Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice (Philosophical Studies Series)

REAL ALTERNATIVES, LEIBNIZ'S METAPHYSICS OF CHOICE

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES VOLUME 74

Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer

Editor

Keith Lehrer, University ofArizona, Tucson

Associate Editor

Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe

Board of Consulting Editors

Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan Denise Meyerson, University of Cape Town Fran~ois Recanati, Ecole Poly technique, Paris

Stuart Silvers, Clemson University Nicholas D. Smith, Michigan State University

REAL ALTERNATIVES, LEIBNIZ'S METAPHYSICS OF CHOICE REGINALD OSBURN SAVAGE North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A.

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 0-7923-5057-X

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.

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This is my Mother's book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

IX

Introduction 1 Notes to introduction 16 Chapter One: Complete Concepts and Counterfactuals 20 I. Iintroduction 20 II. Complete Concepts: Purpose, Objections, and Replies 20 III. Complete Concepts and Counterfactuals 27 IV. Complete Concepts and Leibniz's Metaphysics of Substance 29 V. What Makes Accidents Essential? 33 VI. Counterfactual Semantics, Roughly Speaking 38 Notes to Chapter One 45 Chapter Two: Deliberation and Counterfactuals 50 I. Introduction 50 II. Choice and Deliberation 50 III. Counterfactual Identity and Creaturely Deliberation 54 IV. The Freedom of Creatures and God's Ideas 62 V. Private Miracles? 65 VI. Limited Privacy 72 Notes to Chapter Two 73 Chapter Three: Personal and Metaphysical Identity 78 I. Introduction One: Theological Background 78 II. Introduction Two: Counterfactual Identity and Indiscernibility 83 III. The Identity of Indiscernibles 84 IV. Personhoods and Identity 91 Notes to Chapter Three 96 Chapter Four: Compossibility and Creation 99 I. Introduction 99 II. Leibniz and Creatio ex Nihilo 103 III. An Alternative reading of Leibniz on Creatio ex Nihilo 108 IV. Potential Beings as Eternal Truths 111 V. The Dependence of Potential Beings on God's Mind 118 VI. Perception and Relative Creation 123 Notes to Chapter Four 127

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Chapter Five: Perceptual Incompossibility 132 I. Introduction 132 II. Moral Incompatibility 132 III. Perceptual Incompatibility 137 IV. Specific Perceptual Incompatibility 142 Notes to Chapter Five 147 Chapter Six: Infinite Analysis and Counterfactuals 149 I. Introduction 149 II. Hypothetical Necessity and the Principle of Sufficient Reason 150 III. Infinite Analysis And Counterfactual Truth 160 Notes to Chapter Six 172 Conclusion 175 Abbreviations 183 Bibliography 185

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A grant from the Ford Foundation supported a yearlong reasearch sabbatical at the University of Massachussets at Amherst during which I read a lot of philosophy and theology that otherwise I would not have read. While at Amherst I took advantage of the opportunity to discuss philosophy with a number of outstanding philosophers. Vere Chappell and Robert Sleigh were then and still are very special inspirations. I greatly admire the work of Margaret Wilson and have used her writings as a model of philosophical competence. Besides that, she has been extraordinarily supportive of my work and career. My graduate advisor William H. Hay taught me the importance of being tough, as tough as he was, by my lights he is the toughest of all. Margaret Wilson, Robert Sleigh, Catherine Wilson, David Blumenfeld, Richard Watson, Glenn Hartz, Alan Nelson, Benson Mates, and Jeffrey Tlumak commented on different parts of the book. Donald Rutherford commented on all of an early version of it. I thank Robert Hambourger, Chris Pierce, Dean Margaret Zahn, Nicholas Smith and Keith Lehrer for showing interest in my work and supporting it.

INTRODUCTION

Leibniz reports in his Theodicy that a number of Augustinian theologians, one among them dubbed the "torturer of infants,,,1 espoused the view that infants who have not actually sinned are nevertheless damned. [T 92; T 97] In rough outline, their reasoning for the view was as follows. Original sin suffices for damnation, and infants have no more nor no less a share in original sin than adults. Infants, therefore, are damnable and will be damned unless they repent, accept Christ, and merit salvation. However, infants die without having repented, accepted Christ, or accumulated merit sufficient to deserve salvation. Ergo, they are damned. Leibniz was not persuaded. He considered the opinion that infants are damned and the reasoning offered for it an embarrassment to Christianity generally and rejected it: 2 I believe that God always gives sufficient aid and grace to those who have good wiII, that is to say who do not reject this grace by a new sin. Thus I do not admit the damnation of children dying unbaptized or outside the church, or the damnation of adult persons who have acted according to the light that God has given them. And I believe that, if anyone has followed the light he had, he wiII undoubtedly receive thereof in greater measure as he has need ... [T p. 385]

Leibniz also offered that the Evangelicals spoke with "fair moderation" on the issue of the damnation of infants. [T 93] This is how they spoke: Original sin is forgiven infants, not in such a way as a total sickness is immediately healed, but it is forgiven them in such a way that they are not considered guilty of that sin, or as the ancients say, as long as we live in this flesh, the residue of the sickness remains but its guilt is destroyed. For children are received into grace and are sanctified by God .... For although they do not yet employ reason, nevertheless God impeIIs them in a way of their own. For neither does reason work Christian righteousness in old men, but God inspires them with true fear and reveals sin to those whom he has caIIed into repentance and through faith arouses them again and justifies them. The Holy Spirit brought it about that John, though not yet born, felt the precense of Christ. In such a manner other elect infants also can be sanctified by the Holy Spirit without the aid of reason. 3

Evangelicals confessed that original sin is not a sufficient c,?ndition for damnation, but must be complemented by moral evil or the evil of guilt which presupposes a misuse of reason and freewill, both of which infants lack. [T 265 - 266; T 65; T 273; CD 36;T 288] By misusing reason, men come to misunderstand and hate

1 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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INTRODUCTION

God and the hate of God is the essence of damnation. 4 Infants cannot misuse a reason they do not possess. They therefore cannot form an opinion of God that would cause them to hate him. Hence the opinion that infants are damned is absurd. It is fairly obvious that Leibniz intended his discussion of the question of the damnation of infants in his Theodicy to put Roman Catholicism on the defensive if not on the ropes. It might seem that no matter what else is deemed right about Roman Catholicism, its teachings on God's punishment of children - as Leibniz represented those teachings - proves that its fundamental doctrine of salvation by works is unreasonable. A doctrine is unreasonable if it entails unreasonable consequences, for example, the damnation of innocent infants or their necessary exclusion from the bliss of beatific vision. It is no less unreasonable, Leibniz suggested, that God punish in a gentle way infants who do not hate him and have intended no evil by placing them in an endlessly boring "Limbo" rather than incinerating them eternally. [T 92] Pressing his agenda, Leibniz observed that even with this option available: Many prelates and theologians of France ... [who] join with St. Augustine seem to incline towards the opinion of this great doctor, who condemns to eternal flames children that die in the age of innocence before having received baptism ... But it must be confessed that this opinion has not sufficient foundation either in reason or in Scripture, and that it is outrageously harsh. [T 93]

The afterlife of infants was part of a more general problematic that Leibniz has a critic pose in his Confessio: [W]hat is the source of that partition of souls, in virtue of which some are aflame with the love of God, while others are driven to a hatred that is fatal to them? What is this point of separation, and, if I may put it in this way, center of divergence, given that often it is believable on the basis of external appearances that those to be damned are so similar to those to be blessed that it is not uncommon for us to take one for the other[?} [CP 86-87]

In the above passage, Leibniz's critic points up the main difficulty for Chrisitian theologians who do not subscribe to Origen's heretical theory of salvation. God saves some men and permits the damnation of others even though there appears to be little difference between them. The Roman Catholics confessed that the appearance is false. They maintained that the self-initiated performance of good works engenders differences of worth between men that God, at least, is able to discern. Given that God in fact saves some men and damns others, these differences are evidently sufficient to justify God's salvation of some men but not others. The Evangelicals rejected this solution to the difficulty. In the following passage, Leibniz states the rationale behind the rejection:

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1 have expounded sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation unregenerate man is to be considered as dead, and 1 greatly approve the manner wherein the theologians of the Augsburg Confession declare themselves on this subject. [T 170]

The position Leibniz takes in the above passages conforms to German Lutheran orthodoxy, as did most of his theological views. That orthodoxy is formulated in the writings comprised in The Book of Concord. We read in Article XVIII of one of those writings, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession: Our churches teach that man's will has some liberty for the attainment of civil righteousness and for the choice of things subject to reason. However, it does not have that power, without the Holy Spirit, to attain the righteousness of God - that is, spiritual righteousness - because natural man does not perceive the gifts of the Spirit of God (I Cor. 2:14); but this righteousness is wrought in the heart when the Holy Spirit is received through the Word. s

The theologians of the Augsburg Confession declared themselves on the subject of unregenerate man's relation to matters of salvation as Leibniz did. Man, according to those theologians, is thoroughly corrupted by original sin and unable, on his own, to convert himself to God, even though God is perfectly loving and trustworthy.6 Conversion, they held, is nonetheless necessary for salvation and is accomplished only by a gift of good will or grace 7 which God dispenses absolutely freely. The theologians of the Augsburg Confession asseverated, and Leibniz affirmed them, that man cooperates in matters of salvation only with his resistance. s Leibniz stated that his study of the "opponents" of the theologians of the Augsburg Confession did not "disturb" him but served to strengthen him in their "moderate opinions.,,9 His theodicy, as I understand it, is an attempt to interpret, uphold, promulgate, and provide a philosophical foundation for these moderate opinions, especially as they pertain to original sin and justification. It is not a "modem response to the ancient problem of evil"JQ as Epicurus, to cite Rutherford's example, represented that problem. I I Epicurus's philosophical/theological problem of evil did not involve original sin or a God who elects a few souls for salvation and allows the remainder to be eternally damned and "tormented by the devil." Leibniz's and Evangelicalism's problem of evil is a hybrid of the philosophical/theological problem of the "origin of evil" and the Christian problems of "original sin, of grace, and of predestination." [T p. 59] It concerns especially the issue of divine justice, that is, the reasonableness of God's distribution of "blessings and afflictions" among spirits. [T p. 403] It is a problem of philosophical/Christian theology. Leibniz frames this problem as follows: The original corruption of the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to have imposed a natural necessity to sin without the succor of divine grace: but necessity being incompatible with punishment, it will be inferred that a sufficient grace ought to have been given to all men; which does not appear to be in conformity with experience.

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INTRODUCTION

But the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to God's dispositions for the salvation of men. There are few saved or chosen; therefore the choice of many is not God's decreed will. And since it is admitted that those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest, and are not even fundamentally less evil, the goodness they have coming only from the gift of God, the difficulty is increased. Where is, then, his justice (people will say), or at the least, where is his goodness? Partiality, or respect of persons, goes against justice, and he who without cause sets bounds to his goodness cannot have it in sufficient measure. [T p. 59-60; Cf. T 5] 12

According to Leibniz, the Theodicy, even though it addresses problems of revealed theology, was written from the point of view of natural theology, [T p. 98] and he thought that the difficulties concecerning revealed theology that he raises in the above passage could be resolved, if not dissolved, using natural reason. That thought, he recognized was highly controversial in his day, [T p. 73 ff.] and the Calvinistlfideist Pierre Bayle, Leibniz's main foil in his Theodicy, controverted it. Bayle and the Calvinists confessed with the Evangelicals that souls are predestined to salvation. However, they rejected the Evangelicals' doctrine that predestination is reasonable in the sense of its being grounded in the qualities of created things. They denied, in particular, that God's election of souls is determined by his knowledge or counterfactual knowledge of spiritual creatures' responses to his offers of saving grace. The Evangelicals maintained that God has knowledge that a soul would not respond to an offer of grace with a "lively faith" even if he never makes the offer and that he decides to not make the offer based on that counterfactual knowledge. Evangelical theologians argued that if there is no such basis for God's non-election of souls God's election of souls would be absurd.l3 The basis of God's actions, according to the Evangelicals, is a will determined by moral principles and knowledge, including counterfactual knowledge, that is, a good will. The Calvinists, on the other hand, distancing themselves further from the Pelagian alternative, confessesd that God elected souls for salvation before the foundation of the world. For the Calvinist, the nature of the world and its rational creatures does not in any way "cause" or explain their election or nonelection. God does not base his election of souls, according to the Calvinist, on his knowledge that they will accept his offer of grace with a lively faith, nor does he abandon souls on the basis of counterfactual knowledge that they would reject his offer of grace. The gist of Bayle's polemic, as I understand it, is that the Evangelicals and other liberal protestants should not reject the Calvinist's "nonfoundational" theory of predestination on the grounds that according to it God's election of souls is absurd. The liberal protestants, according to Bayle, in allowing that God permitted the fall of man from grace themselves embraced an absurd doctrine of election. If there had been no fall there would be no need for election. But, surely, man's fall

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from grace makes no sense. According to reason an absolutely perfect being cannot be malicious. Yet reason must conclude that God is malicious if he placed his human creatures in circumstances wherein he foresaw that Satan, for whom they were no match, would dominate and humiliate them. His malice, according to reason, is heightened by the fact that he refused to rescue them and then punished not only them, but their posterity as well, for their incompetence and deprived them of any power whatsoever to redeem themselves. It is absurd that the natures of things that a perfect God created be a basis for their fall and for his treatment of them. It is also absurd that the first parents be responsible for their actions that are consequences of their natures. The first parents should be responsible only for their choices and they did not choose their natures. It is unreasonable that God should hold them accountable for a mistake that was due to what they were, namely, humans. It is human to err. However, if one allows that God's permission of the fall has no basis in nature and reason, but is, indeed, contrary to both, it cannot be necessary that his election of souls be based on reason. If no sense can be made of the fall its senselessness infects whatever is consequent upon it. Bayle considered the Calvinists' absurd account of election preferable to that of the Evangelicals (even if it too is absurd) because, although it dispenses with God's moral rationality, it preserves his power, whereas Evangelicalism, perhaps unwittingly, dispenses with both. For Bayle, it was no big loss to lose reason but it was to lose power. Following Tertullian, he proclaimed that the very absurdity of God was the basis of his faith. [T p. 101] For Bayle, the successfully demonstrated objections brought against faith by reason do not undercut it, but underscore the worthlessness, depravity, and perniciousness of human reason. [T p.99100] The fact that reason can prove that truths of faith are false is symptomatic of original sin. Before the fall reason was an image of God. After the fall, reason is an image of Satan, or some other evil principle, and corrupt. [T 61-62 p. 107] 14 If reason, as we know it, is on the side of the Roman Catholic Pope and Arminius that only goes to show that they, too, are images and agents of Satan. Leibniz's stated aim in the Theodicy is to show that the purported demonstrations of the objections raised by Bayle - at least as they are directed against those of the Augsburg Confession - cannot be reasonable but are either formally or materially tainted and motivated by false appearances. [T 25 p. 89] Leibniz insisted that both faith and reason are gifts of God; that if reason is set against faith, this means, per impossible, that God is set against God. [T 39 p. 96] He thus answers Bayle that if reason in fact shows that a purported precept of faith is false, then that precept is surely counterfeit, dangerous, and ought to be repudiated. [T 65 p. 110; T 41 p. 97] Leibniz responded coolly to Bayle and others of his ilk:

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INTRODUCTION

There are diverse persons who speak much of piety, of religion, who are even busied with the teaching of such things, and who yet prove to be by no means versed in the divine perfections. They ill understand the goodness and the justice of the Sovereign of the universe; they imagine a God who deserves neither to be imitated nor to be loved .. .! have observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny. [T p. 53] Our end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent God to them as an absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and unworthy of being loved. [T 6]

Leibniz sought to "banish from men" false and derogatory ideas of God, not by discrediting reason as Bayle did, but by employing reason to clarify their confused notions of freedom, necessity and destiny which he believed foster them. 15 Among the more dangerous - and also perhaps the most fundamental - of these confused notions, by Leibniz's lights, is that God is free only if he acts without being determined by anything, including rational motives. 16 Nothing determines a free agent to behave as he does, Bayle maintained, because the determination, contra hypothesis, would usurp his control of his actions. 17 For Bayle, determination and necessitation are not different. He concluded that God's freedom is an absolutely unlimited, unconditioned autonomy. Such an autonomy, Bayle acknowledged, is contrary to human reason, more particularly, to the principle of sufficient reason. So much the worse for the principle of sufficient reason, Bayle thought, as the alternative was deplorable. According to Bayle, it follows from the assumption that principles of goodness determine God's actions that: There is therefore no freedom in God; he is compelled by his wisdom to create, and then to create precisely such a work, and then to create it precisely in such ways. These are three servitudes, which form a more than Stoic fatum, and which render impossible all that is not within their sphere. It seems that, according to this system, God could have said, even before shaping his decrees: I cannot save such and such a man, nor condemn such and such another, quippe vetor fatis, my wisdom permits it not. [T 227] 18

Bayle considered a will determined by anything other than its associated power a weak and subservient will. He was among those philosopher/theologians who viewed God, as Leibniz stated it, "metaphysically" rather than among those who viewed him "morally." [T 77] Leibniz thought that the members of both these parties were prone to excesses that left God powerful but not good or good but not powerful: Theologians of excessive rigor have taken into account [God's] greatness at the expense of his goodness, while those of of greater laxity have done the opposite. True orthodoxy would consist in paying equal respect to both perfections. One may designate as anthropomorphism the error of those who neglect his greatness, and as depotism the error of those who disregard his goodness. [CD 2; Cf. T 135]

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Leibniz diagnosed Bayle as being inclined to disregard God's goodness, if "goodness" is understood as a tendency to submit to moral rules. He agreed with Bayle and the despotists that God's power is prior to his other attributes, [T 150] but he also insisted that it was compatible with them. Indeed, Leibniz's main disagreement with Bayle was over the issue of whether God's goodness and wisdom could determine his power without rendering God less than omnipotent. He did not believe, as Bayle did, that the hypothesis that moral rules determine God's will leads ultimately to a repudiation or refutation of the Protestant doctrine of free election. Leibniz surmised that Bayle's and the despotists' views that God's freedom is a freedom of equipoise, and that any form of determination is tantamount to a slavish necessitation were due to misconceptions of freedom, determinism, and destiny. He argued that if there is no such determination, God would be, though not the weakling God of the moralists, a despotic GOd. 19 That is why his project to banish the idea that God is a despot consisted in his clarifying ideas of freedom, necessity, and destiny. His familiar clarifications were these. A free action is an action that involves deliberation and spontaneity and the opposite of a free action is possible even though free actions are determined. [T 291] A necessary action, if there is any such thing for Leibniz, on the other hand, is one whose opposite is impossible, inconceivable, or involves a contradiction. [T 288fo Freedom, Leibniz held, is opposed not to determination but to absolute necessitation. Leibniz agreed with the moralists that a free agent is one who is predisposed to being determined to act by good reasons: The decrees of God are always free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be bound by the consideration of good is to be free; it is not compulsion in the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone, as I have observed so many times, is opposed to freedom. [T 236; cf. T 387]

Leibniz acknowledged that there is a freedom of indifference, but only in the sense of an agent's not being necessitated to one course or the other. [T p. 61, T 46] He agreed with Bayle that God is perfectly spontaneous, but denied that this entails that he is not determined: God is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him offence. It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the best things in the world, and turns our ideas upsidedown, applying the term slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom. [T 228; Cf. T 369; T 36; T 37]

In this response to Bayle, Leibniz assures his reader that God's actions, even though they are determined, are spontaneous or self-determined. The representa-

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INTRODUCTION

tions of good that prompt God to create what he does, and as he creates it, are not distinct from him. Rather, they are his ideas. They constitute his understanding. 21 According to Leibniz the best of reasons determined God to create the world as he did, allowing for sin and the consequential "problematic" salvation and damnation of spirits. Leibniz argued that that does not mean God knew of no reasons at all to create the world otherwise. If it did, God could not deliberate concerning whether to create the world as he did and his act of creation would be slavish. Free actions require deliberation, and deliberation involves, according to Leibniz, reflection upon reasons or arguments both for and against a proposed course of action. 22 Leibniz maintained that under the assumption that God has decided to create something rather than nothing, the creation of the actual world would be necessary if the actual world were the only possible world God could create. 23 As a consequence, God's creation of the world could not be free: "There would be neither choice nor liberty, if there were only one course possible." [T 235; CD 21] If there were only one course available, even if God's creative act were spontaneous, it could not be deliberate. God would have no reason or cause not to create the world he created, and such competing reasons or causes are the basis of deliberation. The actual world would therefore, like God, exist simply in virtue of its being possible. [T p. 395; C 5301L 169]24 Leibniz's compatibilism, with respect to divine actions, is an attempted reconciliation of the ideas that God is omnipotent, that he deliberates concerning how he will act, and that there is a determinate reason for each of his actions. Leibniz invokes his fundamental hypothesis that there are nonactual, purely possible worlds, that is worlds that will never exist, to achieve this reconciliation. [G VII 390-391; T 273; T 123; T 288; T 302] Possible worlds compete for existence, and furnish God with options to deliberate upon. All possible worlds make claims for existence that are accompanied by reasons why God should create them. The best possible world complements its demand for existence with the greatest reasons for God to create it. The reasons for creating inferior possible worlds "seriously and strongly" inclined God to create them, [T 281] but the best possible world inclined him more. More importantly, the world that inclined God the most is a world wherein salvation does not depend on merit or good works and wherein God cooperates in morally and physically evil actions, even the greatest of physical evils, namely, the eternal damnation of souls. Bayle argued that if this were so the cooperation was unreasonable because, according to the Evangelicals, God places souls in circumstances that make them reject God's saving grace, and in which they cannot act otherwise than to reject it. [T 233] The theologians of the Augsburg Confession, however, rejected Bayle's

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premise that men cannot act otherwise than they actually behave. They rejected and condemned: The mad dream of the so-called Stoic philosophers and of Manichaeans who taught that whatever happens must so happen and could not happen otherwise, that man always acts only under compulsion, even in his external acts, and that he commits evil deeds and acts like fornication, robbery, murder, theft, and similar sins under compulsion. 25

These remarks are from the pen of Melanchthon whom Leibniz praised as a "man of sound and moderate ideas." [T p. 81] Melanchthon also was the principal theologian of the Augsburg Confession to which Leibniz, who admitted that he had been "charmed" by the writings of Luther against Erasmus, [T p. 67] subscribed26 • Leibniz no doubt recognized that his fellow confessors, and, indeed, most readers with good sense, would dismiss summarily and with ridicule any theory of freedom that ruled out the possibility of conceiving of actual individuals behaving otherwise as heretical, blasphemous, and dangerous. Leibniz sought, in the Theodicy, to vindicate the Evangelicals' theory of election. For this reason the Theodicy would be a poor choice of venue for Leibniz to deny that God can conceive of individuals behaving otherwise than they actually behave. The denial would pave a short and virtually frictionless path to the suspicion that the God of the Evangelicals is, in fact, an unthinking, unjust, and unlovable despot. Surely, a God who punishes and rewards individuals whom he nor they can conceive of acting otherwise is no better than an "absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and unworthy of being loved." [T 6]27 Yet, Leibniz, in keeping with his Evangelicalism, held that God rewards good and punishes evil. [Grua 373; Grua 174; G II 57ILA 64] Indeed, he stated that reward and punishment are "essential" in God's republic, [DM 36] and that an evil action must bring upon itself chastisement. [T 74] Furthermore: God has established in the universe a connection between punishment or reward and bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things which contains still another kind of preestablished harmony than that which appears in the communication between the soul and body. [T 74]

In his 'New System' Leibniz states that the "mechanical revolutions of matter" are "arranged for the felicity of the good and the punishment of the wicked." [MP 118] Thus God wills physical evil as a punishment for the guilt of moral evil which he permits. [T 119; T 23; T 155] Leibniz also held, however, that praise, blame, rewards, and punishments cannot attach to necessary actions, [T 57] and that there can be no obligation to do what is impossible (= inconceivable). [T 57] By almost anyone's standards, including, I think, Leibniz's, a god who rewards those who do good yet cannot con-

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INTRODUCTION

ceivably behave otherwise is capricious; and a god who punishes those who do evil yet cannot do otherwise is a capricious and unjust despot. 28 Yet, Leibniz repeatedly stated that God is wise and good, not a capricious and unjust despot. Punishing Judas for betraying Christ is morally justified only if Judas can conceive himself behaving otherwise than he actually behaves. God is morally justified in having Judas "receive the wages" of his deeds, [T 30] only if Judas fails to do what he should have done. Judas should have done only what he could have considered himself doing and decided not to do after meaningful deliberation. 29 According to Leibniz, when rational beings make a choice, they do so upon the basis of a comparison of representations of goods and evils. [T 19 p. 425] They make a judgment regarding which representation is best and they choose what appears best to them. Moral evil, Leibniz stated, consists in making the wrong choice for the wrong reasons [T p. 416]30 for which "the harmony of things demands a satisfaction." [T p. 423] Did Leibniz also propose that the representation of a better choice that one spurns when committing a moral evil involves a contradiction? Did he hold that one cannot consistently suppose nor think of one's self doing what is morally good before one does what is morally evil? I have found no explicit affirmative answers to these questions in Leibniz's writings, and there is reason to think that a continued search for affirmative answers would be futile. It would be "hard," Leibniz maintains, to punish those "for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from doing." [T 95] He also denied that even God has the power to do what involves a contradiction, and he stated that only those things that we are able to do if we wish are in our power. [Grua 181] Clearly, if one enjoys the power to prevent oneself from acting as one does, one has the power to act otherwise than one acts, and if one has the power to act otherwise it is consistently conceivable that one act otherwise. Perhaps with thoughts such as these in mind, Broad writes: [For Leibniz] a truth is contingent if and only if there are real alternatives [my emphasis] to it which, though in fact false, are logically possible because internally consistent. Thus, e.g. it is a contingent singular truth that Julius Caesar decided to cross the Rubicon on a certain occasion. 31

And Blumenfeld offers that: [W]hen discussing the sense of contingency involved in freedom ... [it is] Leibniz's considered opinion [that] a free act is such that the agent could have done otherwise. 32

Broad and Blumenfeld are quite atypical, however. Leibniz's commentators are widely agreed that Leibniz denied, or should have denied, that God coherently considers giving to individuals properties other than their actual properties. And

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this is supposed to be because God cannot conceive consistently of them being otherwise. According to Parkinson: It seems evident, on the face of it, that one and the same Adam could have done many things that he did not do. He could, for example, have rejected the apple proffered by Eve; he could have had a different progeny, and so on. In considering these possibilities it seems obvious that one is referring to the same individual; or, putting the point in terms of possible worlds, one is talking about an individual who preserves his identity over a number of possible worlds ... Leibniz, however, would reject such a view ... [according to] Leibniz, we are not to think of one and the same individual as a member of a number of possible worlds. 33

Many others share Parkinson's assessments. Adams writes: Leibniz made it clear that he did not accept [the] assumption of counterfactual identity. He held that no actual individual creature would have existed if anything at all had gone differently from the way things go in the actual world - that if Arnauld, for example, had married he would not have been Arnauld. 34

And Mondadori: The interesting sense of contingency ... and the sense it cannot have within the framework of Leibniz's theory of complete concepts is that in which we say that a given individual should have existed without possessing a property he in fact possesses?5 [A]lthough Leibniz often makes claims which seem to imply that actual objects could have had other properties than they happen to have, he is not entitled to such claims?6

Commentators travel a number of routes to the conclusion that Leibnizian individuals cannot really, or in an "interesting" way, behave otherwise. Here are what seem to me to be the main and most traveled ones: (1) Leibniz held that a singular proposition is true if and only if the complete concept of its subject contains the concept of its predicate. This entails that true singular propositions are analytically true and that their denials are analytically false. It follows trivially that God has no consistent conceptions of actual individuals being otherwise and that these individuals exist only in the actual world. Since God cannot create what he cannot conceive, he cannot create actual individuals being otherwise than they actually are. (2) Leibniz stated that his criterion of truth implies his principle of the identity of indiscemibles. He also admitted that the principle entails that if a person were to have any properties other than its actual properties it would be a different person. It would be absurd to suppose that an individual could be a person other than the person that it actually is. Therefore there are no conceptions of Leibnizian individuals having any properties other than their actual properties.

