Leibniz on Human Freedom

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LEIBNIZ ON HUMAN FREEDOM BY GEORGE HENRY RAD CLIFFE PARKINS ON

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEMS OF HUMAN FREEDOM CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEMS OF HUMAN FREEDOM

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1.1 The aims of the essay 1.2 Four arguments against human freedom CHAPTER II. ANTECEDENT TRUTH, FOREKNOWLEDGE AND PRE-ORDINATION

2.1 The argument from antecedent truth 2.2 The theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge . . 2.3 The non-theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge 2.4 The argument from God's pre-ordination CHAPTER III. LEIBNIZ'S THEORY OF THE WILL

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3.1 Leibniz and the 'standard theory' of the will 3.2 Leibniz's account of motivation 3.3 Leibniz's account of desire 3.4 Antecedent and consequent will: the conflict of desires and motives CHAPTER IV. A CRITIQUE OF LEIBNIZ'S THEORY

4.1 Some criticisms of the standard theory of the will . 4.2 The infinite regress argument against volitions 4.3 Weaknesses in Leibniz's account of desire 4.4 Leibniz's account of human action CHAPTER V. CAUSALITY AND HUMAN FREEDOM

5.1 The causal argument against human freedom 5.2 Leibniz's arguments against the thesis of indifference 5.3 'Inclining without necessitating' 5.4 Freedom as spontaneity and choice . ... 5.5 Freedom and rationality 5.6 Leibniz's views on reward and punishment .

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1.1 Problems about human freedom exercised Leibniz for almost the whole of his life. He says that he was seventeen, or even less, when he began to think about destiny and freedom, reading Luther's De servo arbitrio and Laurentius Valla's dialogue De libero arbitrio (to Basnage, 19 Feb. 1706, GP III, 143 1 ; T, Preface, GP VI, 43; Grua, p. 497). His first work on this subject, Von der Allmacht und Allwissenheit Gottes und der Freiheit des Menschen (A VI, i, 537 if.) was probably written in 1670-71, and his first major work on the theme, the Confessio Philosophi, was written in Paris for Arnauld in 1673. Questions relating to freedom are also discussed in the Discourse on Metaphysics, written in 1686 with Arnauld in mind, and in the subsequent correspondence with Arnauld. Another important text is Chapter 21 of the second book of the Nouveaux Essais (1703-5), in which Leibniz discusses Locke's chapter 'Of Power'. Leibniz's last ma= jor work on the topic (and also the most extensive which he devoted to it) is the Th&dicee, published in 1710. Besides these works, many other papers (outlined in Grua, Jurisprudence universelle et TNodicee selon Leibniz, Paris, 1953, pp. 258-262) testify to Leibniz's deep and continued concern with problems of human freedom. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, Leibniz never wrote a systematic treatise on human freedom as such. In his discussions, the topic is often overshadowed (as in the Confessio Philosophi and the Theodicee) by another issue, the problem of the justification of God's ways to man; again, 1

A

46 47 50 55 61 64

Abbreviations: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Siimtliche Schrif ten und Brief e, Academy Edition

(Darmstadt and Berlin, 1923— ).

C Opuscules et Fragments in6dits de Leibniz, ed. by. L. Couturat (Paris, 1903). GM Leibnizens mathematische Schrif ten, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin and Halle, 1849-63). GP Die philosophischen Schrif ten von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1875-90). Grua G. W. Leibniz: Textes in6clits, ed. by G. Grua (Paris, 1948). NE Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain. The text is that of A VI, vi. T Essais de The'odice. The text is that of GP VI. Bodemann Die Leibniz-Handschriften der KOniglichen Offentlichen Bibliothek Hannover, ed. by E. Bodemann (Hanover, 1889). Translations are by the present author, except in the case of the papers to Clarke, where Clarke's translation has been followed.

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The problems of human freedom



the discussions themselves often take the form of a commentary — on Bayle in the Th6odicee, on Locke in the Nouveaux Essais — in which the order of the discussion is to some extent dictated by the text on which Leibniz comments. It will be the aim of this essay to make good this deficiency and to present, in a systematic way, Leibniz's views on human freedom. The general framework of presentation will be logical, rather than historical, but it will not be forgotten that the works discussed span a period of forty years. However, the essay will not be purely expository. A mere reconstruction of Leibniz's views, though not without interest, would leave unanswered the important question of the value of these views. In recent years, problems about human freedom have been subjected to intensive scrutiny by linguistic philosophers, and one of the aims of this essay will be to judge the value of Leibniz's discussions in the light of their inquiries. To simplify in some measure a discussion which will in any case be very complex, attention will be concentrated on Leibniz's answers to those problems which are of general concern, in the sense that they are not generated by his own distinctive philosophical doctrines. Nothing will therefore be said here about the problem whether there can be any human freedom in the 'best of all possible worlds', or about the question, discussed in the correspondence with Arnauld, whether a man can be free even though there is a 'complete concept' of that mane. 1.2 The difficulties relating to human freedom that are relevant here fall into four main groups. (a) There is what may be called the argument from antecedent truth (cf. G. Ryle, Dilemmas, Cambridge 1954, p. 16). The argument may be stated as follows (cf. T par. 36, GP VI, 123). At the moment, I am writing; that is, the proposition that I am at present writing is true. As this is so, it was also true (say) a hundred years ago that I would be writing at the present moment, and froni this it seems to follow that I must now write, that I am not free to write or not to write. (b) The preceding argument does not assume that anyone a hundred years ago actually knew that I would write today; the argument is 2 Some of the points raised in our discussions are relevant to these problems. Leibniz's distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity is relevant to the first (cf. 2.2 below, and the present author's Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, Oxford, 1965, pp. 108 ff.), and Leibniz's treatment of the difficulties raised by God's pre-ordination (cf. 2.4) is relevant to the second.

Four arguments against human freedom

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based on truth, not on foreknowledge. It has been argued, however, that foreknowledge of what human beings will do puts difficulties in the way of human freedom. The argument has both a theistic and a non-theistic form. The first of these may be called the argument's classical form; it is the form in which it is usually discussed by Leibniz, and is the form in which he found it presented by, for example, Boethius (De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book V, Chaps. 3-6. Cf. Grua, p. 332). In this form, the argument proceeds from the proposition that God is omniscient. Now an omniscient being, by definition, knows all that happens, has happened, or will happen. God therefore knows what I will do before I do it; how, then, can I be called free? In the non-theistic form of the argument, science usually takes the place of God. Here there is an important difference — namely, that it is not claimed that scientists are in a position to foreknow all human actions. However, it is claimed that all that human beings do is in principle foreknowable; this may be taken to mean that if scientists had access to much more empirical evidence about human beings than is at present available to them, and if they had knowledge of many more natural laws governing human behaviour than they have at present, then they would be in a position to know in advance anything that any human being does. Now, if my actions are such that someone even could have had prior knowledge of them, then (the argument runs) it follows that I am not free in what I do. As mentioned above, this is the usual form of the non-theistic argument from foreknowledge; however, similar difficulties would spring from 'precognition' of the type studied by psychical research. For if a medium foresees what I will do, then how can I be free to do it or not to do it? This argument, however, is not as strong as the argument from science, and is probably less popular. It has to find an answer to the problem, whether the medium can be said to have knowledge of what will happen, as opposed to having made a happy guess. It is not the accuracy of a prediction of human actions which raises problems, but the fact (if it is a fact) that the prediction is an item of knowledge. (c) One problem about human freedom is specifically theistic; this is a problem which is related to God's pre-ordination. Many theists believe that God not only foreknows all that will happen in the universe, but has also arranged that it shall happen. Some, indeed, think (cf. T par. 2, GP VI, 103) that it is because he has pre-ordained things that he foreknows things, the argument being that one cannot speak of God as knowing that X will happen until he has decided to pro-

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The problems of human freedom

duce X, and has taken the necessary steps which will lead to X; until then, X is a mere possibility. Now, if God has pre-ordained the fact that I shall write today, how can I be said to be free in this matter? (d) Finally, and perhaps most important, there is a problem that concerns the causation of human actions. The argument is that every event (or at any rate — bearing in mind the theories of quantum physics — every macroscopic event) has a cause, and that this applies to human actions. Now, to say that A is the cause of B is to say that, given A, B must follow; every human action, therefore, is necessitated, and so cannot be called free. Such are the problems with which this essay will be concerned. It will have been noticed that no mention has so far been made of the will; the problems stated have been posed in terms of human freedom, of the freedom or otherwise of human actions. Traditionally, however, these problems have been said to relate to free will, and Leibniz's discussions are phrased in these terms. It is important to see that the problems do not have to be formulated in this way. Modern philosophers would not deny that these are problems; nevertheless, they tend to view the term 'will' (and related terms such as 'volition') with suspicion, if not with hostility, as being both superfluous and misleading. Leibniz would not have agreed, and it will be necessary in due course to examine his views about the human will. However, this is not the immediate task. The terms 'will' and 'volition' are related especially to the causation of human actions. They must therefore be considered before argument (d) is discussed, but it is not necessary to consider them in a discussion of the other three arguments, and to these we now turn.

CHAPTER II

ANTECEDENT TRUTH, FOREKNOWLEDGE AND PRE-ORDINATION 2.1 What has been called above the argument from antecedent truth is called by Leibniz the argument based on the `futurition' of truths (Causa Dei, pars. 102 3, GP VI, 454) or of events (T par. 37, GP VI, 124). To judge from the little that he says about it, he did not think the difficulty to be a serious one; and indeed, it seems unlikely that it has troubled many people very much. In his discussion of this argument in the Theodice (T pars. 36-7, GP VI, 123-4) Leibniz says that the philosophers of his day agree 3 that 'the truth of future contingents is determined, i. e. that future contingents are future, or rather that they will be, that they will happen; for it is as certain that the future will be, as it is certain that the past has been. It was true a hundred years ago that I would write today, just as it will be true a hundred years hence that I have written. So the contingent is none the - less contingent for being future; and determination (which one would call "certainty" if it were known) is not incompatible with contingency'. Leibniz adds that this determination 'comes from the very nature of truth, and could not harm freedom'. The argument is condensed, and needs some explanation. The first question is what Leibniz means by 'contingents'. He often says that propositions or truths are contingent (e. g. C 2, 16, 17 20, 271, 388 9, 402, 405, 408, 519); but he also speaks of contingent things (C 13, 22), and in T par. 37 he speaks of an action which is not contingent, which suggests that some actions can be contingent. A paper on necessary and contingent truths (C 16 ff.) shows the connexion between these. It must be premised that among contingent things there are free substances (C 22), and that a free substance is an 'individual substance'. Now, Leibniz states (C 20) that all the accidents of an individual substance, if predicated of that substance, make a contingent proposition. One may generalise from this and say that a_thing, X, is contingent if a true proposition which states that X exists is -

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3 In an early work, Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum (1664), Leibniz says (A VI, i, 90) that the view that future contingents are of a determinate truth or falsity is accepted by Christian writers, but is denied by Aristotle (he refers to De Interpretatione, Chap. 5, but must mean Chap. 9) and by the Stoics and some of the jurisconsults. (On Aristotle, cf. T par. 331, GP VI, 311).

6 Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

contingent. Thus Leibniz, for example, is a contingent thing, but God is not. Similarly an event, E, is contingent if a true proposition which states the occurrence of E is contingent. What, then, does Leibniz mean by future contingents? In T par. 36 he seems to use the phrase to refer to future contingent things or events, for he says that future contingents will be, will happen. This may be illustrated by an example. By the definitions just given, Leibniz was a contingent thing, and his writing to de Voider on 19 January 1706 was a contingent event. In 1600 (i. e. before he was born) Leibniz was a future contingent (thing), and his writing to de Voider on 19January 1706 was a future contingent (event). Leibniz also says, however, that 'the truth of future contingents is determined' (ibid.). This does not imply that we may speak of future contingent truths, if this is taken to mean that the truths are in the future; rather, Leibniz is referring to truths about future contingent things or events 4 . He would assert that it was true in 1600 that he would exist in the future, and that he would write to deVolder on 19 January 1706, and this is the kind of thing that he has in mind when he says that 'the truth of future contingents is determined'. So much for the terms involved; what of the problem, and of its solution by Leibniz? The problem arises because contingent things and events seem to be determined by antecedent truths about them. For example, if it is true in 1600 that Leibniz will write to de Voider on 19 January 1706, then it seems that he must write. Leibniz would say that it was true, and that he must write; he agrees that the event is determined However, he claims that this determination does not damage freedom, since it comes from `the very nature of truth'. In effect, he is saying that truths do not compel things to exist or events to happen. This seems to be correct as far as it goes; nevertheless, Leibniz does not quite arrive at the solution of the problem, for he does not explain why truths do not compel. Ryle (Dilemmas, p. 23) suggests that a distinction should be drawn between the logically inevitable and the unavoidable. In our example, Leibniz's writing to de Voider is logically inevitable, but it was not therefore unavoidable. As Ryle puts it (ibid.) 'Only conclusions can be logically inevitable, 4 It may be asked if it is also necessary to specify that the truths about future contingents are themselves contingent. Certainly, Leibniz is not concerned here with such logically necessary propositions as 'If Leibniz writes to de Voider next January, then Leibniz writes to de Voider next January'. But perhaps one may say that such a proposition is not really about writing to de Voider, any more than the proposition 'If it rains, it rains' is about rain.

The theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge

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given the premisses'; but the act of writing is not a conclusion, though it may of course be the topic of a conclusion (p. 24). Perhaps this is the line of argument for which Leibniz was groping 5 . Leibniz's account of the difficulties concerning foreknowledge and human freedom will be divided into two parts. The first will concern God's foreknowledge of human actions, and the second, which will occupy 2.3, will concern human foreknowledge of such actions. The problem which arises from God's foreknowledge is discussed by Leibniz in par. 37 of the Thodicêe (GP VI, 123). It is asserted, says Leibniz, that what is foreseen cannot fail to exist; and so much is true. 'But it does not follow that it is necessary, for a "necessary truth" is that whose contrary is impossible or implies a contradiction. Now, the truth which states that I will write tomorrow is not of this nature. But supposing that God foresees it, it is necessary that it happens; that is, the consequence is necessary — i. e. it exists — since it -has been foreseen, for God is infallible. This is what is called a "hypothetical necessity". But it is not this necessity which is relevant here; it is an "absolute necessity" which is required if one is to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not contingent; that it is not the effect of a free choice'. It will have been noticed that Leibniz speaks here of God's foresight rather than of God's foreknowledge; however, he would maintain that where God is concerned the two amount to the same. The passage just quoted implies that, although foresight can on occasion mislead, in God's case it never does, since God is infallible. What God foresees, he foreknows. Leibniz's solution of the problem produced by God's foreknowledge is as old as Boethius (De Consolatione Philosophiae, Bk. V, chap. 6). The question here, however, is not whether what Leibniz said was new, but whether it is true. It is necessary first to clarify Leibniz's distinction between 'absolute' (also 'logical', 'mathematical' or 'metaphysical') necessity and 'hypothetical' (also 'moral' or 'con2.2

,

5 In a draft of a letter to Jablonski (c. 1698; Grua, pp. 420 421) Leibniz may approach the same line of argument — the distinction between the logically inevitable and the unavoidable — by way of his distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity (on which see 2.2). But the bulk of the passage is about foreknowledge, and it is not certain that Leibniz applies the distinction in question to the problem of `futurition'. -

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Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

sequential') necessity 6 . It is clear from the passage just cited that `absolute necessity' is simply logical necessity, and for Leibniz a truth is logically necessary when its opposite is or implies a self-contradiction. To speak of hypothetical necessity is to speak of something which is itself contingent, but which is necessary given that, assuming that such and such is the case. For example (De Rerum Originatione Radicali, GP VII, 303), Leibniz asserts that the present state of the world is hypothetically necessary. A different present state is logically possible; nevertheless, 'given that it is once in such and such a state, the consequence is that such and such things arise'. (`Nempe posito quod semel talis sit, consequens est, talia porro nasci'). In this case, what follows does not follow with logical necessity; Leibniz is in effect saying that the present state of the universe follows from any given preceding state in accordance with the laws of nature. However, Leibniz also gives a number of examples of hypothetical necessity in which the consequent follows with logical necessity. For example, he asserts (C 271) that it is impossible that money shall be taken away from Codrus, given that Codrus has no money. This is clearly a case of logical impossibility; it would be self-contradictory to say that one can take money from a man who has no money. It must now be seen how Leibniz applies this distinction to the problem which concerns us here. Let us consider first the argument expounded in T par. 37, which is based on God's infallible foresight. In this case, the argument is syllogistic, and it can be set out as follows: I All that is foreseen by an infallible being will occur, All that is foreseen by God is foreseen by an infallible being; therefore All that is foreseen by God will occur. II All that is foreseen by God will occur, This human action is foreseen by God; therefore This human action will occur. Sometimes (e. g. Grua, p. 274) Leibniz argues directly from God's foreknowledge, making no reference to God's foresight. In this case, the argument still has two stages, but the first stage makes use of the principle of universal instantiation, as follows: I For all x and for all y, if x knows that y will occur, y will occur; therefore 6 On this distinction, compare Parkinson, Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 109-110. The discussion in 2.2 expands this account.

The theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge



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For all y, if God knows that y will occur, y will occur. (By the x'). principle of universal instantiation, applied to 'For The conclusion may be read as 'All that God knows will occur, will occur', which then appears as the major premiss of a syllogism (II): II All that God knows will occur, will occur, This human action is something that God knows will occur; therefore This human action will occur. In each case — whether the argument is based on what God foresees, or on what God foreknows — the argument is deductive, but the conclusion taken by itself is contingent; that is, in each case we have to do with hypothetical, not with logical necessity. Leibniz asserts that this fact is sufficient to establish human freedom; but is this so? That it is not sufficient can be seen from an example suggested by Stuart Hampshire (The Age of Reason, New York 1956, p. 167). Suppose a man — say, Jones — to be bound and gagged; such a man cannot prevent his house from being robbed. He does not prevent it, and it is necessary that he does not prevent it. Now, Leibniz would say (quite correctly) that the proposition 'Jones does not prevent the robbery of his house' is not, of itself, logically necessary. That Jones does not prevent the robbery is, however, hypothetically necessary, given that he is bound and gagged, i. e. unable to move or to summon help. For the proposition 'Jones does not prevent the robbery of his house' is, in this context, the conclusion of a syllogism which runs: All who prevent the robbery of their house are able to move or to summon help, Jones is not able to move or to summon help; therefore Jones does not prevent the robbery of his house. Nevertheless, as Hampshire points out, it cannot be said that Jones is free to prevent the robbery. Leibniz's solution, therefore, is a failure; if someone is to be free to perform a certain act, more is needed than the mere logical possibility of alternatives. But perhaps Leibniz's argument, unsound as it is, contains at any rate some hint of a genuine solution of the problem. Let us consider again what Leibniz says about hypothetical necessity, and ask what is hypothetically necessary. We have said that to speak of hypothetical necessity is to speak of something which is in itself contingent, but which is necessary given that such and such is the case. Now, it has seen in 2.1 that when Leibniz speaks of 'contingents' he may be

10 Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

referring to things or events on the one hand or propositions on the other; not surprisingly, the same ambiguity is to be found when he speaks of what is hypothetically necessary. For example, he says (Grua, p. 362) that a sin is necessary because God has foreseen it; again, in T par. 37 he says that it is necessary that what God foresees exists, and he implies that certain actions are hypothetically necessary. Here, then, he is referring to things and events. Sometimes, however, what follows with hypothetical necessity is stated by Leibniz in propositional form: he says, for example, that it is necessary that such and such things arise (GP VII, 303); that it is necessary that Judas should sin (Grua, p. 271); that it is impossible that money should be taken away from Codrus (C 271). The connexion between the two ways of speaking is obvious; for example, to say that Judas' sin is hypothetically necessary is to say that it is hypothetically necessary that Judas should sin. But the point is (following the line of argument developed in 2.1) that the latter is the more accurate way of speaking. What follow logically are propositions; things and events are not the conclusions of arguments, and are not bound by the premisses of arguments. In the present case, God's foreknowledge has certain logical consequences; but God's foreknowledge does not bind human beings in the way that a householder is bound by a burglar's ropes. Perhaps this is the point that Leibniz is aiming at; but if so, one cannot say that he has hit the mark. The argument from hypothetical necessity is not the only way in which Leibniz tries to meet the difficulty which arises from God's foreknowledge. One such attempt is contained in the early fragment Von der Allmacht and Allwissenheit Gottes and der Freiheit des Menschen (A VI, i, 537 ff.). Little need be said here about this discussion. At the end of it (op. cit., par. 11) Leibniz states his approval of the Scholastic distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity, but claims that his own solution of the problem is superior. This solution is somewhat pedantically expressed; in essence, however, it consists of the reduction of the proposition 'What God foresees, will happen' to the tautology 'What will happen, will happen'. The precise nature of the reduction is obscure, and Leibniz seems to have abandoned this solution in his maturity. Perhaps he thought that it might be objected that the whole proposition 'What will happen, will happen' is logically necessary; how, then, can one say that what will happen will be other than logically necessary? His answer, of course, would be given by emphasising that distinction between absolute and

The theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge

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hypothetical necessity which the early work merely mentions in passing. Leibniz has another answer to the problem — though this is perhaps not so much an answer as a translation of one problem into another. In a paper on freedom (Grua, p. 308; 1683-6?) he considers the argument that God foreknew, without the possibility of error (`infallibiliter'), that Peter would deny; therefore it is beyond the bounds of error that Peter would deny, and therefore it is necessary that he denied. Leibniz replies that infallibility does not produce necessity; Peter did not deny because God foreknew it, but God foreknew it because Peter was going to deny. He seems to be saying here (cf. T Par. 2, quoted in 1.2 (c) ) that God's foreknowledge is consequent upon his pre-ordination; only after' God has decided to create a universe of a certain sort — e. g. a universe in which there is a Peter who denies his master — can he know what will happen in that universe. So it is not God's foreknowledge, but his pre-ordination, which raises problems about human freedom. Leibniz's views on God's pre-ordination and human freedom will be discussed later (2.4); first, however, there is more to be said about foreknowledge and freedom. So far it has been assumed (and Leibniz would certainly assert) that one may speak of an omniscient being, who knows all that happens, has happened or will happen. But it can be argued that there is not, and indeed cannot be, such a being; for there are some events — namely, the actions of human beings — which cannot be foreknown. Leibniz discusses such an argument in the Confessio Philosophi (ed. Saame, Frankfurt a. M., 1967, p. 84). The argument is that a prediction of what a person will decide to do can never be known to be true, for if the person were to know of the prediction, he might decide to act in a way which would falsify it. Leibniz replies that a person's decision to act in a way contrary to the declared prophecy would have been foreseen by an infallible prophet, 7 It must be noted that the word 'after' in this sentence, and indeed the whole concept of God's foresight and foreknowledge, cause special difficulties for Leibniz, since he holds that God is eternal, i. e. that temporal predicates cannot be ascribed to him. (See, e. g., Parkinson, op. cit., pp. 78 9, 102; N. Rescher, `Logische Schwierigkeiten der Leibnizschen Metaphysik', in Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, Vol. I (Wiesbaden, 1968), pp. 259 ff.). In this connexion, it may be noted that Leibniz asserts that the decrees of God have a logical, not a temporal order (T par. 389, GP VI, 346), and it seems likely that he would say that God's decrees are logically prior to his foreknowledge. -

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Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

who would have made a higher-order prophecy about what the man would do on learning of the declared prophecy. This higher-order prophecy would be made silently, or at any rate announced only to a third party, without the knowledge of the person whose act is predicted. Leibniz then answers his own argument by asking why the prophet cannot publish his second-order prophecy — for surely anyone who knows something can say what he knows, and to any audience. The only reply that he offers is that the existence of someone who can do or decide to do the contrary of what can be predicted by anybody is inconsistent with the existence of an omniscient being; but there is an omniscient being, therefore a person of the kind described cannot exist. But this is clearly no answer to someone who doubts the very possibility of an omniscient being. Perhaps Leibniz could have answered by saying that although someone who knows something can as a rule publish what he knows to anyone, he cannot do this if publication would affect that knowledge itself. This is a logical impossibility, which would not affect God's omnipotence; for it is generally agreed that omnipotence does not extend to doing what is logically impossible. 13 We turn now to the problems that are raised by human foreknowledge of human actions, or even by its very possibility. As mentioned earlier (1.2 (b) ) the argument is that (i) If some human being knows in advance what I am going to do, then I am not free to do it or not to do it. So far, the argument is an exact parallel to the argument from God's foreknowledge. (ii) If what I do is even knowable in advance by some human being, then the same conclusion holds. For let it be supposed that someone could have known that I will do action X; then, if I do not do X, the knowledge that he could have had would not have been knowledge. Here the argument differs from the argument from God's foreknowledge, for God (unlike human beings) is held to be omniscient, so that there is nothing that he could have known but does not know. Now, it is asserted that all human actions can in principle be foreknown by human beings, and the consequence of this is said to be that no human action is free. The grounds for the premiss of this argument are derived from the sciences — or at any rate, from a forecast of what the sciences may eventually achieve. One must be clear about the nature of this forecast. It is already accepted that the behaviour of large masses of human beings can sometimes be predicted,

The non-theistic form of the argument from foreknowledge 13

on a statistical basis, with some accuracy. But what is asserted in the context of the present argument is that the behaviour of each individual can be foreknown. It is admitted that present-day scientific knowledge is not yet adequate for this task; nevertheless, it is asserted, with the increase of human knowledge it may eventually be possible for this to be done. Leibniz would reject any argument against human freedom based on the possibility of human foreknowledge of what a man will do, but for a different reason from that for which he rejects the argument which is based on divine foreknowledge. In the latter case, he accepts the premiss — God's foreknowledge — but rejects the conclusion, namely that human acts are not free. In the former case, he rejects the premiss. In a paper on necessary and contingent truths (C 16 ff.) he asserts that no created being can predict with certainty what a human being will choose (C 20. Cf. Grua, p. 386). Such a prediction, Leibniz argues, would have to be made on the basis of laws. Now, there are physical laws such that one can foreknow on the basis of these that, e. g., an unsupported stone will fall to earth — assuming that the law of gravity is not miraculously suspended. But such foreknowledge cannot be had about minds, for it is not possible to establish universal laws sufficient for a choice to be predicted with certainty. This is because the course of the mind's thoughts is altered by free will. More precisely, intelligent beings 'by the intuition of a certain final cause, interrupt the connexion and the course of efficient causes acting on the will'. In order to understand this argument, it is not necessary to have a knowledge of Leibniz's views on the human will; it is sufficient to note that he is distinguishing here between two types of causation, in one of which a cause is a goal or aim of action (final causation) and in the other of which (efficient causation) an effect follows its cause in time, is necessarily connected with it, and is in spatial or temporal contiguity with it 8 . Leibniz implies that if there were universal laws which govern the human mind, they would have to be stated in terms of efficient causes. He does not say expressly why this should be so, but he seems to assume that this feature is typical of the laws of the natural sciences. He gives no examples of what might be claimed to be universal laws which govern the human mind, but perhaps a pro8 It is not implied that Leibniz regards these two types of causation as independent of one another; in fact, it will be seen later (3.2) that he thinks that they are related.

Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

The argument from God's pre-ordination

position from Spinoza (Ethics, III 22) will serve: 'If we imagine that someone affects with joy a thing which we love we shall be affected with love towards him'. Such a statement is claimed to be a universal law; it says what happens whenever a person imagines an event of a certain kind. Further, the law is stated in terms of efficient causes; for it is implied that the imagination is the efficient cause of the love that is felt. Now, Leibniz would argue that there are exceptions to Spinoza's proposition, for someone might not think it good to love a person of the kind described, and therefore the supposed law is not really a law. This argument is far from convincing. It can be answered that although the law has been refuted in the form in which it was stated, it can easily be reformulated to give another universal law, which would state that Spinoza's assertion holds under certain speci-

This argument has an interesting parallel in a modern criticism of determinism, and a comparison of the two may help to clarify it. In his article 'The Incoherence of Determinism' (Philosophy, XLIV, 1969) Bernard Mayo starts (p. 91) from the premiss that there are no proper names within science. 'Individuals cannot, as such, form a system; it is only in virtue of their having common or recurrent or repeatable properties or relations that they can form a system. Science is a study of such properties and relations, and not, save incidentally, of the individuals which have those properties' (p. 93). As Mayo points out (p. 94), this argument could be countered by the thesis that proper names are reducible to descriptions; that is, that `a sufficiently detailed set of descriptions of something could uniquely identify that thing not only sometimes and contingently ... but always and necessarily'. This, of course, is what Leibniz would have said; the thesis in question is, in effect, his view that each substance has a 'complete concept'im. Mayo does not believe that this view is sound, but he accepts it for the sake of argument. That is, he is prepared to agree that a proper name can be replaced by an indefinitely large number of descriptions, 'or, more properly, that an event or thing can be uniquely identified by a sufficiently extended list of predicates' (p. 94). The weakness of the determinist thesis, Mayo argues, `lies in the notion of an indefinitely large, possibly infinite number, of descriptions of any one event' (p. 95). 'Even the most rigorously deterministic theory', Mayo asserts (ibid.), 'is evidence only that events of certain descriptions are determined; it is still an entirely open question whether events of certain descriptions are all the events

1 4

fied conditions.

It so happens, however, that Leibniz could give a better reply to the thesis that human actions can be foreknown by us. Here it is necessary to recall that, for Leibniz, the concept of each individual substance (and, a fortiori, the concept of each human soul) is of infinite complexity, in the sense that a full knowledge of any substance would involve a knowledge of everything in a universe which consists of an infinite number of substances. God can grasp such a concept, since his capacities are infinite, and so God can foreknow what each individual substance will do. But the capacities of a human being are only finite, and this has the consequence that no human being can have a full knowledge of any individual substance, and so cannot know what the substance will do. Human beings may know certain universal laws, which apply to entities of a certain specifiable nature; but they cannot know that the human being whose action they are trying to predict is of precisely this nature. It will be noticed that, since physical objects are for Leibniz classes of individual substance's', it follows that he must say that we cannot even make with complete certainty predictions about the behaviour of physical things. It might be thought, however, that in the passage just cited (C-20) Leibniz says that the 'actions of physical bodies can be foreknown. Certainly, he contrasts such bodies with human beings; but it will be seen that he does not say that we have foreknowledge even of the actions of physical objects — for one always has to consider the possibility of a miracles. 9 For Leibniz's views on miracles, compare the present author's 'Science and Metaphysics in the Leibniz-Newton Controversy', in Studia Leibnitiana supplementa, Vol. II (Wiesbaden, 1969), pp. 94 ff.

15

there are'.

It is clear that Mayo's argument is not precisely the same as the one which, it has just been suggested, could have been advanced by Leibniz. Mayo bases his argument on the thesis that the descriptions which identify a thing or event are indefinitely large, and might turn out to be infinite in number; Leibniz's view would be that such descriptions are infinite in number. But apart from this difference, the similarity between the two lines of argument is striking. 2.4 We turn now to an argument against human freedom which is based on God's pre-ordination. It has already been noted (2.2) that when Leibniz discusses God's foreknowledge he implies that it is not 1

° Cf. Parkinson, Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 125 ff.

Antecedent truth, foreknowledge and pre-ordination

The argument from God's pre-ordination

so much foreknowledge which raises problems about human freedom, as God's pre-ordination. In the Th&dicee (T par. 38; GP VI, 124) he shows how the argument from God's foreknowledge can lead to an argument from pre-ordination. He points out that someone may say that, although foreknowledge does not in itself make truth any the more determinate, the cause of the foreknowledge does. Tor it is necessary that the foreknowledge of God has its basis in the nature of things, and this basis, which makes truth predeterminate, will prevent it from being contingent and free'. As becomes clear later (e. g. in T pars. 43 and 52) Leibniz is thinking here of God's decrees, of his preordination. These paragraphs also show that although in par. 38 Leibniz has spoken only of the predetermination of truths, he also has in mind the predetermination of human actions. In outline, the argument that he considers is that God foreknows that an event E will occur at time t because he has created a universe such that E will occur at time t. God, therefore, has pre-ordained us to act as we do; how, then, can we act in any way other than the way in which we do act? Leibniz's reply seems to fall into two parts, which he does not distinguish clearly. (i) He says that God does not, strictly speaking, decree that (e. g.) Peter shall sin. Rather, he decrees that there shall exist a Peter who will sin — certainly, indeed, but freely. (Primae Veritates, C 520. Cf. GP VII, 311; C 20; Grua, pp. 314, 343, 384). The argument seems to be that God's pre-ordination amounts to a decree that a certain concept shall be actualised. God does not compel Peter to sin, for when God issues his decree there is no Peter to be compelled, and one cannot constrain or compel what does not exist. (ii) It will have been noticed that Leibniz says that Peter will certainly sin — e. g. he will certainly deny his master. Leibniz explains that this is merely to say that if he does not do so, he is not Peter; that is, not the particular individual he in fact is. (In this connexion he quotes Hugh of St. Victor to the effect that the reason why God prefers Jacob to Esau is simply the fact that Jacob is not Esau. Grua, p. 314; GP VII, 311; see also Discourse on Metaphysics, par. 30, and Confessio Philosophi, ed. Saame, p. 128). Leibniz clearly has in mind his view that each substance has a 'complete concept', which is sufficient to identify it. His point is that the concept of denying Christ forms part of the complete concept of the apostle Peter, in the sense that a full description of Peter must include a reference to his denial of Christ; but this does not mean that Peter is

compelled to deny Christ. All that it means is that someone who thinks of Peter as not denying Christ is not thinking of the real apostle Peter, but of someone else. This someone else may be some other Peter who actually existed, or it may be someone who belongs merely to a possible world, not to the actual world. It may be objected that these replies do not touch the real difficulty. Leibniz has admitted that God created human beings such that they will act in certain specified ways; how, then can they act in any ways other than those in which they do act? Leibniz would probably reply that the objector is thinking of human beings in the wrong way; that he has in mind what would now be called the wrong model. The objector is thinking of a human being as a kind of mechanism, which God creates and then sets going, to execute a predetermined set of actions. Now, it is true that Leibniz sometimes uses mechanical analogies to illustrate his metaphysical views — one may mention the wellknown simile of the clocks, by which he explains the notion of the preestablished harmonyll. Leibniz would say, however, that this is merely a simile, which must not be pushed too far. God, in creating human beings, does not create mechanisms; he creates free agents.

16

17

ii E. g. P. S. to the Explanation of the New System, GP IV, 498. Mention must also be made of the phrase `spiritual automaton', by which Leibniz refers to the human soul (e. g. T par. 52, GP VI, 131; Systeme Nouveau, par. 15, GP IV, 485; Monadology, par. 18). This phrase must not be misunderstood. Leibniz does not think of a soul as a kind of immaterial clockwork; as he puts it (T par. 403, GP VI, 356) 'the operation of spiritual automata ... is not mechanical'. Rather, the word `automaton' is used in its literal sense of 'self-moving', the point being that the soul has an internal force which makes it the source of its own actions.

