally upright in doing so. Regarding the other two doctrines--divine permission and the privative nature of sin--Leibniz's thought undergoes radical change. Once Leibniz feels the need to go beyond giving a reason why God choose to create a world that contains evil, he reverses his opinion about whether God can be said to permit anything. Regarding privations, Leibniz's thought undergoes a number of changes. Around 1678, He reverses his opinion about whether there is any value to holding that sins are privations. Further, the phrase `sins are privations' takes on different meanings as Leibniz develops. In 1686, he takes the phrase to mean that sins are the result of the limitation of the creature. By the time of the Theodicy(1710), however, he thinks of sins both as the result of limitations of creatures and as having a privative aspect (i.e., there is a defect in the action itself, and thus a double-role of the concept of privation). These changes require changes in Leibniz's metaphysics and in particular a change in the way Leibniz thinks of the causal interactions between God and human actions, and substances and human actions. This lends support to the still controversial but increasingly accepted view that Leibniz's metaphysics undergoes a significant change between the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology. (shrink)