12

INTRODUCTION

(3) According to Leibniz all perfections are compatible and all compatible perfections exist. Therefore there are no perfections that are not realized in the actual world. It follows that there are no nonexistent possibles, since a possible is just that which possesses perfections. Therefore there are no "ways otherwise" for God to create. (4) Leibniz propounded an infinite analysis account of contingency. According to this account a proposition is contingent if it cannot be reduced in a finite number of steps to an explicit identity or an explicit contradiction. The infinite analysis account appears to not involve the assumption of counterfactual identity. It appears therefore that Leibniz supposed that contingency does not involve counterfactual identity. Exponents of the thesis that Leibniz rejected the commonsense belief that God could have created actual things otherwise than he actually created them have not, to my knowledge, adduced any texts wherein Leibniz explicitly rejects it. Granted, there are texts that with ingenuity one may construe as evidence that he made the rejection. However, Leibniz also often makes statements, as Mondadori says he does, that one may without ingenuity construe as presupposing the possibility of God's creating things otherwise. In the Theodicy, for example, God is said by Leibniz to conceive consistently of Spinoza dying at Leyden and to conceive consistently of the very same Spinoza dying at the Hague. [T 173] He decides to create a world wherein Spinoza dies at the Hague, because it strikes him, all things considered, as the most fitting place for Spinoza to die. According to Leibniz, in the Theodicy, it was within God's power to have created a world wherein Spinoza dies at Leyden. He did not because his aim in creating a world was to communicate, to the greatest extent possible, his goodness. This aim could be accomplished only by creating the best of possible worlds, and the best possible world is a world wherein Spinoza dies at the Hague. God's goodness determined him to use his power to do what is best, that is, to create a world wherein Spinoza dies at the Hague, rather than to do anything less than the best, for example, to create a world wherein Spinoza dies at Leyden. However, Leibniz denied that this determination entails that the actual world exists absolutely necessarily or that it exists absolutely necessarily as it is rather than otherwise.

REAL ALTERNATIVES

13

******* In this book I examine arguments marshaled in support of the view that Leibniz denied or should have denied that God can conceive of individuals behaving otherwise and refute them. In my view, counterfactual identity of individuals and Mondadori's "interesting sense" of contingency are essential ingredients in Leibniz's metaphysics of choice. Their incorporation into his metaphysics, so far as I can determine, does not render that metaphysics incoherent. I find nothing to recommend Mondadori's pronouncement that Leibniz is not "entitled" to make the incorporation. Leibniz construed possible worlds as testing grounds for the separability of individuals from their actual properties and their being embued with other properties. For Leibniz, if there are no possible worlds wherein an individual does not possess a given property it is inseparable from that property, and that property belongs to it necessarily. On the other hand, according to Leibniz, if there are possible worlds wherein an individual possesses a property and others wherein it does not, the individual is separable from that property and the property belongs to it contingently.37 The keystone of my interpretation of Leibniz's treatment of counterfactuals is the proposition that an actualized Leibnizian individual is just one among infinitely many possible completions of that individual. 38 According to how I read Leibniz, a concept of an individual is a kind of function. 39 As numeric arguments complete numeric functions, concepts of laws, information about other individual subjects, and concepts of divine free decrees complete subject-functions. Completed "individual functions" are complete individual concepts. I maintain that Leibniz accounted for the truth of counterfactual propositions and the possibility that God knows them by stipulating that God completely, and consistently, conceives of individuals in many ways other than how they actually are. 40 Thus, for Leibniz, God cannot derive the proposition that Judas is a saved man by conceiving completely of Judas as he actually created him. Nevertheless God does derive that proposition from some counterfactual complete conception that he has of Judas, albeit, a complete concept that is comprised in an inferior possible sequence of things. In this way, Leibniz managed to remain faithful, in an unforced and uncontrived way, to his general doctrine of truth in formulating an account of counterfactual truth that is the bedrock of his metaphysics of choice. A counterfactual is true, for Leibniz, just in case some complete concept of its subject contains the concept of its predicate, and there are counterfactual identities of individuals because they have many complete concepts.

14

INTRODUCTION

I rely without unusual reservation on Leibniz's Theodicy and other of his exoteric works for textual evidence. With Sleigh, I find groundless the insinuation that Leibniz was insincere in his exoteric writings and presented his true beliefs in his esoteric writings.41 There are others who think differently. After alleging that Leibniz's "lack of candor in the Theodicy is evident,,,42 Adams cites this passage: Metaphysics should be written with accurate definitions and demonstrations, but nothing should be written in it that conflicts too much with received opinions. For thus this metaphysics will be able to be received. If it is once approved, then afterwards, if any examine it more profoundly, they will draw the necessary consequences themselves. [A 6 3 573]

With this "textual evidence" in hand Adams comments: One of the difficulties in the Theodicy, however, is that so many of Leibniz's "accurate definitions" are omitted that one must turn to other works to find the material necessary for a more profound examination 43

In his Nicomachaean Ethics, Aristotle remarks on Plato's distinction between working towards and working from first principles. 44 Philosophers of Leibniz's day made roughly the same distinction in terms of proceeding "analytically" or "synthetically." Proceeding synthetically, one sets down one's definitions, axioms, postulates, etc. reflects on them and deduces from them theorems. Proceeding analytically one begins with a problem, reflects on data relaevant to the problem and reduces the problem to principles. Descartes discusses these two approaches in his Second Set of Replies: [Synthesis) is not as satisfying as the method of analysis nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered ... (analysis) is the best and truest method of instruction, and it is this method alone that I used in my Meditations. [CSM II Ill] In metaphysics ... there is nothing which causes so much effort as making our perception of the primary notions clear and distinct. Admittedly they are by their nature as evident as, or more even more evident than, the primary notions which geometers study; but they conflict with preconceived opinions derived from the senses which we have gotten into the habit of holding from our earliest years, and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdraw their minds from corporeal things, so far as possible, will achieve perfect knowledge of them. Indeed, if they were put forward in isolation, they could easily be denied by those who like to contradict just for the sake of it...For the very fact that someone braces himself to attack the truth makes him less suited to perceive it, since he will be withdrawing his consideration from the convincing arguments which support the truth in order to find counterarguments to it. [CSM II 111-112]

Descartes's remarks may help to illuminate Leibniz's caveat that "Metaphysics should be written with accurate definitions and demonstrations, but nothing should be written in it that conflicts too much with received opinions." The "received opinion" that Leibniz mentions as a reason why not to present one's metaphysics in

REAL ALTERNATIVES

15

a synthetic format echoes Descartes's "preconceived opinions." Leibniz does not withhold his definitions and principles from the Theodicy. Rather, in order to have those who are "braced for attacking the truth" let down their guards, he does not proceed synthetically and without tact. By my lights, Leibniz's "truth" is more fully and clearly propounded in his Theodicy than in any of his other works. One does not need "to turn to other works" than the Theodicy "to find the material necessary for a more profound examination." One needs merely to pay close and unbiased attention to the extraordinarily profound and penetrating arguments of the Theodicy, and one should find that they are guided by the principles and definitions that are found in other of Leibniz's works and do not conflict with them. I say this even acknowledging my familiarity with these remarks by Leibniz: It may occur, however, that in a matter of small moment a wise man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may disconcert those who watch his steps. It is even well at times to imitate Brutus by concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as David did before the King of the Philistines. [T 315]45

Leibniz here sanctions deliberately deceiving one's adversaries in order to defeat their purposes or to achieve one's own. Leibniz is clearly writing against opponents in the Theodicy and it is not unreasonable to presume that he follows his own advice in small matters therein. In my judgment, the question of whether God conceives consistently actual individuals behaving otherwise than they actually behave is no small matter. Those who disagree, and see Leibniz instead as surreptitiously rejecting the idea that God conceives of actual individuals behaving in ways otherwise before he creates them, should heed these remarks by Rutherford: The details of Leibniz's metaphysics are sufficiently difficult, and in many cases sufficiently obscure, that it is easy to lose track of the central thread of his thou gilt - the basic idea that motivates his metaphysical inquiries and justifies us in regarding them as offering answers to some of philosophy's deepest perennial concerns. For this we must see Leibniz's metaphysics as an intellectual project guided by a moral vision. 46

Leibniz stated that his principal goal was to discover the truth, [G III 62] not to realize a moral vision, and my sense is that Leibniz saw himself guided ultimately by faith or revealed truth rather than by intellect. 47 Still, his theodicy is guided at least proximately by the desideratum to prove that the central doctrines of Evangelicalism as set forth in the Augsburg Confession are consistent with a reasonable morality. Any reasonable moral theory ought to provide a means to model propositions concerning how individuals capable of making choices should behave even if they do not so behave. If Leibniz's theodicy involves a "moral vision," his dispensing with what Broad called "real alternatives" would amount to donning a

16

INTRODUCTION

theodicean blindfold. And, if a reading of Leibniz leads to the conclusion that he so impaired himself, a re-thinking of the interpretation is called for. I answer that call in this book.

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 1 Gregory

ofRimini. argued that a world containing damned innocents is absurd. [Grua 300] 3 Melanchthon, Selections: liS 4 To the question of what the reason for the damnation of Judas is, Leibniz's spokesman in his Confessio responds: "I believe that it is the state of the dying man. Namely his burning hatred of God in which state he died and in which consists the nature of despair. Moreover, this suffices for damnation. For since, at the moment of death, the soul is not open to new external sensations until its body is restored to it, it concentrates its attention only on its last thoughts, so that it does not change, but rather augments the condition it was in at death. But from this hatred of God, that is, of the most happy being, the greatest sadness follows, for to hate is to be sad concerning the happiness of the one hated ... and therefore the greatest sadness arises in the case of the hatred of the greatest hapiness. The greatest sadness is misery, or damnation. Hence, the one who dies hating God damns himself." [CP 36 - 37] 5 Augsburg Confession: p. 39. 6 "Original sin is the complete lack or absence of the original concreated righteousness of paradise or of the image of God according to which man was originally created ... Original sin in human nature is not only a total lack of good in spiritual divine things, but at the same time it replaces the lost image of God in man with a deep, wicked, abominable, bottomless inscrutable, and inexpressible corruption of his entire nature in all its powers, especially of the highest and foremost powers of the soul in mind heart and will." Formula of Concord: 510. 7 DSR 31: "The grace of God consists in the gift of will; for happiness is in the power of a person who has good will." In the notes to his introduction to DSR Parkinson comments on this statement by Leibniz: "Leibniz does not say that God's grace consists in endowing us with a good will He seems to mean that God endows us with a will- a will that is free." DSR 125 - 126 n. 138. This is not what Leibniz seems to me to mean. In numerous texts, Leibniz states that the will naturally inclines towards good, and in the Theodicy he states that a rational creature will pursue an evil thing only if it is "masked" by good. [T 154] Furthermore, in the Theodicy he states that the essence of the will is an effort to pursue a thing in proportion to the good that it is perceived to contain. [T 22] I do not maintain here that Leibniz's understanding of what will is in the Theodicy should be used without reservation to interpret earlier statements that he makes about the will. At any rate, a free will according to Leibniz, is a will that is determined by the good or apparent good, indeed, by the best or what appears best. In so far as a will is determined by something other than what is good it is not free. xTp.69. ~ T p. 97. Among the principal opponents of the Churches of the Augsburg Confession were the papists or "New Pelagians," the renegade followers of Zwingli, and Calvinists of "excessive rigor" such as Bayle. 10 Rutherford, Leibniz: 9. 11 "God either wishes to take away evils and is unable; or he is able, and is unwilling, or he is neither willing nor able; or he is both willing and able. If he is willing and unable, he is feeble, which does not agree with the character of God; if he is able and unwilling, he is malicious, which is equally at odds with God; if he is neither willing nor able, he is both malicious and feeble and therefore not God; if he is both willing and able, which is alone suitable to God, from what source come evils? Or 2 Leibniz

REAL ALTERNATIVES

17

why does he not remove them?" This passage is cited from Rutherford's Leibniz: 9. Rutherford's source was Lactantius's, De ira dei 13: 20-21. 12 Cf.: "[O]ne must return to the same conclusion that God is the final reason of faith and of election in Jesus Christ. And be the election the cause or the results of God's design to give faith, it still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he pleases, without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon but few men ... So it is a terrible judgement that God, giving his only Son for the whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of men, yet saves so few of them and abandons the rest of them to the devil his enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their creator, though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness, his justice, and his other perfections. And this outcome inspires all the more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all eternity is God's having exposed them to a temptation that he knew they could not resist. .. " [T p. 126] 13 Leibniz propounds his understanding of the Evangelical theory of election at CD 126-121. 14 Bayle states that there are ideas implanted in us by "a general providence or nature" that are contrary to religion, that is, opposed to God. [Selections: 18] Leibniz held, against Bayle, that reason can never deceive us since it is nothing other than a "linking together of truths." [T p. 110; T p. 109] Leibniz distinguished between this "right reason" and "corrupt reason" which is "mixed with prejudices and passions." [T p. 107] Right reason cannot lodge irrefutable objections against faith, [T p. 10 I] is at the service of faith, [T I] and is the ground of all revealed faith [N 497] or Christianity. [T p. 102] Bayle was skeptical regarding all of this, holding that it is difficult to grant faith and reason their respective rights, [Selections: 29] and that one cannot prove that faith conforms to reason. [Selections: 31] 15 T 367: "Indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in terms, and from one's failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas about them. That gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken, contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the impossible. But provided that it is understood that necessity and possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend only upon this question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that contingency is consistent with the inclinations ... " 16 Among the dangerous consequences of this view is that God is unloveable and despotic. But by far the most dangerous consequence is that, in so far as it involves a rejection of the principle of sufficient reason, it takes away the possibility of proving God's existence. [T 44] However, if that were to happen, according to Leibniz, the principle of contradiction would go with it since he states that the principle of sufficient reason is a consequence of the principle of contradiction. [See Leibniz's 'On the Unitarian Metaphysics of Christoph Stegmann,' in the Appendix to Jolly, Leibniz & Locke: 196] 17 This view is obviously self-serving. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, as Bayle interpreted it, requires that God be indifferent to anything other than his will or essence. 18 Leibniz associated this doctrine of freedom with Descartes. [T p. 111-112; T 365] 19 According to Leibniz, a despot is a person who does not intend the good by his actions. [T 166] 20 Leibniz focuses in the Theodicy on Spinoza and Hobbes as examples of absolute necessitarians: "I have not neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes and Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in his Physical Elements and elsewhere, but also in a special book against Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the first cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with a complete absence for capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding in the first source of things." [T p. 67] In the order I have mentioned them, he says of their views: "It is therefore the doctrine of blind power (Spinoza) or arbitrary power that destroys piety. The one

18

INTRODUCTION

destroys the intelligent principle of the providence of God; the other attributes to him characteristics that are appropriate to the evil principle." [T 403] 21 T p. 427: "Even though an active substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not moved by objects: for it is the representation of the object within it which contributes towards the determination. Now the representation does not come from without, and consequently there is complete spontanaiety." [Cf. T 428] 22 C 498: "Deliberation is a consideration of contrary arguments concerning practical good and evil." 23 Leibniz cites as reasons that God would have for creating nothing that it would be simpler and easier than creating something. [L 639; L 487] 24 Leibniz maintained that only God's essence involves his existence. [Grua 386; Grua 539] 25 Book of Concord: 471. Leibniz suggests in the Theodicy that Bayle was intent upon reviving Manichaeism. [T 136] 26 Leibniz says of Luther's book On the Servitude of the Will that it is an "excellent work." [Grua 369] 27 The punishments and rewards are for worldly deeds. 28 According to Leibniz, God is "perfectly and entirely just." [L 563] Parkinson points out [Leibniz on Human Freedom: 64] that Leibniz admitted that" even if there were an absolute necessity about our actions, rewards and punishments would still be just and reasonable." However, Parkinson goes on to add that there is a moral and punitive element to punishment for Leibniz. [Leibniz and Human Freedom: 66]. It is this moral element that prevents God, according to Leibniz, from punishing innocent infants. [L 563] 29 Of course, a fundamental moral principle is that one ought to deliberate before acting, that is, one ought to consider alternative ways of acting and their likely consequences. If a creature cannot meet this moral requirement he cannot behave morally since moral actions are free and: "When we act freely we are not being forced, as would happen if we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom; and we are not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as would happen if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment. There is contingency in a thousand actions of nature; but when there is no judgment in him who acts there is no freedom." [T 34] 30 According to Leibniz, men are not accountable for consequences of their actions which they do not foresee when they do their duty. [T 120] It is, he says, the intention behind the action that counts "For as to the future, we do not have to be quietists and wait ridicu;ously with folded arms for what God will do ... but we must act according to the presumptive will of God, as far as we can judge of it, trying with all our power to contribute to the general good ... For if the event may perhaps show that God did not in this instance wish our good will to have its effect, it does not follow from this that he did not wish us to do what we did. On the contrary, as he is the best of all masters, all that he ever asks is a right intention, and it is for him to know the time and place for letting good designs prosper." [DM 3] 31 Broad, 'Leibniz's Last Controversy With The Newtonians': 61 32 David Blumenfeld, 'Things Possible in Themselves': 304. 33 Parkinson, 'Philosophy and logic': 215-216. 34 Adams Leibniz: 53., 35 Mondadori, 'Leibniz and the Doctrine ofInter-World Identity': 44. 36 Ibid.,: 22. 37 Descartes in his Fifth Meditation also speaks of properties that belong to a thing essentially and necessarily as properties that are "inseparable" from it, [CSM II 46] a description that matches well Leibniz's distinction between hypothetical and absolute necessity. An absolutely necessary proposition, for Leibniz, is true under every hypothesis. [See: Grua 386; C 405; Grua 387; Grua 273; Grua 271; Grua 362; Grua 379; Grua 373; Grua 358; T 53; G VI 504/L 550.] For very useful discussions of Leibniz's notion of hypothetical necessity see Adam's 'Leibniz's Theories of Contingency': sec. 1.3; and David Blumenfeld's, 'Leibniz on Contingency and Infinite Analysis': 495ff.]

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19

3R I mean by a "complete individual" an individual whose concept is complete and by an "incomplete individual" one whose concept is not complete but which, with sufticient addition, can be upgraded to a complete concept. Leibniz's God, in fact, would carry out necessarily such a transformation given his omniscience. Not all incomplete concepts are such that they can be upgraded to complete concepts, for example, the concept of the sphere on the grave of Archimedes cannot be. 39Loemker inspired this analogy. See his 'On Substance and Process in the Philosophy of Leibniz': 54. 40 The idea that Leibnizian subjects have many complete concepts was first proposed, to my knowledge, by Grimm in his 1971 article 'Individual Concepts and Contingent Truths.' The article has had negligible influence, at best, among Leibniz scholars. In her article 'Possible Gods': 720, Wilson suggests that Grimm would have perhaps not made his proposal had he given "due weight to passages cited by Mates, Mondadori, and Ishiguro" in support of their contention that there is no counterfactual identity of Leibnizian individuals. My view is that the passages in question refute the contention. 41 Sleigh, Leibniz, p. 5: "I see almost nothing to be said in favor of Russell's idea that Leibniz had two philosophical systems. Leibniz did employ various styles of presentation, although no useful distinction can be drawn in this regard between work that he published and work that he circulated P2rivately or n?t ~t all." Adams, LelbnlZ: p. 52. 43 Ibid .. 44 Nichomachean Ethics: 1095a30-1095b 10 45 Other remarks by Leibniz that might arouse suspicions are these: "As there are many people whose faith is rather small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think that one must not present them with that which might be poisonous for them." [T p. 97] "We must certainly distinguish what it is good to say from what it is correct to believe; but since most truths can be boldly upheld, there is some presumption against an opinion that must be concealed." [N 491] 46 Rutherford, Leibniz: 289. 47 I do not mean here that for Leibniz the ultimate truth is not a moral truth, though my sense is that for him it is not. God himself is Truth, according to scripture, and I believe that Leibniz followed scripture on this point. To the point that, for Leibniz, faith is the ultimate guide: "[I]f we were capable of understanding the universal harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we should see, and not believe only, that what God has done is best. I call 'seeing' here what one knows a priori by the causes; and 'believing' what one one judges only by the effects, even though the one is as certainly known as the other. And one can apply here too the saying of St. Paul (2 Cor. V. 7 ), that we walk by faith and not by sight." [T p. 98-99] And also "[D]ivine faith itself, when it is kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and depends not upon occasions or motives that have given it birth; it advances beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of the heart, to make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of God commands. Then we have no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of argument which the mind may anticipate." [T p. 91] Finally, "[R]eason cannot teach us the details of the great future, which are reserved for revelation." [MP202]

CHAPTER ONE COMPLETE CONCEPTS AND COUNTERFACTUALS I. INTRODUCTION

Rational beings act freely, Leibniz contended, in so far as clear and distinct perceptions determine them to act, and they act without freedom when confused conceptions determine them to act. [T 289] God, in particular, is perfectly free, according to Leibniz, because all of his perceptions are perfectly clear and distinct. [T 192; T 310; T 319] How does the claim that all of God's perceptions are perfectly clear and distinct bear on the question of whether Leibniz could have maintained coherently that God has clear and distinct conceptions of himself and his creatures acting otherwise? Many would hold that if God is free to act he not only has the power to act otherwise, but also the power to create his creatures otherwise. But if God has the power to act otherwise and the power to create his creatures otherwise he must clearly and distinctly conceive of counterfactual ways of acting on his part and on the part of those creatures. Is it possible that God have a perfectly clear and distinct knowledge of things as they actually are, a socalled "knowledge of vision," and also any knowledge at all of how actual things might be otherwise: A possible knowledge of vision? In this chapter, I briefly examine the motives behind Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts, a doctrine that embodies the idea that God is omniscient. I then examine arguments that seek to establish that that doctrine is incompatible with the view that actual individuals cannot be conceived to be otherwise. II. COMPLETE CONCEPTS: PURPOSE, OBJECTIONS, AND REPLIES

According to the stock and dominant Aristotelian epistemology of Leibniz's day, a mind knows universals by means of reason and perceives singulars by means of the senses. l It knows universals when it grasps their essences and this grasping is accomplished by defining or formulating them. Young Leibniz is to be counted among the exponents of this conception of knowledge. He along with most of the other adherents also maintained that there are definitions only of universals and

20 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

COMPLETE CONCEPTS AND COUNTERFACTUALS

21

that only universals are intelligible or susceptible of being understood. 2 To be sure, according to this view to which Leibniz subscribed, God knows singulars, but he does not know them, qua their singularity, through definitive concepts of them.' Leibniz eventually repudiated this conception of the knowledge of singulars. At least God, Leibniz came to aver, knows singulars as well as universals through definitive concepts. His change in mind may have been prompted by his creationism. 4 God could not have freely created the world, Leibniz later maintained, unless he was fully cognizant of what he was creating. [Grua 311] According to Leibniz,: " .. .it is because his [God's] knowledge is perfect that his voluntary actions are perfect," [T 192] and God's very ability to act depends on knowledge. [CD 27] God is not a free creator of anything, Leibniz opined, if his actions are not deliberate, and his actions cannot be deliberate if he acts out of ignorance. [T 302; cf. DM 1; CD: 20; T 192] But there is no ignorance in God: "God is omniscient, and so no intelligible proposition can be formed concerning which he does not know for certain whether it is true or false." [Grua 306] If singular propositions are intelligible it follows, for Leibniz, that God knows for certain whether they are true or false. By "intelligible" Leibniz meant "conceivable without contradiction." [DSR 103; G II 55/LA 62]5 Given this meaning of "intelligible," there is no doubt that Leibniz, a thoroughgoing nominalist,6 accepted that there are intelligible singular propositions and by consequence singular propositions that God knows and knows why they are true: [T]o know something is to know the truth of a proposition, and indeed to know the truth of a proposition is to know why it will be thus. Therefore, if God perfectly foresees a thing, he will foresee not only what will be, but why it will be.?

And here is the criterion of truth that Leibniz proposed: [I]n every true affirmative proposition, necessary or contingent, universal or particular, the concept of the predicate is in a sense included in that of the subject; the predicate is in the subject; or else 1 do not know what truth is. [G II 56ILA 63; Cf. FC 179] A true affirmation is one, the predicate of which is present in the subject. Thus in every true affirmative proposition, necessary or contingent, universal or particular, the notion of the predicate is in some way contained in the notion of the subject, in such a way that if anyone were to understand perfectly each of the two notions just as God understands it he would by that very fact perceive that the predicate is in the subject. [MP 96]

It follows from Leibniz's characterization of knowledge and his criterion of truth that if God has perfect knowledge of a singular thing he knows all true propositions about it and the reasons why they are true. That is, he knows all the reasons why the concept of the subject of a true singular proposition contains the concept of its predicate. These reasons must be contained in the concept itself, otherwise

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there would be truths about the particular that God could not derive from its concept. If so, the concept would not be definitive, and if a thing does not have a definitive concept it does not have an essence and it cannot be known per se. 8 Leibniz called the defining concepts of individuals, concepts that contain all the reasons for the truths about them, and upon which demonstrations of truths about them are based "complete concepts.,,9 Here are some characterizations that Leibniz provided of complete concepts: All the predicates of Adam either depend upon other predicates or they do not so depend. Putting aside, then, those that do depend on others, we have only to take together the primitive predicates in order to form the complete concept of Adam, which is sufficient to make it possible to deduce from it everything that must happen to him. [G II 41ILA 44] God in seeing the individual notion or haeccietas of Alexander, sees in it at the same time the basis and the reason for all the predicates which can be truly affirmed of him. It can be said that there are at all times in the soul of Alexander traces of all that has happened to him, and even traces of all that happens in the universe ... [DM 8] Whenever we find some quality in a subject, we ought to believe that if we understood the nature of both the subject and the quality, we would conceive how the quality could arise from it.[A 6 6 66] Since Julius Caesar is to become perpetual dictator and master of the republic and will destroy the liberty of the Romans, this action is contained in his concept, for we have assumed that it is the nature of such a perfect concept of a subject to include everything so that this predicate is included in it - ut passU inesse subjecta.[G IV 557IL 576] In the perfect concept of each individual substance is contained all its predicates, both necessary and contingent, past, present, and future ... [G VII 311] God, who decrees nothing without exact knowledge, has known perfectly, even before he decrees that here should exist this Peter who later denied Christ, what would happen to Peter were he to exist; or what is the same thing, he has in his intellect a perfect concept or idea of possible Peter, a concept that contains all the truths concerning Peter. .. [Grua 311] [T]he individual concept of each person includes once for all everything which can ever happen to him, one sees in it a priori proofs or reasons for the truths of each event and why one has happened rather than another. [G II 12ILA 5]

Leibniz held that if God did not have complete concepts of individuals, he would not know them perfectly and he could not freely create them. But it is not entirely obvious that God can be both free and omniscient according to Leibniz's standard of omniscience. The opposite of a free action must be possible in order for it to be a possible object of choice. This condition appears to conflict with the proposition that singular propositions are demonstrable: How can the opposite of a demonstrable proposition be possible? But if the opposite of a true singular proposition is impossible does not that true proposition lie outside of the scope of God's will? If it is impossible that Spinoza not die at the Hague does it not follow that God cannot deliberate about whether to create Spinoza not dying at the Hague? How can

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God deliberate about what is impossible? But if God does not deliberate about what properties to give Spinoza, his creation of Spinoza cannot be free. Thus the paradox: Leibniz imputes perfect knowledge to God because perfect knowledge is needed for perfect deliberation and perfect deliberation is needed for perfect freedom. \0 Divine knowledge of singulars, if it is demonstrable knowledge, seems, however, to entail that God cannot deliberate about anything because truths that are demonstrably true cannot be false. As Aristotle pointed out long before Leibniz, one cannot deliberate about what cannot be false or what cannot be true ll because what is necessarily true or false cannot be otherwise. 12 Leibniz noted that the Socinians, concerned to defend God's and humans' status as free moral agents, responded to this paradox by refusing singular contingent propositions the status of objects of knowledge, divine or human. [T p. 58; T 364; G II 23ILA 19; G II 19/LA 14] He also noted that Epicurus, following Aristotle, responded to the paradox by pronouncing that propositions about the future are neither true nor false. [T 169] However, the majority of philosophers and theologians of Leibniz's day, and those who preceded him, resisted, sometimes in ways that Leibniz did not condone, 13 the view that God does not know singular propositions. They were unwilling to surrender the article of faith that God is omniscient. An absolutely perfect being must be omniscient, and an omniscient being must have more than mere opinions about singular propositions. He must know them, and know them with absolute certainty. Leibniz also repudiated the epistemological retreats of the Socinians and Epicurus. In keeping with the traditional conceptions both of God and knowledge, Leibniz, at least for a significant span of his career, assimilated singular propositions to the status of knowable, demonstrable propositions. He stipulated that God knows singular propositions not only by an immediate vision of their subjects but also by means of a priori demonstrations. He held that God knows that a proposition is true if and only if he knows that the concept of the subject of the proposition contains the concept of its predicate. Yet it does not suffice, according to Leibniz, for God to have a "vision" of the containment. In order to know the proposition perfectly, God must also see why the concept of the subject contains the concept of the predicate. He must see all the reasons that connect the predicate of the proposition to its subject. But this is just to demonstrate the proposition. Most commentators acknowledge that Leibniz held fast to his convictions that God freely created the world, and that God's decision to create the world was deliberate. However, most also are convinced that he recognized (even if he did not openly admit) that his doctrine of complete concepts implies that the opposites of truths about actual individuals cannot be true. They maintain that according to Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts all singular propositions are analytic and

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this precludes God from "forming" or "finding" a counterfactual concept of any actual individual. 14 They mean by an "analytic" proposition what Kant meant, I 5 namely, one whose predicate concept is constitutive of its subject concept and can be elicited from the subject concept by decomposition and whose denial is a contradiction. 16 Here is their reasoning. If the proposition "S is pOI is analytically and necessarily true the proposition "S is not-POI is analytically and necessarily false. It follows that there is no consistent, counterfactual conception of S bearing not-Po But for Leibniz, all propositions, including singular propositions are analytic. Hence, for Leibniz, actual individuals cannot be consistently conceived to be otherwise. Based on this reasoning, and it is, essentially, their reasoning in full, commentators have concluded that Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts entails that individuals are "world bound," that is, that they belong to at most one possible world. They argue that if an actual individual belonged to other possible worlds, it would have properties other than its actual properties in those worlds. As Hunter argues: Given the notion of complete concepts, which entails that a possible individual's concept contains within it complete information about its world ... and the doctrine that worlds are maximal series of jointly possible (= compossible) individuals, it follows that a possible individual can belong to at most one world. For suppose it belonged to two worlds. Then its complete concept would contain contradictory information and hence the corresponding individual would not be possible, contrary to the hypothesis. I?