Leibniz and the 'standard theory' of the will CHAPTER III

LEIBNIZ'S THEORY OF THE WILL 3.1 The last of the arguments against human freedom listed in 1.2 is that which is based on the thesis that human actions are subject to causal laws. The argument is that every event has a cause; further, given the cause, the effect follows necessarily. Now, human actions are events, and therefore they have causes; hence they are necessitated, i. e. human beings are not free agents. This is perhaps the most important of the arguments against human freedom, and demands extended treatment. But before it can be examined, it is necessary to know what Leibniz thought about the causation of human actions, and this involves an inquiry into his views about the will. These views will be expounded in the present chapter, and criticised in Chapter IV. Broadly speaking, philosophers who have advanced theories about the human will have been discussing 'the mind of a man consciously bent on doing something' (H. L. A. Hart, in Freedom and the Will, ed. by D. F. Pears, London, 1963, p. 46). Such a man acts, and acts in accordance with a plan; now, it has seemed to these philosophers that there is a gap between planning and acting, in that planning is a purely contemplative activity, with no executive force of its own. If a man's project is to be carried out, if his plan is to be translated into action, there must be some intermediate mental act, and this intermediate act is a 'volition' or 'act of will'. So three stages are involved: first, the entertaining of some plan or scheme of action; second, a volition to put this plan into effect; third, the bodily movement or movements which constitute the putting into effect of the plan. These three stages are regarded as being linked causally; stage one (the entertaining of the plan) causes stage two (the volition),, and stage two causes stage three (the act). Further, these causes are of the type traditionally called 'efficient causes' (on which cf. 2.3); for example, the entertaining (E) of a plan causes a volition (V) in the sense that_E is immediately prior to V in time, and there is a necessary (but nonlogical) connexion between the two. Such is the theory; and since it has been widely held it may for convenience be called the 'standard theory' of the will. Ryle dismisses the concept of volition as a technical concept which is of no utility (The Concept of Mind, London, 1949, p. 62), and



19

many modern philosophers would agree with him. Nevertheless, the view just sketched seems to be the one that Leibniz has in mind when he speaks of 'the (voluntas, arbitrium) or of `volitione (les volitions, volunta'tes: e. g. Causa Dei, par. 26, GP VI, 442). The standard theory, as has been seen, has three main features: (i) it concerns planned or deliberate, action, (ii) it postulates three stages, which may briefly be described as planning, willing and acting, (iii) the links between the stages are causal links, the links involved being 'efficient causes'. These three features are also present in Leibniz's theory of the will. (i) It is clear that Leibniz, in speaking about 'the will', is concerned with the same topic as the standard theory. Will, he says, is a judgement (sententia) about good and bad, and he adds that a judgement is a 'practical thought' (Elementa Verae Pietatis, 1679? Grua, p. 14). In speaking of the will, then, he is concerned with planned or deliberate action. (ii) Like the adherents of the standard theory, Leibniz assumes that planned action has three stages. In a series of definitions entitled De Affectibus (10 April, 1679), he says that the will is a striving to act (conatus agendi) which arises from thinking (cogitatio) (Grua, p.512); it is (op. cit., p. 513) a striving which follows a belief (opinio) about good and bad which the striver has. The mental act from which will follows is also termed by Leibniz 'judgement' (ibid. He uses the legal term sententia). Similar views are stated by Leibniz elsewhere; e. g. in the revision notes to the Nova Methodus (c. 1695-1709) he says that willing is 'a striving which arises from thought' (conatus ex cogitatione), i. e. a striving towards something on account of its goodness which is recognised by thought (A–VI, i, 284). Again, in the Specimen Inventorum (GP VII, 311) Leibniz says that every volition (voluntas) presupposes a judgement (judicium) of the intellect about goodness 12 . In the Nouveaux Essais 2.21.5 Leibniz seems to offer a more complex view; there he says that volition is the effort or tendency (conatus) to go towards what one finds good and away from what one finds bad, a tendency which results immediately from the apperception that one has of it (qu'on en a). By 'apperception' he means 'conscious awareness' (cf. NE Pref., A VI, vi, 53-4), and he seems to be saying that the tendency in question results, not from what one finds good or " See also Bodemann, p. 104 — the will is excited by an understanding of good and bad, i. e. by the practical understanding (Nov. 1677); to Morell, Sept. 1698 — the will naturally follows the knowledge of the good (Grua, p. 139).

Leibniz's theory of the will

20



bad, but from one's awareness of what one finds good or bad. Perhaps, however, he really means that the tendency results from one's conscious belief or judgement that something is good or bad, which would be consistent with the other passages cited. All this shows that Leibniz recognises the first two stages of the standard theory, the stages of planning and willing. The third stage of the standard theory is the act, and this stage, too, is postulated by Leibniz. He says that an act is the effect of the will (De Postulationibus, 1678 9?; Grua, p. 750); or, that a striving (conatus) is a state from which an act follows, if there is no hindrance (table of definitions, 1702 4; C 474). In NE 2.21.5 Leibniz says that not only do our voluntary mental actions follow from (solvent de) conatus, but so also do the voluntary movements of our body. This remark is of some interest in view of Ryle's assertion (op. cit., p. 67) that the primary function of volitions is to initiate bodily movements; here, on the other hand, Leibniz introduces this aspect of their efficacy after he has spoken of the mental actions that follow from the acts of the will. This is perhaps because the production of one mental state by another did not seem puzzling to Leibniz's contemporaries; what did seem puzzling was the action of mind on body, or body on mind (iii) The standard theory regards the relations between these three stages as causal, and Leibniz appears to view them in the same way. With regard to the first two stages, he says in NE 2.21.5 that effort or tendency 'results from' the earlier stage. Elsewhere he says merely that some striving towards action (conatus aliquis agendi) follows a belief about good and bad (De Postulationibus, Grua, p. 750). Again, in Elementa Verae Pietatis (1679?; Grua, p. 14) he says that a thinking (cogitatio) about good and bad is 'joined with' a striving to act, and in T par. 34, GP VI 122, he speaks of a judgement which is 'accompanied by' an inclination to act. As to stages two and three, Leibniz makes it quite clear that the relation is a causal one; it has already been seen that he says in NE 2.21.5 that the third stage 'follows from' the second, and that in Grua, p. 750, he says that an act is the 'effect' of the will. So much by way of a comparison between Leibniz's theory of the will and what we have called the 'standard theory'. To complete our exposition of Leibniz's account of the will it is necessary to examine, in the light of what has just been said, other ways in which he defines it. So far, it has appeared that Leibniz's view is that to speak of 'will' is to speak of a certain kind of striving — the-striving towards X -

-

Leibniz and the 'standard theory' of the will



21

which is caused by the judgement 'X is good', or the striving away from X which is caused by the judgement 'X is bad'. Leibniz sometimes lays stress on the judgement rather than the striving, as when he says (Elementa Verae Pietatis, Grua, p. 14) that the will is a judgement (sententia) about good and bad, or (De Postulationibus, Grua, p. 750) that it is a belief (opinio) about good and bad. This, however, does not make of the will something purely intellectual, in the sense of something contemplative. In the De Postulationibus (loc. cit.) Leibniz says that to define will as a belief about good and bad is the same as to define it as the striving of an intelligent being. This is because God has so fashioned the nature of an intelligent being that some striving towards action follows a belief about good and bad. Essentially the same point is made in the Elementa Verae Pietatis. After defining the will as a judgement about good and bad, Leibniz goes on to say that a judgement is a practical thought, i. e. a thought together with a striving to act (cum agendi conatu; Grua, p. 14). This, he says, is the distinction between a 'simple thought' (an imagination, a representation) and a judgement; the man who has formed some judgement (qui aliquam sententiam habet) is ready to act in some way which is conformable to this judgement". This presumably means, in the light of what is said elsewhere, that a 'practical thought' is a thought with special causal properties. Leibniz adds that if, in the definition of 'will' just given, we substitute for the term 'judgement' its definition, we get 'Will" is a thinking about good and bad, joined with a striving to act'. This, he says, agrees with the definition of will as the final stage (ultimum) of deliberation". Deliberation, Leibniz says, is a kind of doubt, joined with inquiry; as long as we deliberate, we are not ready to act, but once our doubt and our inquiry have come to an end, then we have decided what is to be done. (Leibniz does not explain here what deciding is; but see 3.4 below, on `consequent will'.) Leibniz concludes by remarking (Grua, pp. 14-15) that if anyone prefers to say that will is not a judgement about good and bad, but is that striving to act which follows immediately on the judgement, then he will not dispute the point, provided that it is ac13 This is a clearer account of the judgement than that given in the De Affectibus (1679; Grua, p.513), in which Leibniz says that judgement is an aggregate of

simple understanding and the understanding of its cause; from this there follows a reaction of the mind towards that cause, and this reaction is 14 Cf. Leibniz's discussion of Bellarmin, De libero arbitrio, Book III, Grua, p. 295; also definitions of 'the more simple terms', Grua, p. 544.





23

Leibniz's theory of the will

Leibniz's account of motivation

knowledged that the striving arises out of the judgement. For a striving to act which does not arise out of knowledge is mere brute striving; Leibniz instances the striving to descend which we feel in ourselves, which does not come from a judgement of the mind but from the nature of the body-namely, from the fact that it is heavy. In the definitions cited so far, there has been a reference to good and bad. Leibniz often omits such a reference. For example, he says that the essence of will is the effort to act in accordance with the judgement (aprs le jugement; T par. 311, GP VI, 301). Again, he says (definitions of 'the more simple terms', 1680-86?; Grua, p. 544) that to will something is the same as to strive or act because of a judgement (ob sententiam); or he says (Definitionum Juris Specimen; Grua, p. 725) that will is an inclination of an agent to act, because he understands. However, none of this is inconsistent with the definitions cited earlier; the judgement may be assumed to be a judgement about good or bad, the understanding an understanding of what is good or bad. Often, Leibniz compresses his definition of 'will' even further, saying that will is the striving of a thinking being (to Velthuysen, May 1671, A II, i, 98; Elementa Juris Naturalis, A VI, i, 457, 482) or of an intelligent being (Table of Definitions, 1702 4, C 498). It has already been noted (see above, on De Postulationibus, Grua, p. 750) that Leibniz says that 'the striving of an intelligent being' is the same as 'a belief about good and bad', so it is clear that these definitions do not introduce any essential difference. The same may be said of the passages in which Leibniz defines will as a 'rational appetite' (Elementa Juris Civilis, A VI, ii, 50), an 'intellectual appetite' (Grua, p. 725) or a `rational inclination' (ein verstandiger Trieb, GP VII, 112; cf. Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken, 1698 1701, Grua, p. 445, which refers to eine verstandige Neigung) 15 . The discussion so far has concerned the nature of Leibniz's views about the will; it must now be asked why he holds them. If Leibniz were asked why he maintains that there are such occurrences as acts of will, he would reply that we are conscious of ourselves as striving to act, and that by a volition he means a striving to act of which we are conscious (paper on freedom, 1680 82?, Grua, p. 287; cf. NE

2.21.5, quoted below, 3.3 ad fin.). According to Leibniz, then, willing

22

-

is something that can be identified empirically by a kind of inner sense — 'observation', as Locke would put it, 'employed ... about the internal operations of our minds' (Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.1.2). It is not wholly clear whether Leibniz would say that whenever we perform a deliberate act, there is a striving of which we are conscious, or whether he would say merely that whenever we perform a deliberate act, there is a striving of which wecan be conscious. It seems more probable, however, that the latter is his view; thus, in NE 2.21.5 he says that we call 'voluntary' only those actions which can be apperceived, and on which we can reflect. But Leibniz's views about the will are not based wholly on empirical grounds. It was said at the beginning of this section that the `standard theory' of the will asserts that every deliberate action is caused by a volition, i. e. that any deliberate action must have a volition as its cause. This is a proposition to which no exceptions will be admitted, and as such is clearly a priori and not empirical. Leibniz seems to hold this view also; incidentally, this would enable him to say (as suggested at the end of the last paragraph) that there may be unnoticed volitions. It is not clear, however, why he holds an a priori view of this kind. He asserts on metaphysical grounds that every act has as its origin a striving, a conatus 16 ; but this is not the same as saying (nor does Leibniz seem to suggest that it is) that every deliberate act is caused by a volition. It may simply be that Leibniz thought that there is no way to explain the difference between a planned and an unplanned action other than by saying that the one is caused in a way that the other is not, namely by a volition — i. e. by a striving which is caused by a judgement about good or bad.

-

-

15

Similar compressed definitions can be cited: e. g. 'Willing is thinking-tending'

(Volens est cogitans tendens) (from a set of definitions, c. 1679?, Grua, p. 538); `Willing is a striving to act of which we are conscious' (On Freedom, 1680-82?, Grua, p. 287).

3.2 There is much that can be criticised in the theory of the will

that has just been expounded; but before any criticism is attempted it will be advisable to complete the exposition of Leibniz's views by considering some related topics. One such topic is that of motivation. The English term 'motive' has several uses, but in one standard use of 16 `Conatus est initium actionis', De Affectibus, 1679, Grua, p.513; cf. Elensenta Juris Naturalis, A VI, i, 483; Summa Hypotheseos Physicae Novae, A VI, ii, 332.

Since it may be assumed that every act has an origin, this implies that every act has a striving as its origin. This is in turn related to Leibniz's metaphysical thesis that every substance strives for a certain end (cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 170 ff.).

24

Leibniz's theory of the will

the term to speak of a motive is to speak of the agent's purpose, what he aims at, what he thinks good. (Cf. R. L. Franklin, Freewill and Determinism, London, 1968, p. 97; G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, Oxford, 2nd ed. 1963, pp. 21 ff.) Leibniz uses the word motif in this sense, and so it may correctly be rendered as 'motive'. He speaks, for example, of 'good, either true or apparent — in a word, the motive' (to Clarke, 5.8), and of 'the motive of the good' (T par. 336, GP VI, 314). The connexion of this with what has gone before is clear. Leibniz has said that an act of will is a striving which is caused by a judgement about good and bad; it has now been seen that to talk about what a man thinks good or bad is to talk about his motives. Since an act of will is, by definition, a striving which follows a judgement about good or bad, one would expect Leibniz to say that the will always acts by motives. This, indeed, he does say in Remarks on King, par. 13, GP VI, 413; he also says that every voluntary act is for the sake of something good or bad (Elementa Verae Pietatis, Grua, p. 16), and that the will acts only on account of an end, which is the apparent good (Conversatio de Libertate, 1677; Grua, p. 269). These are clearly ways of saying that voluntary acts are always motivated. If what has been said above is correct, this must be true by definition, and this is confirmed by Leibniz's 4th Paper to Clarke, par. 2: 'A mere will without any motive is a fiction, not only contradictory to God's perfection but also chimerical and contradictory, inconsistent with the definition of the will' 17 . To speak of a motive as 'the good' might seem to suggest that a motive is something which is outside the agent, and Leibniz is careful to correct this impression. Writing to Clarke (Paper 5, sec. 15) he says that motives do not act on the mind like weights on a balance, in the sense that they are something outside the mind". Rather, the mind 17 In a letter to Hartsoeker (7 Dec. 1711, GP III, 529) Leibniz seems to use the principle of sufficient reason to prove the proposition that the will always acts by motives, when he says that the idea that there could be a power of choosing without reason (facult6 de choisir sans sujet) contradicts the principle that nothing happens without a determining reason. So, clearly, it does; but Leibniz could have argued in stronger terms, saying that such an idea is self-contradictory. 18 Leibniz does not wish to say that motivated action can in no way be compared to a balance; for example, weak motives give way to stronger ones, much as the heavier weight tilts the balance towards its side. Cf. to Clarke, 5.3; first draft of the 5th paper to Clarke, pars 1-2 (Correspondance Leibniz-Clarke, ed. A. Robinet, Paris, 1957, pp. 122-3); see also references to the 'balance of deliberation', to Caste, 19 Dec. 1707, GP III, 401; Conversation on Freedom, Grua, p.479.

Leibniz's account of motivation 25

acts by virtue of its motives (en vertu des motifs), which are dispositions to act. The question is, what Leibniz means by this, or by the statement (Notes on Twisse, Scientia Media, c. 1695; Grua, p. 354) that the will is a striving to act, i. e. the beginning of an act, which follows from a disposition. What Leibniz has said may seem to resemble Ryle's view that motives are dispositions. Ryle argues that vanity, for example, is a dispositional property, in the sense that a sentence such as 'Jones is vain' is to be analysed as (e. g.) 'Whenever situations of certain sorts have arisen, Jones has always or usually tried to make himself prominent' (cf. The Concept of Mind, p. 85). So the statement 'He boasted from vanity' is to be regarded as saying (op. cit., p. 89), 'He boasted on meeting the stranger and his doing so satisfies the law-like proposition that whenever he finds a chance of securing the admiration and envy of others, he does whatever he thinks will produce this admiration and envy'. However, the resemblance between Leibniz and Ryle is only superficial; for although Leibniz calls a motive a 'disposition', he regards neither motives nor dispositions in the way that Ryle does. Ryle states that vanity may be a motive; and indeed, if a motive is taken to be what moves a man to action, what explains his action, then Ryle is correct. But it has been seen that a motive may also be an aim or purpose, and that this is the sense in which Leibniz takes the term — and, incidentally, that he does so in that fifth paper to Clarke in which a motive is said to be a disposition. Now, to say of someone that he boasted from vanity does not state a motive in this sense; vanity, though it may explain an action, is not an aim of action. In Leibniz's view, one would describe a vain man's motives by such statements as 'He boasted in order to impress'. To see what Leibniz means by a 'disposition' (une disposition) when he says that a motive is a disposition to act, one may consult a passage from the Theodicee. In this passage (T par. 46, GP VI, 128) Leibniz speaks of the 'maxims of the philosophers', which state that a cause cannot act without having a disposition to action". This dispo19 It is not made clear what philosophers he has in mind, but he may be referring to the Aristotelian doctrine that act springs from potency; that, e. g., a man becomes learned not from being simply non-learned, but from being potentially learned (Metaphysics, Book Theta, Chap. 6). That a disposition is related to potency is asserted by Aquinas, who states that that which is disposed must be related to that to which it is disposed as is potentiality to act (Sum. Theol., la 2ae, Qu. 49, Art. 4, Resp.).