If Hunter is right, Leibniz cannot have maintained coherently that the proposition that Spinoza died at the Hague is contingently true because Spinoza, in some possible world, does not die at the Hague. Likewise, it was forbidden to Leibniz to maintain that the proposition that Spinoza did not die at the Hague is contingently false because in some possible world Spinoza does not die at the Hague. If that proposition is contingently false, it must be so for reasons other than God's conceiving of Spinoza dying otherwise. Mondadori, hurrying along this well-worn line of reasoning, concludes: [W]e should like to be able to say, e.g., that Eric Ambler should not have written The Intercom Conspiracy while still existing - but within the framework of Leibniz's theory of complete concepts, we just can't. All we are entitled to say is that it is possible that Eric Ambler should not have existed. IS

The arguments that commentators advance for the claim that Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts implies that Leibnizian individuals belong to only one possible world are borrowed from Arnauld who commented on Leibniz's claim that individuals have complete concepts:

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If this is so, God was free to create Adam, but supposing that he did decide to create him, all that has since happened to the human race or even what will happen to it has occurred and will occur with a necessity more than fatal... [G II 15ILA 9] I cannot think of myself without considering myself as a singular nature, so distinct from any other existing or possible that I can as little conceive of different varieties of myself as of a circle whose diameters are not of the same length ... The reason is that these different varieties of myself would be distinct one from another, otherwise there would not be many of them. Thus one of these varieties of myself would necessarily not be me, which is manifestly a contradiction. Let me, Sir, now transfer to this version of myself what you say about Adam, and judge yourself whether that could be maintained. Amongst possible beings God found in his ideas many versions of myself, one of which possesses the predicates of being a doctor, and another of living in celibacy and being a theologian. And having decided to create the latter, the version of myself which now exists contains in its individual concept the notion of living in celibacy and being a theologian, whereas the former would have contained in its individual concept that of being married and a doctor. Is it not clear that there would be no sense in this discourse: because since my self is necessarily a particular individual nature, which is the same thing as having a particular individual concept, it is as impossible to conceive of contradictory predicates in the individual concept of myself as to conceive of a variety of myself distinct from me ... since it is impossible that I should not have remained myself, whether I had married or lived in celibacy, the individual concept of myself contained neither of these two states .. .! must consider as contained in the individual concept of myself only that which is such that I should no longer be me if it were not in me. [G II 30ILA 29-30]

Arnauld challenged Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts on the grounds that that doctrine contradicts the article of faith that the world is God's free creation. He believed that God could not freely create a world unless it is possible that the individuals in it possess properties other than those they actually have. This requires that at least some of the properties of individuals belong to them accidentally. Accidental properties, according to Arnauld, merely embelish individuals and an individual can both be and be conceived without them. Arnauld concluded, after reading a summary of Article 13 of Leibniz's Discourse, that Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts implies that none of an individual's properties belong to it accidentally, but that all of them belong to it essentially. Essential properties, according to Arnauld, in some sense constitute individuals, and in both thought and reality are inseparable from them. God certainly cannot sensibly be said to decree that an individual have a property that, even in thought, is inseparable from it. According to Arnauld, God therefore cannot be perfectly knowledgeable - as Leibniz understood "perfectly knowledgeable" - and perfectly free. Since Arnauld had no doubt that God created the world freely and could have created it otherwise, he sought to reduce to absurdity Leibniz's claim that the complete concept of an individual contains its accidental predicates. His reduction proceeds as follows. Taking it for granted (or at least seeming to take it for granted) that Leibniz will agree with him, Arnauld assumes that it is possible for

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him to have predicates other than those he actually has. Since his actual complete concept is a consistent concept it cannot contain any counterfactual predicates (they would contradict his actual predicates). It follows that another complete concept of him must contain those counterfactual predicates. However, complete concepts are individual natures and individual natures determine distinct individuals. Hence, the (obviously true) assumption that he could have been otherwise combined with the assumption that his complete concept contains his accidental predicates leads to the absurd conclusion that he could have been someone other than himself, that is, that he could have been distinct from himself. It is therefore demonstrably false that his complete concept contains his accidental predicates, that is, those predicates he could have failed to have and that he can be conceived without. Arnauld's identification of complete concepts with individual natures, as he construed individual natures, is obviously crucial to his argument against them. If that identification is wrong his reductio ad absurdum is unsound. The most Arnauld proves is that if complete concepts are individual natures, as he understood individual natures, and if an individual has only one individual nature, then an individual cannot have any counterfactual properties or counterfactual identities. But Leibniz does not cede to Arnauld the antecedent of this conditional. To the contrary, Leibniz responds to Arnauld that the complete concepts of individuals comprise considerably more than their natures, as Arnauld construed "natures": I think it necessary to philosophize one way about the concept of an individual substance and another way about the specific concept of a sphere. It is because the concept of the species contains only eternal or necessary truths, whereas the concept of an individual contains, regarded as possible, what in fact exists or what is related to the existence of things and to time, and consequently it depends on some free decrees of God which are considered as possible: for the truths of fact or of existence depend on God's decrees. So the concept of the sphere in general is incomplete or abstract, that is to say, one considers only the essence of the sphere in general or in theory without regard to the particular circumstances, and consequently it does not in the least contain what is required for the existence of the individual sphere, but the concept of the sphere that Archimedes had placed on his tomb is complete and must contain all that pertains to the subject of that form. [G II 38-391LA 41] [T]he concept of an individual contains, regarded as possible, what in fact exists, or what is related to the existence of things and to time, and consequently it depends on some free decrees of God which are considered as possible: for truths of fact or of existence depend on God's decrees [G II 39ILA 41]. [P]ossib1e things are possible prior to all the actual decrees of God, but not without sometimes supposing the same decrees considered as possible. For the possibilities of individuals or of contingent things contain in their concepts the possibility of their causes, that is, of the free decrees of God. [G II 51ILA 56]

Leibniz also wrote around the time of his correspondence with Arnauld:

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If the concept of the [existence] of the essence of A itself involves this, or if this follows

from the possibility of A itself, that what is A is B, this proposition is necessary or eternal. If from the concept of the essence of A itself with the addition of the concept of time this

proposition follows: what is A is B, then this proposition is contingent. Therefore, in things that are not eternal, nothing is necessary, for they are able to be demonstrated not from the concept of the things themselves, but from the concept of time ... Time, however, involves the concept of the whole series of things and the will of God and of other free things. [Grua 537; cf. Grua 536-554] Leibniz defined time as an order of inconsistent phenomena or accidents [G II 253/L 531; GIl 268-69/L 536]. He distinguished between the "concept of the essence" of an individual thing itself and the concept that results from "adding" to such a concept the concept of time. One demonstrates truths of fact or existence, that is, contingent truths, not from the concepts of the essences of things themselves but from the concept of time. How an individual exists in time depends on divine free decrees not merely on its essence. There is nothing about Adam considered independently of his place in time and in the whole series of things that implies that he will exist with Eve or any other created thing, or that he will exist with them and behave towards them as he does: It is therefore true that I would be able to not take this journey, but it is certain that I shall. This event is not indubitably linked with my other predicates conceived of incompletely or in a general way; but it is indubitably linked with the complete concept of me, since I suppose that one can deduce from it all that is happening to me. [G II 46ILA 50-51. Cf. G II 52ILA 58] 19

III. COMPLETE CONCEPTS AND COUNTERFACTUALS In arguing that Leibnizian individuals are worldbound, contemporary commentators rehash without significant enhancement Arnauld's reasoning against Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts. However, they usually fail to note that Arnauld withdrew his objections after carefully considering Leibniz's defense of the doctrine: 20 I am satisfied by the way you explain what had at first shocked me regarding the concept of an individual nature. For a man of integrity must never find it difficult to yield to the truth as soon as he has made acquaintance with it. I was especially struck by the argument that in every true affirmative proposition, necessary or contingent, universal or particular, the concept of the attribute is in a sense included in that of the subject: the predicate is present in the subject.[G II 63- 64ILA 77] One reason that Arnauld capitulated was that Leibniz led him to appreciate the force of the view they shared that the concept of the subject of any true proposition contains the concept of its predicate. Leibniz pointed out to Arnauld that it

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follows from this criterion of truth that if contingent propositions are true the concepts of their subjects contain the concepts of their predicates,zl A Catholic theologian such as Arnauld likely would be loath to deny that there are true contingent (factual) propositions. Holy Scripture abounds with them, for example, that God took on human nature to redeem mankind and that Eve disobeyed God. But that obviously would be an effect of his maintaining both that the concepts of the subjects of all true propositions contain the concepts of their predicates and that the concepts of the subjects of contingent propositions do not contain the concepts of their predicates. Arnauld thus affirmed Leibniz's point that the complete concepts of individuals only in a sense contain their accidental, non-essential attributes, and that that sense is not the same sense in which the concepts of individuals contain their essential properties. Leibniz made it clear to Arnauld what that sense is: the accidental properties of an individual, according to Leibniz, belong to it in virtue of God's free decrees that are constitutive of its complete concept. The essential properties of an individual, on the other hand, belong to it independently of God's free decrees. God does not decree what an individual essentially is. He does decree what circumstances it will exist in, however, and when it will exist in them. It is important to note, also, that Arnauld approved Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts without renouncing his own conviction that there are counterfactual truths and counterfactual identities. This suggests, at least, that Arnauld concluded that Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts is consistent with there being true counterfactuals. It is equally important that Leibniz at no point sought to disabuse Arnauld of his conviction that there are counterfactual truths and counterfactual identity. The fact that he did not suggests that Leibniz found no fault with it or perhaps even agreed with it. There is reason to believe that he did agree with it. Recall that a proposition is true according to Leibniz if and only if the concept of the subject of the proposition contains the concept of its predicate, and if and only if there are sufficient reasons for its truth. He did not explicitly except counterfactual conditionals in his statements of his criterion of truth. Indeed, Leibniz wrote: [All] the knowledge which is in God, whether this is of simple intelligence, concerning the essence of things, or of vision concerning the existence of things, or mediate knowledge concerning conditioned existences, results immediately from the perfect understanding of each term which can be the subject or predicate of any proposition.[MP 96]

Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts entails, however, that the concepts of predicates of counterfactuals, if they are truly attributed to individual substances, are contained in complete concepts of their subjects. In Leibniz's metaphysics this would entail straightforwardly and in an obvious way the individuals' belonging to

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more than one possible world. It would entail counterfactual identity and counterfactual complete concepts. Complete concepts contain the foundations of derivative truths about individuals. In the following passage, Leibniz argues that if there is such a thing as counterfactual knowledge of actual individuals, there must also be a foundation for it: [Molina] considers that there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a certain condition if it were translated into action ... there is a kind of mean between the merely possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit the conditional event...Instance is given of the famous example of David asking the divine oracle whether the inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he designed to shut himself in, would deliver him to Saul,supposing that Saul should besiege the town. God answered yes; whereupon David took a different course ... the principle objection [against the doctrine of mediate knowledge] is aimed at the foundation of this knowledge. For what foundation can God have for seeing what the people of Keilah would do? [T 41]

Leibniz argues against the Molinist doctrine that God's knowledge of future contingents and counterfactual conditionals is merely a scientia media, that is, a "vision" of future and conditional contingents that is not founded on a knowledge of their causes. Knowledge by vision of future and counterfactual contingents, for Leibniz, does not by itself amount to perfect knowledge of them. There also must be a knowledge of the preestablished causes of future and counterfactual contingents since everything must be explained by its cause. [G II 40ILA 43] Thus, if there are "intelligible" ways of being otherwise of actual individuals, e.g., "the people of Keilah," God, according to Leibniz, not only knows these ways by "seeing" them, but he also knows what would cause or dispose the people of Keilah to be otherwise and why.22 It is true that Leibniz stated that God does not need to know the connection of causes and effects to know states of affairs that are the effects of causes. [T 360] Nevertheless, there are such connections and the perfection of God's knowledge entails that he knows them, and through the connections he knows effects by knowing their causes. [T p. 419] This view conforms to the Aristotelian tenet that the definitions of things specify their causes. 23 Leibniz rejected Molina's middle knowledge because it did not. But he did not reject Molina's view that God knows counterfactual truths about actual individuals. IV. COMPLETE CONCEPTS AND LEIBNIZ'S METAPHYSICS OF SUBSTANCE

One might cite Leibniz's so-called "mirroring principle," as Mates does in the following passage, as evidence that Leibniz did make the rejection, or at least should have:

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[I]n the actual world, and in every other possible world, each concept "mirrors" or "expresses" all the other individual concepts in that world. Each individual of the actual world is related to all the others, and every relation is "grounded" in simple attributes of the things related; the same is true of the other possible worlds as well...Adam's concept involves those of all of his progeny, including those of Cain, Abel, Seth,and even ourselves. If Adam had not existed, none of us would have existed, and, what is more surprising, if any of us had not existed, Adam would not have existed. Thus if two individual concepts belong to a single possible world, then they are present or absent together in every possible world. 24

As Mates points out, complete concepts of individuals contain information about other individuals they would coexist with if they existed, not just information about themselves. The information is a reflection or expression of other individuals. These individuals, presumably, would be present to be reflected if the complete concept were realized since the "reflective properties" are well-founded according to preestablished harmony - on the properties of those other individuals. Moreover, by implication, if the reflective properties of an individual S are not in fact grounded in the attributes of some other possible individual T, Sand T cannot coexist because coexistence is effected only by means of such grounding. The following passage especially appears to bear out Mates's reading of Leibniz's "mirroring principle": In the perfect concept of an individual substance in a pure estate of possibility, considered by God, everything is contained that would happen to him if he existed, indeed, the whole series of things of which he is a part.[G VII 311]

In this passage Leibniz states that "the whole series of things" to which an individual would belong if it existed is contained in its perfect concept. This statement might appear to corroborate the contention that Leibnizian individuals cannot belong to more than one possible world. Complete concepts therefore might appear to preclude counterfactual identity, or to entail that if individuals have individuating non-complete concepts or essences, those concepts or essences are no less "worldbound" than complete concepts. Notwithstanding this appearance, Leibniz makes statements that suggest more strongly that he believed that God conceives of substances without conceiving of the individuals with which they actually exist, and also conceives of them existing in diverse ways with individuals other than those with which they actually exist: Contingent possibles can be considered either separately or as all correlated in an infinity of possible worlds, each of which is perfectly understood to God, though only one among them has been produced into existence. [CD 15] The Wisdom of God, not content with embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them one against the other ... By this means the divine Wisdom divides all the possibles it had already considered separately [my emphasis] into so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other. [T 225]

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One can conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and primitive and a consequent and final will. The primitive antecedent will has as its object each good and each evil in itself detached from all combination [emphasis added], and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. The mediate will relates to combinations as when one attaches a good to an evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination, when the good exceeds the evil therein, but the final and decisive will results from the consideration of all the goods and evils that enter into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. [T 119] God foreknew and predetermined, from the beginning, not only the infinite series of things, but also the infinite series of possible combinations of actions, passions, and changes of those things. [AG 102] God had knowledge of possible things, not only as separate, but as coordinated in innumerable possible worlds, from which, by his most wise decision, he chose one. [G III 30]

Leibniz distinguished between "contingent possibles," "possibles," and "possible things," on the one hand, and "worlds of possibles" and "systems of contingent possibles" on the other. He states that God might conceive a given possible combined in different ways in different systems. My reading of AG 102, in particular, is that Leibniz's God foreknew not only the actual combination of actions, passions, and changes of the things he created, but also infinitely many alternative possible combinations of actions, passions and changes of those things. My reading of AG 102 comports with Grua 285: [S]uppose that there are the possible beings ABC D E F G, equally perfect and tending to existence, of which there are some incompatibles A with Band B with D and D with G, and G with C, and C with F and F with E, I say that one would be able to make two things to exist in fifteen ways, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, BC, BE, BF, BG, CD, CE, DE, DF, EG, FG, or three together in the following ways ACD, ACE, ADE, ADF, AGE, AFG, BCE, BEG, BFG, or four together in just one manner ACDE,which would be chosen from among all the others because by it we obtain the most that we are able to obtain. [Grua 285; Cf. G VII 194]

Leibniz clearly intends the "possible beings" he refers to in this passage to be understood as individuals, for he says that they are tending to exist, and "tending to exist" is a property of Leibnizian individuals. 25 All of the combinations of compatible possible individuals are representations of possible worlds. Leibniz assumes that it is possible for two possible individuals A and C to be compatible yet there be a third individual B with which A is incompatible and with which C is compatible (compatibility is intransitive). The result is that there are possible worlds that contain both C and B, e.g., BCE, and other possible worlds that contain only one of them, e.g., ACDE. If there is a complete concept of C as C "exists" in the possible world BCE, that complete concept obviously is distinct from the complete concept of C as C exists in the possible world ACDE. A complete concept of C contains information about all of the other individuals with which C coexists. There can be no com-

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plete concept of C that contains the information that C coexists (in the same possible world) with both A and B. However the complete concept Q of Cas C exists in BCE does contain the information that C coexists with B and the complete concept R of Cas C exists in ACDE contains the information that C coexists with B. Clearly, R has to be distinct from Q. Hence, Leibniz appears to be committed to the proposition that individuals have more than one complete concept by his remarks at Grua 285. The view that there is no counterfactual identity in Leibniz, on the other hand, in so far as that view appeals to his doctrine of complete concepts, presupposes that Leibnizian individuals have at most one complete concept. As Mates rightly observes, a complete concept of a possible substance contains information about every state of an entire world. Hence, Leibniz should not have had in mind complete individual concepts when he spoke of whatever it is that is considered "prior" to being considered as belonging to various universal systems. Obviously, God cannot conceive of a complete concept that involves a world or universal system without also conceiving of that world. Since Leibnizian substances relate by representing one another, if God conceives of a substance not representing other substances he conceives of it not related to those other substances. The concept of a substance not representing a world is not a complete concept. Nevertheless it is the concept of a substance. Leibniz offers the following example of such a concept: I had said that the assumption from which all human events can be deduced is not simply one of creating an indeterminate Adam, but of creating a particular Adam, determined to all these circumstances, and chosen from among an infinite number of possible Adams. That gave M. Aranuld the opportunity to object that it is as impossible to conceive of many Adams, taking Adam as an individual nature, as to conceive of many varieties of myself. I agree, but then in speaking of many Adams I was not taking Adam as one determinate individual. I must explain myself. This is how I understood it. When one considers in Adam a part of his predicates, for instance, that he is the first man, placed in a garden of pleasure, from whose rib God draws forth a woman, and similar things conceived of in a general way (that is to say, without mentioning Eve, Eden, and other circumstances which complete his individuality), and that the person to whom all these predicates are attributed is called Adam, all this is not enough to determine the individual, for there can be an infinite number of Adams, that is to say of possible people differing from one another, who fit that description. [G II 41- 42ILA 45]

In this passage, Leibniz specifies a set of determinate or definite descriptions, such as "the man from whose rib God drew forth Eve," and "the first man who lived in the Garden of Eden." Our Adam, and no other actual individual substance, is supposed to fit these descriptions. To generate an indeterminate, indefinite, or general description of Adam that presents Adam as an indeterminate or vaguely apprehended subject, Leibniz proposes that we think of these descriptions "in a general way." He proposes that we

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can do this by disregarding circumstances that determine Adam's individuality. For example, that we think of "the first man who lived in the Garden of Eden" in a general way by not "mentioning" Eden. This abstraction yields "the first man who lived in a garden of pleasure." Similarly, we can think of "the man from whose side God took Eve" in a general way, by not "mentioning" Eve and we obtain "the man from whose side God took a woman." According to Leibniz, the general descriptions that constitute an incomplete or general concept of Adam can function within the confines of the actual world to pick him out from among all other actual individuals since no other actual complete individual substance satisfies them. But ranging over possible worlds, the same descriptions pick out many possible complete substances that cannot, generally conceived, be distinguished from Adam. V. WHAT MAKES ACCIDENTS ESSENTIAL?

Leibniz did not deny that God is able to conceive substances without conceiving of all of the freely decreed accidental details of their existence. To be sure, Leibniz held that existent substances "need" their accidents to exist, [G IV 364] and that if substances exist they must express all things. [G IV 523; G IV 518] Leibnizian substances involve the perfections or attributes of other substances, [L 526] and also the phenomena of other substances. [G II 58ILA 66] Indeed, the representations of their relations to other things complete Leibnizian subjects. More precisely, the very first state that God bestows on a subject completes it, since, according to Leibniz: Everything occurs in every substance as a consequence of the first state which God bestowed upon it,and extraordinary concourse excepted, his ordinary concourse consists only of preserving the substance itself in conformity with its preceding state and the changes that it bears. [G II 91-921LA 115]

Yet one must ask here what Leibniz meant by a "first state" and what he meant by a "subject" on which it is imposed. I understand Leibniz to have meant by the "first state" that God imposes on an individual the first temporal/representational state that he imposes on it. A temporal/representational state is just a state that is "pregnant with a future" and that unfolds sequentially according to laws of time and other laws of final and efficient causes. By the "subject" on which God bestows a "first state" I think it fairly obvious that Leibniz meant a subject lacking the state, a subject that would not have the state unless it so pleased God to bestow the state upon it. I concur with Russell who wrote: We must not say, therefore, as is often loosely done, that Leibniz identified substance with activity (=an attribute); activity is the essence of substances, but substances themselves are

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not essences, but the subjects of essence and other predicates. Thus a substance is not, for Leibniz, identical with the sum of its states; on the contrary, these states cannot exist without a substance to inhere in. 26

God, according to Leibniz, imposes a first state on a substance whereof Russell speaks, and the first state inheres in it. A concept of a stateless substance does not involve a concept of time and God cannot derive truths of fact or existence from it. It is not the concept of a substance that is a member of a universal system. A stateless substance is a substance without a view or point of view. A complete individual concept of a substance, on the other hand, is the concept of an entire world or universal system from a particular point of view. 27 It involves not only the individual essence of the substance that occupies the point of view but also its "other" accidental predicates. These accidental predicates express the relations of their subject to other substances in its world and also the laws that govern those relationships. A complete concept is therefore the concept of what I call a "substantialized," "concretized," or, more barbarously, "worldified" subject, that is, a subject that acts and suffers. In more systematic language: [W]e need to seek no other concept of power or force than that it is the attribute from which change arise, and whose subject is substance itself [emphasis added]. [G II 1701L 516] [A]ctive force, life, and antitypy are something essential and at the same time primitive, and one can conceive of them independently of other concepts, even of their subjects, by means of abstractions. Subjects, on the contrary, are conceived by means of such attributes. Yet these attributes are differentfrom the substances of which they are the attributes [emphasis added]. [G VI 5821L 620] [No] one could object if the substance in abstracto is taken to be the primitive force which always remains the same in the same body and brings about, successively, accidental forces, and particular actions, which are all nothing but the nature or primitive subsisting force applied to things. Nevertheless, it is true that the substance in concreto is something other than force, [emphasis added] for it is the subject taken with this force. [A 1 7248-249]

It does not appear that Leibniz has mere distinctions of reason in mind when he distinguishes subjects from their attribute of primitive active power. Distinctions of reason do not imply a real difference between the items distinguished. They also do not involve independent conceptions of attributes. Leibniz designated primitive active forces "individual laws." [L 155] According to him, one way to conceive an individual law in abstracto [N 216; N 222] is to conceive it not being applied, in conception, to possible data, that is, to its correlated primitive passive force: When I said that primary matter is that which is merely passive and separated from [my emphasis] forms, I said the same thing twice, for it would be the same if! had said that it is

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passive and separate from all activity. Forms are for me nothing but activities or entelechies, and substantial forms are the primary entelechies. [G III 5511L 511] I have preferred to say that the active is incomplete without the passive, and the passive without the active, rather than to speak of matter without form and form without matter ... [G III 5511L 511]

Leibniz identified primitive active force with the law of the monad [L 155; G II 264/L 535] and primitive passive force with confused perceptions. [G III 637 (4)/L 659; G IV565/L 581] Both types of primitive force are essential constituents of complete beings. It is "essential," according to Leibniz, for created beings to act and to suffer. [G IV 508-509/L 502] Both primitive active force and primitive passive force are essence in the sense that both are that without which there would be no existent subjects. A substance is passive, according to Leibniz, insofar as it is receives and is modified by representations of things external to it. [C 514; N 168] The modifications of a substance are its accidents and it is separable, according to Leibniz, from them. [T 391; T 393; L 537; T 88] Thus: W]e see that there is a real (reete) distinction between the substance and its modifications or accidents, contrary to the opinion of some moderns ... [T 32]

Leibniz states not only that a substance is "distinct" from its accidents, he adds the qualification that the distinction is "real." It is not a foregone conclusion that he did not, or should not, have in mind a real distinction very much like the Cartesian variety, especially not since he states that accidents are beings "added to" substance, [N 333-4] and that they are modifications of the substance that do not augment it. [L 532] The qualification "very much" in the preceding sentence is called for because Leibniz would deny that a substance can exist without any accidents at all. That is, Leibniz would deny that a substance could exist without suffering or there being other things that act on it. Indeed, existence itself would be at least one accidental property of any created being. However the question is not whether a substance can exist without accidents. The question is whether an actual substance can exist without the accidents that it actually has. This would require conceiving of it without those accidents, not conceiving of it existing without accidents. A concept of a substance separate or distinct from its accidents or modifications is an incomplete concept, as a concept of Judas neither being loyal to nor betraying Christ is an incomplete concept of Judas. "Betraying Christ" is a temporal accident of Judas that God freely decrees, likewise for Judas receiving payment for his betrayal. These properties do not belong to Judas simply because of who he is, but also because of what other things are, and because of what is required to harmonize Judas with them in a world, that is, because of what Leibniz called

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"universal harmony." This harmony, according to Leibniz, is preestablished in the first state that God bestowed on Judas. The first state that God imposes on a subject does not depend on its later states but its later states depend on and are derived from its first state. A perfect conception of this state fits Leibniz's description of a complete concept. A nature, broadly understood, is the source or cause of the derivative properties of a thing. Since a substance's later states originate in its first state, that first state is a nature according to this criterion. However, not all properties of a Leibnizian subject are consequences of its first state. A subject obviously must have properties "before" God imposes a first state on it, otherwise it would not be an entity: "Nothing has no attributes." Arnauld would say that such properties are such as his being a man and being less than omniscient. These properties constitute the nature of the subject more narrowly construed. In the following remarks from a paper thought to have been written around the time of Leibniz's correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz makes a point that is based on the same idea as the one presently under discussion: [From] the first essential laws of the series - true without exception, and containing the entire purpose of God in choosing the universe, and so including even miracles - there can be derived subordinate laws of nature .. .It should not disturb anyone that I have just said that there are certain essential laws for this series of things, though I said above that these same laws are not necessary and essential, but are contingent and existential. For since the fact that the series itself exists is contingent and depends on the free decrees of God, its laws will also be contingent in the absolute sense; but they will be hypothetically necessary and will be essential given the series. [MP 99-100]

The "first laws" of the series are essential because they are inseparable from the series or "true without exception" of the series and also because all of the other properties of the series "flow" from them. However, they are merely hypothetically essential rather than absolutely essential because they are separable from the concept of a world generally considered. In other words, they are not true of a world simply in virtue of its being a world. The laws are therefore essential relative to this series but accidental relative to series simpliciter. In a similar way, Adam's environment is both essential and not essential: It is essential relative to this Adam but not essential to Adam considered simpliciter or sub ratione generalitis, our Adam's environment is not essential to every possible Adam. Aquinas anticipated Leibniz's extended sense of the terms "essence" and "nature": [A] nature or essence can be considered in two ways. First absolutely, according to its proper meaning. In this sense nothing is true of it except what belongs to it as such .. .In a second way a nature or essence can be considered according to the being it has in this or that individual. In this way something is attributed to it accidentally, because of the subject

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in which it exists, as we say that man is white because Socrates is white, though this does not belong to man insofar as he is man. This nature has a twofold being: one in individual things and the other in the soul, and accidents follow upon the nature because of both beings. In individuals, moreover, the nature has a multiple being corresponding to the diversity of individuals. [On Being and Essence: 46- 47]

Aquinas understood the body that a soul informs as a sort of circumstance for it, and so does Leibniz, as he interprets the notion of a soul having a body within the framework of his doctrine of preestablished harmony. Aquinas surely would affirm also, with Leibniz, that the accidental condition of a body is determined by the body's environment. Thus, that Socrates is white is an accident that he has because he is an embodied soul and also because he is usually indoors. The, environment then, by Aquinas's logic, would belong to Socrates's nature or essence understood in the "second way." Along with the body, it would constitute Socrates's individuality. Leibniz, it appears, was familiar with Aquinas's On Being and Essence. 28 Arnauld was speaking of a nature in Aquinas's first and proper sense of "nature" when he objected to Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts. Having studied Leibniz's clarification of what Leibniz meant by "nature," it was easy enough for Arnauld to glean that his dispute with Leibniz was verbal, that is, based on the ambiguity of the word "nature." Taking note of that ambiguity should help to make sense of these remarks by Leibniz: [A]llthough there cannot be marks which distinguish it [an existent individual] perfectly from every other possible individual, there are however marks which distinguish it from other individuals which we meet. [C 360]

In his correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz states that the complete concept of an individual provides a basis for distinguishing it from every other possible individual. What he states here appears to conflict with that statement. However, the appearance is weakened by the consideration that he does not state in his correspondence with Arnauld that a complete concept serves as a basis for distinguishing individuals perfectly from every other possible individual. I take Leibniz to have meant by a "perfect distinction" a distinction not only at the level of properties that "follow from the concept of time" but also those that are independent of time, namely, those properties that a subject possesses qua being an individual subject. This "remote" and absolute subject has a nature that no other existent subject has. However, the same nature is exemplified in other possible worlds, that is, the subject of the nature is exemplified in other possible worlds. An actual individual subject cannot be perfectly distinguished from individuals in other possible worlds that share its absolute nature. It cannot be distinguished from individuals that are it.

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The "other individuals which we meet," of which Leibniz speaks, are individuals with which we coexist. An individual's predicates, considered in the general way that Leibniz described to Arnauld ["the man from whose side God took a woman," "the first man," "a garden of pleasure," etc.] are sufficient to serve as a basis for distinguishing him from other existent individuals. However, not even God would be able to distinguish one Adam from another possible Adam using these general predicates as marks which, as I understand Leibniz, are rough indicators for whatever the absolute individual nature of Adam is. VI. COUNTERFACTUAL SEMANTICS, ROUGHLY SPEAKING

There is a further interesting consequence of this conclusion. Take the description "the man from whose side God took a woman" and mention "Lilith" instead of "Eve," and the description "the first man in some world" and mention "Neptune" rather than "Earth." Alternatively reconstituting the descriptions in this way would apparently culminate in mentioning individual substances other than the actual Adam, albeit, in other possible worlds. Nevertheless, the general descriptions designate the same vaguely conceived subject that the actual Adam is. This warrants naming all of the completely described individuals in question "Adam." They differ from our Adam only with respect to the freely decreed determinations of certain relatively abstract properties such as "the first man." In essence, we would be naming or referring to the subject, not the composite. Corresponding to each complete description of Adam is a complete concept. Hence, God forms many different complete concepts that involve the substance Adam. Although Sleigh gives a different answer than I do, he also recognizes that it is a legitimate and intelligible question to ask whether Leibniz's system incorporates individuals that have many complete concepts: Since no two worlds are exactly the same, it is natural to assume that each substance in a world will have some properties reflecting that particular world. Given these assumptions, no complete individual substance is a member of distinct collections constituting possible worlds .. .in other words, each complete concept is in exactly one world. This is a totally innocent claim. For example, it is independent of the thesis that no possible object exists in more than one possible world. Thus, consider the concept that contains all and only the primitive properties that Arnauld has in the actual world. Suppose that this concept is in the actual world and no other. This is consistent with the claim that Arnauld exists in other worlds. For each such world there will be a distinct concept containing all and only the primitive properties Arnauld has in that world. Clearly, if we think that Arnauld exists in worlds other than the actual world, we will regard the expression "the complete concept of Arnauld" as elliptical - short for "the complete concept of Arnauld in the actual world" or, more generally, "the complete concept of Arnauld in possible world W." 29

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Leibniz wrote often of "the" complete concept of an individual, perhaps giving the impression that he was committed to the view that individuals have only one complete concept. Sleigh has supplied grounds for doubting that impression and for at least considering whether Leibniz's manner of speaking is elliptical. Certainly, if one contends that Leibniz is speaking elliptically, one must advance arguments in support of that thought. However, if one contends that he is not, one must also advance arguments in support of that thought. Sleigh advances an argument, namely, that Leibniz is a superintrinsicalist. Perhaps, however, Sleigh's superintrinsicalism is consistent with the idea that individuals have more than one complete concept. Sleigh has convinced me by his arguments that Leibniz is a superintrinsicalist. Yet, I do not think, as Sleigh does, that Leibniz's superintrinsicalism forces him to eschew counterfactual identity, and I will explain why I do not in Chapter Three. Sleigh does see Leibniz as seeking a way to preserve the distinction between essential and accidental properties. In my estimation, however, if a distinction between essential and accidental properties does not clear the way for the possibility of consistently conceiving of individuals behaving otherwise than they actually behave, and does yield an account of counterfactual truth, Leibniz would view that distinction as too feeble for his purposes. Leibniz regards the distinction between essential and accidental properties primarily as a conceptual tool for forging moral and eschatological distinctions. It is supposed to help make sense of the moral concepts of praiseworthy and blameworthy actions, of punishments and rewards, salvation and damnation. If God cannot conceive an individual not behaving as it actually does, that individual very simply is not responsible for his behavior. As Mondadori points out, Leibniz makes numerous statements that appear to entail that individuals possibly behave otherwise than they actually behave and that they belong to more than one possible world. Here is a modest sampling of such statements: Let us imagine twin Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold to the Turks, brought to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some chance ... Someone will perchance say that God foresaw by mediate knowledge that the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained in Poland. There are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of this sort takes place. But will it therefore be said that this is a general rule, and that not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have been saved if he had been amongst Christians? Would that not be to contradict our Lord, who said that Tyre and Sidon would have profited better by his preaching, if they had had the good fortune to hear it, than Capernaum? But were one to admit even here this use of mediate knowledge against all appearances, this knowledge still implies that God considers what a man would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains true that God could have placed him in other circumstances more favorable, and given him inward or outward succour capable of vanquishing the most abysmal wickedness existing in the world. [T 101-103]

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It is true that there is no contradiction in the supposition that Spinoza died in Leyden and not at the Hague; there would have been nothing so possible: the matter was therefore indifferent in respect of the power of God. But one must not suppose that any event, however small it may be, can be regarded as indifferent in respect of his wisdom and his goodness. [T 103] [R]easons for contingent truths incline without necessitating. It is therefore true that I would be able not to take this journey, but it is certain that I shall. [G II 46\LA 50-51] God, having considered the sequence of things that he established, found it fitting, for superior reasons, to permit that Pharaoh, for example, should be in such circumstances as should increase his wickedness. [T 99] Thus it all often comes down to circumstances, which form a part of the combination of things. There are countless examples of small circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. [T 100] [A]ll the internal and external causes taken together bring it about that the soul is determined certainly, but not of necessity: for no contradiction would be implied if it were to be determined differently, it being possible for the will to be inclined, but not possible for it to be inclined of necessity. [T 371] God punishes man ... God justly punishes whomever he punishes so God punishes man justly ... so Man is punished justly... so Man is guilty ... so Man could have acted otherwise ... [N 482] [T]ime, space, and, matter, united and uniform in themselves, and entirely indifferent to everything, might have received entirely other motions and shapes and in another order. [T 34] [T]here is an infinity of orders which the totality of matter might have received in place of these particular changes which it [my emphasis] has actually taken on. For it is clear that the stars could have moved quite differently, since space and time are quite indifferent to every.kind of motion and figure. [G VI 506- 5071L 552] [T]he certain determination to sin which exists in man does not deprive him of the power to avoid sinning (speaking generally) or, since he does sin, prevent him from being guilty and deserving punishment. [T 369; cf. G IV 509\L 502: "a power which can never be exercised is meaningless."] [A]bsolutely speaking, our will, considered as contrasted with necessity, is in a state of indifference, and it has the power to do otherwise or to suspend its action altogether, the one and the other alternative being and remaining possible. [DM 30] [A]fter this life ... there is always in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a freedom which renders him culpable, a power, albeit remote, of recovering himself, even though it should never pass into action.[T 269] [T]he effect being certain, the cause that shall produce it is certain also; and the if effect comes about if will be by virtue of the proportionate cause. Thus your laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain naught of what you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would by acting with care have avoided. [emphasis added]. [T 55] [T]he necessity contrary to morality, which must be avoided and which would render punishment unjust, is an insuperable necessity, which render all opposition unavailing, even

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though one should wish with all one's heart to avoid the necessary action, and even though one should make all possible efforts to that end. Now it is plain that this is not applicable to voluntary actions, since one would not do them if one did not so desire [emphasis added]. [Tp. 381] God considers what a man would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains true that God could have placed (emphasis added) him in other circumstances more favorable, and given him inward or outward succour capable of vanquishing the most abysmal wickedness existing in the world. [T 103] [S]pace time and matter, in which nothing is considered other than extension and resistance, that is bare, is clearly indifferent to what ever magnitudes, figures, and motions you please, nor accordingly is a determinate reason able to be found, either why the world exists in such a way and is not produced under any other not less possible form. [C 13]

These passages do not square, at least not smoothly, with the view that Leibniz conceded that his doctrine of complete individual concepts implies that there is no counterfactual identity of individuals. To the contrary, they strongly suggest that Leibniz supposed that individuals belong to more than one possible world and that different laws and different relations to things determine them differently in those worlds than they are determined in the actual world. It is no wonder that Mates responds to the passage quoted from C 13: If this means that literally the same world could have existed in some other form, we have an inconsistency that I do not know how to explain.3o

I agree with Mates that there is an inconsistency. However, the inconsistency is not found in Leibniz's system. The inconsistency is generated by faulty interpretations of his principles and illustrations that Leibniz provides of those principles. According to Mates, if Leibniz's God conceives of "bare" matter under a given form he cannot conceive of it under any other form. Leibniz, however, states that God can conceive of matter under many different forms because matter is "indifferent" to particular forms. Evidently, either Leibniz misunderstood his principles and transgressed them, or Mates has misunderstood them. I am inclined to think that the former alternative is most likely. I have no reason to not take Leibniz seriously when he insinuates that one would be denying Christ's teachings were one to maintain that there are no counterfactual truths. Christ assserts that Tyre and Sidon would have profited better from his preaching if they had heard it under different circumstances. Leibniz seems to be reluctant to contradict Christ. Leibniz, himself, states that God could have placed individuals in circumstances other than their actual circumstances, and that individuals have the power to behave in ways that they will never behave. He asserts at Theodicy 173 that whether Spinoza dies at the Hague or at Leyden is "indifferent in respect of

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the power of God." Especially in light of other of the passages that I have quoted, I understand him to have meant by this assertion that God has the power to realize either alternative. If that is what Leibniz meant, and if he also considered the conception of Spinoza dying at Leyden contradictory, he was committed to the view that contradictory conceptions are objects of God's power. Clearly, however, Leibniz did not, and would never allow that God can create contradictions. He would not endorse the view that Adam could exist both married to Eve and not married to Eve at the same time. He denies in the Theodicy that God can create contradictions without explicitly excepting contradictions that are not finitely demonstrably contradictions: Is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can have such influence upon a gifted man [Bayle] as to make him wish and hope for the power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole reason that God forbade them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued them an order to ensure that they always walked together? I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe ... [T 186; cf. T 242]

Leibniz's message in this passage is evident: God cannot will that contradictory states of affairs exist. According to Leibniz, God cannot even will that they don't exist. He ridicules Bayle for hoping that God can. Leibniz also wrote concerning God's power: God is omnipotent. That is, God can do anything that does not imply a contradiction; indeed, the notions of possibility and impossibility consist precisely in this. Hence, the power of God extends not only to what has been and what will be, but also to what is at least capable of being clearly and distinctly perceived. And in this sense the sacred scripture says: without doubt there is no word which is able to be understood that is impossible to God. [Grua 307]

Following Descartes, [CSM II 50] Leibniz states that God's power extends to that which "is at least capable of being clearly and distinctly perceived." Leibniz, therefore, should not have meant by his statement that the supposition that Spinoza died at Leyden is implicitly contradictory in a way that cannot be detected logically by a finite analysis of the terms of the supposition. If a proposition is clearly and distinctly perceived, surely, it does not harbor a contradiction. As Mondadori acknowledges, "Leibniz often makes claims" that imply that God could have given to actual objects, say Spinoza, Pharoh, Tyre, or Sidon, properties other than those they happened to have, claims to which Mondadori declares Leibniz is not entitled. Mondadori's acknowledgment, but not his declaration, is warranted also by the following text: [T]he celebrated Mr. Hobbes supported (the) opinion, that all that what does not happen is impossible. He proves it by the statement that all the conditions requisite for a thing that

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shall not exist...shall never be found together, and that the thing cannot exist otherwise. But who does not see that that only proves a hypothetical impossibility? It is true that a thing cannot exist when a requisite condition for it is lacking. But as we claim to be able to say that the thing can exist although it does not exist, we claim in the same way that the requisite conditions can exist although they do not exist. [T 172]

Leibniz challenges Hobbes's claim that a "thing cannot exist otherwise," not the "claim that a thing that exists cannot fail to exist, or the claim that other things cannot exist. He concedes that conditions for his acting otherwise must exist if he is to act otherwise. He then goes on to assert that conditions requisite for a thing's existing otherwise can also exist. Leibniz also wrote: T]hat which is certain is not always necessary, or altogether impossible; the thing might have gone otherwise, but that did not happen and with good reason. God chose between different courses all possible: thus, metaphysically speaking, he could have chosen or done what was not the best, but he could not morally speaking have done so. Let us make use of a comparison from geometry. The best way from one point to another (leaving out of account obstacles and other considerations accidental to the medium) is one only: it is that one which passes by the shortest line, which is the straight line. Yet there are innumerable ways from one point to another. There is therefore no necessity which binds me to go by the straight line, but as soon as I choose the best, I am determined to go that way, although this is only a moral necessity in the wise. That is why the following conclusions fail: 'Therefore he could only do that which he did. Therefore that which has not happened or will never happen is absolutely impossible.' (These conclusions fail, I say: for since there are many things which never will happen and which nevertheless are clearly conceivable and imply no contradiction, how can one say that they are altogether impossible? [T 234; Cf. Grua 300]

Leibniz rejects the "conclusion" that "he could only do that which he did." He states that his acting otherwise is among "many things which never will happen, and which nevertheless are clearly conceivable." Again, according to Leibniz, God's power extends to all that is clearly and distinctly conceivable, [Grua 307] and he included among things clearly and distinctly conceivable, actings otherwise, and by implication, the requisites for them. In this connection, Leibniz wrote in his New Essays: [I]deas (of modes) are real just so long as the modes are possible, or - to say the same thing - distinctly conceivable, and that requires that its constituent ideas be compossible, that is, to be able to be in mutual agreement. [N 265]

"Existing otherwise," is a way or "mode" of existing other than how one actually exists. Leibniz states that a sufficient condition ("just so long as") for a "mode" being possible is that it be clearly conceivable. He then states that the distinct conceivability of a conception consists in its constituent concepts being "compossible" or "able to be in mutual agreement." Leibniz nowhere, to my knowledge, states that ideas are in "mutual agreement" just in case their combination, even if it involves a contradiction, cannot be reduced in a finite number of steps to an ex-

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plicit contradiction. The notion of agreement is much stronger than that. To say that two ideas "mutually agree" is to say that they are jointly consistent and compatible. Leibniz states that God could have placed an individual in circumstances other than those in which he actually placed him; that the stars could have moved otherwise; and that the totality of matter could have taken on different shapes and motions because it is "entirely indifferent to everything." A naive reader, who has no idea that Leibniz is supposed to be a superessentialist, would likely interpret Leibniz as holding that God could have placed one and the same man in circumstances other than he actually placed him. A similar reading likely would be made of Leibniz's remark that the stars in the sky could move differently, and that matter, which exists, could take on different shapes. If I am correct, Leibniz would have affirmed this naive reading of his "claims which seem to imply that actual objects could have had other properties than they happen to have." I also think that the arguments for the contention that he is not "entitled" to them, because Leibnizian individuals are worldbound, are, at best, not fully thought out. There are reasons, therefore, to doubt the conclusion of the arguments, and reasons to believe that Leibniz is speaking of Adam and Eve not sinning in another "possible sequence," rather than simply not existing, in this "exchange" between he and Bayle in his Theodicy: Bayle: If God is not determined to create the world by a free motion of his goodness, but by the interests of his glory .. .if the love he has for himself has compelled him to show forth his glory through the most fitting means, and if the fall of man was this same means, it is evident that this fall happened entirely by necessity and that the obedience of Eve and Adam to God's command was impossible. Leibniz: Still the same error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to him, but the love for his glory, or the will to acquire this glory is not so by any means: the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary. [T 233]

It is important to note Leibniz's statement that the first parents sinned freely not merely that they sinned contingently. The first parents' possible nonexistence entails that their act of sinning was contingent. That contingency, however, does not entail that their sinning was free, that is, that they deliberated before sinning. If it did, then the possible nonexistence of any creatures, including non-deliberating creatures, would imply that they act freely. For Leibniz, the fact that there are possible plans wherein the first parents are conceptually present and do not sin renders their act of sinning in the best planned world free.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1 Leibniz wrote: "There are two kinds of knowledge, that of facts, <which is called perception> and that of reason, which is called intelligence. Perception is of singular things, intelligence has for its object universals or eternal truths." [Grua 583] 2 In setting out his "Art of Combinations," which is a system for thinking about things or representing things in such a way so as to facilitate thinking about them, Leibniz issued this caveat: "Finally, warning must be given that the whole of this art of complications is directed to theorems, or, to propositions which are eternal truths, i.e. which exist, not by the will of God, but by their own nature. But as all singular propositions which might be called historical (e.g. 'Augustus was emperor of Rome'), or as for observations (i.e. propositions such as 'All European adults have a knowledge of God' - propositions which are universal, but whose truth has its basis in experience, not in essence, and which are true as if by chance, i.e. by the will of God) - of these propositions there is no demonstration, but only induction; except that sometimes an observation can be demonstrated through an observation through the mediation of a theorem." [LP 5-6]. 3 Aquinas provides an excellent sample of the view that God knows singulars because he knows them. In answering the objections to the thesis that God knows singulars he wrote: "God knows singular things. For all perfection found in creatures pre-exist in God in a higher way ... Now to know a singular thing is part of our perfection. Hence God must know singular things ... Now some, wishing to know how this can be, said that God knows singular things through universal causes. For nothing exists in a singular thing that does not arise from a universal cause ... This, however, is not enough; for from universal causes singular things acquire certain forms and powers which, however they may be joined together, are not individuated except by individual matter. Hence he who knows Socrates because he is white ... or because of something of that kind, would not know him in so far as he is this particular man. Hence, following the above explanation, God would not know singular things in their singularity .... Therefore we must propose another explanation. Since God is the cause of things by His knowledge ... His knowledge extends as far as His causality extends. Hence, as the active power of God extends not only to forms, which are the source of universality, but also to matter, as we shall prove further on, the knowledge of God must extend to singular things, which are individuated by matter. " [ST Part I Q 14 Art. 11]. Note that this is not an account of how God knows singular things but of why he must know them. It should be noted also that Aquinas, in answer to the question "Whether our Intellect Knows Singulars," answers, "Our intellect cannot know the singular in material things directly and primarily. The reason for this is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual matter; whereas our intellect.. .understands by abstracting the intelligible species from such matter." [ST Part I Q 86 Article I] 4 Leibniz's nominalism might also explain his change of mind. See N 145: "indeed knowledge of concrete things is always prior to that of knowledge of abstract ones - hot things are better known than heat." See also Chapter X of Mates's Leibniz. 5 Leibniz stated that the criterion of truth is being able to be conceived clearly and distinctly without contradiction, and the criterion of conceiving something clearly and distinctly is being able to give a rroof. [NE 219] Leibniz wrote in his "Preface to an Edition of Nizolius": "[l]n philosophising accurately, only concrete terms should be used.. .it appears that this passion for devising abstract words has obfuscated philosophy for us entirely; we can well enough dispense completely with the procedure in our philosophising. For concretes are really things; abstractions are not things but modes of things. But modes are usually nothing but the relations of a thing to the understanding or phenomenal capacities." [L 126] Leibniz also wrote "... the nominalists have deduced the rule that everything in

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the world can be explained without reference to universals or real forms. Nothing is truer than this opinion, and nothing is more worthy of a philosopher in our time." [L 128] It is interesting that Leibniz later came to regard supposed concrete things as modes of God. See Introduction I of Chapter Three of this book. 7 Cited from Sleigh, 'Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge': 48. 8 In a paper titled 'A Meditation on the Principle of the Individual' Leibniz wrote: "We say that the effect involves its cause; that is, in such a way that whoever understands some effect perfectly will arrive at a knowledge of its cause. For it is necessary that there is some connection between complete cause and the effect...unless we admit that it is impossible that there should be two things which are perfectly similar, it will follow that the principle of individuation is outside the thing in its cause. It will also follow that the effect does not involve the cause in accordance with its specific reason, but in accordance with its individual reason, and therefore that one thing does not differ from another in itself. But if we admit that two different things always differ in themselves in some respect as well, it follows that there is present in any matter something which retains the effect of what precedes it, namely a mind. And from this it is also proved that the effect involves the cause." [DSR 51] I think that Leibniz meant by an "individual reason" a reason that is located in the matter of a thing and by "specific reason" a reason that is located in its form. His claim is that distinct individuals must differ not only with respect to their matter but also with respect to their form, so that, in effect, each individual will belong to a species that is unique to it, that is, it will constitute an infima species. A thing, according to Leibniz, must have within itself the cause of its being what it is, if it is to have an identity. In a paper written later, but in the same year (1676), he wrote: "In my view, a substance, or, a complete being, is that which by itself involves all things, or, for the perfect understanding of which the understanding of nothing else is required. A shape is not of this kind; for in order to understand what a shape of such and such a kind has arisen, we need to have recourse to motion ... Each complete being can be produced in only one way; the fact that figures can be produced in many ways is a sufficient indication that they are not complete things." [DSR 115] Leibniz comes very close, in this passage to stating his doctrine of complete concepts. He certainly is anticipating it, and he is clearly being inspired by Spinoza's understanding of a substance as that which is in itself and is conceived through itself, that is, that which is a causa sui. As it turned out, Leibniz admitted that only God could fit his description of a substance, I think that this led him to his Spinozist conception of creatures that I discuss in Chapter Three. He weakened the conditions for being a substance later. The weakening was achieved by Leibniz's ruling out any being other than God acting on any other being in a transeunt fashion. Leibniz saw that Spinoza had reduced creatures to modes on the basis of the assumption that there are efficient causes that are finite. 9 Leibniz distinguished "complete" concepts from "full" concepts. [G II 49/LA 54 n. 3] The former concepts, he stated, differ from the latter in that they involve, while the latter do not involve information concerning the matter and spatial/temporal characteristics of their subjects: "I shall say a word about the reason for the difference there is in this between the concepts of species and those of individual substances, in relation to the divine will rather than to simple understanding. It is that the most abstract specific concepts contain only necessary or eternal truths, which do not depend on God's decrees (whatever the Cartesians may say of them in this matter); but the concepts of individual substances which are complete and capable of wholly characterizing their subject, and which consequently embrace truths of contingency or of fact, and the individual circumstances of time, the place, etc., must also embrace in their concept, considered as possible, the free decrees of God, also considered as possible, because these free decrees are the principle sources of existences or facts; whereas essences exist in the divine understanding before one considers will." [LA 54-55/G II 49] Complete concepts are concepts of entities that are able to have spatial/temporal or material characteristics; to have "circumstances of time, the place, etc.". They are the concepts of entities to which events can happen, which can have experiences, which can act and suffer, which can perceive. Not all entities in the Leibnizian realm of possibles, God's mind, are of these sorts. As I have already