26 Leibniz's theory of the will

sition contains a predetermination, which the agent either receives from outside or which it has by virtue of its own prior constitution (sa propre constitution anterieure). This may be supplemented by a remark in one of the appendices to the Theodicl'e, the Remarks on King, in which Leibniz says (par. 20, GP VI, 422) that an act must spring from a disposition to act, otherwise one will do anything from anything, quidvis ex quovis. However, the disposition 'breaks the charm of pure indifference'. It is clear from this that in saying that a motive is a disposition to act Leibniz is not thinking of dispositions in the way that Ryle does. When Ryle speaks of a disposition, he is referring to a capacity, tendency, proneness or liability (Ryle, op. cit., pp. 119, 123). For Leibniz, on the other hand, a disposition is not a tendency or liability; rather, it is because a man has such and such a disposition that he tends or is liable to do such and such 20 . For example, to say of a man that he is of a choleric disposition is not, in this sense of 'disposition', simply to say that he is prone to anger; it is to say that there is something in his nature which makes him prone to anger. So also with regard to motives as dispositions. It is because we think that X is good that we are liable to act in certain ways; it is not the case that to think that X is good just is to be liable to act in these ways. It now has to be asked how this account of the nature of motives is to be related to Leibniz's account of the will in genera1 21 . It has been suggested in 3.1 that Leibniz views the relations between judgement, will and act as causal, and further that the causes in question are `efficient causes'. Leibniz also seems to be thinking in terms of efficient 20 Leibniz is aware of the existence of what Ryle calls 'dispositions' or `dispositional properties'; significantly, however, he refers to these as habitus (literally, `habits'). Thus, he says (Definitionum Innis Specimen, Grua, p. 740) that malice is a 'habit' of sinning in will (babitus peccandi in voluntate), even if the will is not always actual. Thus the robber, whilst seeking the traveller, is not always thinking about murder, but nevertheless is malicious throughout (semper in malitia est). Leibniz adds (ibid.) that some call this 'virtual intention'. On this, cf. to des Bosses, 2 Oct. 1708 (GP II, 562): the consecrating priest has a 'virtual intention' even if, at the moment of consecration, he happens to be thinking about something else. 21 One apparent inconsistency can best be dealt with in a note. It was pointed out early in 3.2 that Leibniz asserts that the will always acts by motives; this means that he regards motives as determining volitions, i. e. strivings of a certain sort. Now, however, it has been seen that Leibniz says that a motive is a disposition to act, from which it would follow that motives determine actions, rather than strivings to act. However, there is no inconsistency here. Leibniz would say that the motive determines the act through the striving, i. e. that the motive determines the striving, and the striving determines the act.

Leibniz's account of motivation 27

causes when he speaks of a motive as a disposition to act, which contains a predetermination. But in speaking of motives, he also speaks in terms of final causes. He speaks, for example, 'of the final cause, or of the motive' (NE 2.22.11); he says that every voluntary act is for the sake of something good or bad (Elementa Verae Pietatis, Grua, p. 15), by which he must mean that each voluntary act is to achieve some good or to avoid something bad. Again, he says that the apparent good (sc. the motive) is the end (finis) of the will, which is moved by the appearance of good (Conversatio de Libertate, 1677; Grua, p. 269). However, the apparent contradiction can be removed. Leibniz himself remarks (Specimen Demonstrationum Catholicarum, 1683-6?; Grua, p. 28) that final causes can be related to efficient causes — 'namely, when the agent is intelligent; for then the agent is moved by knowledge' 22 . An example may clarify Leibniz's meaning. Someone decides to take a medicine which has been recommended to him, in order to regain his health. The recovery of his health is the motive of his action, and it is clearly a final cause, in that it is the end or aim of his action. But the man also thinks it good to be healthy; this thought precedes his decision to take the medicine, and is the efficient cause of the decision. The idea that final causes can be related to efficient causes may seem untypical of Leibniz, in view of the well-known fact that he , contrasts the 'two kingdoms' of efficient and final causes, saying that the one is quite indepedent of the other 23 . However, the context shows that when Leibniz speaks of efficient causes in these passages, he is really speaking of causality in the physical world; he speaks, for example, of 'the laws of efficient causes or of movements' (Monadology, par. 79; cf. Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, par. 3). He is saying in effect that the physical world is explicable solely in mechanical terms; it is to be explained in terms of impulse or push (on which see especially Considerations sur les Principes de Vie, GP VI, 542) and not in terms of ends or purposes. The mental world, on the other 22 Cf. Conversatio de Libertate, Grua, p.269: when we choose the apparent good, we will on account of knowledge (propter cognitionem). The same may be implied by a definition given in C 472: 'An end is that whose appetition (appetitio) is the sufficient cause of striving in the agent'. Strictly, this cannot be accurate, since an appetition is a striving; perhaps, however, Leibniz meant to say `cognitio' and not `appetitio'; this would make the definition consistent with what he says elsewhere. 23 Considerations ..., GP VI, 542; T par. 247, GP VI, 264; Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, par. 3; Monadology, par. 79.

2 8 Leibniz's theory of the will

hand, is not to be explained in mechanical terms — there are no laws of motion of the soul — but is to be explained in terms of ends. As suggested earlier, this does not mean that there is no efficient causality in the mental realm, but it is to say that the efficient causes which operate there are ideas of or judgements about what is good and bad. Another topic which is related to the subject of will is that of desire. It is a commonplace that the word 'desire' has both a narrow and a wide sense. In the narrow sense, it is related in particular to food, drink and sex; in the wide sense, to desire to do X is to want to do X, whatever X may be. As the will is not regarded as concerned solely with food, drink and sex, it is clearly the wide sense of `desire' which is relevant here. To speak of a man's desires is to speak of what the man aims at, what he strives for; it is not therefore surprising that Leibniz should say that volition can hardly exist without desire and avoidance (desir et fuite; NE 2.21.39), since it has already been seen that in his view, to speak of a volition is to speak of a striving of some sort. It is clear that in this passage Leibniz is using the term 'desire' in its wide sense, and this seems to be his normal use of the term. Thus, in NE 2.21.30 Leibniz says that a `velleity' is a desire, and may be called a volition of a kind. (It will be seen later, 3.4, that a velleity has the form 'I would like to, if I could', and is clearly not restricted to food, drink and sex). Again, when discussing desire in NE 2.20.6, Leibniz speaks of waiting for some good (en attendant le bien) without specifying any particular type or types of good. Leibniz gives a detailed account of the nature of desire when he comments in NE 2.20.6 on Locke's definition. Locke appears to have thought that desire is a form of pain, which he called 'uneasiness', and which is the 'spur to human industry and action' (Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.20.6). Locke's French translator, Coste, said that he had had some difficulty in rendering the word 'uneasiness', but finally decided on inquietude. Leibniz comments (NE 2.20.6) that the word inquietude, whether or not it renders the exact sense of Locke's term, does correspond to the nature of things — better, indeed, than the word 'uneasiness' itself, if this is taken to refer to some actual pain (quelque douleur effective). For there is in desire a disposition towards and a preparation for pain, rather than pain itself. As Leibniz remarks later in the same section, if it were the case that we feel a pain whenever we desire something, then we should always 3.3

Leibniz's account of desire 29

be miserable when waiting for some good (cf. NE 2.21.36). This, of course, is not inconsistent with the view that a desire is sometimes preceded by a pain; what Leibniz denies is that it is always preceded by a pain. Leibniz throws light on what he means by 'dispositions towards pain' by speaking instead (NE 2.20.6) of rudiments or elements of pain, of 'semi-pains', of little inapperceptible pains; these constitute what he calls the 'spurs of desire' (des aiguillons du desir. eAiguillon' is Coste's translation of Locke's word 'spur' in Essay 2.20.6). In the course of satisfying our desire, we continually overcome these semipains; this conquest gives us a number of what Leibniz calls 'semipleasures', and these, by continuing and increasing, finally become a full and genuine pleasure. What Leibniz says here is clearly related to his view that there are little perceptions', i. e. perceptions of which the percipient is unaware. He is saying in effect that a 'disposition towards pain' is an unconscious perception (cf. the reference to petites perceptions insensibles in NE 2.21.36); more precisely, it is an unconscious perception of a kind that, if increased, would become a felt pain. (Cf. NE 2.21.36: the 'elements of pain' degenerent en douleur when they increase too much.) It now has to be asked how a disposition towards pain is related to desire. Leibniz might mean that whenever we desire something we have a pain, or disposition towards pain, and desire to be rid of this 24 . If this were to be put forward as a definition of desire it would be circular, since Leibniz would be defining desire in terms of desire. However, Leibniz need not be offering a definition; he may simply be saying that all desires have something in common — namely, the presence of a pain or a disposition towards it. Leibniz could offer a definition of desire which is not circular by saying that to desire something is to have a pain, or disposition towards it, which causes one to act or to tend to act in ways which (one believes) will rid one of the pain or the disposition. However, there is no clear evidence of such a definition in Leibniz; further, it has already been seen that Leibniz usually says that it is a striving which is the immediate cause of an action, which would not be consistent with the view that an action is the immediate effect of a pain. It seems, then, that Leibniz is not offering a definition, but is making a general statement about 24 Cf. a somewhat similar view discussed by P. H. Nowell-Smith in Ethics (Harmondsworth, 1954), p. 107. Nowell-Smith, however, speaks only of sensations, and makes no reference to dispositions towards sensations.

30



Leibniz's theory of the will



desire — namely, that all desires- are desires to be rid of a pain or of a disposition towards pain. That this is his view seems to be confirmed by NE 2.21.36, in which he says that the rudiments of pain 'excite the will'. Finally, it must be enquired how all this is to be related to Leibniz's views about the will, and more specifically to his view that an act of . will is preceded by a judgement. No doubt Leibniz would say that when there is an actual pain we judge it good to be rid of this, and so are led to try to get rid of it. In the case of a disposition towards pain, one might perhaps suppose that Leibniz would say that there is an unconscious judgement to the same effect, followed by an effort to remove the disposition. However, Leibniz prefers to give the name of cappetitions' rather than `volitions' to the efforts which result from `insensible perceptions' (NE 2.21.5). His reason is that one calls `voluntary' only those actions which one can apperceive, and upon which, when they follow from the consideration of good and bad, our judgement can light (tomber). So it seems that when there is only a disposition towards pain there is no volition, and no need to postulate an unconscious judgement. It also emerges from this that although every volition involves desire (cf. NE 2.21.39, quoted earlier in this section), not every desire is a volition. 3.4 Nothing has been said so far about conflict within the human agent; more specifically, a conflict of desires or a conflict of motives. For example, a man may desire to drink, but not do so because of some opposite and stronger desire, such as the desire to show himself the master of his bodily cravings. This situation can also be described in teams of what Leibniz calls 'motives'. The man in question thinks it good to drink, but he also thinks it good to show himself the master of his bodily cravings, and the second motive proves to be the stronger. Leibniz considers such cases when he discusses what he calls the volonte antec&lente and volonte cons4uente (or voluntas antecedens, voluntas consequens), terms which he borrows from St. John Damascene and the Scholastics 25 . These terms are to be translated literally as 'antecedent and consequent will' or as 'antecedent and consequent volition', depending upon the context, though it will be 25 St. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, II 29; cited by Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I, qu. 19, art. 6, ad 1. (Cf. Leibniz to Spanheim, 20 Feb. 1699; Grua, p. 449). Leibniz argues (Notes on Burnet; Grua, pp. 468-9) that the distinction can be found in writers before Damascene: e. g. Chrysostom, Homil. 1 in Ep. ad Ephes., Cap. 1

Antecedent and consequent will: the conflict of desires and motives

31

seen shortly that to speak of antecedent will or volition can be misleading. An example may help to show what Leibniz has in mind when he uses these terms. It is, he says, God's antecedent will that all men shall be saved, but it is his consequent will that some shall be damned (Causa Dei, par. 24; GP VI, 442). By 'consequent will' here Leibniz refers to God's decision; as he puts it, the antecedent will (also called 'prior', praevia) inclines, whereas the consequent will (also called 'final', finalis) decrees (Causa Dei, par. 24. On 'inclining' and 'decreeing' cf. T par. 282, GP VI, 284 5). An antecedent volition, as the name implies, precedes a consequent volition, and may be regarded as a stage on the way to such a volition. The antecedent will, Leibniz says, does not go as far as the ultimate effort (au dernier effort; ad summum conatum); entire and infallible success belongs only to the consequent will, and it is only of this will that it is true to say that one never fails to do what one wills when one can (T par. 22, GP VI, 116; cf. Causa Dei, par. 27, GP VI, 443. In a paper on freedom (Grua, p. 287) and in NE 2.21.5 Leibniz speaks only of 'will' in a similar context, but he is plainly referring to the 'consequent will'). It will now be clear why it was said earlier that to translate volonte antecdente as 'antecedent will' or 'antecedent volition' can be misleading. Only the volont6 cons6guente is what would usually be called `will'; only the volont6 consequente is the 'final stage of deliberation' (cf. 3.1). Volont6 antec6dente belongs to a stage before this final stage, and it is not so much will or an act of will as a motive or desire. One would say, for example, that God desired that all men should be saved, or that God thought it good that all men should be saved, but that despite this he willed that some should be damned. However, the literal translation is convenient, and now that the use of the terms has been explained it may be allowed to stand. Leibniz offers two accounts of thee relations between antecedent and consequent will, the one being in terms of final and the other in terms of efficient causes. On the one hand, he says that the antecedent will regards each good separately, in so far as it is good (en tant gue bien), by which he seems to mean that it does not consider whether there might be something better (T par. 22, GP VI, 115 6). The consequent will, however, looks towards the whole (Causa Dei, par. 24, GP VI, 442). Here, the two types of will are described as evaluating courses of action, as considering what is good (Leibniz uses the verbs regarder, spectare). They almost seem to be personified — as if the -

.

-

33

Leibniz's theory of the will

Antecedent and consequent will: the conflict of desires and motives

antecedent will were like a person who sees nothing but the one thing in which he is interested, whereas the consequent will is like a person who is more judicious, and can take into account everything that is relevant. However, it is certain that Leibniz cannot mean that the human soul is divided in this way, for he insists that the soul is one substance. One must therefore take him to mean that to have an antecedent volition is to view something as good in isolation, and to have a consequent volition is to regard the whole. This account has been in terms of final causes; in Leibniz's other account, which is in terms of efficient causes, antecedent and consequent will are compared to forces. The antecedent will, says Leibniz (T par. 22), is efficacious per se, i. e. the effect would follow if there were not some stronger reason to prevent it. When such prevention occurs, antecedent volitions conflict with each other, and the consequent volition 'results from the conflict of all the antecedent volitions' (T par. 22. Cf. Notes on Burnet, Grua, p. 468; to Naude, 29 December 1707, Grua, p. 502; NE 2.21.39). Leibniz compares the way in which, in mechanics, a composite movement results from all the tendencies which are present in one and the same movable object. (T par. 22; this refers to Leibniz's paper, Rêgle generale de la composition des mouvements, 1693, GM VI, 231-3. Cf. NE 2.21.40). In making this comparison, Leibniz is bringing out the point that the antecedent volition is some way efficacious (T par. 22, ad fin.), or, in other terms, that in speaking of an antecedent volition he is speaking of a serious inclination, a serious volition (T par. 22; Reflections on Hobbes, par. 11, GP VI, 397; to Spanheim, 20 Feb. 1699, Grua, p. 449). He distinguishes an antecedent volition from a `velleity', which may be regarded as an inclination which is not serious. One has a velleity when one would will if one were able, and would like to be able; a velleity has the form, 'I would like to, if I could' (Liberet, si liceret; from a paper on possessio, 1696?, Grua, p. 855. Cf. Causa Dei, par. 25, GP VI, 442). In short, a velleity is idle, in a way that an antecedent volition, even if it does not become a decision, is not. Before leaving the topic of conflict within the human agent, there is one further point to be made about the conflict of motives. Leibniz asserts that the will never prefers weak motives to strong ones (to Clarke, 5.15); the will, he says, is always 'more inclined' towards that side which it takes (T par. 43, GP VI, 126; cf. T par. 45, GP VI, 128; Remarks on King, par. 14, GP VI, 414; conversation on freedom and destiny, Grua, p. 479; to Coste, 19 Dec. 1707, GP III, 401). In

other words, Leibniz is asserting that whenever anyone makes a choice, he follows the strongest motive. The question is, whether this proposition is regarded by Leibniz as contingent or as logically necessary. Here it is necessary to look again at Leibniz's account of motives as dispositions, discussed in 3.2 above. It will be remembered that Leibniz's view is that a motive is not outside the mind; rather, the mind acts by virtue of its motives, which are dispositions to act. This means that if a man acts in a certain way, then he must be disposed to act in that way; he must, for example, find certain things good. Leibniz goes on to say (to Clarke, 5.15) that if the mind were to prefer a weak motive to a strong one it would act against itself, and in a different way from that in which it is disposed to act. This seems to mean that the mind would find more preferable what in fact it finds less preferable, and it suggests that Leibniz thinks that the view that the mind sometimes follows the weaker motive is selfcontradictory, and hence that the proposition 'Whenever anyone makes a choice, he follows the strongest motive' is necessarily true 26 . We have now reached the end of our exposition of Leibniz's account of the human will. It is a complex account, and it may be useful at this stage to summarise what has been said. (1) For Leibniz, the concept of the will is closely related to the concept of planned or deliberate action. In his view, a belief or judgement about good or bad is the efficient cause of a striving to act (i. e. a volition), and the volition, if there is no hindrance, is the efficient cause of an act. This view is said by Leibniz to agree with the definition of the will as the last stage of deliberation. Leibniz asserts that volitions can be identified empirically, for by a 'volition' is meant a striving to act of which we are conscious. (2) Leibniz often calls what an agent aims

32

26 It must be noted that in to Clarke, 5.4, Leibniz gives as an example of moral necessity (i. e. of what is necessary, but not logically necessary) 'Every mind follows the strongest inclination'. It is hard to see how this can be so. It is possible that Leibniz thinks the proposition to be morally necessary because the mind is following what seems to it to be best; but this does not mean that it is logically possible for it to do otherwise. On the view that a man may sometimes act against his strongest motive, cf. to Coste, 19 Dec. 1707, GP III, 402. It may be asserted, says Leibniz, that a man may sometimes follow the course of action which he sees to be less useful and less agreeable. Leibniz replies that strictly speaking this is not so; the course of action will have become more agreeable to him by virtue of caprice, of a spirit of contradiction. This caprice, as he says elsewhere (NE 2.21.25) enters into the balance, and makes that please a man which otherwise would not please him. (Cf. T par. 45,

GP VI, 128).