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pointed out, Leibniz, speaking in metaphysical rigor, in a way consistent with his nominalism, denies that species, for example, are of this sort. For Leibniz, there are full concepts of species but there are no complete concepts of them. 10 The most clearly and powerfully articulated statement and discussion of this paradox I have examined is due to Boethius in Book V of his The Consolation of Philosophy. 11 Nichomachean Ethics Book III Chapter 4 19-31 and Chapter 5 18-30. 12 Aristotle wrote for example: "We must either say this or else lay it down as a principle that demonstration is of what is necessary and what is demonstrated cannot be otherwise." [Posterior Analytics: Book I Chapter 6 74blO-15] also "Demonstrative knowledge is what we have by having a demonstration; hence a demonstration is a deduction from things that are necessary." [Posterior Analytics: Book I Chapter 4 73a25-27] 13 The Molinists, Hobbes, Spinoza, for example. 14 Leibniz wrote in some "remarks" on Arnauld's criticisms of his doctrine of complete concepts: "[O]ne must attribute to him [Adam] a concept so complete that everything that can be attributed to him can be deduced from it; now, there is no reason for doubting that God can form such a concept of him, or rather that he may find it already formed in the domain of possible things, that is to say in his understanding." [G II 42/LA 46]. He wrote later in a letter to Arnauld: "Certainly, since God can form and in fact does form this complete concept ... " [G II 53/LA 59] In his Discourse, Leibniz, more closely in keeping with the statement in his letter to Arnauld, wrote "I also find it altogether strange the expression of certain other philosophers who say that the eternal truths of metaphysics and of geometry and consequently also the rules of goodness, of justice and of perfection, are only effects of God's will, whereas it seems to me that they are only consequences of his understanding, which assuredly no more depends on his will than does his essence." [DM 2] To say the least, the fact that Leibniz dropped the qualification "or rather that he may find it already formed ... " from his explanation of complete concepts is intriguing. Complete concepts, it would seem, for Leibniz, although they are not formed voluntarily by God, are nevertheless formed by him and therefore are "consequences" of his understanding. What, one should ask, is God thinking about when he forms these concepts? I address this question in Chapter Four. 15 See, for example, Jarrett, 'Leibniz on truth and Contingency': 103. The view that Leibniz held that all truths are analytic is too widely held to have to cite more adherents. However, for an interesting argument against the view see Grimm's 'Individual Concepts and Contingent Truths.' Kant wrote: "In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought.. .this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something which is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies outside the concept A, although it does indeed stand in connection with it. In the one case I entitle the judgment analytic, in the other synthetic. Analytic judgments (affirmative) are therefore those in which the subject is thought through identity; those in which this connectionis thought without identity should be entitled synthetic. The former, as adding nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely breaking it up into those constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it, although confusedly, can be called explicative. The latter, on the other hand, add to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: 48. As should become apparent, my view is that Leibniz had before Kant made the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. In particular, I think it fairly obvious that when Leibniz's God forms the complete concept of an individual he forms it by "adding" to the individual what Leibniz calls a "concept of time," and also, perhaps derivatively, a "concept of space." Given the formation of this complete concept, Leibniz states that it is possible to "de-form" or analyse it, but the analysis is certainly not the same as an analysis of a concept that is not formed by adding concepts of space and time to it. Thus Leibniz wrote that: "... some forms are essential or constitutive, others are accidental." [G II 471] The essential forms, I think Leibniz would say, are forms that, because they

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constitute a subject, are identical with the subject. Leibniz clearly indicates that accidental forms are not constitutive of subjects and, thus, are not identical with them. 16 This was also Descartes's charactreization of a "logical" truth or a "contradictoria." [CSM III 365] 17 Hunter, 'The Superessentialist Misunderstanding': 129 18 Mondadori, 'Leibniz and the Doctrine ofInter-Worid Identity': 22 19 Curley responds to this remark: "This misses the point. The question is not what follows from my being a man, but what follows from my being myself. And to that question Leibniz must, to be consistent, answer "everything". ['Leibniz on Locke on Personal Identity': 320.] Contra Curley, I submit that everything does not follow simply from one's being oneself, according to Leibniz, but from one's being oneself in certain circumstances that God decrees. There are infinitely many divinely decreed "particular" circumstances that contribute towards the production of an individual's accidental properties. I do not believe that one's circumstances, for Leibniz, are derivable from a concept of one's "self." Rather, according to Leibniz, God combines the concept of a "self' with a concept of freely decreed circumstances to form a complete concept of it. Everything true of an individual in the world that the concept pertains to does follow from this concept 20 Sleigh is an exception. In his book Leibniz and Arnauld, Sleigh refutes decisively the conjectures of other commentators that Leibniz forced Arnauld to admit that the doctrine of complete concepts conformed to the criterion of truth Arnauld and Nicole state in the Port Royal Logic. Sleigh then argues that Arnauld conceded because he misunderstood Leibniz. Sleigh writes [Leibniz and Arnauld: 94]: " Consider: 6. For any individual x and property f, if x has f, then for any y, were y to lack f, then y would not be x. 7. For any individual x and property f, if x has f, then, for any y, if Y lacks f, then y is not x. The passage from RL 39 ... would have tempted Arnauld to suppose that Leibniz read no more into unacceptable (6) than was in innocent (7) - that Leibniz had squeezed all the juice out of the idea of an intrinsic connection. When Arnauld applauded Leibniz's truth definition, noting that "the concept of the attribute is in a sense included in that of the subject: the predicate is in the subject," he took the clause preceding the the colon to have no content other than the content of the clause following the colon." Contrary to Sleigh, I think Arnauld found (6), properly understood, quite acceptable. What Leibniz forced Arnauld to recognize was that it makes a great deal of difference what the x's and y's range over. Arnauld initially took them to range over the subjects of accidents, thus his resistance. He later, and correctly, took them to range over the composites of subjects and accidents, that is, individual substances, thus his concession. 21 "I have given a decisive argument which in my view has the force of a demonstration; that always, in every true affirmative proposition, necessary or contingent, universal or particular, the concept of the predicate is in a senseincluded in that of the subject; the predicate is present in the subject; or else I do not know what truth is." [G II 56/LA 63]. If Arnauld did not assume that complete concepts of Leibnizian individuals do not involve "counterfactual information" about them, he might have surmised that, for Leibniz, a counterfactual is true just in case its predicate or consequent is contained in a complete concept of it. I must emphasize, here, that I do not maintain that Leibnizian complete concepts belong to more than one possible world. My position, instead, is that complete concepts of a Leibnizian substance contain data about different possible worlds. Cover and Hawthorne, in 'Essentialism, Transworld Identity, and Counterparts,' argue that Leibnizian complete concepts do belong to more than one possible world. They base their argument on the premise that complete concepts do not contain the relational properties of individuals. This premise is patently false. No concept of an individual that does not contain the relational properties of an individual is a complete conept.

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22 Leibniz notes, in this connection, that those of the Augsburg Confession hold that prevision of the cause is prevision of the effect: T 83. 23 According to Leibniz, it also conforms to the view of the Churches of the Augsburg Confession: T 83 who held also that God knows everything Formula of Concord: 593. 24 Mates, 'Individuals and Modality in the Philosophy of Leibniz': 91. 25 Recall Leibniz's nominalism. 26 Russell, The Philosophy of Leibniz: 49. 27 "For as God turns the universal system of phenomena which he sees fit to produce in order to manifest his glory, on all sides and in all ways, so to speak, and examines every aspect of the world in every possible manner, there is no relation which escapes his omniscience, and there thus results from each perspective of the universe, as it is seen from a certain position, a substance which expresses the universe in conformity to that perspective, if God sees fit to render his thought effective and to produce that substance." [DM 14] 28 Leibniz refers to On Being and Essence in Article 15 of his Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation. 29 Sleigh, Leibniz & Arnauld: 50-51. 30 Mates, Leibniz: 71.

CHAPTER TWO DELIBERATION AND COUNTERFACTUALS I. INTRODUCTION

Wilson, in her article 'Possible Gods,' observes that Leibniz frequently described God as possibly creating worlds other than the best possible world. The main point in the article is that the thesis that Leibniz is some sort of counterpart theorist is untenable because there cannot be any such thing as a counterpart God.) A collateral result of her argument is that if God really can act otherwise then there obviously are counterfactual identities of God. It would also appear that Wilson's argument stands to undermine the contention that there are no counterfactual identities of creatures. It is hardly obvious why there would be counterfactual identities of God but not of other individuals whom Leibniz stated differ from him only in degree. 2 In this chapter, I argue that the concession that there are counterfactual identities of Leibniz's God is also a concession that his God's creatures have counterfactual identities. I develop the argument within the context of an examination of Leibniz's understanding of a free action as one that involves deliberation. I also offer an explanation of why Leibniz referred to certain actions of rational creatures as "sort of" miraculous. II. CHOICE AND DELIBERATION

Adams writes in his article "Theories of Actuality": It is evidently also a part of (Leibniz's) theory that God (who exists necessarily, according to Leibniz) chooses freely and could have chosen another possible world instead of the one he has chosen. I doubt that Leibniz or anybody else has held the alternative version of the divine choice theory, according to which the actual world is the only one God could have chosen?

And in his book Leibniz:

50 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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Leibniz holds that there are infinitely many possible worlds that God could have possibly created, and he never speaks of alternative "possible Gods" who could have created the different worlds. He seems to be committed not only by this silence but also by the doctrine of God's necessary existence to the view that it would have been the same God that created whatever possible world was created. In other words, Leibniz seems to have accepted trans world identity for God while rejecting it for every other creature. [Leibniz] is prepared to say that the same individual God could have been the creator of different possible worlds because the sense in which God "could" have is that were it not for God's wisdom and goodness, or were it not for these worlds' inferiority, God could have - not that God's creating them would have been perfectly consistent with the divine nature. 4

Adams's acknowledgment that Leibniz held that God could have created possible worlds other than the best possible world is surely just, but his interpretation of Leibniz's view is not. There are not for Leibniz degrees of consistency. Either God's creation of inferior possible worlds would be perfectly "consistent with divine nature" or perfectly inconsistent with it. A middling consistency is not struck by God's bartering his goodness and wisdom for creative license. For Leibniz, God is identical with his goodness and his wisdom. He states that "God is essentially as good and wise as he is powerful," and that it is contrary to natural reason to say that God is not good. [T 177] The propositions "God is not wise" and "God is not good," therefore, are no less contradictory and contrary to reason than "God is not powerful." Thus, according to Leibniz, it is not consistent with God's freedom and goodness to do less than the best. [T 201] Indeed, Leibniz claimed that God would "destroy divinity," a feat that is absolutely impossible, were he to violate the principle of the best [T 158; CD 67]: [I]f God had not selected for creation the best series of the universe (in which sin does occur), he would have admitted something worse than all sin committed by creatures. For, in this case, he would have acted contrary to his own perfections, and thereby also all other perfection. For divine perfection can never fail to select the most perfect, since what is less perfect implies some evil. God himself and with him all things would be abolished if God either lacked power, or erred in his intellect, or failed in his will. [CD. 67; Cf. CD 123 125]

So far as Leibniz was concerned, Adams's explanation of what it means for God to possibly create inferior possible worlds amounts to this. If God were not God then God could create the inferior possible worlds. However, this explanation explains too much. Insofar as the proposition that God is not good and wise is absurd, it implies both that God can create other possible worlds and that he cannot create other possible worlds. Adams's explanation does not work but, clearly, the proposition that God could have created inferior possible worlds stands in need of explanation in light of the above quote. I think that Leibniz offered one. Responding to Bayle's remark that:

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Adam's perseverance in innocence was always impossible; therefore his fall was altogether inevitable, and even antecedently to God's decree, for it implied contradiction that God should be able to will a thing opposed to his wisdom; it is, after all, the same thing to say, that it is impossible for God, as to say, God could do it, if he so willed, but he cannot will it. [T 234]

Leibniz wrote: It is misusing terms in a sense to say here: one can will, one will will; 'can' here concerns the actions that one does will. Nevertheless it implies no contradiction that God should will - directly or permissively - a thing not implying a contradiction, and in this sense it is permitted to say that God can will it. [T 234]

Leibniz's point is that it is perverse to think that God consequently wills everything that he is capable of willing. He agrees that the possibility of the best possible world of things guarantees that God will decide to create it, and, in fact, create it. Yet, he insists that there remain possible things that God can will that he will never will consequently. Indeed, Leibniz states that God does will inferior possible worlds, albeit, antecedently. For Leibniz, God antecedently wills whatever is not impossible in itself even if he will not consequently will it: [T]hat which is certain is not always necessary, or altogether impossible; the thing might have gone otherwise, but that did not happen and with good reason. God chose between different courses all possible: thus, metaphysically speaking, he could have chosen or done what was not the best, but he could not morally speaking have done so. [T 234]

Leibniz invokes his distinction between moral necessity and metaphysical necessity to establish the possibility of God's choosing to create what he does not create. For Leibniz, it is not logically impossible that God conceive of himself creating an inferior possible world. He admits only that the supposition is morally impossible, while insisting that it is metaphysically possible. By "metaphysically possible" he meant what he usually meant, namely, consistently conceivable. God can and does conceive of himself acting in ways that are morally impossible, and his so conceiving himself is constitutive of his antecedent willings. God, according to Leibniz, consequently wills only that which is morally possible but he antecedently wills that which is morally impossible. What would "destroy divinity" is God's consequently willing an inferior possible world. Divinity survives, however, God's merely thinking of himself behaving less than perfectly. It is only "after" God compares his different conceived of ways of acting that they take on the denominations "better" and "worse." The antecedent willings, Leibniz says, occur before comparing them, where "before" must be understood in signa rationis. 5 God's antecedent willings are not governed or limited by the principle of the best. Leibniz's God has intelligence sufficient to conceive of himself creating an inferior possible world - he knows how to create an inferior possible world - and

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he enjoys the power necessary to create the world, if he so wishes. God simply, in the end, according to Leibniz, does not wish to create inferior possible worlds as much as he wishes to create only the best possible world. However, what God wishes to do, in the end, does not limit what he can conceive of himself doing and consider doing antecedently, "before" he makes up his mind. Again, it is necessary that God conceive of himself acting in a variety of ways if he is to make a decision as to how to act. If God could only conceive of himself creating the best possible world there would be nothing to decide, and if there were nothing to decide, there would be neither choice nor deliberation: there would be no freedom. Thus, Leibniz states repeatedly that God wills antecedently to create all good, but wills consequently to create only the best. 6 He states also that God is inclined antecedently to create all possibles, but that the result of all his antecedent inclinations and deliberations 7 is that he consequently wills the best. 8 Surely, if God is inclined to create all possibles he can conceive of himself creating them. Otherwise, God would be inclined towards, and have an "earnest"and "serious intention" [T p. 402; T p. 21] to do the inconceivable. 9 Adams will grant, I think, that, for Leibniz, the possibility of God's acting otherwise is a necessary condition for his acting freely. Leibniz did not trace this possibility to the possibility of God's somehow shedding his wisdom and goodness. It is a wise and good God, for Leibniz, who could have acted otherwise. But I will be more specific, here. According to Leibniz, it is a perfectly good and wise God who could have saved those he permits to be damned, and who could have permitted to be damned those he saves. Leibniz wrote in his Theodicy: Abelard admits that it may very well be said that...that which God does not can be done. He could therefore have spoken with the rest, who mean nothing different when they say that God can save this man, and that he can do that which he does not. [T 171]

Given the context within which Leibniz makes his criticism of Abelard, the statements that he makes at Theodicy 234, and the following text, it is clear that he counts himself among "the rest": It is true also that God could produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most perfectly conceived plan admits. [T 114]

The denial that God can conceive of himself saving a damned soul trivially entails a denial of the dogma that his dispensation of saving graces is absolutely free and that he wills to save all men on account of his universal philanthropy. [T 21; T 127] That Leibniz sought to avoid this result is evident from a consideration of the following passages in the Theodicy:

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Bayle: He offers grace to people he knows are destined not to accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal than they would be if he had not offered them the grace; he assures them that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does not give them the grace which he knows they would accept. Leibniz: It is true that these people become more criminal through their refusal than if one had offered them nothing, and that God knows this. Yet it is better to permit their crime than to act in a way which would render God himself blameworthy, and provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it is not possible for them to do better even though they had or might have wished it. God desires that they receive such grace from him as they are fit to receive, and that they accept it; and he desires to give them in particular that grace whose acceptance by them he foresees: but it is always by a will antecedent, detached or particular. [T 115]

Were Leibniz's God to behave in a blameworthy way, he would destroy divinity, that is, he would not be God. Thus, there would be "some justification," albeit very slight and metaphysical, for criminals' complaints that they could do no better: everything, including "some justification" for the criminals' complaints, follows from the absurd supposition that God is blameworthy. Yet, Leibniz allows that God desires to give to criminals graces that he does not in fact give to them, and God must be able to do, and think of himself doing, that which he desires to do, otherwise his desires would be foolish. More than this, God foresees the criminals' acceptance of the graces, and his foresight is conditioned (or foundational) not visionary. God, unless it is the God of the Socinians or others of their theological bent, cannot antecedently desire that whose consequences he does not foresee. The reason that God does not give graces to the criminals is that he foresees the consequences of his doing so and judges that it is better that he not indulge his antecedent inclination. Of course, Leibniz does not have in mind the scientia media of Molina. Rather his God foresees, by means of foundations that would be in place, the existence or conditioned existences of things. I see no foundation whatsoever for the claim that Leibniz is not committed to the counterfactual identity of both God and his criminal creatures in the passages under discussion. To dismiss them as proof of Leibniz's lack of candor would be, as Leibniz would put it, "halting in every respect." III. COUNTERFACTUAL IDENTITY AND CREATURELY DELIBERATION

In the preceding section, I focused on the role that Leibniz's God's counterfactual identitities play in his deliberative activities and antecedent willings. Leibniz insisted upon such a counterfactual identity of God primarily because he was interested in proving that God's act of creating the world he created was not arbitrary and that God made the best choice that he could have made and should be praised for it. A consequence of God's deliberations and counterfactual antecedent activities,1O however, is the counterfactual identity of the creatures that are involved

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in those deliberations and activities. If God can conceive of himself saving a soul he will permit to damn itself, he can conceive of that soul he will permit to damn itself being saved, that is, not damning itself. This is not, for Evangelical Leibniz, an unwelcome consequence. Counterfactual identities of rational creatures are required to justify God's punishment of them. II That is, the counterfactual identities of creatures are a condition for their being held accountable for their actions. Rational creatures are responsible for their actions because they are capable of deliberating about their actions before they act. They are responsible because they can either misuse or use properly the will and reason with which God graced them. 12 Leibniz certainly did not shy away from making statements that would tend to give the impression that he believed that rational creatures are able to think of themselves acting in conditions other than their actual conditions. For example, he writes in his Theodicy of a young man who has been: [D]elighted by the applause which has been showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to reputation; he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes this passion, and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to attain his end. For although he may know very well that he will not feel what is said of him after his death, the representation he makes of it for himself beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. [T p. 435]

Leibniz seems to take it for granted that a young man could conceive himself receiving great fame even if he never will. However, if the received wisdom in Leibniz scholarship is correct, Leibniz cannot have consistently supposed that it is possible for the young man to conceive or imagine himself behaving in ways he will never behave. He cannot picture himself standing before an audience being applauded if he will never leave his home and never pursue his career. He cannot prepare for a concert by imagining himself performing beforehand. The fact that God knows that the young man will soon lose his voice rules out such preparation. Generally, the young man cannot think of himself otherwise than how God knows him. Not even God can know what the young man will do and think of the man otherwise. The price that Leibniz's God pays for omniscience is lack of imagination. The assumption that there is an assignment of only one complete concept to each Leibnizian substance is a very easy and cheap way to severely restrict the Leibnizian God's ability to think about individuals. It is evident that if Leibniz's God is to think counterfactually of individuals he must have many complete concepts of them. However, Leibniz's manner of formulating his doctrine of complete concepts does not by itself entail that individuals have only one complete concept. At least, I have been unable to see how that doctrine implies that God has only one complete concept of any given individual.

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If Leibniz allowed that rational beings in fact deliberate before they act, and that their choices are based on the deliberations, he needed either to allow also that the deliberations involve inconsistent counterfactual conceptions or that they involve consistent ones. Leibniz, I maintain, in fact denied that practical reasoning based on inconsistent counterfactuals issues in free choices. He did maintain, however, that all of the actions of God and some of the actions of spirits are free. My view conflicts with the following reflections of Frankel: Granting that moral good or evil does, as Leibniz claims, follow upon metaphysical good or evil, what can be done about moral responsibility? [For Leibniz] We are morally responsible because it is our nature to act as we do, whether we could have done otherwise or not. The very act of willing, no matter how one has come to will an action, renders one morally responsible for that action. 13

Frankel adds that Leibniz considered an action free even if "there is no real sense in which the agent could have done otherwise.,,14 A less than "real" sense of acting otherwise she says Leibniz would countenance is the sense in which acting otherwise is what she calls "epistemically possible." The epistemic possibility of acting otherwise, according to Frankel, does not involve a real ability or power to act otherwise but only the "conceivability" of doing otherwise. 15 Frankel seems to be imputing to Leibniz the view that an agent can conceive of himself performing an action without having the power to perform it. However, for Leibniz, an action or a "doing" just is a determination of power. He wrote in his Theodicy: Now the Philosopher of the Stagira supposes that there are also two kinds of Act, the permanent act and the successive act. The permanent or lasting act is nothing but the Substantial or Accidental Form: the substantial form (as for example the soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my judgment, and the accidental is only so for a time. But the altogether momentary act, whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. I have shown elsewhere that the notion of Entelechy is not altogether to be scorned, and that, being permanent, it carries with it not only a mere faculty for action, but also that which is called 'force', 'effort', 'conatus', from which action itself must follow if nothing prevents it. Faculty is only an attribute or rather sometimes a mode; but force, when it is not an ingredient of substance itself (that is, force which is not primitive but derivative), is a quality, which is distinct and separable from the substance. I have shown also how one may suppose that the soul is a primitive force that is modified and varied by derivative forces or qualities, and exercised in actions. [T 87]

If an agent clearly conceives of himself doing something that conception must be, according to what Leibniz states in the above passage, the conception of a derivative force modifying or varying a primitive active force. An action, for Leibniz, presupposes a power to act, since, for him, an act is the realization of a power. [T 87; DSR 109]16 Thus, Leibniz could maintain only incoherently that an agent clearly conceives of himself acting without also clearly conceiving of himself

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having the power to act. The agent is, according to Leibniz, a power to act or a substantial form. Therefore, to maintain that an agent does not have a power to act otherwise is simply to maintain that the agent cannot be otherwise, especially since Leibniz held that there is no acting before being. [T 387] Frankel's proposal also conflicts with the following remarks made to De Voider by Leibniz: [Y]ou say that substance is that which is conceived in itself, an opinion to which I have opposed the proposition that an effect cannot be conceived better than through its cause, but that all substances but the first have a cause. You reply that we need a cause to conceive the existence of a substance but not to conceive its essence. But to this I answer that the concept of a possible cause is needed to conceive its essence, but to conceive its existence the concept of an actual cause is needed. [L 524]

What Leibniz states here applies to actions as well as to substances. If an action is possible, there must be a possible cause of that action. But a possible cause of an action is nothing other than a power. I do not know what it could mean to say that an agent "possibly has a power." If he possibly has the power, he actually has the power. At any rate, Leibniz asserts that determined individuals do retain the power to act otherwise: It is true that Adam was determined to sin in consequence of certain prevailing inclinations: but this determination destroys neither contingency nor freedom. Moreover, the certain determination to sin which exists in man daes nat deprive him af the pawer ta avaid sinning [emphasis added] (generally speaking) or, since he does sin, prevent him from being guilty and deserving punishment. [T 399; Cf. T 269]

The following remarks by Leibniz also indicate that it is doubtful that he would resort to the notion of epistemic possibility to make sense of the intuition that it is "possible" to act otherwise: Now it is obvious that we have no idea of a concept when it is impossible. [DM 25] [O]ne can boast of having an idea only when one is assured of its possibility. [DM 23]

For Leibniz, the idea of a thing must specify its cause or the means for producing it, [DM 24; L 293] a specification that proves the possibility of the thing. [G II 63/LA 72] Thus, if it is possible that Caesar act otherwise there must be a possible cause of his possibly acting otherwise, a cause that obviously would be Caesar or God acting through Caesar. I take this to mean that Caesar has the power to act otherwise, if it is possible that he act otherwise. Conversely, if there is no specifiable cause for Caesar's acting otherwise, it is impossible that he act otherwise. Again, I take this to mean that Caesar does not have the power to act otherwise, and that there therefore is no conception of him acting otherwise. Hence, if Cae-

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sar, nor anything else, can cause Caesar to act otherwise, it is impossible that he act otherwise Frankel's "epistemically possible" yet really impossible conception is not what Leibniz called an "idea." It also is not real because it is not a conception of which one can be certain that it is possible. [T p. 410] Furthermore, it is at odds with Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason. If Caesar does not have the ability to cross the Rubicon, and if there is no other power to get him across it, then his crossing of the Rubicon does not have a possible cause. But the principle of sufficient reason requires that anything that can happen has a possible cause, that is, there must be a power that can bring it about. If there is no possible cause that can render a conception actual, that conception is impossible and must harbor a contradiction. [G II 63ILA 72; DSR 109; DSR 7] Thus, Frankel's "epistemically possible" conception is nothing more than an inconsistent conception, a chimera, to which is attached a supposition of unproven and unprovable possibility. Such a conception is useless for the purposes of deliberation that can lead to severe punishment or lavish reward at the hands of a perfectly wise and benevolent God. Nevertheless, in his book Leibniz, Adams offers a weakened version of Frankel's notion of Leibnizian epistemic possibility.17 He uses his version to interpret the following remarks by Leibniz in a way that is consistent with his conjecture that Leibniz denied that there is a counterfactual identity of creatures: It is more exact even to say that the good actions of God, the Angels confirmed [in good],

and the glorified Saints are not necessary, although they are assured; and the reason is because they are done by choice, whereas there is necessity where there is no choice to make. When there are several paths, one has the freedom to choose, and although one may be better than another, that's just what makes the choice ... [I]t is not indifference of equilibrium, so to speak, that constitutes freedom, but the faculty of choosing among several p.ossibles, even though they are not all equally feasible or convenient for the one who acts. 18

There is nothing new in this passage. Leibniz repeats his standard line that although the actions of God and his blessed creatures are assuredly going to be righteous and for the best, they are not absolutely necessarily so. The fact that an action is determined to occur eliminates doubt in a sufficiently intelligent mind, not choices or options for an agent. A saint might have several paths open to him, and will consider himself taking each of them. The saint will choose the best path, after due deliberation, because he is confirmed in good. God knows this. Still, it is conceivable that the saint choose otherwise. That is how I read the passage, and it seems to me the obvious reading to make. According to Adams, however, the reading is well off the mark. Adams conjectures that Leibniz "must probably" have meant that there are "several paths that may be taken" but not "several paths that a saint might take." Generally, Adams maintains that the predicates of false singular propositions (whose subjects

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are beings other than God) are possible or consistent but never the propositions themselves: [T]he alternatives among which creatures choose must probably be regarded as somewhat general, rather than as completely individual, actions. Caesar's alternatives on the bank of the Rubicon, for example j must be crossing and not crossing, rather than Caesar's crossing and Caesar's not crossing. 9

Adams's speculation straightforwardly implies that God cannot think of Caesar's not crossing the Rubicon, but can merely juxtapose "not crossing" and "Caesar" and somehow construe, given the juxtaposition, "not crossing" as an "alternative" for Caesar. There should be more to this proposal, however. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason requires that there be some explanation based in Caesar's nature, in the nature of crossing, and in the nature of being an alternative [N 382] of why "not crossing" is an alternative for Caesar. There must be reasons that make the proposition "Not crossing is an alternative for Caesar as he stands on the banks of the Rubicon" true. There must be some connection between the predicate of this proposition "is an alternative for Caesar as he stands on the banks of the Rubicon" and its subject, namely, "Not crossing." The explanatory reason cannot be simply that "not crossing" is possible in itself or consistently conceivable. "Being God," "is a creator," and "perceives infinities of infinities perfectly clearly and distinctly" are also possible in themselves or consistently conceivable. They also are predicates that Caesar does not have, but they are not thereby alternatives for Caesar. Nor are they thereby creative alternatives for God with regard to Caesar simply in virtue of their being possible in themselves or consistently conceivable alongside consistent thoughts of Caesar. Likewise, God can think consistently of "being the fastest," "possible," and "the wheels on Caesar's chariot." However, "being the fastest possible" is not an alternative for the wheels on Caesar's chariot or for any wheel. 20 If Adams maintains that Leibniz counted "not crossing" as an alternative for Caesar merely because "not crossing" is consistently conceivable, why should he deny that, for Leibniz, "creating" is an alternative for Caesar or "being the fastest possible" is an alternative for the wheels on his chariot? Yet Leibniz surely would assert that "crossing the Rubicon" is an alternative for Caesar while "creating" is not. [T p.75] We need to ask, then, why, for Leibniz, "creating" is not an alternative for Caesar while "not crossing" is. I think that Leibniz would answer that God cannot conceive of Caesar creating but he can conceive him "not crossing," of course not just "not crossing" but not crossing something or other, say, the Rubicon. In addition, God knows an explanation for why Caesar does not cross the Rubicon. However, there can be no explanation of any finite being creating a thing or of any wheel being the fastest possible wheel.

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The last sentence of the passage Adams quotes places his speculations into deeper doubt. Leibniz speaks of "several possibles" being "not all equally feasible or convenient for the one who acts." How can a given path possibly be feasible or convenient to any degree for one who acts if it is inconceivable that the one who acts take the path? Certainly, if it is inconceivable that one take a path it is also inconceivable that the path be to any degree feasible or convenient for one. Nor is there any suggestion whatsoever in the passage that Leibniz denies that saints deliberate before deciding which of several paths to take. If he did, he would be denying, according to his own criteria of a free action, that the saints act freely. But if the saints do deliberate, in what would their deliberations consist? To the minds of the saints, are the various paths merely paths to an end that may be taken, or are they paths that they might take to an end? Do they attempt to determine whether the paths might be easy for them to take or do they attempt to determine, in the abstract, that the paths might be easy to take? Leibniz's general eschewal of abstractions would seem to count heavily against the latter alternative and heavily in favor of the former. Besides, the latter alternative, as Adams urges, is on its face explanatorily deeply inadequate and unsatisfactory. It also strikes me as somewhat ridiculous. If an interpretation reduces a great philosopher's position to the ridiculous, that is reason enough to warrant viewing it skeptically. So too, does the following passage from Theodicy [T 100]: Nothing is more widely known than the Tolle, lege (Take and read) cry which Saint Augustine heard in a neighboring house, when he was pondering on what side he should take among the Christians divided into sects, and saying to himself, Quod vitae sectabor iter?

This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures which he had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were the words which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism.

Here we find Leibniz explicitly speaking of Saint Augustine "pondering on" "what side he should take," not "what side should be taken," of asking what way of life he should follow, not "what way of life should be followed." He does not add that "strictly speaking" Saint Augustine could not have so pondered or so asked. Leibniz also spoke of himself as though he thought that he could consider himself acting otherwise: Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officis) as, for instance, Cicero St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrock, Rachekius, Pufendorf, as well as the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return to the owner a thing deposited: for example, one will not give back a dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that Cephalus will unwittingly em-

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ploy to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded back from me, and I am right in refusing them. But how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore them, when I cannot prove to him what I know of the evil consequences that restitution will have ... ? I should then be compelled to make restitution, having no alternative other than my own destruction. [T 121]

The important observation to make concerning these fantastic scenarios is that they all concern how Leibniz should act in a given type of circumstance. No matter how fantastic the imagined cases, Leibniz asserts with the ending sentence "/ should then be compelled to make restitution." How could he? Should we suppose that Leibniz intends to be understood to mean that there could be only a fIeshless making of a restitution? That there can be no destroying of Leibniz, but only, to his great fortune, and possible relief, a destroying in general if there is an equally etiolate resisting of orders? I think that Leibniz would answer here: "It would be much less shameful to admit that one does not have an answer to one's opponent than to give that answer." [T 169] Or, "These generalities are abstractions that cannot be found in the truth of individual things." [T 27] What Leibniz writes at T 100 and T 121 are not departures from his philosophical commitments. He assigns a crucial role to deliberation, and role playing, as it is commonly understood, in free choice making. Any effort to dismiss T 100 and T 121 and many other passages like them should involve adducing direct textual evidence that Leibniz denied that "The one who acts" cogitates upon what he will do and what the world will look like for him when and after he acts. Adams fails to do this. He does not come close to establishing his contention that, for Leibniz, God decides that the banks of the Rubicon will not be remained on rather than that Caesar will not remain on the banks of the Rubicon. There is a difference, of course, between the possibility of Caesar's merely remaining on the banks of the Rubicon and the possibility of his voluntarily and freely remaining on the banks of the Rubicon. For Leibniz, a voluntary action involves "proper" deliberation and such deliberation requires clear thinking. In spite of his view that most human reasoning is confused and "suppositive" [DM 24], Leibniz insisted that human freedom is possible and he held that knowledge is a possible basis for human freedom: [W]e must know and will what we are doing. It must be possible for us to abstain even from the sin which actually we are committing, if only a sufficiently strong effort were applied. [CD: 97-98]

Willfully abstaining from sin requires knowledge, judgment, and effort, according to Leibniz. [T 311] Caesar must understand what his not crossing the Rubicon is if he is to abstain freely from crossing it. Caesar cannot understand the impossible, however. Hence, if Caesar can properly deliberate on the question of whether to cross the Rubicon, Caesar's not crossing the Rubicon cannot be impossible; it

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must be consistently conceivable. Clearly, then, there must be an identity of Caesar across possible worlds if Caesar can coherently deliberate about what he is to do. There must also, it seems, be an identity of Jesus Christ across possible worlds if the following statement by Leibniz makes sense: And as for the dogmas of religion, we have no need for new revelations: if we are presented with rules which are conducive to salvation we are bound to obey them, even if the person presenting them performs no miracles And although Jesus Christ had the power, he nevertheless refused sometimes to exercise it for the gratification of 'this ... evil generation' which 'seeks a sign,' when he was preaching only virtue and what had already been taught by natural reason and the prophets. [N 510]

This passage, I think, is especially difficult to reconcile with the readings of Leibniz advanced by Frankel, Adams and other commentators. Frankel maintains that what Leibniz meant by the possibility of someone's acting otherwise is that the person may be conceived to act otherwise but lacks the power to act otherwise and Adams makes the more radical claim that there is no conception. In this passage, however, Leibniz states that Christ had the power to act otherwise, to perform miracles, but refused to use it. Christ could refuse to use a power only if he possessed it and could have used it. 21 That is, Christ cannot have refused to do what he was powerless to do. But suppose that he did exercise his power to perform miracles that he did not perform. Would he still be Christ? Would he still be God? Surely, Leibniz would say that we can conceive of Christ, that is God, performing miracles that he did not perform. But even though Christ is God, he is a creature. [CD 49] He is a man, and if he can conceive himself acting otherwise, so too, one would think, can he think of other men, e.g. Tyre and Sidon, acting otherwise. If Christ has counterfactual identities, so too do other men. So too does Leibniz because he, in some possible world, steals away with the magic Javelin, and saves the life of Procris. IV. THE FREEDOM OF CREATURES AND GOD'S IDEAS

According to Leibniz, the basis of the deliberation of rational creatures is their capacity to consider alternative courses of action, [Grua 300] even if they do not take advantage of it. I believe that for Leibniz this capacity is due to the fact that: [O]ur mind is affected immediately by the eternal ideas which are in God, since our mind has thoughts which are in correspondence with them and participate in them.[L 627] There remain in man some vestiges of the divine image, which furnish the reason why God may punish sinners without prejudice to his justice. The vestiges of the divine image consist in the innate light of reason as well as the innate freedom of will. [CD: 97-98] [O]ur soul is a certain expression, imitation, or image of the divine essence, thought and will and all the ideas which are comprised in God. [DM 28]

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Leibniz held that the light of reason can illuminate for spirits "all essences" as well as all existences. [DM 26] If God has an idea of Caesar acting otherwise, then Caesar has access to it, though he probably will not take advantage of that access owing to lassitude, or lack of time, or attachment to his senses. [N 186-187] Those "blessed substances" who are "confirmed in goodness," however, do take advantage, and they deliberate properly. [N 198; C 21f2 It is the fault of those who are not blessed that they do not deliberate properly: [People] speak and reason without explicit ideas - it is not that they cannot have the ideas, for they are there in their minds, but that they do not take the trouble to carry the analysis through ... [N 186]

Leibniz embraced the tenet that it is in principle possible for spirits to deliberate properly, with knowledge of alternative ways of acting available to them. They could achieve this knowledge if they took "the trouble to carry the analysis through." They do not take the trouble because they turn from God, who is the source of clear and distinct thoughts, to the imperfections of his creatures [T 284; CD 73; Grua 365] whose representations confuse them. [T 66] This turning from God to creatures, from clear and distinct ideas to confused ones,23 is due proximately to original sin, and it is due remotely to man's original and essential imperfection and natural incompleteness [Grua 436; Grua 362; Grua 365]: [I]t is not only after man's fall from innocence that original sin has got hold of the soul; even before, there was an original limitation or imperfection connatural to all creatures, which makes them capable of sin or failure. There is therefore no greater difficulty in supralapsarianism than in other views. And to this, I believe, the opinion of St. Augustine and other authors should be reduced who hold that the root of evil lies in nothingness, that is, in the privation or limitation of creatures, which God graciously corrects by that degree of perfection which it pleases him to give.[DM 30]

Leibniz wrote in this connection: Our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused. Distinct knowledge or intelligence occurs in the actual use of reason; but the senses supply us with confused thoughts. And we may say that we are immune from bondage insofar as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are confused. In this sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were to be desired, and we may say with St. Augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom of a slave. Yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has freedom to choose according to the state wherein he is, although more often than not he is under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils ... Nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is also our own, does not prevent us of choosing that which pleases us most, in the state to which we are reduced, in proportion to our present strength and knowledge. [T 289]

We have been reduced to our present state of living in sin by our original and unavoidable metaphysical imperfection and by original sin which was preventable.

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[Grua 362] We are not clearly and distinctly aware of things themselves but have confused images of them. These images are a defective basis for deliberations and judgments. Nonetheless, the images are a basis for choice. Caesar does not conceive clearly and distinctly his crossing the Rubicon or his not crossing the Rubicon. Still, it is his crossing of the Rubicon and his not crossing of the Rubicon that he conceives. He conceives of his not crossing the Rubicon when he reflects, to the extent that his "present strength and knowledge" allows, on God's idea of his doing so. Again, this reflection, however short of perfection it might be, is what makes deliberation possible for Caesar. Proper deliberations require clearly apprehended, appropriate alternative complete concepts, not obscure apprehensions of a complete individual concept that is a concept of how one exists in the actual world. It is only by means of a counterfactual complete concept that an individual can think coherently of himself taking alternative courses of actions. Leibniz would agree that it would certainly be remarkable for created rational beings to light upon the right complete concepts when deliberating. However, with the concurrence of God it is at least possible that sometimes they get it right, as the saints and those confirmed in good often do. For, according to Leibniz: As a matter of fact, our soul always does have within it the disposition to represent to it any [emphasis added] nature or form whatever, when an occasion arises for thinking of it. I believe that this disposition of the soul, insofar as it expresses some nature, form, or essence, is properly the idea of the thing, which is in us and always in us whether we think of it or not. For our soul expresses God and the universe, and all [emphasis added] the essences as well as all the existences. [DM 26]

If there are many complete concepts of Caesar in the "Region of Ideas," then Caesar, however obscurely, expresses them. There is, then, according to Leibniz, a possibility of Caesar's thinking with the appropriate complete concepts when deliberating, if he chooses to, and if there are many complete concepts of him. If God is so pleased to give the perfection of being "confirmed in good and evil" to a spirit, then that spirit will "make good use of its advantages," that is, its participation in God's ideas, and "carry the analysis through" to "a knowledge of its true good." A spirit confirmed in good and evil will be "above passion" (at least to a very large measure) and thereby enabled to "will as one should, i.e., with proper deliberation." "Proper deliberation" is possible only with a proper or clear and distinct idea in mind. I submit that, for Leibniz, in order to have the proper idea in mind when deliberating, one must have in mind some complete concept other than one's actual world complete concept. Counterfactual thinking with one's actual world complete concept is inexorably inept.

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V. PRIVATE MIRACLES?

Members of the Augsburg Confession avowed that man has the power to choose earthly things and that he can act otherwise than he actually acts with regard to them. According to that Confession, man is unfree only with respect to spiritual things, in particular; he is unable to achieve love and fear of God on his own or to regenerate himself. Man, as Leibniz states in his Theodicy, is "dead to the works of God." Leibniz meant by this that man has no power with respect to the works of God. Where there is no power there is no freedom. If Leibniz approved of Article XVIII of the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, as he said he did, one would reasonably expect that he at least not seek to subvert those articles in his Theodicy. My view is that he did not and that he in fact affirmed and promoted them. According to Leibniz, man has power in the "external" world to choose between worldly goods and evils, and after he has chosen, it may be truly said of man that he could have chosen otherwise. That is why he chooses freely. In Leibniz's view, all of the actions of a creature are contingent. [G VII 108] But not all of them are free. When passions, desires, and inclinations determine the mind to act as it does it is, in a certain sense of the term "free," not free. [T 66; Grua 676] That sense of free is "self-mastery" as opposed to "servility" and subordination. [T 200; T 228; Grua 677] The mind "accommodates" the body when it is "sunk" in the passions and emotions that bodily representations give rise to or beget. [T 66; T 64; T 310] On the other hand, When a rational creature thinks clearly and distinctly it controls or moderates these passions, inclinations, and desires, and its body is thereby accommodated to it. [T 66; T 64; MP 173f4 The mind dominates the body, for example, when it uses the body to study the behavior of projectiles or, more generally, to discover laws of nature. In another sense of "free," the mind is free even when the body dominates it and it accommodates the body. For Leibniz, freewill and freewill in bondage are the same thing. [T 277] Though constrained by and in service to the body, the soul retains power over its actions. Its submission to the orders and demands of the body is due not to necessity but to desire, which governs the exercise of its power. [T p. 387; T p. 381] A rational soul serves the body because it wants to. [T 277 278] It thus serves the body freely. The actions of intelligent substances that are due to their "covetous" desires for the pleasures that they find in carnal evil [T 278] are free because the desires arise from their defective natures, not from elsewhere. Inclinations to act: [U]sually relate to objects; but there are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously a subjecto or from the soul itself, and which bring it about that the one object is more accept-

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able than the other, or that the same is more acceptable at one time than at another. [T p. 427]

Rational creatures have desires because they lack perfections and it is their nature to lack perfection. The lack of perfection is the "deficient cause" of desires. [T 289; T 33; T 384; T 20] Thus, in so far as the will of the intelligent creature is determined by its desires it is determined, indirectly, by its limitations. Since the limitations of the creature belong to it and are essential to it, in being determined by its desires the will of the creature is self-determined. The determination has to be an instance of self-determination precisely because the creature is its limitations. This analysis throws some light on Leibniz's remark that all that creatures contribute to their salvation is their resistance. What God has to "overcome" when he saves creatures are their sense based strivings and covetous desires. Creatures resist God by desiring things other than the bliss making grace God wills to bestow on them. Being saved involves the elimination of the desires, that is, the elimination of concupiscence: being freed from the bondage of "sweet" sensible pleasures. [T 289] Creatures contribute the desires that God overcomes when he, in a sense, detaches them from their bodies and unites them with reason. 25 The possibility of a rational creature's acting according to reason is due to God's endowing them with a power to discern alternative possibilities and a knowledge of moral principles by means of which to evaluate the alternatives. [Grua 300; T 201] The passions of intelligent creatures cloud their thinking or "thwart the practical judgment of the understanding." [T 310] They enable the agreeably good to make a greater impression on the creature than the morally good makes on it. [T 154] Nevertheless, God equipped spirits with moral and other principles that they could use to think clearly about what to do if they wish to. Clearly and distinctly perceived principles applied to clearly and distinctly perceived alternatives yield free actions and unconstrained actions. The judgments of an intelligent creature, even a saint or a blessed creature, are always to some extent influenced by passionate responses to obscure representations of things external to it. [N 490; T 314; T p. 407] A creature frees itself from the bondage of confused perceptions to the extent that it responds to them intelligently, with sound judgments, rather than passionately. The force of others and its passions - "sensual pleasure, avarice, ambition" - enslave the rational creature. [T p. 423; T 228] An intelligent response might be to withhold judgment concerning the confused perception. Leibniz, in fact, often states that such suspension of judgment is what human freedom consists in. [T 64; Grua 385; T p. 382] However, freedom, in Leibniz's view, is not entirely negative. Detachment from objects of sense prepares the intelligent mind for attachment to other objects

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that are proper to its nature and these are its innate ideas. In so far as those ideas are constitutive of its God given rational nature, a rational creature thinks itself in thinking them and is thus self-determined and free. Of course, Leibniz admitted that only God is perfectly independent [Grua 362] or determined "by himself alone" [G VII 169; T p. 428; Grua 676] and that the "self-determination" of intelligent creatures is not pure but involves God's nature. [N 210] Indeed, God provides the force by which they determine themselves. When man judges and chooses goods in a rational manner, and acts by his power to obtain them, his actions are determined by final rather than efficient causes. In a manner of speaking, efficient causes determine a man when the reasons for his actions reside not in his reason but in things that he does not judge in an objective way. Leibniz considers the determination to act based on a rational judgment of goods and evils as analogous to private miracles: Free or intelligent substances have something greater [than stones] and more marvelous in a kind of imitation of God, so that they are not bound by any certain subordinate laws of the universe, but act as if by a private miracle, on the sole spontaneity of their own power, and, in consideration of some final cause, they interrupt the nexus and course of efficient causes acting on their own will. So it is true that there is no creature that knows the heart who could predict with certainty how some mind will choose in accordance with the laws of nature ... From this it can be understood what is that indifference that goes with freedom. Just as contingency is opposed to metaphysical necessity, so indifference excludes not only metaphysical but also physical necessity. [C 20-21]

Adams comments on this passage: This is an exceptional text, in part because it also says that free agents "interrupt the connection and course of efficient causes operating on their will" - something that seems quite contrary to Leibniz's usual views, as expressed, for example, in his letter of April 1687 to Arnauld (LA 93f.). But even aside from that, which may be just a lapse, I know of no other text in which Leibniz assimilates free actions to miracles, and it may be that the assimilation did not usually seem welcome to him. 26

I agree with Adams that it is apparently contrary to Leibniz's usual views for him to state that free agents "interrupt the connection and course of efficient causes operating on their will," but I do not agree with the reasons for his statement. Leibniz was committed to the view that the only efficient cause that acts on creatures is God. All other causes that "operate" on the wills of creatures do so indirectly and only ideally through the mediation of God, and they are not efficient but moral or final causes. [T 66; T p. 427] They appear good or bad to a mind and they affect it by attracting or repelling it. The attraction or repulsion does not involve a physical influence. Leibniz stated explicitly that minds are independent of the physical influence of all other creatures. [T 59] What, then, could Leibniz have

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meant by intelligent creatures interrupting "efficient causes operating" on their wills? If there is no operation there is no interruption. My judgment is that Leibniz was not writing with metaphysical rigor when he wrote that intelligent creatures interrupt "the nexus and course" of efficient causes acting on their wills. But his meaning is clear enough. Leibniz treated final or moral causes, which can only be representations of good and evil, as virtually efficient causes when their effects on a mind are not accompanied by judgment. If the mind responds to a representation without making a value judgment concerning it, the goodness of that representation plays a negligible a role in producing the reponse. Hence, its action on the mind is virtually efficient or very much like the action of an efficient cause. This situation will occur when bodies produce passions and inclinations in a mind of which the mind is unaware, and to which it responds nevertheless. [T 36] Such a response is not willed because, according to Leibniz, will depends on knowledge. [Grua 725] For Leibniz, the mind when it acts without thought and will is like a body or a "bare monad" that responds mechanically to stimuli. On the other hand, when a mind takes stock of what is happening to it, and thinks (makes value judgments) before it acts, it is something appreciably more than a body and things external to it do not act upon it as if "efficiently." Perhaps most often a practical judgment of the understanding is not involved in action. [T 51] When it is not, the action, according to Leibniz, in a sense is not free. It is not, as it were, miraculous: "There is contingency in a thousand acts of nature," Leibniz wrote, "but when there is no judgment in him who acts there is no freedom." [T 34; cf. Grua 488] The "as it were," in the preceding sentence is crucial. Contrary to what Adams states, Leibniz does not expressly assimilate free actions to miracles, at least not in the sense that Adams uses the term "assimilate." In another sense of the term "assimilate," however, I do grant that Leibniz assimilates free actions of created substances to miracles. What he states is that created intelligent substances act by their own power as ifby a "private miracle." He does not state that they act "by" a private miracle. The difference in the two statements is obviously vast. Not taking note of it can lead to interpretive mistakes, and Adams is led to them and away from an understanding of what Leibniz meant by "as if by a private miracle." I say "them" because Adams suggests also that the position Leibniz takes in the "private miracle" passage conflicts with his principle of preestablished harmony. But that suggestion is based on the errant presumption that according to Leibniz's principle of preestablished harmony every act of a mind is an "effect" of its body "acting" "efficiently" upon it and vice-versa. Leibniz does not formulate the principle in those terms. With his principle of preestablished harmony Leibniz provides, among other things, an account of the phenomenon of mind/body inter-

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action. However, the principle does not entail that all that happens in a mind is due to mindlbody "causal" interaction. 27 To be sure, Leibniz stated that every state of the mind is in agreement with all else that happens in the universe to which it belongs and that there is a "perfect parallelism" between what happens in the mind and in the body [L 536; T 74]: God created the soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must produce and represent to itself successively that which takes place in the body, and the body also in such a fashion that it must do to itself that which the soul ordains. Consequently the laws that connect the thoughts of the soul in the order of final causes and in accordance with the evolution of perceptions must produce pictures that meet and harmonize with the impressions of bodies on our organs; and likewise the laws of movements in the body, which follow one another in the order of efficient causes, meet and so harmonize with the thoughts of the soul that the body is induced to act at the same time when the soul wills it. [T 62] However, Leibniz does not assert in this passage or, to my knowledge, anywhere else, that there is a truly efficient causal connection between the soul and the body for the soul to interrupt. His view is that the appearance, or perhaps the vulgar belief, that the body acts upon the mind, that it produces pain in it, for example, can be accommodated by or interpreted away with the hypothesis that there is a concomitance between the states of the mind and the states of the body. This hypothesis of concomitance permits the abandonment of the hypothesis of physical influence without making an appeal to the hypothesis of occasional causes. More than this, concomitance or agreement is not always a rational reconstruction of the phenomenon or appearance of causal interaction. Leibniz states, for example, that a hyperbola expresses a circle, that what "takes place" in a circular curve "parallels" or maps what takes place in a hyperbolic curve, yet there is no causal interaction between the two curves [T 357] and the mapping does not represent a causal connection. The mind and body might be harmonized, sometimes, as circles and hyperbolas are harmonized. More to the point, the mind might sometimes be harmonized with a body in the way that a circle is harmonized with the smell of a rose. From another perspective, it appears to me that, for Leibniz, all sensible perceptual expression is a species of causal expression. However, he denied that all expression is sensible perceptual expression. According to Leibniz, minds express God's ideas when they reflect upon metaphysical, moral, and mathematical truths. [Grua 580-81] However, for Leibniz, they do not sensibly perceive these ideas. According to Leibniz, intelligent substances sensibly perceive singular things and apprehend intellectually universals. [Grua 583] In addition, he states that an object A acts on an object B just in case an increase in the perfection of A corresponds to a decrease in the perfection of B which is said to suffer on account of A. [DM 15] When a thinker thinks universals, universals do not suffer, that is, there is no de-

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crease in perfection in the universal even if there is an increase in the perfection of the thinker. Nor is there an increase in the perfection of a universal, when it is thought, that corresponds to a decrease in perfection of the thinker. The thinker expresses the universal, but there is no apparent efficient causal relation between the thinker and the universal. There is no reciprocal action and passion as there is in the case of perceptual expression. [T 66] There is a way to make good sense of Leibniz's talk of created intelligent substances acting as if by a private miracle, without casting him in the role of stumbling about in his carefully structured metaphysical scheme. Here is how. According to Leibniz, God's free actions emanate from his consideration of alternative possibilities. He states that the freedom of created minds is like this: The root of human freedom is in the image of God in man. Even if God always chooses the best, (and, if another omniscient being is supposed it would be able to predict what God would choose), nevertheless he chooses freely, since that which he does not choose remains possible by its own nature, therefore its opposite is not necessary. In the same way [emphasis added] man is free, so that it is allowed that from two things he always chooses what appears best, nevertheless he does not choose with necessity ... But in beasts there is not reflection or action in itself, therefore there is not a free decree concerning their actions [Grua 300]

Reflection, for Leibniz, is not always simply thinking about what one perceives sensibly. Reflection involves a consideration of possible courses of actions and the moral and other a priori rules that pertain to them. Reason "pure and simple," according to Leibniz, is concerned only with truths independent of the senses. [T p. 73] Man is capable of reflection because there is an image of God, more precisely, an image of God's understanding and wisdom, in him that involves these truths. Man freely chooses his actions when he reflects upon the courses of action that he can take and evaluates them. Presumably the more courses of actions he considers, and the more clearly and distinctly he perceives them, the more reasonable, free, and in control he is. He can always suspend his judgment regarding which possible action to take by taking into account other possibilities. Leibniz states, of course, that there must be motives for such suspensions of judgment. But the consideration that there is possibly something better is precisely such a motive. In acting in a quasi - miraculous manner a rational creature reflects on various ways in which it might act. It compares its ideas of possibilities that are purely possible. These possibilities, even though they are destined to remain eternally nonactual, nevertheless exert an influence on the rational soul. It is seemingly miraculous that a nonactual thing, something that is merely thought about can influence the behavior of an existing thing. One might say that it is the thought that does the influencing and the thought is actual. Granted. But suppose a man

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forms the conception of a perfect sphere and the conception of a perfect circle. He has time to study one or the other to determine its properties. He attempts to ascertain which of the two objects would be the best to study. As it is, the sphere is - to use Leibniz's words - "more worthy of observation." [GLW 163] In a sense, it is a more attractive object of study, there is more in the sphere to hold the man's attention. The man decides to study it rather than the circle. The contents of the man's thoughts when he thinks of a perfect sphere and a perfect circle are pure possibles. These are especially suitable examples of pure possibles because Leibniz stated that when minds engage in mathematical thinking they are thinking God's ideas. [T 242] At any rate, it is not clear to me that the contents of these thoughts do not figure, somehow, into the determination of the man's will. However, if the content of the thought is a pure possible, I believe that Leibniz would say that the determination is quasi-miraculous: it exceeds, or goes beyond, the natures of all creatures other than the self-determining creature whose nature comprises and "turns to" reflect upon the ideas. Indeed, the determinants of a freely chosen action, the objects of a free agent's antecedent acts of will, exceed, or go beyond, the existent sensible sequence of things to the region of pure possibles. The determination therefore is like a miraculous determination. It resembles the determination of God's will by his contemplation of pure possibles in his understanding. That, no doubt, is why Leibniz remarked that the souls action upon itself is as "great a difficulty" as the incarnation. 28 In his Theodicy Leibniz states also that the Mysteries of the Christian faith "contain truths that are not comprised in this sequence." [T 108] He meant by this that the determining reasons for the Mysteries, for example the virgin birth, are found outside of this sequence or world. Reasons for events that occur in this sequence that are found outside of the sequence are above human reason, but are in supreme reason, namely, God's understanding. For Leibniz, "private miracles" are minor mysteries, final causality and self-determination are minor mysteries. Leibniz was a great fan of Plato and there is little doubt that he did not fail to take note of Plato's remark in Book N of the Republic that "self-control" is a "ridiculous" term: Moderation is surely a kind of order, the mastery of certain kinds of pleasures and desires. People indicate as much when they use the phrase "self-control" and other similar phrases. I don't know just what they mean by them, but they are, so to speak, like tracks or clues that moderation has left behind in language. Isn't that so? Yet isn't the expression "self-control" ridiculous? The stronger self that does the controlling is the same as the weaker self that gets controlled, so that only one person is referred to in all such expressions. Nonetheless, the expression is trying to indicate that, in the soul of every person, there is a better part and a worse one and that whenever the naturally better part is in control of the

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worse, this is expressed by saying that the person is self- controlled or master of himself... But when, on the other hand, the smaller and better part is overpowered by the larger because of bad upbringing or bad company, this is called being self- defeated or licentious. [Republic Book IV 430e-431b]

Socrates's admission that he does not understand what "self-control" means and his description of the term as "ridiculous" indicate that Plato viewed the notion of self-control or self-determination as something of a mystery. In his Objections to Descartes's Meditations, Arnauld went further and claimed that the notion of being "self-caused" is flatly incoherent. [CSM IT 150] Descartes did not disagree with him, but maintained that a thing can be a formal cause of itself and that is "strongly analogous" to being an efficient cause of itself.[CSM IT 170-171; Cf. CSM ill 176] As Leibniz notes, [T 365] Descartes also confessed that humans cannot make any sense of their freedom of the will, and by "freedom of the will" Descartes meant self-determination of the will. Leibniz meant by "as if by a private miracle" what Plato meant by "ridiculous" and what Descartes meant by "free will" and the notion of self-causality being "strongly analogous" to efficient causality. VI. LIMITED PRIVACY

In the passage wherein Leibniz states that there are actions of intelligent substances that are neither physically nor metaphysically necessary, he does not add that they are also not morally necessary. They are in fact morally necessary. The action of the intelligent substance, even though it is free, and even when it is quasi - miraculous, conforms to the principle of the best and to the principle of sufficient reason. Thus, although "it is true that there is no creature that knows the heart who could predict with certainty how some mind will choose in accordance with the laws of nature," some creature, perhaps an angel, might predict how the mind will choose in accordance with the laws of final causality or laws of the will if it knew the motives of the mind. God, certainly, could predict how an intelligent substance will judge objects of choice [T 49] by means of laws that are not known to us. [G VIT 273] He knows which objects the intelligent substance will judge are good, which better, and which are best. Leibniz's point is that God's knowledge of how the intelligent substance will choose, how it will determine its will, is not founded entirely on a knowledge of efficient causes acting on the will according to laws of nature. It is founded also on a knowledge of final causes acting on the will, and the intelligent substance's actions on itself, its reflections. Reflections are not efficient causes. Hence, they are not subject to laws of nature and they are not causally connected to them even if they are in agreement (not in conflict) with them. They are quasi-miraculous.