34

Leibniz's theory of the will

at the agent's 'motive'. In this sense, it is true by definition that the will always acts by motives. A motive is not something outside the agent; the mind acts by virtue of its motives, which are dispositions to act. By a 'disposition' Leibniz does not mean a tendency to action; rather, it is because a man has a certain disposition that he tends to do such and such. In speaking of 'motives', Leibniz is speaking of final causes; what he says about them can, however, be reconciled with what he has said about the will in terms of efficient causes. Leibniz argues that in the case of motivated action, final causes (here, motives) can be related to efficient causes, in that the thought that something is good can move a man to action. This is not inconsistent with Leibniz's view that the 'two kingdoms' of final and efficient causes are distinct, for Leibniz seems to be distinguishing there between explanation in terms of teleology and in terms of mechanism. (3) Another topic which is relevant here is that of desire, since to desire something is to strive for it. Leibniz argues that Locke is wrong in supposing that desire is a form of pain; the correct view is that whenever we desire something we have either a pain or a 'disposition towards pain', which is to be viewed as a kind of unconscious perception. Every volition involves desire, but not every desire is a volition; the efforts which result from dispositions towards pain are to be called `appetitions' rather than `volitions', since we are not conscious of them. (4) Leibniz considers the conflict of desires and the conflict of motives under the head of 'antecedent will' and 'consequent will'. A consequent volition is a decision; an antecedent volition is a serious inclination which may (but need not) issue in a decision. A consequent volition is said by Leibniz to result from the conflict of all antecedent volitions; he compares the composition of movements in mechanics. Leibniz asserts that in a conflict of motives, the strongest motive is always followed; this is a proposition which he seems to regard as necessarily true.

CHAPTER IV

A CRITIQUE OF LEIBNIZ'S THEORY 4.1 It would be possible for the student of Leibniz's views on the will to leave uncriticised the theory of the will which has just been expounded, treating it as a framework within which Leibniz operates, and criticising only his operations within this framework. But such an attitude would be unduly narrow. It would ignore the important arguments brought by modern philosophers, to the effect that some at least of the difficulties about human freedom have arisen from the way in which the problems are formulated, namely in the very concept of will itself. It must be inquired, then, whether or not Leibniz's concept of the will is defensible. In the course of this inquiry, incidentally, more will be learned about Leibniz's views on the will, and on human action in general. Leibniz's theory of the will is, as has been seen, a causal theory; and it is the idea that volitions are causes, that they are a kind of occult 'inner thrust' (Ryle, op. cit., p. 67) that has given rise to most criticism. But before such criticisms are considered, there is an objection of a more fundamental kind to be discussed. The philosopher who says that there are volitions must be able to tell us how to identify them. But here we meet the question, raised by A. I. Melden in his Free Action (London, 1961) 27 , 'What do I recognise when I recognise an act of volition?' We will actions of many different kinds, and differences in kinds of action must be reflected in differences in kinds of volition — for it would be odd if, for example, my volition to raise my right arm had as its effect my raising of my right foot. Now, the raising of a right arm and the raising of a right foot are clearly distinguishable; but how is one to distinguish between the volition to raise a right arm and the volition to raise a right foot? It is not sufficient to say that we learn the difference inductively, learning by repeated experience that (e. g.) the deliberate raising of the right arm has always been accompanied by a volition of a certain sort; for how did we learn to produce this volition in the first place? Faced with this difficulty, H. A. Prichard argued (Moral Obligation, Oxford, 1949, pp. 196-7) that 'an act of will requires an idea of something 27 Melden, op. cit., pp. 47 ff. Melden's discussion is carried on in terms of the volition to contract or relax certain muscles; this has been changed in what follows, since it does not seem necessary to the argument at this point.

36 A critique of Leibniz's theory

which we may cause if we perform the act'. So, to will to raise my right arm, I must have the idea of the raising of my right arm, and it is this which distinguishes my volition to raise my right arm from any other volition. Leibniz does not consider this problem, but it seems likely that, had he considered it, he would have produced a solution similar to Prichard's. As has already been seen (3.1), he argues that when there is an act of will, there is a judgement about the goodness of the act to be performed, which implies that a volition is accompanied by the idea of the act which (unless impeded) it will produce. But two objections can be brought against this solution. First, it may be objected that is is not the case that, whenever we do X deliberately, we form the express judgement that X is good. For (a) sometimes we act deliberately, but without any express judgement; this is often the case when a decision has to be made rapidly. (b) Sometimes we make an express judgement, but then act in a way which is contrary to it. Leibniz would admit the truth of (b); as he puts it, we do not always follow the ultimate judgement of the practical understanding (T par. 51, GP VI, 130; cf. Remarks on King, par. 13, GP VI, 413). His solution is to appeal to unconscious operations of the mind; he says, `I do not oblige the will always to follow the judgement of the understanding, because I distinguish this judgement from the motives which come from imperceptible (insensibles) perceptions and inclinations' (Remarks on King, ibid.). In the former case (that of the 'judgement of the understanding') Leibniz says that the will follows the most advantageous 'distinct' representation of good and bad; in the latter, he says that it follows the most advantageous 'confused' representation. In each case, however, the will is following a motive; for 'it is always by motives that it acts' (ibid.). It is important to be clear about what Leibniz means here. He is not saying that there are unconscious motives — understanding the term 'motive' as he does, i. e. as what a person thinks good — but rather that there are motives the reasons for which are not clear to the agent. This is shown by his use of the term 'confused' in this context. When he speaks of confused knowledge (e. g. Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis, GP IV, 422) he refers, not to unconscious knowledge, but to knowledge based on reasons of which the knower is not conscious. So too in the present case: the 'confused representation' is a conscious judgement about good or bad, but is based on foundations of which the agent is unaware, since these are unconscious 'perceptions and inclinations'.

Some criticisms of the standard theory of the will 37

It seems, then, that although Leibniz would agree that we can act deliberately against a judgement, he would say that in any such case our action follows another judgement. Here, then, there is no exception to the rule that whenever we do X deliberately, we form the judgement that X is good. As to assertion (a) — namely, that we sometimes act deliberately without any express judgement — it seems unlikely that Leibniz would accept this. He would probably say that an action done without an express judgement is not a deliberate action, but is what would now be called a reflex action. The second of the two objections mentioned in the last paragraph concerns those cases in which there is, indisputably, a conscious judgement about the goodness of the act to be performed. Melden would argue that, in such cases, the volition cannot be the cause of the act. For (op. cit., p. 52) 'the very notion of a causal sequence logically implies that cause and effect are intelligible without any logically internal relation of the one to the other'. Presumably the author has in mind the view that a causal relation is not a logical relation — i. e. that to say that A causes B is not to say that B follows logically from A — and this would doubtless be generally accepted. But the view that he actually puts forward is that if A causes B, A must be describable without reference to B. This is not the same as the first view, and can indeed be refuted by an appeal to counter-examples; thus, as D. F. Pears points out (`Desires as causes of actions' in The Human Agent: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, 1966 7. London, 1968, p. 86) fear of a particular accident may cause that accident. Pears suggests that Melden's argument may be stronger if it is put in a modified form — namely, that A cannot be said to be the cause of B unless A can be specified in some way that does not mention the fact that it causes B. Thus, we do not specify the cause of an accident if we say that the cause was whatever caused it. Doubtless this is so; but such an argument is in no way damaging to Leibniz's theory of the will. Leibniz does not say that the cause of a deliberate action is whatever causes it. For him, the cause of a deliberate act is a volition, and the cause of a volition is a certain kind of belief; and both volitions and beliefs are identifiable by us. Another objection to Leibniz's view that volitions are causes makes use of the familiar point that causal connexion involves universal law. For example, if one says that the striking of a match under certain conditions causes a flame, this commits one to saying that whenever a match is struck under similar conditions a flame follows. Simi-

38

Some criticisms of the standard theory of the will 39

A critique of Leibniz's theory

larly, if there is a causal connexion between volition and act, then any volition of a given type (e. g. the volition to get up) must be followed by an action of a corresponding type (in this case, the act of getting up). But it is well known that this does not always seem to happen; a man may brace himself to get up, but may not perform the act in question. (Cf., e. g., Ryle, The Concept of Mind, p. 68). Leibniz would doubtless say that in this case the bracing oneself to get up is not a consequent, but only an antecedent volition. This may answer Ryle's point, but it raises fresh difficulties about the identification of an act of will. It was said in 3.4 that the 'antecedent will' is not what is usually meant by `will'; rather, the term refers to desires or motives. What, then, would Leibniz say about the way in which one identifies an act of will, in the usual sense of the word? He can hardly appeal to some intrinsic difference between antecedent and consequent volidons, for there seems to be no such intrinsic difference. It is not the case, for example, that the consequent volition is always experienced as the stronger; thus, a man bracing himself to get up may be aware of the great effort that he is making to get up, but may be quite unaware of the even greater effort which (according to Leibniz) keeps him in bed. It seems, then, that one can only tell which is the consequent volition when one has actually performed one of the acts which were under consideration. This, however, does not prevent Leibniz from saying (as it was argued in 3.1 that he would say) that acts of will can be identified empirically. Leibniz would say that a man can identify empirically both his strivings (his antecedent volitions) and his acts, and he can therefore identify empirically his acts of consequent will. This means that it is necessary to modify slightly what was said about the identification of volitions in 3.1. It was said there that a volition can, according to Leibniz, be identified empirically, since a volition is a striving to act of which we are conscious. It is now clear that this must refer to antecedent volitions; the identification of a consequent volition involves also an awareness of the act performed. We have discussed Leibniz' view that volitions are causes; more exactly, that they are causes of the type that he calls 'efficient causes'. But it has also been seen (3.2) that he gives an account of motives, too, in terms of efficient causes. He says that a motive is a final cause, but that such final causes can be related to efficient causes, in that in the case of motivated actions the thought that something is good is the efficient cause of the decision taken. Now, it might perhaps

be argued against Leibniz (as it has been argued against Hobbes) 28 that in saying this he has failed to take into account the difference between causes (or in his terminology, 'efficient causes') and reasons. The nature of this distinction may be shown by an illustration. Consider the two statements, 'Z handed over secrets to a foreign power because he thought that this would help to destroy capitalist society', and `Z handed over secrets to a foreign power because he had been injected with a certain kind of drug'. Each of these statements gives an answer to the question why Z performed a certain act; but in the former case a reason has been given for Z's act, and in the latter case the cause of his act has been stated. That there is a distinction here may be shown by the fact that reasons may be called good or bad; causes cannot. Helping to destroy capitalist society may be regarded as either a good or a bad reason for handing over secrets to a foreign power; injection with a drug is neither a good nor a bad cause of handing over secrets — it is simply a cause. Leibniz does not draw a distinction in precisely these terms; nevertheless it seems that he can, within his own technical vocabulary, allow for the distinction. He could say that it is closely related to his distinction (cf. 3.2) between final and mechanical causation. The man who hands over secrets to a foreign power because he thinks that this will help to destroy capitalist society thinks it good to destroy capitalist society (final cause), and thinks that handing over the secrets will further this end. On the other hand, the handing-over of secrets which is produced by the action of a drug is an instance of what Leibniz would call mechanical causation. Leibniz would no doubt agree that one cannot say, in the latter case, that the drug is a good or a bad cause of what is done, but that one can say that in the former case the man's reasons are good or bad: e. g. it may be said that what he thinks to be good is not good, or that what he thinks will achieve his end will not do so. It might be asked whether Leibniz can consistently distinguish between final and mechanical causation, since he has said (cf. 3.2) that final causation can be related to efficient causation. The answer seems to be that he can, since the efficient causation involved in final causation is significantly different from mechanical causation. Consider again the man who hands over secrets because he thinks that this will help to destroy capitalist society. In Leibniz's language, the final cause of the man's action is the destruction of capitalist society: this 28

See, e. g., R. S. Peters, Hobbes (Harmonds worth, 1956), pp. 161, 176

40

A critique of Leibniz's theory



Weaknesses in Leibniz's account of desire



41

4.2 In The Concept of Mind (p. 67) Ryle produces an infinite regress argument against the existence of volitions. Volitions, he says, were postulated to be that which makes actions voluntary. But what of volitions themselves? They can hardly be involuntary; for if I cannot help (say) willing to fire a gun, it would be absurd to say that my firing the gun is voluntary. But if my volition is voluntary, then it must be the consequence of a prior volition, and that of another, and so ad infinitum. Leibniz saw the danger of an infinite regress of this type, and tried to avoid it. His solution was to say that volition itself is not an object of our free will. As he says in the Th6odicee, we will to act, we do not will to will; otherwise, we could say that we will to have the will to will, and so ad infinitum (T par. 51, GP IV, 130; cf. T par. 301, GP VI, 296 — we do not choose our volitions, as we choose our actions by our volitions)". It could be objected that it is not clear why, if acts of will do not need anterior acts of will, all overt voluntary acts

must have them (cf. J. F. Thomson, in Freedom and the Will, ed. by D. F. Pears, London, 1963, p. 26). Leibniz does not consider such an objection, but he might reply that the presence or absence of volitions marks the difference between voluntary and involuntary acts. That there is such a difference is clear; but there is no reason to suppose that there are both voluntary and involuntary volitions, and therefore no need of an explanation of such a difference. However, such an answer would give rise to a fresh objection. Ryle has argued (op. cit., p. 67) that if a volition is neither voluntary nor involuntary, then one cannot ascribe to it predicates such as 'virtuous' and 'wicked', 'good' and 'bad'. Once again, Leibniz's reply can only be conjectured. It might be thought that he could say that only voluntary acts are good or bad, and that although it may be a condition of our calling an act good or bad that it should be preceded by a volition, it does not follow that goodness or badness should be predicable of the volition itself. Such a reply, however, would not be adequate, for one often says that an intention or desire is good or bad, even if it is not translated into action. Leibniz, in other words, must take into account what he calls 'antecedent', as well as 'consequent' volitions. To see how he might attempt this, one must consider why he should say that an act is good or bad only if preceded by a volition. According to Leibniz, a volition is not only a striving, it is the striving of an intelligent being; more precisely, it is a striving caused by a judgement about good or bad (cf. 3.1), i. e. a striving which arises from a motive (3.2). In other words, Leibniz calls an act good or bad in so far as it issues from a motive, and he could say the same about an unfulfilled intention or desire. The important point here, relative to Ryle's objection, is that this would be unaffected by the fact that a volition is neither voluntary nor involuntary.

29 Leibniz always asserts this of human beings (e. g. Confessio Philosophi, ed. Saame, p. 80; Conversation on Freedom, Grua, p. 482; NE 2.21.22-3), but he seems uncertain whether or not to assert it of God. In a letter to Wedderkopf of May 1671 (A II, i, 117), in which he discusses the will of God, he says that it is in no one's power (in nullius potestate) to will what he wills, and in a paper on freedom (1680-82?, Grua, p. 289) he says that God cannot will voluntarily, since otherwise there would be a will to will, etc. But in some notes on Bellarmin's De gratia et libero arbitrio, Book III (1680-82?, Grua, p. 302) he says that God does will the will to will, etc. These 'infinite reflections', he says, are suitable to God (cadunt in Deum), but are not suitable to creatures. Presumably his view is that since God is infinite, the fact that each act of his will is preceded by an infinity of such acts would not prevent him from willing; this would only be a hindrance in the case of finite creatures like ourselves.

4.3 Perhaps the least satisfactory part of Leibniz's theory of the will is his account of desire. It has been said of some philosophers that they make the mistake of trying to reduce all desires to the same pattern, in that they maintain that whenever there is a desire there is a preceding pain or discomfort of some kind. This, it is objected, is not true of all desires. For example (Nowell-Smith, op. cit., p. 110) one may speak of 'desire of office or precedence', which is Hobbes' definition of ambition (Leviathan, chap. 6); yet there is no antecedent painful sensation which the ambitious man wishes to allay. It is true that certain feelings are connected with ambition, but these are con-

is the 'apparent good'. The efficient cause is the thought that the handing over of the secrets will help to destroy capitalist society. Now, it will be noticed that when the cause is described here, reference is made to the effect (the handing-over of secrets); but if one says that a man handed over secrets because drugged, there is no reference to the effect in describing the cause. According to the argument of Melden described earlier, this would mean that one cannot strictly speak of causation in the former case; but perhaps it could be replied that it is precisely this feature — the fact that in describing the cause one must refer to the effect — which distinguishes the efficient causes which are related to final causation from those which are mechanical causes.