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Strictly speaking, for Leibniz, every action of a mind is determined by a final cause. The mind always acts to achieve some good, even if it is virtually insensible of what it is doing, and therefore acting virtually in a mechanical fashion. But no matter how closely resembling to a mechanical action an action of a mind is that action is necessarily not mechanical. A mathematician's deduction of a theorem of geometry is less mechanical looking than a carpenter's hammering of a nail. In Leibniz's system the differences in appearance are due to the principle of pre-established harmony, a principle that governs how things appear. Strictly speaking, however, the actions of the carpenter are neither more nor less mechanical than the actions of the mathematician. In so far as both the mathematician and the carpenter are minds, none of their actions are really mechanical. Leibniz regarded rational, dispassionate self-determination as sort of miraculous because of the extent to which it is not an adjustment to things that behave without reason and mechanically, that is, bodies. To the extent that minds react mindlessly or without reason to representations they react like bodies, as if they are subject to efficient causes. Rational minds behave like bodies when they do not subsume particulars under universals, for that is what they can do that bodies cannot do. [N 142] And that is why there is freedom only in intelligent creatures.[T 65] Leibniz, speaking without metaphysical rigor, but not carelessly, and certainly for heuristic purposes, dropped the "like" in the "private miracles" passage. Another crucial difference between minds and bodies that is due to the former being able to apprehend universals while the latter is unable to is that minds are able to suspend their actions by reflecting and bodies cannot. The more a mind holds itself in suspense, by reflecting on possibilities, the less like a body it is. Its self-suspension might be construed as analogous to God's suspension of the influence of laws of nature. That no doubt, is why Leibniz stated that minds behave as if by a private miracle. In acting quasi-miraculously, a spirit harmonizes itself with God rather than with the universe. It achieves union with God, a deification, albeit, only by the grace of God. In following the lead of its body and senses, it foresakes that union, and sins.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO Hide Ishiguro sets forth the generic formulation of counterpart theory as ascribed to Leibniz: "Why are truths of fact contingent? Is it true as Russell claimed that no subject/predicate proposition could really be contingent for Leibniz? Leibniz gives as an example of a contingent truth, the truth that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. That this is true implies that the concept 'crossed the Rubicon' is included in the concept of Caesar. How then can the opposite, the proposition 'Caesar did not cross the Rubicon,' be possible? 1

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What Leibniz meant by saying that the opposite of 'Caesar crossed the Rubicon' is possible, is that there could have been in a different world a person like Caesar in all respects except that of crossing the Rubicon, with its attendant consequences. He could not, of course, be Caesar, that particular historical person in the world. So, strictly speaking, it is not the case that 'Caesar did not cross the Rubicon' could be true. But it is possible for there to be another complex concept which contains almost all the predicates of Caesar, but which contains 'did not cross the Rubicon' instead of 'crossed the Rubicon' ... "[T]he corresponding proposition which is true in other worlds would not be about Caesar but about someone like him. Thus there are contingent singular propositions ... within Leibniz's metaphysical system." According to Ishiguro, Leibniz's doctrine of complete individual concepts precludes Caesar, and any other actual individual, from possibly existing in any possible world other than the actual world. Hence, she asserts that Leibniz settled for an ersatz "as ir'-reference to Caesar across possible worlds. That is, Ishiguro holds that the name "Caesar" cannot really refer to our Caesar in other Leibnizian possible worlds but must, at best, refer to Caesar counterparts. Likewise Ishiguro maintains that Leibniz's doctrine of complete individual concepts and his principle of the identity of indiscemibles restricts him to speaking not "strictly" but only "loosely" of "Caesar did not cross the Rubicon" being possibly true. Ishiguro argues that Leibniz could do this loose speaking by denying by proxy, by way of a counterpart, the proposition, "Caesar crossed the Rubicon." "Caesar," in the contingently true proposition "Caesar did not cross the Rubicon," loosely refers to Caesar, according to Ishiguro, but strictly refers to a Caesar counterpart. Ishiguro's "counterparts" are analogs of samples of a substance that are used in experiments conducted under the aegis of the principle that similar causes will cause similar effects in similar objects: what happens to one sample of a substance under a given set of conditions would happen to any other sample of the same substance under the same conditions. Ishiguro envisages possible Caesars as samples of Caesar, as it were. Wilson points out that Leibniz often claims that God can act otherwise. She then raises the question of whether there are counterpart God's, that is, counterpart absolute perfect beings that differ from the actual God but are nonetheless similar to him. Wilson argues that the idea that there are is absurd. Here is the gist of her argument. If a being is absolutely perfect, the concept of that being implies its existence, that is, the essence of an absolutely perfect being is identical with its existence. This entails that if there are counterpart Gods these counterpart God's exist: according to the ontological argument one cannot consistently suppose an absolutely perfect non-existent being, since existence is counted among the perfections of such a being. At the same time, however, Leibniz insisted that there is necessarily only one God [Grua 354; Grua 267], so there cannot be counterpart existing Gods. It appears that the possibility of God's acting otherwise in Leibniz's system, therefore, cannot be made sense of by means of counterpart theory, even if that theory might be useful in accounting for the freedom of imperfect beings. David Blumenfeld forcefully criticizes counterpart theory on grounds that I believe Leibniz would affirm. He writes in his article 'Counterparts and Freedom': "We do normally take the fact that relevantly similar people have behaved differently from a given individual to support the claim that the latter person could have done otherwise. But isn't this because we normally take such data to be evidence that this person himself could have done otherwise? We believe, that is, that ... the world might have been such that the very person we are judging behaved differently. If we did not take the data to have this import, it seems to me that we would not find it relevant to the person's freedom." ['Superessentialism, Counterparts, Freedom': 114] If Leibniz took the "normal" approach to evaluating counterfactuals that Blumenfeld describes in the above passage, it would have been redundant for him to introduce counterparts of actual individuals into his metaphysical scheme. Counterparts are meant to compensate for the concession that actual individuals cannot be conceived consistently to behave otherwise. Why postulate

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counterparts if there are consistent conceptions of actual individuals behaving otherwise? On the other hand, if God cannot conceive consistently of actual individuals behaving otherwise what is the point of counterpart theory? According to Leibniz, if it is not consistently conceivable that an individual behave otherwise, then it is impossible that that individual behave otherwise and its having a counterpart cannot undo this condition. The interpreters of Leibniz as a counterpart theorist construe him, in effect, as proposing that if the complete concept of a counterpart of Caesar contains a predicate, then the complete concept of Caesar possibly contains that predicate. In other words, they maintain that what is true of a counterpart of Caesar is possibly true of Caesar. The following passage, however, poses a serious challenge to that proposal: "[I]t is required of a definition that there should be agreement that it is possible. That is, it is necessary that it should be proved that A is possible... But this can be known only by experience, if it is agreed that A exists, or has existed, and so is possible. (Or at least, if it is agreed that something like A has existed. However, perhaps this case cannot really arise, for two complete things are never similar and where incomplete things are concerned it is sufficient that one of two similar things should exist for the incomplete thing, i.e. the common denomination, to be possible)." [C 372 (1 686)/LP 62; cf. L 551, 524, 268] According to counterpart theory, the proposition that Adam did not take the fruit is possible if some counterpart that is similar to Adam does not take the fruit. The connection between what a counterpart does and what Adam can do is supposed to be established by their similarity. But Leibniz states in the above passage that no two complete things are similar and this fact, according to him, rules out inferring what is possible regarding one from what is the case regarding the other. To be sure, there are different kinds of similarity, and in the passage Leibniz no doubt has in mind perfect similarity. In other places he is more precise, he states that perfect similarity occurs only in incomplete things. His point, then, is that in order to draw legitimate inferences about what is possible for A from what is the case for B, A and B must be perfectly similar. Leibniz, therefore, would certainly hold that the so-called "counterparts" of an actual individual, because they are "complete," are not perfectly similar, and consequently useless for determining what is possibly true ofit. 2 A 6 2 288. According to Leibniz, God's wisdom differs from ours only in that it is infinitely more rerfect: T p. 75. Adams, 'Theories of Actuality': 192. 4 For Adams's discussion of Wilsons's refutation of the view that Leibniz is a counterpart theorist see his Leibniz: 54-57. 5 Leibniz refers to God's "separate decrees," as "antecedent acts of will:" T 196. 6 Leibniz states often that God wills antecedently to create all good, including the good that is the salvation of all men: [T 25, T 116, T p. 402, T 21, T 26, T 84.] 7 Leibniz regarded deliberations as acts of antecedent will. [T 225] R God is inclined to create all possib1es.[ T 201] 9 "The antecedent will is entirely serious and pure and ought not to be confused with velleity (which consists in this: that one would will if one were able, and would wish to be able), which does not exist in God; nor is it to be confused with conditional will ... The antecedent will of God tends towards actualizing all good and repelling all evil, as such, and in proportion to the degree of goodness and evil. How serious this will is, God himself confirmed when he so firmly asserted that he did not want the death of the sinner, that he wanted all men to be saved, and that he hated sin." [CD 25] 10 Leibniz refers to antecedent willings as acts: [T 201, T 325, T 84, T 383, T 82] II They are also required to make sense of the Evangelicals theory that God elects those who he sees will accept his graces with a lively faith and abandons those to themselves who would not so accept them.

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12 Bodies and nonspirits, that is creatures that perceive but that lack reason, [T 124] and are arranged according to time and space [T 200], are not responsible for their actions because God chooses for them. [N 179] 13 Frankel, 'Being Able to do Otherwise: Leibniz on Freedom and Contingency': 296. 14 Ibid., 299. 15 Ibid., 298. 16 According to Leibniz there is no act without a predetermination to act and predetermination is predisposition by causes.[CD 106] Leibniz also stated that all action must have its origin in disposition to act: [T 46, T p. 427, T p. 421] and that the predetermination to act is contained in the disposition to act. [T 47] I take it to be a trivial point that a predetermining cause is a power. 17 Adams, Leibniz: 33. 18 Cited from Adams, Leibniz: 53. 19 Ibid. 20 "[W]e cannot safely infer from definitions until we know that they are real or that they involve no contradiction. The reason for this is that from concepts which involve a contradiction, contradictory conclusions can be drawn simultaneously, and this is absurd. To explain this I usually make use of the example of the most rapid motion, which involves an absurdity. Suppose a wheel turns at a most rapid rate. Then anyone can see that if a spoke of the wheel is extended beyond its rim, its extremity will move more rapidly than a nail in the rim itself. The motion of the nail is therefore not the most rapid, contrary to hypothesis. Yet at first glance we may seem to have an idea of the most rapid motion, for we understand perfectly what we are saying." [L 293] 21 Even the damned have the power to act otherwise, according to Leibniz. [T 269] 22 The blessed are blessed with passions that always tend toward the good [T 310] because they are united to God [DSR 113] and they are also aided by circumstances [T 286] and good impressions. [T 298] 23 "I have learned something with certainty .. .it is this: if someone turns to God, or what is the same, withdraws from the senses and draws back unto his own mind, if he seeks the truth with sincere affection, then the darkness will be split as with some unexpected stroke of light, and through the dense fog in the middle of the night the way is shown." [CP 40] Leibniz perhaps learned this from Augustine: "Therefore the will, clinging to common and immutable goods, obtains the first and great goods of man ... The will, however, commits sin when it turns away from immutable and common goods, toward its private good, either something external to itself or lower than itself. It turns to its own private good when it desires to be its own master; it turns to external goods when it busies itself with the private affairs of others or with whatever is none of its concern; it turns to goods lower than itself when it loves pleasures of the bodies ... evil is turning away from immutable goods and a turning toward changeable goods." [On FreeChoice of the Will: 82] A careful reading of the Theodicy will reveal that Leibniz discusses each of the "turnings" that Augustine lists and describes in that work. 24 According to Leibniz, rational beings perceive bodies distinctly when they see the ideas of the bodies in God rather than by feeling.[MP 177] In understanding the reasons for material things the rational creature reflects God, and when it has confused thoughts it reflects the universe. [MP 175] 25 Leibniz stated that a thing resists that which endeavors to divide it. [DSR 60] If this is a general characterization of resistance that applies to souls' resistance to God's grace, I think that it is reasonable to believe that, for Leibniz, the souls are resisting detachment from their passions and their confused ideas. Consider, in this connection, Descartes's efforts in his Meditations to detach himself from his senses. See note 21, this ckapter. 26 Adams, Leibniz: 92. 27 Parkinson makes this point in his introduction to LA: "Leibniz ... seems to be saying that a monad or substance is 'dominant' over others if it represents or expresses these more distinctly than it expresses other substances ... one may ask why, in this case, the dominant monad should not be called the cause of the body. Leibniz might reply that, although causality is to be explained in terms of

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expression, it does not follow that every case of one substance's expressing another is also a case of causal relation," [LA xxxvi-xxxvii] 28 Cited from Loemker, 'Boyle and Leibniz,': 272,

CHAPTER THREE PERSONAL AND METAPHYSICAL IDENTITY I. INTRODUCTION ONE: THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

Adams and Yost) have conjectured that Leibniz proffered a "purely qualitative" universe. Their conjecture, if restricted to an early stage of Leibniz's career, agrees with Kulstad's claim that Leibniz, early in his career, shared Spinoza's view that there are no substances other than God and that what we typically regard as individuals are really modes or properties of God. 2 According to this brand of pantheism, modes are loci of relations "within" the one substance, God, and the relations differentiate the modes, not distinct selbst standen "substrata" on which the relations are founded. During the "Spinozist"stage of Leibniz's career, the question of whether a finite individual substance could have properties other than its actual properties is as inept for Leibniz as the question of whether a river could have a different depth would have been for Heraclitus. The texts appear to provide impressive support for Kulstad's reading of Leib3 niz. Consider, for example, the following: It can easily be demonstrated that all things are distinguished, not as substance (i.e., radically) but as modes. This can be demonstrated from the fact that, of those things which are radically distinct, one can be perfectly understood without the other; that is, all the requisites in one can be understood without another; that is, all the requisites of the one can be understood without all the requisites of the other being understood. But in the case of things, this is not so; for since the ultimate reason of things is unique, and contains by itself the aggregate of requisites of all things, it is evident that the requisites of all things are the same. So also is their essence, given that an essence is the aggregate of all primary requisites. Therefore the essence of all things is the same, and things differ only modally, just as a town seen from a high point differs from the town seen from a plain. If only those things are really different which can be separated, or of which one can be perfectly understood without the other, it follows that no thing really differs from another, but all things are one, just as Plato argues in the Parmenides. [DSR 93 - 95]

These pronouncements set Leibniz's early theory of finite creatures worlds apart from his later theory of individual substance.4 Yet, to its credit, Leibniz's early Spinozism is consistent with his Evangelicalism. At the heart of Evangelicalism is the precept that man, apart from God, is powerless, or, to say the same thing, that

78 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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man is able to act only through his union with God or God's essence. As already discussed in the Introduction to this book, the Evangelicals maintained that no effort on the part of man can accomplish this union. According to them, only an absolutely free dispensation of grace by God can bring it about. Whereas man fell away from God's power by his freewill, he cannot tum again to God by his freewill because he has not the power to do so and his hate of God keeps him powerless. Leibniz's early views on creaturely action are in agreement with this precept, and my guess is that the agreement is by design. Leibniz's Spinozism, I think, is a rampart for the idea that man, apart from God is nothing. For Leibniz, for man to be nothing apart from God meant for man to have no substance, essence, or ability apart from God. As Augustine stated it, if God were to withdraw his sustaining grace from a man, that man would return to nothingness. Leibniz agreed with Augustine, and his agreement is evident in the following passage from a 1677 note on a conversation he had with Steno: 5 Properly and accurately speaking, the correct thing to say is not so much that God concurs in an action, but rather that he produces it. For let us suppose that God concurs in some action in such a way that it is produced not only by God, but also in part by a man; from this supposition it follows that this particular concurrence of the man does not require the cooperation of God, which is contrary to the hypothesis. For that particular concurrence is also an act; therefore it follows in the end that all acts are produced in full by God, in the same way as are all creatures in the universe. [Grua 275]

The conclusion that Leibniz draws in this passage is tantamount to the claim that creatures do not have essences, for an essence is precisely the source of action as God's essence is the source of God's action. His conclusion is also consistent with the idea that modes do not act, but only substances do. It is the nature of a Leibnizian substance to act. In Leibniz's early philosophy there is only one such substance. Hence, the following remarks by Russell are nearly accurate when referred to that philosophy: [Leibniz's] substance can only be defined as "this." Or rather - and this is where the doctrine of substance breaks down - the substance cannot be defined at all. To define is to point out the meaning, but a substance is, by its very nature, destitute of meaning, since it is only the predicates, which give a meaning to it. Even to say "this" is to indicate some part of space or time, or some distinctive quality; to explain in any way which substance we mean is to give our substance some predicate. But unless we already know which substance we are speaking of, our judgment has no definiteness, since it is another judgment to assert the same predicate of another substance. Thus we necessarily incur a vicious circle. 6

I say that Russell's remarks are only "nearly" accurate because Leibniz, during his Spinozist stage, would deny that what Russell says of his theory of substance betokens its breakdown. Rather, Spinozist Leibniz would have responded that if

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what Russell says of his theory of substance is true, it validates that theory from the point of view of his confession of faith. According to Leibniz's early theory of substance, the "identity," or "meaning" as Russell called it, of Leibnizian creatures is accomplished by their "entire being." [G N 18] The entire being of a creature includes its relations to other things. Indeed, for early Leibniz the identity of modes is constituted entirely by relations. In other words, different relations determine different "entire beings" or different modes. Leibniz develops this point in his Confessio: Th.: [S]ince souls are in themselves very similar to each other, or, as they say in the schools, they differ numerically or surely only in degree, and hence are differentiated solely by external impressions, what reason can there be in that universal harmony, why this soul rather than that soul is exposed to circumstances that will corrupt the will, or (what is the same) why is it assigned to this time to this place? [CP 104] Ph. [Leibniz's spokesman]: This question seems difficult, but more in virtue of the tortured manner of asking the question, than in the nature of the problem. It touches upon the very thorny consideration of the principle of individuation, that is, of the discrimination of things differing solely in number. Suppose that there are two eggs so similar to each other that not even an Angel <(from the hypothesis of highest similitude» is able to notice a difference. Even in this case, would anyone deny that they are different; at least by that which makes one of them "this" and the other one "that", either by haecciate, or because they are one and another, or by number? But what do we mean when we count to ourselves, or when we say This [for number is to repeat "this"]? Or by determination? What unless sense of time and place, or motion .. .1 would audaciously say that an Angel or God is not able to assign any other difference [from hypothesis of highest similitude] than that this one [egg] is presented at this time in the place A and the other in the place B. [CP 104; Cf. CP 104ff.]

Leibniz's employment of eggs to illustrate the point he is making in the above passages is very suggestive. Eggs are evocative of blank white tablets. Are souls of a given species in general like tabulae rasae? If so, is one tabula rasa-like soul of a given species any different intrinsically from another tabula rasa-like soul of the same species? His blunt answer is "No." In the Confessio, Leibniz maintains that extrinsic denominations are needed to distinguish things that are of the "highest similitude." 7 The claim that there is no way to distinguish souls intrinsically provides a basis for a defense against the charge that God's dispensing of grace independently of considerations of personal merit is unfair, a defense that Leibniz and other Evangelicals were concerned to give. [DM 31] No soul can be more or less deserving of salvation or damnation than another if they are indistinguishable. Likewise, God cannot have been playing favorites with souls that he cannot tell apart. He cannot have placed one soul in a set of circumstances rather than another because of discrimination: if there is no way to discriminate among souls there is no way to discriminate against them. This was a clever defense, but it needed to be reconciled with Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason. If there is no distinction

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among souls independently of their relations, how is God to determine which soul to give which relations? God would have no reason, if he cannot tell two souls apart, for treating them differently in any way, including how he locates them in space and time. Leibniz eventually effected the needed reconciliation by, among other things, assigning to souls inherent dispositions: Human souls differ not only from other souls but also from one another, though the differences are not of the sort that we call specific. And I think that I can demonstrate that every substantial thing, be it soul or body, has a unique relationship to each other thing; and [emphasis added] that each must always differ from each other in respect of intrinsic denominations. Not to mention the fact that those who hold forth about the 'blank page' cannot say what is left once the ideas have been taken away - like the scholastics who leave nothing in their prime matter. It may be said that this 'blank page' of the philosophers means that all the soul possesses, naturally and inherently, are bare faculties. But inactive faculties - in short, the pure powers of the Schoolmen - are also mere fictions and obtainable only by abstraction ... There is always a particular disposition toward action, and toward one action rather than another. [N 110] [It] may be that all men are equally bad, and consequently incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good or less bad qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way: for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the Preestablished Harmony proves. Some are more or less inclined towards a particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, all in accordance with their natural dispositions. [T 105; CD 138-139]

In his Confessio, Leibniz limited the application of his principle of the identity of indiscernibles to souls as they exist in relation and bear a unique relationship to other minds in God. Subsequently, in the Theodicy and the New Essays, Leibniz states both that existing souls have a unique point of view "and" that each must differ from every other in respect of intrinsic traits. Different souls of the New Essays and Theodicy have different dispositions. s However, the dispositions must not be confused with positive "goodness." Leibniz maintained to the end that there is nothing in souls that is able to accomplish good works or that merits salvation. Spirits cooperate in their salvation, Leibniz maintained steadfastly, only by resisting it. Yet, Leibniz did make something of a Semi-Pelagianistic compromise, or, at least, he appeared willing to make it: There must needs be choice; but I do not think that one must seek the reason altogether in the good or bad nature of men. For if with some people one assume that God choosing the plan which produces the most good, but which involves sin and damnation, has been prompted by his wisdom to choose the best natures in order to make objects of his grace, this grace would not seem sufficiently to be a free gift. [However] some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and in a more favorable way for those whose resistance will be less, and that he abandons the rest to their free will. We may readily suppose that this is often the case, and this expedient is among

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those which make man distinguishable by anything favorable in his nature, is the farthest removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture, notwithstanding, to make of it a universal rule. [T 103-104]

Leibniz is offering a very generous compromise in these passages, compared with what other, conservative Evangelicals were prepared to offer. To be sure, he does not allow that there is anything positive in a man that makes him more worthy of election. "It is remote from the teachings of St. Paul and even from Supreme Reason," he wrote, "to assume that men are distinguishable by some inborn merit." [T 103]9 He only allows that one man may resist less than another. He states elsewhere that a lesser evil may be treated as if it is a good when compared to greater evils [T 8] (and, likewise that a lesser good may be treated as anevil when compared to greater goods. [T 196])\0 Nonetheless, he goes beyond the conservative Evangelical position in allowing that salvation may depend in a "safe" way on the relatively positive character or qualities of man. Yet God does not save a man on account of his inherent goodness, so God's absolute love is not compromised or jeopardized: Christs's sacrifice is not demeaned. It is still the case that "[T]he cross is good and ... works are bad, for through the cross works are undone and the old Adam, whose strength is in works, is crucified." 11 God loves man in spite of his wretchedness not because of his goodness. To Leibniz's mind, that is all that an Evangelical needs to confess, and he can confess it safely. He adds: One may say that men are chosen and ranged not so much according to their excellence as according to their conformity with God's plans. Even so it may occur that a stone of lesser quality, is made use of in a building or in a group because it proves to be the particular one for filling a particular gap ... But, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is no need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make it clear to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of God. [T 105-106; Cf. CD 136-137]

Leibniz argues that if it serves God's plan to save men on account of their hearts being more receptive to an "infusion of good will," [T 167] he will do so, and if it serves his plan to save men because of their greater resistance to such infusion, he will do so. God will do whatever is included in the best plan. He has no particular will for saving this or that man; rather, he has a general will to create the best of possible worlds. [T 206; T 337] The dispensation of grace does not depend on the works of the man but on the harmony of the universe. [T 376] Nevertheless: God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will. He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons, makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. [T 174]

Another point to bear carefully in mind is that Leibniz does not retreat from his earlier view that creatures do not act, at least not in the customary sense of the

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word. Leibniz came to maintain that creatures "act" in the sense of providing God with reasons for making changes in other things and in themselves, changes, as we have seen, that God builds into creatures from the beginning of their existences. Leibniz also continued to maintain that creatures concur in divine action by resisting. The resistance takes the form of creatures setting limits to God's creative activity in their various idiosyncratic ways. They are idiosyncratically disposed to limit God's creative activity due to their unique finite capacities to receive perfection. The limitations of creatures "moderate," Leibniz stated, in unique ways the impression that God's act of perfecting them makes on them. [T 30] II. INTRODUCTION TWO: COUNTERFACTUAL IDENTITY AND INDISCERNIBILITY

Any metaphysical system that assumes both complete concepts and true counterfactuals should provide for counterfactual identity and individuals' having many complete concepts. The main point of this chapter is that Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscemibles does not entail that those very reasonable and minimal provisions cannot be met. I will not sidestep or downplay Leibniz's well-known pronouncement that if God were to entertain a counterfactual conception of an individual that that "counterfactualized individual" would be a different person than it actually is. Commentators have interpreted Leibniz to have meant by this statement and other statements like it that it is not possible for an individual to have any properties other than its actual properties. The unstated basis of this interpretation is the supposition that, for Leibniz, there is one possible personhood per individual. However, given Leibniz's acceptance and defense of the doctrines of the Filioque [Grua 178] and of the Trinity, the idea that the divine essence or nature is different persons [T 22 p. 87, Grua 179: "Tres sunt personae divinitatis qua rum una numero essentia est. "] I think that there is a prima facie case, at least, for the contention that Leibniz allowed for non-divine substances possibly being different persons. Given his view that there is only a difference of degree, albeit an infinite degree of difference, between finite spirits and God, it is not clear to me how Leibniz could maintain consistently both that the divine substance is different persons and also that it is impossible for finite spirits to be different persons. I argue that in Leibniz's system the same individual "absolute" subject (as Leibniz calls it [Grua 540]) is the "foundation," as it were, of different complete individual substances, or, as I understand Leibniz, persons, in different possible worldS. 12 I aim to show that the proposition that the same absolute subject is different possible complete individual substances is not systematically incoherent for Leibniz.