42 A critique of Leibniz's theory

nected only with thwarted ambition, and not with ambition as such. The objection is a strong one, but it may seem that it does not affect Leibniz. He does not say that every desire is preceded by a pain; he says only that it is preceded by a disposition towards pain, which would become an actual pain if it increased. But let us ask why Leibniz should have supposed that there are 'dispositions towards pain'. The existence of such dispositions cannot, by definition, be known empirically; the arguments in favour of their existence must therefore be a priori. Now, it can be argued that in postulating their existence, Leibniz was under the influence of the idea that each desire must be preceded by a pain. He knew that this was sometimes not true; we are not always miserable when waiting for some good. But instead of abandoning the idea that all desires are preceded by pains, he retained it in a modified form by postulating that those desires which are not preceded by actual pains are preceded by dispositions towards pain. This postulate, then, seems to have an insecure basis; to which it may be added that it is not clear what a 'disposition towards pain' is supposed to be, unless it is an unconscious pain — a concept which many would regard as self-contradictory. However, it would probably be wrong to lay great stress on Leibniz's account of desire. The rest of what he says about the will does not seem to depend on it, and in any case the account just discussed seems restricted to the Nouveaux Essais, where Leibniz may, as it were, be experimenting with some ideas suggested by his reading of Locke. The last of the difficulties in Leibniz's theory of the will to be discussed here is a far-reaching one. Stated briefly, the problem is whether Leibniz can give an adequate account of human action, as opposed to what may be called human 'happenings' (A. R. White, The Philosophy of Action, Oxford, 1968, p. 12). The antithesis is between what is described by such statements as 'Jones winked at his friend' and 'Jones blinked in the bright light', or 'Jones jumped the ditch' and `Jones jumped at the sound of thunder'. The first statement of each pair describes an action (or, as some would say, a voluntary act); the second describes a happening (or, as some would say, an involuntary act). It has already been seen that action in this sense is viewed by Leibniz as involving three stages. First, the agent judges that it would be good to perform a certain action; this causes a striving or tendency towards the action, and this, in turn, causes the action. Now, how 4.4

Leibniz's account of human action

43

precisely is the action to be described? For Leibniz, an action is strictly speaking a perception. All substances are in his view souls, or at any rate soul-like, and substances `tend towards' perceptions (Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, par. 2; Monadology, par. 15). However, the problem that concerns us here arises, not at the metaphysical level, but rather at what might be termed the common-sense level. It concerns the actions performed by human beings who are regarded, not as Leibnizian monads, but as creatures of flesh and blood. A man, let us say, jumps a ditch; the question is, how would Leibniz describe this? He might perhaps say that the action consists of purely muscular movements, which are caused by a striving, which is caused by a certain judgement, such as 'It would be good to get to the other side of this ditch'. It is the presence and causal efficacy of the judgement which makes this an action, a voluntary act, as opposed to a happening, an involuntary start. Such a view, according to which a human action consists of a muscular contraction which has a mental cause, has had its defenders — in particular, the nineteenth century jurist John Austin 30 . According to Austin, it is not strictly accurate to speak of the act of shooting someone. The acts really involved here are those of raising the weapon, aiming it and pulling the trigger, whereas the contact between firing-pin and cartridge, the ignition of the propellant, etc. — all these are consequences of the act. What a man wills are simply muscular movements; it is these which are caused by his volition. It has been convincingly argued that such an account of human action misrepresents the facts 31 . If we consider what we actually desire to do, it can be seen that we seldom desire to contract our muscles. Of course a man may sometimes decide (e. g.) to flex his biceps, perhaps with a view to showing the strength of his arm. On the whole, though, what we desire to do and what we decide to do are such things as picking up cups, opening doors, moving chairs. In such cases we do not desire or decide to contract such and such muscles — indeed, we may not know what the relevant muscles are. It is true that muscular movements are involved in such actions, but this is not to say that we know or even believe what they will be before we act, or that we endeavour to bring them about. 30 Lectures on Jurisprudence, XVIII—XIX. The view was derived by him from Dr. Thomas Brown, Enquiry into the relation of cause and effect, 1818. (Cf. H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility, Oxford, 1968, p. 97, n. 22). 31 H. L. A. Hart, op. cit., pp. 101-2.

44

A critique of Leibniz's theory

It must now be asked whether Leibniz is vulnerable to such an objection. The first point to be made is that he does not state expressly that human beings, in performing actions involving bodily movement, always aim at the production of such and such muscular movements. For him, an example of human action is provided by Judas' betrayal of his master (e. g. Notes on Arminian writers, 1691-5?, Grua, p. 343). He would say, then, that Judas aims at the betrayal of Christ; he does not aim at the production of certain movements of his own lips and vocal chords. How, then, does Leibniz think that human action is to be analysed? A full answer cannot be given here, since Leibniz's whole theory of mind-matter relations is involved, but one must at any rate attempt an outline of an answer. In a letter to Jaquelot (4 Sept. 1704, GP VI, 560) Leibniz says, 'What there is that is true and proper in the proposition "I believe that I move my arm" consists in this — "I believe truly that when I will that my arm shall be moved, it is moved"; this is by virtue of a certain dependence on me which the body has, as a consequence of the prevalence of my nature, and this is what one can and should call action between creatures'. Leibniz is concerned here both to deny something and to assert something. He is concerned to deny that the mind has any direct influence on the body, or conversely. As he says in a later letter to Jaquelot (GP VI, 568-9), 'I have, you say, a perpetual awareness (une expb-ience continuelle) that I move my arm when I will. But your experience teaches you that the arm is moved when you will, and no more. It does not tell you that it is by an immediate physical influence of your soul on the arm'. That is what Leibniz denies; what he asserts here is, in effect, a consequence of his theory of the preestablished harmony. Leibniz asserts that to speak of someone willing something is to speak of the activity of one substance, which is a conscious being or soul. To speak of the body, on the other hand, is to speak of a class of substances, no one of which is a conscious being. None of these substances acts on any of the others, but they are so related that it is possible to infer from the states of the soul to those of the body, or conversely. In speaking of 'the prevalence of my nature' in the earlier of the two letters Leibniz means that in the case under discussion a man's soul 'expresses' the man's body more distinctly than his body expresses his soul — i. e. that it is easier to infer from soul to body than conversely — and we therefore say that his will causes the movement of his body. (Cf. Logic and Reality in

Leibniz's account of human action 45

Leibniz's Metaphysics, p. 154). The obvious objection to such a view is that it seems to destroy the unity of the human person; in this connexion, it is significant that Leibniz should speak of my willing that my arm shall be moved, rather than of my willing to move my arm. This is a large question, which cannot be discussed here; but it should be noted that Leibniz himself may have felt uneasy about this approach to the problem of the relations between mind and body, and in his account of the vinculum substantiale he seems to have been at least prepared to consider the idea that there is a `metaphysical union' between them32.

32 Cf. the present author's introduction to The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, ed. by H. T. Mason (Manchester, 1967), pp. xxxvi

Leibniz's arguments against the thesis of indifference CHAPTER V

CAUSALITY AND HUMAN FREEDOM 5.1 After these extensive preliminaries it is now possible to discuss Leibniz's views about the argument against human freedom which is based on the view that every event has a cause. For reasons which will shortly become clear, it will be useful to re-phrase the argument in syllogistic form. In this form, the argument consists of three linked syllogisms, the minor premisses of the second and third being the conclusions of the first and second respectively. I (a) Every event is caused (b) Every human action is an event; therefore (c) Every human action is caused. II (a) Everything caused follows necessarily on its cause (b) Every human action is caused; therefore (c) Every human action follows necessarily on its cause. III (a) Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free (b) Every human action follows necessarily on its cause; therefore (c) No human action is free. The value of this mode of presentation is that it brings out various ways in which the truth of the conclusion can be, and indeed has been, denied. We say 'the truth of the conclusion' rather than 'the soundness of the argument', for there seems to be nothing formally wrong with the argument. This consists of two syllogisms in Barbara and one in Celarent; and if all the premisses are true, then the conclusion of III must be true. But if at least one premiss is false, then the conclusion may be false, i. e. the argument does not entitle one to say that the conclusion is true. Leibniz knew that the truth of I (a) — the statement that every event is caused — has been denied. More recently, it has been asserted that I (b) is false; human actions, it is said, are not events, if an event is regarded as a 'happening', in the sense explained in 4.4. It is also argued that although events have causes, human actions do not, which means that I (c) is false. (See, e. g., Melden, op. cit., pp. 201 ff. This, incidentally, is a stronger thesis than that discussed in 4.1. That thesis was that human actions are not caused by volitions; the present thesis is that human actions have no causes). Leibniz, for his part, denies the truth of III (a) — 'Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free'. Let us now see in detail how he argues.

47

5.2 It was said above that some defenders of human freedom have denied the truth of I (a). They have said that it is not the case that every event is caused; for human actions are events, and there are at least some human actions which have no cause. This is the thesis which Leibniz has in mind when he speaks of the view that freedom consists in indifference (T par. 302, GP VI, 296; T par. 320, GP VI, 306; a paper against indifference, Grua, p. 385), or more precisely (since Leibniz does not deny 'indifference' if this is taken to mean that human acts are contingent) that freedom consists in the 'indifference of equilibrium' (T pars. 35, 46, 132, 175, 232, 303; GP VI, 122, 128, 184, 218, 256, 296). When Leibniz speaks of the 'indifference of equilibrium' he is referring to the view that there are situations in which 'there is no reason which inclines one to one side rather than to the other' (T par. 232), but in which we still choose one side or other. The classical example is Buridan's ass. Suppose a hungry ass, placed at an equal distance from two equally large and succulent bundles of hay, A and B. We may be sure that the ass will eat one of the two (say, A) first; yet he can have no reason for eating A before B. This, then, is a case of an act without a reason. The ass has a reason for eating — that is not in dispute — but he has no reason for eating A before B. It is argued that comparable situations, in which there is an exact balance of motives, are found in the case of human beings, and when we act like Buridan's ass we are free. This thesis may be called for convenience 'the thesis of indifference'. Leibniz rejects it, on the ground that it contradicts the principle of sufficient reason, which he holds to be universally true (T par. 175, GP VI, 219; Remarks on King, par. 2, GP VI, 402; GP VII, 109 33 ; to Coste, 19 Dec. 1707, GP III, 402; to Hartsoeker, 7 Dec. 1711, GP III, 529). Here a terminological matter must be clarified. It may be doubted whether the thesis of indifference really contradicts proposition I (a), and whether Leibniz really defends that proposition. For 33 Leibniz says in GP VII, 109 (one of a number of papers collected by Gerhardt under the title Initia et Specimina Scientiae novae Generalis) that liberty of indifference is impossible. He can hardly mean that it would be self-contradictory, but must mean that it cannot be true given the truth of the principle of sufficient reason. In other words, the necessity involved here is hypothetical, not absolute. Another example of hypothetical necessity in a similar context is to be found in the Th6odide. In T par. 35 (GP VI, 123) Leibniz considers a case in which there are three alternatives, and says that if we are equally attracted by A, B and C we cannot be equally attracted by A and not-A (which is here equivalent to B and C). Once again, the necessity is hypothetical; it is assumed that A, B and C are equally attractive.

4 8

Causality and human freedom



I (a) was stated in causal terms; but the thesis of indifference is stated in terms of reasons, and the principle which Leibniz opposes to that thesis is a principle of sufficient reason. But in 4.1 an antithesis was drawn between causes and reasons. All this is true; but what matters here is the interpretation that Leibniz would give to I (a), and there is no doubt that he would count this proposition as a form of the principle of sufficient reason, and so as contradicting the thesis of indifference. The principle is stated in various ways (cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 63 ff.). Sometimes it asserts that there must be a sufficient reason for anything which exists or happens; sometimes it asserts that there is no true proposition whose reason cannot in principle be grasped. Sometimes, however, it asserts that nothing happens without a cause, or that there is nothing without a cause. Here, Leibniz is not contrasting 'cause' and 'reason', but is using the two terms as equivalent. The thesis of indifference, then, does contradict I (a) as Leibniz understands it, and to assert the principle of sufficient reason is, for Leibniz, to assert I (a). In saying that the thesis of indifference is false because it contradicts the principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz is arguing on a priori grounds; he is saying that even when we are not aware of a reason for an action, there must be a reason — a reason which may on occasion be some 'imperceptible impression' (T par. 305, GP VI, 297. Cf. NE 2.1.15). Leibniz also seems to assert that empirical support can be found for his rejection of the 'indifference of equilibrium'. He says (T par. 35, GP VI, 123) that such equilibrium is absolutely contrary to experience, and that when one examines oneself one will find that there has always been some cause or reason which inclined one towards the side one took. This seems to be an over-statement; for if the reason which inclined one was (as Leibniz says it may be) some `imperceptible impression', this cannot by definition be perceived. Leibniz may have in mind the fact that we often realise the reason for a choice only when the choice has been made. But this is not to say that we can always find the reason for a choice — even if, as Leibniz claims, such a reason can always be given by an infinite being. Leibniz has another a priori reason for rejecting the thesis of indifference. He says that a situation of the kind that Buridan envisages cannot arise, since it would contradict another of Leibniz's metaphysical principles, that of the identity of indiscernibles. This principle states that no two substances are exactly alike; or, if two complete descriptions of substance X and of substance Y are alike in all re-

Leibniz's arguments against the thesis of indifference



49

spects (except as regards the difference of names), then 'X' and 'Y' must be two names for the same substance. This, Leibniz says, (T par. 49, GP VI, 129; cf. T par. 307, GP VI, 298; NE 2.1.15; to Coste, 19 Dec., 1707, GP III, 402) implies that the universe cannot, as Buridan supposes, be cut in two by a plane drawn through the centre of the ass, in such a way that everything is equal and alike on each side. There, will, then, 'always be many things, both inside the ass and outside it, which — even if they are not evident to us — will determine it to go one side rather than to the other' (T par. 49). Here one may wonder whether, even if the principle of the identity of indiscernibles is true, Leibniz's conclusion follows. If the principle is true, then there will be differences between the bundles of hay, A and B, between which the ass is supposed to hesitate. (More exactly, there will be differences between two groups of substances which appear as the two bundles of hay; but this complication can be ignored in the present context). Now, granting that the ass is in some way aware of these differences (and here Leibniz would appeal to his views about 'little perceptions'), it can be asked whether these are relevant differences. For example, it may be that the ass chooses bundle A, and that A is nearer to the spire of Salisbury Cathedral than B is; but it is hard to see why this difference between A and B should constitute a reason for preferring A to B. It seems, then, that it is open to a supporter of the thesis of indifference to say that, even granting the truth of the identity of indiscernibles, there may be two bundles of hay which are alike in all relevant respects — relevant, that is, to the hungry ass. Leibniz might perhaps reply that if the ass chooses A rather than B, then there must be a reason for this, and this reason will lie in a difference between A and B. This difference, since it is a reason for choice, must be a relevant difference. If this were Leibniz's reply, then it would seem that the argument against the thesis of in- difference based on the identity of indiscernibles is not an independent argument; in the end, it turns out to be another form of that which is based on the principle of sufficient reason. It may be objected that Leibniz's rejection of the thesis of indifference is based entirely on his metaphysics. If we accept the principle of sufficient reason and (perhaps) that of the identity of indiscernibles, then we must reject the thesis of indifference. But is there any good reason to accept Leibniz's metaphysical principles? Could one not rather say that the situations to which the thesis of indifference points are a refutation of Leibniz's principles? Leibniz, of course,

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would deny that this is so; but he has alternative arguments which do not rest on his metaphysics, and it will be worth while to look at these. These non-metaphysical arguments say in effect that if the thesis of indifference is true, then certain propositions must be true which are generally (and rightly) regarded as false. (i) In an undated letter (Bodemann, p. 117) Leibniz says that it follows from the idea that freedom lies in indifference that the more perfect one is - the more inclined to the good - the less one is free and praiseworthy. (ii) If men were indifferent, and were not inclined to act by causes, they would not worry about rewards and punishments, and would not be led to the good by these means, which would in consequence become useless. (Conversation on Freedom, 1699-1703?, Grua, p. 483. For a more recent version of the argument, cf. J. M. E. McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion (2nd ed., London, 1930), pars. 149-150). (iii) Finally, Leibniz argues that pure indifference would make knowledge useless (Remarks on King, par. 19, GP VI, 420) 34 . By this he presumably means that our reasons for action are often (and as far as possible should be) based on knowledge. But if free action is without any reason, what is the point of acquiring knowledge? There is little doubt that Leibniz would regard these arguments as supplementary to those based on the principle of sufficient reason and the identity of indiscernibles; but they may carry more conviction to the modern philosopher. 5.3 We have been discussing a way in which Leibniz does not defend human freedom against the syllogisms set out in 5.1; it is now time to consider the way in which he does defend it. As mentioned earlier, Leibniz in effect denies the truth of III (a) -i. e. of the proposition `Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free'. His reasons for doing so are bound up with his famous assertion that motives 'incline without necessitating' 35 . 34 He also says (loc. cit.) that it makes goodness useless, but it is not easy to see his point here. Perhaps this is another way of saying what was said in (i) above that the thesis of indifference implies that the more settled one is in good habits, the less free one is. So the man who wants to be free will find goodness useless indeed, he will find it worse than useless, for it will be an obstacle to freedom. 35 NE 2.1.15, 2.21.8, 12, 49; T pars. 43, 45, 53, 132, 280 (GP VI, 126, 127, 131, 184, 283); Summary of Th6odic6e, Reply to Obj. 3, GP VI, 380; Remarks on King, pars. 14, 19, 20 (GP VI, 414, 420, 422); Causa Dei, par. 105, GP VI, 454; On the freedom of the creature, 1697?, Grua, pp. 383, 384; to Molanus, 22 Feb. 1698,

`Inclining without necessitating'

51

Leibniz's account of the nature of motives has been discussed in 3.2, and only a brief recapitulation will be necessary here. It was seen that Leibniz regards a motive as what an agent aims at. He insists, however, that a motive is not something which is outside the agent; rather, the mind acts by virtue of its motives, which are dispositions to act. Taken in this sense, motives are final causes; but Leibniz can relate motivated action to efficient causality by saying that when a man (e. g.) acts in a certain way in order to be healthy, his acts may be described in two ways: on the one hand, it may be said that health is the motive (the final cause) of what he does, and on the other hand it may be said that the thought that it is good to be healthy is the efficient cause of his actions. How, then, are we to interpret Leibniz's assertion that motives incline without necessitating? In trying to see what the phrase means, it is perhaps best to begin by considering some things that it does not mean. Consider someone who is debating what to do, and who is pulled this way and that by competing motives. For example, he may know where a certain wrongdoer is, and he thinks it good to hand over wrongdoers to justice; but the wrongdoer happens to be a close relation, and the man also thinks it good to protect his relatives. Now, one might think that this is ,a case in which there are two motives, each of which inclines a man to act in a certain way, but neither of which compels him to act in this way; the motives, in short, 'incline without necessitating'. No doubt the word 'incline' could be interpreted like this, but the point is that this is not how Leibniz takes it. He makes it clear (T par. 45, GP VI, 127; cf. a conversation on freedom, Grua, p. 479; NE 2.21.8) that he is thinking of the prevailing, i. e. the strongest motive. Suppose that, in the example above, the person deliberating decides to protect his relative by not handing him over; then it is his motive for doing so - his belief that it is good to protect one's relatives - which 'inclines' him. We are dealing, then, with the strongest motive, and not just with any motive. Now, in what sense does the strongest motive 'incline' one to do this or that? It is unnecessary to carry out a survey of the Grua, p. 413; Draft of a reply to Jablonski, 1698?, Grua, p. 421; Conversation on Freedom, 1699-1703?, Grua, p. 479; to Burnet, 22 Nov. 1695, GP III, 168; to Coste, 19 Dec. 1707, GP III, 402; to Jaquelot, 28 April 1704, GP III, 472; to Hartsoeker, 6 Feb. 1711, GP III, 519; to Bourguet, 11 April 1710, GP III, 550; to Jaquelot, Dec. 1704, GP VI, 571; unaddressed letter, Bodemann, p.116; C 402, 405; to Clarke, Paper 5, pars. 8-9; GP VII, 300; Remarks on a letter of Arnauld, GP II, 46; Discourse on Metaphysics, par. 13, Summary.

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ordinary use in Leibniz's time of words like 'incline', since what is involved here is a special sense. Leibniz says that he borrows the phrase 'incline without necessitating' from the 'famous dictum', 'The stars incline, they do not necessitate' 36 (T par. 43; GP VI, 126), but he also makes it clear that he adapts the phrase to suit his own ends. He agrees with the general tenor of the 'famous dictum' — namely, that there is human freedom, that we are not at the mercy of fate. But the dictum also implies that the event towards which the stars 'incline' does not always occur. (It may be added that this seems to agree with modern usage. If someone says that he is inclined to do X, what he says is compatible with his either doing or not doing X). Leibniz, on the other hand, says that when we are more inclined towards one course of action, we never fail to follow that course — i. e. it is certain that we shall follow it (T par. 43; GP VI, 127). But if this is so, what can Leibniz mean when he says that motives do not necessitate? The answer is (e. g. to Clarke, 5. 8-9; T par. 53, GP VI, 131-2) that he has in mind the distinction between hypothe36 The idea that the stars incline but do not necessitate can be traced back to the Scholastics. In his Speculum Naturale, Vincent of Beauvais cites Albertus Magnus as the source of his doctrine that the power of the heavenly bodies does not impose necessity on free will, though it can be said that the soul of man is inclined and changed (Vincent, fol. 64 b, cited by T. O. Wedel, The Mediaeval Attitude towards Astrology, Yale, 1920, pp. 65-6). The doctrine that Vincent ascribes to Albertus is that the stars influence the human will by way of the body, and this doctrine is also to be found in Aquinas. Aquinas (Wedel, op. cit., p. 68) asserts that intellect and will are not corporeal, and so escape the influence which the stars necessarily exert over matter. They are, however, affected indirectly, in that both are intimately connected with corporeal organs. The intellect is necessarily affected whenever a man's physical processes are disturbed; the will, however, does not follow of necessity the inclinations of inferior appetite, although the irascible and the concupiscent in man incline the will towards this or that choice. (Sum. Theol. I, 115, 4, Resp. Cf. Contra Gent. III 92: the heavenly bodies, by their action on our bodies, 'dispose' and 'incline' us to certain choices). In his De Causa Dei, which Leibniz discussed (Demonstrationum Catholicarum Conspectus, A VI, i, 496; T pars. 67, 95, GP VI, 139, 156), Thomas Bradwardine restates this view, and says that the doctrine that the stars impose, not necessity, but merely a disposition and inclination in men towards certain actions, is not to be wholly rejected. (De Causa Dei, ed. Savile, 1618, p.265; cited by Wedel, op. cit., p. 125). The doctrine continued into the Renaissance: for example, Giovanni Pontano (De Rebus Coelestibus: Opera Omnia, Venice, 1518-19) said that the influence of the stars is not a necessitating one, but that the stars have the power to incline human matter; again, Thomas Liebler (Erastus) states that astrologers admit that the stars are not necessary causes — they say that they incline, but do not compel (Defensio Libelli Hieronymi Savonarolae, Heidelberg, 1569. Cf. D. C. Alien, The StarCrossed Renaissance, Duke, 1941, pp. 39, 83).

`Inclining without necessitating'

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tical and absolute necessity, which has already been met in the context of the argument from God's foreknowledge (2.2). To see the nature of his argument here, let us suppose that someone (say, myself) has made a choice between alternatives. That I chose as I did is a contingent truth, in that it would not be self-contradictory to suppose that I had chosen otherwise; i. e. it is logically possible that I should have chosen differently. Now, Leibniz would say that my choice had a motive (cf. 3.2: the will always acts by motives), and he also asserts (3.4) that the strongest motive is always followed. Given, then, that I am making a choice, and given that my motive for doing action A is my strongest motive, it follows that I will choose to do A. To put this in a more formal guise: (a) Whenever anyone makes a choice, he follows the strongest of his motives; therefore (b) Whenever I make a choice, I follow my strongest motive. (c) In the present situation, X is my strongest motive; therefore (d) In the present situation, I will follow motive X. My choice, then, is necessary, but only hypothetically necessary; for it remains logically possible that I should have chosen something else. This, for Leibniz, is the sense in which motives incline without necessitating. It must be stressed that Leibniz does not maintain that hypothetical necessity alone will establish freedom. Take, for example, an event such as a stone's falling to the ground. Leibniz would say that this is hypothetically, and not absolutely, necessary. (It is not absolutely necessary because the truth of the proposition that the stone falls can be denied without self-contradiction. But the stone's falling is necessary given certain laws of nature, which in turn are necessary given the truth of the principle of sufficient reason, and of the proposition that there is a God). However, Leibniz would certainly not say that the stone falls freely. Freedom, in his view, is predicable only of substances which exercise choice, i. e. rational substances (e. g. T par. 34, GP VI, 122; discussed in 5.4 below). Now, when Leibniz discusses `inclining without necessitating', he is discussing the activities of rational substances, and so he can claim to have established human freedom. Reverting to the three syllogisms stated in 5.1: it can now be seen why Leibniz would deny proposition III (a) — 'Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free'. For a choice is free; but a choice follows necessarily upon the strongest motive, and a motive is a

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Freedom as spontaneity and choice

cause. It will also be seen that, if Leibniz is right in his attack on this premiss, the conclusion 'No human action is free' is not simply not proved true, but is actually false. Leibniz has negated the major premiss, 'Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free', by asserting the truth of the proposition, 'There are some things (namely, those human actions we call choices) which follow necessarily on their causes, and are free', from which it follows that 'No human action is free' is a false proposition. Such, then, is the way in which Leibniz hopes to solve a problem about freedom by saying that motives 'incline without necessitating'. It may be thought that he is faced with a special difficulty here, which arises from his view that everyone who makes a choice follows the strongest motive. This proposition, he seems to hold, is necessarily true (cf. 3.4). Now, take the argument which consists of the last three propositions of (a) (b) (c) and (d) above: 'Whenever I make a choice, I follow my strongest motive; in the present situation, X is my strongest motive; therefore in the present situation, I will follow motive X'. The first of these propositions is necessarily true; must not the conclusion be necessarily true also? Leibniz would say that this is not so, since the proposition 'In the present situation, X is my strongest motive' is contingent 37 , and therefore (since the conclusion follows the weaker part) the conclusion will be contingent also (Notes on Bayle, 1706?, Grua, p. 493; cf. extracts from Petau, 1691 5?, Grua, p. 336). Leibniz, then, can consistently say that the proposition, 'In the present situation, I will follow motive X' is contingent. But is this sufficient to establish human freedom? It has already been argued, in the discussion of God's foreknowledge in 2.2, that it is not, and the same argument is valid here. Suppose that someone — say, Jones — does not move because he is bound hand and foot. To say that Jones is free, because the proposition 'Jones does not move' is contingently true, is to produce a travesty of the notion of freedom. It was also suggested, however, (ibid.) that Leibniz's view about the relevance of the notion of hypothetical necessity to problems about freedom does represent an approach to a valid argument. He may be approaching the idea that it is only propositions which are necessitated by propo-

37 Leibniz is also prepared to say this of the rather different proposition, 'This is the best': Notes on Bayle, 1706?, Grua, p. 493. The argument as a whole is: `That which is the best is chosen' (which Leibniz admits to be necessary), 'This is the best; therefore this is chosen'.



55

sitions, and that this is not the same as saying that individuals are constrained or compelled. To apply this to the point now at issue: the proposition that, in the present situation, I will follow the strongest motive does indeed follow logically from other propositions. But this does not mean that the premisses of the argument bind the event, i. e. the choice itself. 5.4 Such an answer, however, does not seem to dispose of all arguments against human freedom which are based on causation. The weakness of the answer, it may be said, lies in the fact that it does not take account of an objection that can be made concerning proposition (c) above — 'In the present situation, X is my strongest motive'. Leibniz takes this to be contingent, in the sense that its opposite is logically possible, i. e. that to suppose its opposite to be true does not involve a contradiction. Leibniz is clearly right in this; if the word `can' is taken to refer to logical possibility, it can be the case that X is not the strongest of my motives. But it could also be argued that there is another sense of 'can' and 'cannot', in which X cannot but be the strongest of my motives, i. e. must be the strongest, from which it follows that I must choose as I do. The line of argument is familiar, and runs roughly as follows. To say that X is one of Y's motives for choosing Z is to say that X appears to Y to be good. Now, we can say why X appears good to the person in question, by stating the cause of this situation. But if we have stated a cause, then the effect follows necessarily; hence X must be one of Y's motives for choosing Z. By the same reasoning, we can say that when X is the strongest motive, it must be the strongest motive. The `must' is a causal `muse; it is not a logical 'must', in that it is not being said that to suppose X not to be the strongest motive would involve a contradiction, but it is none the less a 'must'. This line of argument, or one which is close to it, is considered by Leibniz in a passage in the Confessio Philosophi (ed. Saame, p. 44), in which he asks why a man thinks something to be good. He says that there are, in the last analysis, two causes of belief — the temperament of the believer, and the nature (dispositio) of the object. (By `object' he means, as the context shows, that thing or state of affairs which is believed to be good; he is not speaking of an 'object' in the sense in which a proposition may be called an object of belief). We say that there are 'in the last analysis' two causes of belief, because Leibniz asserts that an earlier belief may affect a later one, by which he pre-

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sumably means that one belief may arise out of others; ultimately, though, we reach primitive beliefs (primae opiniones), and these have as their causes the nature of the mind and the temperament of the body on the one hand, and the circumstances of the thing on the other 38 . Leibniz does not give an example of what he means, but he may have in mind something of the following sort. Suppose a man's bodily state to be such that he thinks that all sweet things are to be tasted (`temperament of the believer') and suppose also that a glass of sweet wine happens to be at hand, and is perceived by him and is known by him to be sweet (`circumstances of the thing'). Given all this, the man must think that the glass of wine is to be tasted. In the Confessio Philosophi, the difficulty which this creates is stated in theological terms. Both the object of the belief and the temperament of the believer come from God, from which it follows that God is the ultimate ground (ultima ratio) of a man's sin; to this it may be added that the man who sins, must sin. The difficulty can also be put in non-theological terms. A glass of sweet wine happens to be at hand — i. e. the man did not bring about this situation; nor, again, did he create his temperament, i. e. the bodily state which is such that he thinks it good to taste sweet things. It seems, then, that the cause of his choice is outside himself, and further, that he must choose as he does". To meet such difficulties, Leibniz says that it is necessary to reconsider the idea of freedom. He says that some Scholastics have defined freedom as the power to act or not to act, given all the requisites of action, both inside and outside the agent (Confessio Philoso phi, ed. 38 Cf. a conversation on freedom, 1699-1703?, Grua, p. 482: we choose what we will, but we will what we find good; this depends on our taste and on the objects, not on our choice. 39 Essentially the same argument seems to be put forward later in the Conf essio Philosophi (ed. Saame, p. 80). Here, Leibniz says that it is not in our power to decide or not to decide something. We cannot, without reasons, bring it about that we do not believe what we believe; belief, therefore, is not in the power of the will, from which it follows that will is not in the power of the will. Here it seems to be assumed that our reasons are not in our power; that (as argued earlier in the Confessio Philosophi) we find things good because of our temperament and the nature of the object. In the De Obligatione Credendi (Grua, p. 181) Leibniz defends the proposition `To believe or not to believe something is not in our power' by saying that to believe something is to be aware of reasons that persuade us, and awareness is not in our power. This seems doubly weak. First, someone who believes something need not be aware of his reasons; second, awareness is in our power — e. g. someone who wants to cease to believe in the truth of a proposition, p, will neglect the arguments that support p and concentrate on those that are opposed to it.

Freedom as spontaneity and choice



57

Saame, p. 80; C 25; Notes on Spinoza's Ethics (1678), GP I, 148). Freedom of this kind, however, is an impossibility. If all the requisites — i. e. all the necessary conditions 4 ° — of an action are present, then the action must be performed. If it is not performed, then some necessary condition of the action must be absent, which is contrary to the hypothesis 41 . The correct definition, Leibniz says, is that free will is the power of acting and not acting, given all the external requisites of action (Confessio Philosophi, loc. cit.; C 25). So I am free if, even when all the aids to action (agendi adminicula) are at my disposal, I can still not perform the action — namely, if I am unwilling to act (Confessio Philosophi, loc. cit.). Leibniz does not specify these 'external requisites', but presumably he means that, for example, I am free to drink a glass of wine given that the glass of wine is within easy reach, and my muscles are in good trim and unimpeded. Leibniz goes on to say in the Confessio Philosophi (ed. Saame, p. 82) that the definition of freedom that he has given agrees with Aristotle's, according to which something is said to be 'spontaneous' if the principle of action is in the agent, and 'free' if there is spontaneity together with choice. It is unnecessary to ask here if this really is Aristotle's definition of freedom (on which see Saame, op. cit., pp. 173-4); what matters is that this definition is not confined to early works of Leibniz, such as the Confessio Philosophi, but is to be found also in the works of his maturity. For example, in par. 34 of the TUodice (GP VI, 122) Leibniz notes with approval that 'Aristotle has already remarked that there are two things in freedom, spontaneity and choice', and in Causa Dei par. (GP VI, 441) he says that freedom consists in the fact that a voluntary action is spontaneous and deliberate 42 . 40 Cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, p. 63, and Saame, op. cit., p. 146 (n. 31). 41 In C 25, Leibniz says that to suppose the contrary would be to contradict the principle of sufficient reason. It is hard to see how this can be so. That principle states that a reason can be given for everything (C 25), whereas Leibniz is arguing here that given all the requisites of X, then must exist. Perhaps what he means is that to suppose the contrary would contradict the definition of a sufficient reason as the aggregate of all requisites: e. g. a paper on existence, 1676?, Grua, p. 267. Cf. Demonstratio Propositionum Primarum, 1671-2?, A VI, ii, 483. 42 Many other references can be cited: e. g. NE 2.21.9; on Descartes' Principles, GP IV, 362; to Lady Masham, Sept. 1704, GP III, 364; GP VII, 108-9; C 25; Table of Definitions, C 498.

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It will be worth while to clarify this definition. As has been seen, a thing is said to be 'spontaneous' if the source or principle of action is in the thing (Confessio Philosophi, loc. cit. Cf. Reflections on Bellarmin (1680-82?), Grua, p. 301; Conversation on Freedom (16991703?), Grua, p. 480; Paper on the Principle of Reason, C 14). In Causa Dei par. 20 Leibniz opposes spontaneity to 'the necessity which destroys deliberation'. By this 'necessity' he must mean absolute, _not hypothetical necessity; his point is that if it is logically necessary that a person should do something, then he cannot deliberate about it. In GP VII 108, however, he goes further than this, saying that that is spontaneous which is neither necessary nor compelled (coactum). This would cover the case of someone (such as the householder discussed in 2.2) who is prevented physically from doing something, although the performance of the action is logically possible. One is reminded here of Spinoza, for whom something is 'free' if it is self-determined, and `necessary, or rather compelled (coacta)' if it is determined by something else to exist and act in a certain and determinate way (Ethics, I, Def. 7) 43 . The difference is that, for Leibniz, if something is to be free it must also exercise choice; and it is well known that there are in his view many substances which, although spontaneous (otherwise they would not be substances), are not rational substances and so do not exercise choice 44 . Leibniz claims that the human soul is free in the sense just defined; for we do exercise choice, and the principle of such mental acts is in ourselves. One may readily agree with the former, but with regard to the latter one may ask why, and with what justification, Leibniz thinks that the principle of such acts as choosing is in ourselves. The first point to note is that he rejects the idea, which he ascribes to Descartes (perhaps referring to Principia Philosophiae, I 41), that the independence of the mind is known by a 'lively internal sentiment' (T par. 50; GP VI, 130). He says that we do not strictly speaking perceive (sentir) our independence, and that in any case we do not always apperceive, i. e. are not always conscious of, the causes on which our decisions depend. It is, he says, as if a compass needle en43 Spinoza also says (Ethics, I, Def. 7) that that is called 'free' which exists by the necessity of its nature alone, which suggests that God alone is free. However, in Ethics II, 17 Schol. Spinoza is prepared to consider the possibility of a faculty of the mind being free, and of course he speaks much of the 'free man'. 44 Cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 166, 174.0n the view that 'freedom' means spontaneity and reason or intelligence, cf. GP IV, 362; C 25; GP VII, 108.

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joyed turning towards the north; it would think that it turns because it enjoys it, independently of any other cause. (Cf. T pars. 292-3, 299; GP VI, 290, 293-5). The example is reminiscent of one used by Spinoza, who says that if a moving stone could think, and were conscious of its striving to continue in motion, it would believe that it is free and would think that it continues in motion because it wants do (Ep. 58, to Schuller; The Correspondence of Spinoza, trans. by A. Wolf, London, 1928, p. 295). Indeed, the argument as a whole reminds one of Spinoza's view that men think that they are free 'because they are aware of their actions, and do not know the causes by which they are determined' (Ethics, II 35 Schol.). However, this is by the way; what matters here is the question, what type of causes Leibniz has in mind when he says that we are not always conscious of the causes on which our decision depends. He can hardly mean that we are not always aware of our motives; for, as has already been seen (3.2), he does not regard motives as outside the mind, and motives would therefore not count as the kind of external determinant that must be ruled out if the mind is to be free. What he must have in mind are the kinds of factors which we have already seen mentioned in the Confessio Philosophi as causing our beliefs; one may instance, for example, the physico-chemical mechanism as a result of whose functioning some people like sweet things. (Cf. a paper on internal dispositions, 1689?, Grua, p. 327, in which Leibniz says that it is objected against human freedom that the reason for one's willing may come from external things — namely, from the temperament of the body and from the impression of (sc. made by) the object). Now, if every decision has a cause of this kind (and Leibniz seems to think that it has) then one may wonder how he can maintain that human beings are free. His answer would be that the body does not really determine the mind to action. The mind is one substance and the body is quite a different set of substances, and no created substance acts on any other, though their actions 'concur' (cf. Grua, p. 327) or harmonise 45 . So it comes to this: that Leibniz's defence of human freedom is based on his metaphysics. 45 In Grua, p. 327, Leibniz considers the objection that the present dispositions of the mind come from past impressions of the body and of external things. He replies by saying that there are in the mind 'some primitive dispositions, which do not come from external things'; so 'the root of liberty is in primitive dispositions'. This hardly seems consistent with Leibniz's mature philosophy, according to which no disposition of the mind comes 'from external things', and it may be wondered if Grua is right in conjecturing that the date of this paper may be as late as 1689.

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Such is the way in which Leibniz would answer the thesis that we must act as we do, because our motives (and therefore our choices) are determined by external factors. It will be useful to see how this answer is to be related to the syllogisms of 5.1. Leibniz, it seems, is still attacking III (a) — 'Nothing that follows necessarily on its cause is free' — as he did when he said that motives 'incline without necessitating'. Now, however, his attack does not rest solely upon the idea of hypothetical necessity. He is saying in effect that a given choice follows with hypothetical necessity upon its cause, to the extent that the cause is the strongest motive, which must be followed. But a choice (he adds) is the act of a spontaneous substance, and therefore is free. Let us suppose for the moment that Leibniz has shown that the mind is spontaneous; would this be enough to establish human freedom, in any standard sense of the term? In the Critique of Practical Reason (Acad. ed., p. 97) Kant said that freedom of the kind that Leibniz claims to have proved is no better than the freedom of a roasting-jack which, once it has been wound up, performs its movements of itself. This objection seems to fail on two counts. Leibniz could reply, first, that Kant concentrates on one part of his definition — that part which says that what is free is spontaneous — and ignores the second part, which says that freedom involves choice. (Cf. to Jaquelot, no date, GP VI, 571-2: 'There is no doubt that spontaneity is insufficient to establish freedom, but it is required for it. One must add choice'). A roasting-jack does not exercise choice, and so freedom cannot be predicated of it. Second, Leibniz would say that the roasting-jack is not strictly spontaneous. We call it 'automatic', but it is not really self-moving; it does not strictly speaking have its principle of action within itself. Certainly, it turns round because a spring is uncoiling, and the spring is inside it; but the energy of the spring comes from something outside it — namely, the muscles of the person who wound it up. Kant might perhaps reply that Leibniz's monads are in a sense wound up — wound up by God — to which Leibniz would probably answer that God, in creating human beings, does not create mechanisms; rather, he creates substances which choose in accordance with final causes (cf. 2.4). Kant's objection, then, does not seem to have any force. Nor, again, would there be any force in an objection to the effect that according to Leibniz, the bound and gagged householder considered in 2.2 is, in so far as he is a substance, self-determined and therefore free. Leibniz would agree that it would be absurd to call such a person free (cf.

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T par. 34, GP VI, 122, in which Leibniz cites as cases of un-free action being pushed over a precipice, or acting under the influence of a drug). He would again (as in the case of the roasting-jack) point out that a free act involves choice (Causa Dei, par. 20; NE 2.21.9; to Lady Masham, Sept. 1704, GP III, 364), and it may be assumed that the householder does not choose to be bound and gagged. But although Leibniz may be able to meet these objections, it can be argued that there are two further weaknesses in his defence of human freedom. First, there seems to be an absurdity in Leibniz's position. Consider again the bound and gagged householder; is it not absurd to say that the actions of this man are, in so far as he is a substance, self-determined? Surely one would want to differentiate his acts from those of a man who is not bound and gagged by saying that the former is determined from outside, whereas the latter is not. Second, the view that each substance is self-determined is a metaphysical doctrine; and even if the doctrine did not lead to absurdity, a modern philosopher would probably be reluctant to base a defence of freedom on a metaphysics as such. Our task must now be to see if these are real weaknesses; to see if there really is an absurdity in Leibniz's position, and to see if it is possible to translate what Leibniz states in the language of metaphysics into a language which will be acceptable to the non-metaphysician. ,

5.5 In discussing the argument that Leibniz's metaphysical views imply that a man is self-determined in circumstances in which this would not normally be said of him, it is necessary to refer to Leibniz's account of the notion of 'acting on'. It has already been noted that, according to Leibniz's metaphysics, no created substance acts on any other. However, Leibniz does not maintain that the words 'act on' are wholly without use. It is, he says, a fact that we often find it easier to infer from the states of one substance (say, A) to those of another (say, B) than conversely, and we express this by saying that A acts on B, or that B is acted on by A 46 . So Leibniz can say that the sentence, `The householder has been bound and gagged by the burglar' can be regarded as expressing a true proposition; it is in a sense correct to say that the householder is acted on by the burglar, is determined by him.

46 Cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, pp. 153 and 4.4 ad fin. above.

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4; also NE 2.21.72,

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Leibniz would doubtless reply in essentially the same way to another objection. It has been seen that he holds that every substance is the source or principle of its actions. To say this is, for Leibniz, to say that it acts purposively, towards a certain end — though it should be added that only some substances (we may call them 'conscious' substances) are aware of what their ends are. The obvious objection to this is that a man may have some ends which are determined by other people; e. g. his values may be implanted in him by education. Such a person, it may be said, is not wholly the source of his actions; he thinks and acts as he does because someone else was able to instil certain views in him Leibniz would doubtless agree that such a man is to be called passive; the man does not act, but rather is acted on. However, he would argue that (as already mentioned) to say this is really to say that it is easier to infer from the man's education to his views than conversely. But he would have more to say than this. According to Leibniz (e. g. Monadology, par. 49) we are the more passive the more our perceptions are confused — which means, the less we think. Now, the man under consideration is assumed to accept, quite uncritically, someone else's point of view; he does not really think, and as such he is passive, and so cannot called 'free'. So far, we have as it were remained within Leibniz's system; we turn now to the second of the two questions asked at the end of the last section — namely, whether it is possible to translate this system into a language which a modern philosopher may find acceptable. The point just made may help to make the transition. It was suggested that for Leibniz, the man who accepts uncritically another's views is not really free; in other words, there is for Leibniz a link between freedom and rationality. This link does not depend on Leibniz's metaphysics; in saying that the free man is the man who thinks, who is not merely the passive recipient of another's views, Leibniz is not presupposing the doctrines of his theory of monads. Such a link between freedom and rationality is by no means peculiar to Leibniz. People often say such things as, 'I could not help myself; I was mastered by an overwhelming passion'. Here the passion is regarded as in some way dissociated from the person, and as having mastered him A man, then, is thought not to be free in so far as the passions control him; but many philosophers have said that he is free in so far as reason rules. (One does not, on the whole, speak of a `slave to reason'). Here, the reason tends to be identified with the individual; the reason is the real self. In so far as I act rationally, so far (it is argued) my real self acts, and so, far I act. In this way,

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the idea that freedom implies spontaneity — i. e. being the source of one's own actions — is retained, . but a special view is taken of what one's own actions are. Such a view of freedom, which is to be found both in the Stoics (cf. NE 2.21.8) and in Spinoza, is often expressed by Leibniz. For example, in the Confessio Philosophi (ed. Saame, p. 82) he says that something is the more free, the more it is capable of choice; that is, the more it understands with a pure and tranquil mind Later in the same work (ed. Saame, p. 86) he says that the highest freedom is to _use one's intellect and will in the most perfect way Similar views can be found in his mature works: for example, in his comments on Descartes' Principles (1692; GP IV, 362) he says that to act freely and to act rationally are one and the same, since a man is the more free the less his use of reason is disturbed by the onset of the passions. Again, in a conversation on freedom and destiny (1699-1703?) he says that we are free in so far as we are determined to follow the perfection of our nature, that is, reason, but that we are slaves in so far as we follow our passions. It is in so far as we follow this perfection of our nature that we are said to act; in so far as we are imperfect we are said to be passive and to be subjected to external things — 'although in a certain metaphysical sense, which I have explained in my system of the union of the mind and the body, there is spontaneity in everything that happens to us'. (Grua, p. 481; see also GP VII, 109). It must be noted that this sort of freedom — the freedom which is defined as the life of reason — is not the same as that which is in mind when it is said that Judas and Simon Peter were free agents. Leibniz himself notes that there is an ambiguity here, when he says in the Nouveaux Essais (NE 2.21.8) that the freedom of the will is taken in two senses: (a) that in which it is opposed to the imperfection or the slavery of the mind, and (b) that in which it is opposed to necessity. What Leibniz says about 'freedom' as meaning 'spontaneity with choice' seems, in so far as it is freed from dependence on his metaphysics, to relate to (a) only. If Leibniz is to show that Judas and Simon Peter were free agents he must find other arguments; and these (as indicated in the Nouveaux Essais, loc. cit.) appear to be those which hinge on the distinction between inclining and necessitating. It was argued earlier, however, (at the beginning of 5.4) that this distinction does not seem adequate to answer the objection that a man's strongest motive is causally determined, and that therefore he must act as he does. Here, it seems, Leibniz can do no better than

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fall back upon his metaphysical doctrine that all substances are spontaneous. 5.6 Our discussion of Leibniz's views on human freedom is now in essence complete, but there is still something to be said that may clarify what has gone before. From time to time in the preceding sections some comparisons have been drawn between the views of Spinoza and of Leibniz. It may help to clarify Leibniz's views if we compare them again with Spinoza's, but this time on a subject which has not yet been discussed in this paper, although it is very relevant _ to a discussion of freedom — namely, reward and punishment.' The relevance of this subject to the problems which have concerned us is evident. If every human action has a cause, this seems to imply that no man can do other than what he does; but if so, with what justification does one praise and reward the good and blame and punish the bad? Leibniz's views on the philosophy of punishment are expounded fully in the The''odic6e, pars. 67 ff. (GP VI, 139 ff.). He says (T par. 67) that even if there were an absolute necessity about our actions (which there is not), rewards and punishments would still be just and reasonable. One cannot, on these grounds, refute such philosophers as Hobbes and Spinoza, Bradwardine and Wycliffe. Briefly, Leibniz's argument is that punishment involves elements of defence, correction and deterrence, and praise involves an element of correction, all of which can consistently be accepted by adherents of a doctrine of absolute necessity. But Leibniz also holds that punishment involves a further element for which they cannot account. In detail, Leibniz's argument runs as follows: (i) (T par. 68, GP VI, 139). It is permissible to kill a madman when one cannot defend oneself in any other way; it is also permissible, and often necessary, to kill venomous and hannful animals, even though it is not their fault that they are venomous or harmful. (Cf. a conversation on freedom, 1699-1703?, Grua, p. 483, where Leibniz refers to the fact that madmen are locked up). This is reminiscent, of Spinoza's remark about a man driven mad by the bite of a mad dog; the man is excusable, but it is right to kill him (`excusandus quidem est, et tamen jure suffocatur') — because, it is implied, of the danger he constitutes to others. (Ep. 78, to Oldenburg, 7 Feb. 1676; The Correspondence of Spinoza, trans. by A. Wolf, p. 358). It may be asked how this is relevant to a discussion of punishment, for no one says that in such cases one is punishing the madman or the harmful

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animal. Presumably Leibniz implies that in some punishments (and perhaps in all) there is an element of self-defence; e. g. it might be argued that the punishment of a murderer by execution or imprisonment is (in part, at any rate) society's defence of itself. The point that both Leibniz and Spinoza would stress here in that in so far as it defends itself, society does not consider whether what , the man is or has done is his own fault. (ii) (T par. 69, GP VI, 140). One inflicts punishments on animals, even though they lack reason and freedom, when one judges that this will serve to correct them; it is in this way that one punishes horses and dogs. One also uses rewards in the same way. Here again it may be objected that one does not strictly speaking punish an animal. As will be seen later, Leibniz would probably agree; the point here, however, is that philosophers such as Spinoza and Hobbes can consistently say that to reward or punish a person contains an element of correction, and to that extent may be compared with training an animal. (iii) (T par. 70, GP VI, 140). Finally, Leibniz says that one would inflict capital punishment on a beast, if one thought that the punishment would serve as an example or instil terror into other beasts, to stop them damaging human beings or their property. He gives.a number of examples, such as the crucifixion of lions in Africa, mentioned by Rorarius as a means of driving lions away from towns. Such methods, says Leibniz, are justified if they work. Once again it could be objected that the lions in question were not punished; they were not, strictly speaking, executed. However, Leibniz may mean here that punishment may contain an element of deterrence, and that deterrence does not presuppose reason and freedom among those who are deterred, or among those who serve as examples. Leibniz sums up by saying (T par. 71, GP VI, 140) that since it is a matter of experienced fact that the fear of punishment and the hope of reward serve to make men abstain from evil and oblige them to try to do well, it would be right and reasonable to make use of this fear and this hope even if men acted necessarily, in any sense of the term. The same can be said of praise and blame (T par. 75, GP VI, 143), with the addition that we can praise or blame good or bad natural qualities, where the will has absolutely no part, in a horse or a diamond or a man. Again, the man who said that it was impossible for Cato of Utica not to act virtuously thought to praise him all the more. (Cf. the Summary of the Theodicee, par. 8, GP VI, 386; the `moral necessity' which governs the sage does not destroy morality, reward and praise).

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All this, says Leibniz, can consistently be maintained by those who say that everything happens with absolute necessity. They can accept the existence of that kind of justice which punishes by medicinal means, as it were, and whose aim is to make the criminal better, and they can allow for justice of the exemplary kind (Remarks on King, par. 17, GP VI, 417). They cannot, however, allow for what Leibniz calls 'true retributive justice' (la veritable justice vindicative), which presupposes the intelligence and the freedom of the offender (ibid.). Such justice 'is founded only on fitness (la convenance), which demands a certain satisfaction as the expiation of a bad action' (T par. 73, GP VI, 141); 'The harmony of things demands a satisfaction, an evil which consists in suffering (un mal de passion), which makes the mind perceive its fault after the voluntary action to which it has given its agreement' (Remarks on King, loc. cit.). This kind of fitness, Leibniz adds, satisfies not only the injured party, but also the wise who see it; one may compare the way in which beautiful music or architecture satisfies the mind (T par. 73). Punishment of this kind provides (ibid.) a kind of spiritual compensation (dedommagement de l'esprit); the mind would be offended by disorder, unless the punishment contributed to the re-establishment of order. Leibniz is in effect saying here that Hobbes, Spinoza and those who think like them ignore the fact that punishment contains a moral element. To punish someone is not merely to act in self-defence, or to try to improve the offender, or to make an example of him (though it may involve all these); to punish someone for what he has done implies that what he did was wrong, and that he ought to expiate it. Leibniz puts this in a metaphysical context. His view is that it is not just human beings who — in accordance, perhaps, with some kind of categorical imperative — demand satisfaction of this kind; it is the `harmony of things' that demands it. This 'harmony of things' is, for Leibniz, ultimately related to God. There is, according to Leibniz, a `principle of fitness' (principium convenientiae: a paper on the division of philosophy, after 1695, C 528; cf. Monadology, par. 46), also called by him the 'principle of the best' (C 528), in accordance with which God creates the universe. This principle, in other words, governs contingent things, and also contingent truths (Monadology, par. 46; Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, par. 11). Leibniz found fault with Spinoza for having failed to give an account of contingent truths 47 ; in the passages discussed in the last paragraph he is saying 67

Cf. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, p. 91.

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that it was because Spinoza neglected the principle of fitness that he failed to give an adequate account, not only of contingency, but of justice as well. It remains to be asked how all this is to be related to freedom. One can perhaps sum up Leibniz's position by saying that, in his view, punishment as Spinoza conceives it does not apply to human beings as such. Spinoza treats man, as far as rewards and punishments are concerned, exactly like any other animal. But this, says Leibniz, is not the whole concept of punishment; punishment of the sort presupposed by retributive justice assumes that the wrongdoer is intelligent and free. (Cf. Remarks on King, par. 17, cited above). Intelligence is assumed in that the mind is, by such punishment, made to see its error. Freedom is assumed in that such justice implies moral condemnation when a man is punished, and moral approval when he is rewarded; and these are applicable only to voluntary agents, who can act in ways other than the ways in which they do act — agents who, as Leibniz would say, are 'inclined, but not necessitated'.