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III. THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

Leibniz stated in his Discourse that his doctrine of complete concepts is a "paradoxical" consequence of his concept containment theory of truth. [DM 8] Another important and paradoxical (according to Leibniz) consequence of that theory is his principle that there are no numerically distinct, qualitatively identical individuals. [DM 9] This is Leibniz's so - called "principle of the identity of indiscernibles." The following are paradigmatic statements that Leibniz provides of that principle: It is not true that two substances may be exactly alike and differ only numerically, solo numero, and what St. Thomas says on this point regarding angels and intelligences (that among them every individual is an infima species) is true of all substances, provided that the specific difference is understood as geometers understand it in the case of figures. [G IV 433IL 308] There is no such thing as two individuals indiscernible from each other ... two drops of water, or milk viewed with a microscope, will appear distinguishable from each other. [G VII 393IL 700] [The] nature of an individual must be complete and determinate. I am even very much persuaded of what St. Thomas had already taught regarding intelligences, and I consider it to be generally true, namely that it is not possible for there to be two indiviuduals entirely alike, or differing in number only. So one must not conceive of an indeterminate Adam, when it is a question of determining whether all human events follow from the assumption of his existence; but one must attribute to him a concept so complete that everything that can be attributed to him can be deduced from it. [G II 42ILA 45-46] It is not obvious why Leibniz considered his principle of the identity of in discern ibles paradoxical. Indeed, the proposition that there are qualitatively identical, yet numerically distinct, individuals is more difficult to motivate from the standpoint of experience than its contrary: I have never seen qualitatively identical yet numerically distinct objects, and do not expect to. If presented with two objects that appear to be qualitatively identical, I would suppose that they are qualitatively different in ways that I do not detect. So Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles, so far as I am concerned, is intuitively correct. However, Leibniz drew consequences from that principle that are quite paradoxical: [I]t would not have been our Adam, but another had he experienced other events, for nothing prevents us from saying that he would be another. He is therefore another. [G II 42ILA 45-46] [I]f in the life of some person and even in this entire universe something were to proceed in a different way from what it does, nothing would prevent us saying that it would be another person or another possible universe that God would have chosen. [G II 52ILA 58]

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You will insist: you can ask why God did not give you more strength. 1 respond: If he had done that, you would not be [esses], for he would not have created you but another creature. [Grua 327] [A] falsity would therefore exist, if 1 did not take (a journey contained in my complete individual concept), which would destroy the individual concept of me, or what God conceives to be true of me even before deciding to create me. [G II 52ILA 58] But, someone will object, whence comes it that this man will assuredly do this sin? The reply is easy. It is otherwise he would not be this man. [DM 30] [I]f it is certain that A is B, whoever is not B, is not A. Therefore, if A signifies me, and B signifies whoever will take this journey, it can be concluded that whoever will not take this journey is not me. And this conclusion can be drawn from the single certainty of my future journey... [RL 39]

These passages may appear to embody a reductio ad absurdum of the commonsense belief that individuals can have properties other than their actual properties. That is why, I believe, Leibniz thought that his principle of the identity of indiscernibles is paradoxical. The passages also appear to support Sleigh's contention that Leibniz's complete concept theory of substance commits him to superintrinsicalism. According to Sleigh, a superintrinsicalist holds that an individual possesses all of its properties intrinsically. Here is how Sleigh characterizes an intrinsic property: Consider an individual x and a property f that x has; if f is such that, for any y, were y to lack f then y would not x, then let us say that x has f intrinsically. 13

Sleigh rejects the view that Leibniz is a superessentialist. 14 He argues that, for Leibniz, a property of an individual is an essential property if and only if the proposition that it has that property is finitely demonstrable. 15 Leibniz maintains, however, that some of a created individual's properties cannot be finitely demonstrated to belong to it. Still, Sleigh denies that the distinction Leibniz makes between accidental and essential properties ushers in counterfactual identities of creatures. Indeed, according to Sleigh, the doctrine of superintrinsicalism obviously entails that actual individuals are "worldbound" because individuals cannot be other than they intrinsically are. Sleigh's point is that the worldboundedness of Leibnizian individuals does not imply that there is no room for a distinction between accidental properties and essential properties in Leibniz's system of principles. Thus superintrinsicalism, according to Sleigh, entails that there are no true counterfactual ascriptions of property to an individual, just as superessentialism does .. Hence, assuming Sleigh is right, the hypothesis that there is in God's mind a complete concept of each individual conflicts with the commonsense belief that individuals possibly possess properties other than their actual properties. Clearly,

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however, Leibniz is insistent that God has complete concepts of individuals, so it would seem that, for him, individuals cannot be conceived consistently to have properties other than their actual properties. Remarks by Leibniz such as that Adam would be a different person if he had had any properties other than his actual properties seem to me to be the basis of Sleigh's view that any given Leibnizian individual belongs to only one possible world. I do not dispute that Sleigh's construal of such remarks is well-thought out and reasonable, but its reasonableness depends on the metaphysical framework one assumes for Leibniz when analyzing the text in which the remarks occur. For example, interpreting the statement "Adam would be a different person" as the identity "Adam would not be Adam" involves a tacit attribution of a metaphysical position to Leibniz, namely, one that precludes individuals being different persons. This attribution is hardly innocent and requires justification. Granted, there are metaphysical frameworks within which an individual cannot be different persons, but there also are metaphysical frameworks that accommodate the idea of individuals' being different persons. Leibniz stated that if an individual were to have any other than his actual properties he would be a different person. He did not state that if an individual were to have any other than his actual properties he would not exist. To equate the claim that Adam would be a different person if he were to have any properties other than his actual properties with the claim that Adam would not exist if he had had any other than his actual properties is to take a controversial stand on the question of what it means to be a person. Even if one can defend taking that stand, it is another matter to show that Leibniz took it. The showing should take into account these remarks by Leibniz: But in order to to support by natural reasons the view that God will preserve for all time not merely our substance but also our person, that is to say our memory and knowledge of what we are ... we must add morals to metaphysics. [DM 35] I have also said already that no sleep should last forever; and in the case of rational souls it will be of even briefer duration or not at all. These souls are destined always to preserve the same person [persona] which they have been given [emphasis added] in the city of God, and hence to retain their memories, so that they may be more susceptible of punishments and rewards. [N 59] We must also push metaphysics further than has been done so far, in order to have true notions of God and of the soul, of person, substance, and accidents. [A 2 1 4871L 261] [T]hey [Sennert and Sperling] confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby in the case of man is understood not only the soul but also [emphasis added] the person subsists. [T 89] But in order to support by natural reasons the view that God will preserve for all time not merely our substance but also [emphasis added] our person, that is to say the memory and

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the knowledge of what we are (though the distinct knowledge is sometimes suspended in sleep and in fainting fits), we must add morals to metaphysics. [DM 35] But since nature gradually unravels confusions, then that which we suppose to be death cannot be perpetual. But it is only rational substance which preserve, not only their individual [individuam] but also [emphases added] their person [personam], by retaining or recovering consciousness of themselves, so that they can be citizens in the city of God, capable of reward and punishment. [MP 177]

"Person," Leibniz suggests, is a moral notion that is distinct from the metaphysical notion of substance and individual. A person, he states, is a substance with a knowledge, consciousness, and memory of what it is [N 236 ff.] and a citizen of the moral kingdom or the "City of God [DM 36]" that is preserved in its personhood by the grace of God. Were God to strip, supernaturally, a substance of its knowledge, consciousness and memory, the substance would be without person. Presumably, also, if God were to replace a substance's actual memory with a memory that differs from its actual memory to the slightest degree, he would, by that act, create a different person for it. At least, according to Leibniz, no matter how small the difference between the two memories, we would have "no reason" to say that the change of memories would leave us with the same person, a person which, according to what Leibniz states at N 59 "we have been given." If Leibniz indeed held that an individual could be different persons, or could be given different persons, his view should not be surprising. Ordinary and philosophical discourse abounds with talk of individuals being different persons without the connotation that they would no longer exist. Most Christian theologians of Leibniz's day would not have interpreted the remark that Adam would have been a different person if he had not sinned as meaning that Adam could not have existed and not sinned. The continued existence of an individual is often "conversationally' implied" rather than denied, by the assertion that he has become or will become a different person on account of having different properties. What is typically meant by such an assertion is that someone has taken on (what are regarded to be) radically different and very significant behavioral traits. "Person" is not always taken in everyday or philosophical parlance to denote some "I know not what" underlying and permanent subject or agent that initiates and is responsible for behaviors. Rather, social status, religious beliefs, political attitudes, class background, etc., traits of a subject that are subject to change, are often taken to contribute very significantly and definitively toward the constitution of personhood. Hence, if someone adopts radically different traits, e.g., "having his sins washed away," he "becomes a new person, leaving the old person behind in the water." Thus Rorty, for example, remarks: Defining the conditions for individual identification does not reduce to specifying conditions for reidentification because the characteristics that distinguish or reidentify persons

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(e.g.,fingerprints, DNA codes, or memories) may not be thought by the individual herself or by her society to determine her real identity. For instance, it might be possible that an individual be considered reidentifiable by the memory criterion, but not be considered identifiable as the same person because all that she considered essential had chan!jed: her principles and preference rankings were different, her tastes, plans, hopes, and fears 6

Rorty speaks in this passage of certain changes, involving the loss of purported "essential" properties, that an individual could undergo that might prompt one to reasonably count that very individual as being, at different times, different persons. But the different persons nevertheless would be, according to Rorty, the same individual: the same subject: Someone becomes a different person. If Leibniz agreed with Rorty's claim that the gaining or the losing of certain purported "essential" properties can transform one and the same subject into different persons, and if, as Mondadori has argued, every property of a Leibnizian person is essential, it follows that any difference in the totality of its properties would render a Leibnizian subject different persons. Of course, the expressions "someone," "me," and "person" are used to mean "subject" as well as "characteristic way of being of a subject" (for lack of a better way of putting it). The former sense of "person" is intended when one states, for example, that an additional person has entered a room; or that another person was born today; that another person has died; or that some person is trying to solve a problem. In these cases one clearly means that an additional individual subject has entered a room, that a subject was born, that a subject has died, or that a subject is trying to solve a problem. Hobbes touches on this distinction in his Leviathan A Person, is he, whose words or actions are considered, as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction ... The Word Person is latine, instead whereof the Greeks have Prosopon, which signifies the Face, as Persona is latin signifying the disguise, or outward appearance of a man ... a Person is the same that an Actor is ... to Personate is to Actor to Represent himself or an other... I7 •

If Leibniz has person-as-subject or Hobbes's person-as-actor, rather than personas-outward appearance, -disguise, or -representation, in mind when he states that Adam would be a different person if he had any different properties, we should understand him to mean that Adam would not be the same subject or actor if he had any different properties. But it is wildly absurd to suppose that the subject or actor Adam could have been a different subject or actor. Adam (the subject/actor) cannot be Eve (the subject/actor) even if we suppose that he can assume or be given an Evish persona. Perhaps with considerations such as these in mind, Locke, before Leibniz, counseled his readers:

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[E]very one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases. But yet, when we inquire what makes the same spirit, man, or person in our minds, and having resolved with ourselves what we mean by them, it will not be hard in either of them, or the like, when it is the same and when not. IS

Locke's counsel should provoke interpreters of Leibniz to detennine whether there is a need to disambiguate his remark that Adam would be a different person if he had any different properties. Which sense of "person" does Leibniz have in mind when he makes this remark? How do we decide? I believe that Leibniz provided a solid clue: You have insisted upon the objection there would be to saying that, if I do not take the journey that I am to take, I shall not be me, and I have explained how [my emphasis] one can say it or not. [G II 56ILA 63]

Leibniz claims, here, that the truth of the statement "If I do not take the journey that I am to take, I shall not be me," (hereafter "G") depends upon "how" one says it. This suggests that G can be consistently denied. However, in order for G to be denied consistently, it appears that it would have to be possible for Leibniz to exist and not take a journey he actually will take. Leibniz argues, however, that any conception of him not taking a journey he will in fact take would "destroy" his complete individual concept: [A] falsity would therefore exist, if! did not take (a journey contained in my complete individual concept), which would destroy the individual concept of me, or what God conceives to be true of me even before deciding to create me. [G II 52ILA 58]

Leibniz meant by a "destroyed" complete concept a complete concept that has been rendered inconsistent or incomplete and it can be so rendered by adding or removing any content to it. [L 519]19 For Leibniz, a complete individual substance is an exemplification of a complete individual concept, and no inconsistent concept can be realized. It would seem to follow that he cannot maintain coherently that he can exist and not take the journey in question, if taking the journey is contained in his complete individual concept. The proposition that he will take the journey is therefore ostensibly absurd. It would appear to imply, in particular, the contradiction "Leibniz will not be Leibniz." This line of reasoning, however, depends crucially upon the innocent appearing premise that "I" and "me" have the same reference in "I shall not be me" and that "Leibniz" has the same reference in the subject and predicate positions of "Leibniz will not be Leibniz". Can we be certain, however, that Leibniz meant for us to read "I" and "me" as having the same reference throughout the propositions in question? Consider these remarks by Aristotle:

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We must not fail to notice that sometimes it is not clear whether a name means the composite substance, or the actuality or the form, e.g., whether house is a sign of the composite thing, 'a covering consisting of bricks and stones laid thus and thus', or for the actuality or form ... and whether an animal is 'a soul in a body' or a 'soul'; for soul is the substance or actuality of some body?O It is clear that the soul is the primary substance and the body is matter, and man or animal is the compound of both taken universally; and 'Socrates' or 'Corsicus', if even the soul of Socrates may be called Socrates, has two meanings (for some mean by such a term the soul, and others mean the concrete thing).}1

In the above passages, Aristotle argues that proper names are denotatively ambiguous. The name "Socrates," for example, according to him, refers both to a soul as the "actuality" of a body and also to a composite actualized body that "contains" a soul. Leibniz followed Aristotle on this point: The word substance can be taken in two ways, for the subject itself and for the essence of the subject. For the subject itself, when one says that the body or the bread is a substance; for the essence of the subject, when one says, the substance of the body or the substance of the bread; and then it is something abstract. So when it is said that primitive force constitutes the substance of bodies, their nature or essence is understood; thus Aristotle says that the nature is the principle of motion and rest; and the primitive force is nothing but that principle in that each body from which all its actions and affections are born. [A I 7 248] If Leibniz were also to follow Aristotle in recognizing an equivocal use of proper names, there would be connected with this recognition an interesting and perhaps illuminating consequence. Consider the proposition "Socrates is not Socrates." This proposition will probably appear to be a blatant contradiction because one usually unreflectively assumes that "Socrates" has univocal reference throughout propositions like it. One will very likely take for granted that it is a proposition of the form "A is not-A." The assumption may be false, however, if Aristotle is right, and if it is also possible for the same soul to animate (in an Aristotelian manner) different bodies. For one could then suppose that Socrates's soul possibly belongs to a number of different possible composite creatures, all of which are Socrates. On the one hand, in virtue of their possibly having the same soul or essence, these possible creatures - which I will suppose inhabit different possible worlds will be the same in a sense: they are the same soul. They will be, on the other hand, different composite (possible) creatures in virtue of their having different bodies. Thus, it is possible to interpret (in a philosophically interesting way) the proposition "Socrates is not Socrates" as a proposition of the form "A is not B": "This Socrates (A) is not that Socrates (B)." The two entities are both Socrates because the soul is what establishes absolute identity. Accordingly, when Leibniz writes, for example:

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You will insist: you can ask why God did not give you more strength. I respond: If he had done that, you would not be [esses], for he would not have created you but another creature. [Grua 327]

I understand him to mean that God would create with a soul A a composite creature other than the composite creature he actually created with A, if he were to give A more strength than he actually gives A. 22 For Leibniz, there is a contingent relation between an actual soul and its actual creatureliness. There is also a contingent relation between an actual soul and its actual personhood. It therefore does not follow directly from what he states in the above passage that God cannot give to an individual more strength than he actually gives it. That is, the statement is not a prima jacie reduction to absurdity of the hypothesis that God gives one and the same soul more strength. Surely the body that God places a soul in makes a difference as to how much strength that soul enjoys, and also makes a difference regarding the person that soul is. 23 In the passage under discussion the "you" in "you would not exist" refers to a composite creature, not to a soul/subject/actor. Hence, God, speaking in more robust language to Lucius, might admonish him, "You wretched soul, Lucius, standing before me, in the form of a man, on two feet, could stand before me, if only I were to give you more strength, in the form of an ass, on four feet. But, unfortunately, you, the soul-component of the creature that you are, would exist, even if I were to make you over (transcreate you) into a powerful ass. It would be better if I were to do away with you altogether." In other words, the personal pronoun "you" has, for Leibniz, ambiguous denotation just as the proper name "Lucius" does. I believe that this result is a straightforward corollary of Leibniz's metaphysics of substance. Leibniz also insists that any conception of an individual having properties in the actual world that it does not have in the actual world would involve a destruction of its actual world complete concept and would be an absurd, unrealizable conception. Hence, according to Leibniz, one cannot consistently say that it is possible for an individual not to take in the actual world a journey he will in fact take in the actual world. This does not imply, however, that one cannot take the journey in some other possible world. IV. PERSONHOODS AND IDENTITY

For Leibniz, a finite person is the same thing as a complete spiritual, finite individual substance. This fact provides some ground for interpreting his claim that Adam would be a different person if he were to have different properties along Rortian lines. Thus, I understand Leibniz to have meant by his assertion that an individual would be a different person if he had any different properties that the individual would be a different person but the same subject, soul, or self:

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What makes the same individual human is not a 'parcel of matter' which passes from one body to another, nor is it what we call I; rather it is the soul. [N 241] As regards 'self, it will be as well to distinguish it from the appearance of self and from consciousness. The 'self makes real physical identity, and the appearance of self, when accompanied by truth, adds to its personal identity. [N 237]

The "I" or "appearance of self" that Leibniz mentions in these excerpts from his New Essays is what he refers to as his "person" in his correspondence with Arnauld. His soul, i.e., his self, on the other hand, assumes or is given this person and is the agent of actions and subject of sufferings. It is the basis, as it were, of many different personae: If transmigration is not taken strictly, i.e. if anyone thought that souls remain in the same rarefied bodies and only change their coarse bodies, that would be possible, even to the extent of the same soul's passing into a body of but, if there were no connection by way of memory between the different personae which were made by the same soul, there would not be enough moral identity to say that this was a single person. [N 233]

Presumably, a soul in the actual world does not have the same memory (and perhaps not the same "coarse body") it would have in another possible world. If not, according to what Leibniz states in the above passage, it would be a different person in another possible world. The same soul, according to Leibniz, "travels" in conceptu to Paris or to Germany. This soul is "itself" whether it travels to Paris or to Germany, although it would constitute a different "I" if it traveled to Paris rather than to Germany. That is why Leibniz's statement that Adam would be a different person if he had any properties other than those he actually has does not contradict his claim that he would be himself regardless of what he does. Arnauld surely recognized as much. Very likely, this is one important reason why he withdrew his initial severe criticism of Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts. Similarly, the proposition "Adam is a different person in another possible world" is therefore not a contradiction because the singular term "Adam" has ambiguous singular denotation. It refers both to the complete individual substance defined by Adam's complete individual concept and to the relatively incomplete object or subject defined only by his individual essence that does not include a concept of time. "Person as subject" is not the default, canonical, "philosophically rigorous" meaning of "person," as Adams appears to assume that it is in the following remarks: Leibniz held that [if] anything had gone differently from the way things go in the actual world - that if Arnauld, for example, had married, he would not have been Arnauld [or more precisely, that anyone who got married would not have been Arnauld. 24

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The "more precisely" is Adams's, not Leibniz's, and is full of metaphysical presumption. What idea is being captured "more precisely" by "anyone who got married would not have been Arnauld?" What is imprecise about the statement that Arnauld would not have been Arnauld if he had gotten married? I think that Adams obscures Leibniz's meaning rather than expresses it more precisely with his revision. Leibniz is not speaking of some subject other than Arnauld not being Arnauld, he is speaking of the subject Arnauld not being the compound substance Arnauld that exists in the actual world. He can do so coherently with his Aristotelian distinctions between substance as attribute, substance as underlying subject, and substance as "Force taken together with subject." I find Leibniz nowhere setting forth a canonical, supposedly philosophically rigorous meaning of the term "person" and it is not the prerogative of his commentators to set forth one on his behalf. If the canonical meaning that Adams adopts for Leibniz is needed to make sense of Leibniz's claim that Adam would have been a different person if he had had different properties, then that meaning is also needed to make sense of a great number of contemporary discussions on the problem of personal identity. It is needed also to make sense of Locke's discussions of personal identity, for Locke clearly thought that one and the same Man could be different persons. The standards of philosophical rigor of our day do not prohibit us from stating that one and the same individual would be a different person given certain changes in his manner of existing. The standards of philosophical rigor of Leibniz's day did not limit Leibniz to meaning that Adam would not exist if he were a different person. He was no more so limited than we are limited to meaning that an acquaintance who changes jobs takes on the risk of changing selves when we say that a different job will make him a different person. Leibniz could mean what we could mean, and what Locke meant, namely, that Adam would experience a different way of being connected to things in the world, and perhaps to himself, if his circumstances were changed. In one sense of the word, a person is a subject considered under the relations that he has to other things. This reasoning comports with the following remarks that Leibniz makes concerning the Trinity: [C]ertain writers have been too ready to grant that the Holy Trinity is contrary to that great principle which states that two things which are the same as a third are also the same as each other: that is to say, If A is the same as B, and C is the same as B, then A and C must also be the same as each other. For this principle is a direct consequence of that of contradiction, and forms the basis of alllogic ... Thus when one says that the Father is God, that the Son is God and that the Holy Spirit is God, and that nevertheless there is one God, although these three Persons differ from one another, one must consider that this word God has not the same sense at the beginning as at the end of this statement. Indeed, it now signifies the Divine Substance, and now a Person of the Godhead. [T 22 P 87-88]

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According to Leibniz, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one and the same substance yet different Persons of that substance. [Grua 179] I see no obvious reason to refuse outright the idea that Leibniz extended the notion that one essence can be many different persons in the case of the divine substance to the case of nondivine substances. If Leibniz allowed that the divine substance is actually different persons why would he not also allow that finite substances are merely possibly different persons, that is, that God can conceive of them being different persons? All this means is that God conceives a finite substance in circumstances other than its actual circumstances, for example being in hell rather than being in heaven, being saved rather than being damned. As we have seen, Leibniz allowed for God "placing" a substance in circumstances other than its actual circumstances. Thus Adam, for example, would have been a different person if God had placed him in circumstances wherein Satan would not have tempted him, and wherein he would not have sinned. But if Adam had not sinned he would have been a different person. Christ is the same substance as the Holy Spirit yet a different person from him. Likewise the Adam who is conceived of not sinning is the same substance as the Adam who sins yet a different person from him. God conceives Adam, according to Leibniz, as different persons because he conceives Adam having relations other than his actual relations to things. But this does not come even remotely close to entailing that Adam will fail to be in any of God's conceptions of him as a person, that is in any of God's conceptions of him as a subject endowed with a complete array of worldly relations, one and the same subject. It is Adam; after all, whom Leibniz says would be a different person. It is Adam who would have been a different person if he had a rib taken from his right side rather than from his left side. Leibniz maintains that this difference in Adam's life would have an impact on the subject Adam sufficient to make him a different person. Thus, Leibniz does not deny that there is only one subject Adam, he denies that there is only one possible person Adam since, in some possible world, Adam does not lose a rib and gain a mate who is the cause of his downfall. Again, in this regard, Leibniz has the backing of our everyday and philosophical semantic conventions. These conventions sanction our speaking of someone changing into different persons while, in another sense, remaining himself that is, remaining the same subject. To be sure, there is a marked difference between the criteria Leibniz used and those most others of us use in ascribing different personhoods to the same subject. But the difference is one of degree not of kind. Owing to his uncompromised application of his principle of the identity of indiscemibles, Leibniz counted any difference between possible exemplifications of the subject Adam as grounds for correctly asserting that he is a different person. Most

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others of us, on the other hand, typically require that the differences be important, striking or both. For example, for most speakers of American English the statement "Adam would have been an entirely different person if he had not eaten that fruit" is perfectly un surprising; but "Adam would have been a different person if he stubbed his toe" is quite surprising. For Leibniz, however, both of these statements are unexceptionable because he regarded every property an individual subject has as contributing toward the person it is, not just its, let us call them, "more important properties." There are certain logical views about the nature of species and genera that might underwrite his heterodoxy: One can understand 'species' mathematically or else physically. In mathematical strictness the tiniest difference which stops things from being alike in all respects makes them all a different species. [N 308] [E]very individual can be conceived as a lowest species (and) it is not possible that there are two individuals who resemble each other perfectly, or who differ solo numero .. .it is essential to take the specific difference, not following common usage, according to which it is absurd to say that two men differ with respect to species, but according to the use of mathematicians who hold that two triangles or two ellipses, that are not congruent, differ with respect to species?5

Combining Leibniz's view about species differentiation with his view that completed individuals constitute infima species, [DM 9; N 326] yields a promising speculation as to why he might hold that any change in property of our Adam would make him a different person. For, if Adam were to have any different (than his actual world) properties he would be, at least, a different infima species. Can Adam change infima species and at the same time retain his personhood? I believe that Leibniz, in saying that Adam would be a different person if he had different properties, is answering this question "no." Indeed, it seems to me that Leibniz is merely informing Arnauld that strictly or mathematically speaking, the "tiniest difference" in Adam would place him in a different infima species. For Leibniz, a personhood is a variety of infima species. I maintain that Leibniz postulated the subject Adam - that is Adam conceived of independent of his extrinsic denominations or without a point of view - as an infima genus and Adam conceived of along with all of his extrinsic denominations as an infima species that falls under this infima genus. I interpret "another possible Adam" to signify, for Leibniz, an alternative infima specific determination of the infima genus "Adam." The extrinsic properties of individuals function as the differentiae that determine infima species. If this interpretation is sound, Leibniz's claim that there are many possible Adams turns out to be no more eye-catching than the observation that the genus "animal" includes many different species; or the observation that there are many varieties of garden pea.

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But I do not believe that it was Leibniz's aim to catch our attention with philosophically interesting or intriguing pronouncements. Rather, his fairly unremarkable contention was that any particular accidental property constitutes an individual's personal identity neither more nor no less than any other or any other number of accidental properties. Leibniz recognized that the questions: "How much does an individual have to change before he becomes a different person?" and "What accidental properties fix an individual's personal identity and which ones don't?" are inept. Each accidental property is essentially constitutive of an individual's personal identity. I agree with Mates's contention that: [R]elatively "slight" changes that are not regarded as crucial for identity, could be gradually transformed into a concept of anything whatever. Once we allow that an individual could have had some attributes other than the ones that individual does have, there is no "natural" place to draw the line. In short, there is no plausible way of dividing the attributes of an individual non-trivially into the essential and the accidental. 26

There is no natural stopping point. The distinction between the essential and accidental properties of Leibnizian individuals is the distinction between their primitive power and their reflections of the world about them that they have through an employment of that power. Power, or force, according to Leibniz, is a metaphysical principle not a natural principle. [MP 116] Change an individual's accidents as much as you please, and you will never interrupt its metaphysical identity. Indeed, change the person that it is, deprive it of its personal identity, for example by depriving it of reason and reducing it to a merely sentient being, and it retains its metaphysical identity. Any change, big or small, in the sequence of "worlddetermined" properties that an individual has would make it a different person, but God would see the subject that each person is, just as he sees that the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all the Godhead. Leibniz did not assert that an individual's personal identity is constitutive of its identity as a "primitive" or absolute subject. That is why his superintrinsicalism accommodates counterfactual identity and a straightforward application of his criterion of truth to counterfactual propositions.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1 Adams defends the view that there are no absolute subjects for Leibniz (Leibniz uses the apt expression "absolute subject" at Grua 540) in his paper 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity.' He not only includes Leibniz among "famous philosophers" who "... have believed in a purely qualitative constitution of things, [5]" but also claims that Leibniz is "... the archetypal believer in a purely qualitative universe [5] ... " Yost concurs with Adams: "In Leibniz's opinion, does the assay of a simple concretum yield a particular as well as qualities, or does it yield only qualities? There is, I think, a preponderance of evidence in favor of the view that Leibniz's ontology included only

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qualities [Leibniz and Philosophical Analysis: Jl8]; D. M. Armstrong raises questions connected with this issue in Chapter I of his book A Materialist Theory of the Mind: 27-29. 2 Kulstad , 'Did Leibniz incline towards Monistic Pantheism in 16761' 3 Here are two other texts that Kulstad cites: 'God is all things; creatures are some things;' [DSR 67]; 'So just as these properties differ from each other and from essence, so do things differ from each other and God' [DSR 77] 4 The following remarks that Leibniz makes to Arnauld might appear to count as evidence that Leibniz's Spinozist stage extended at least to April 30, 1687, when he made the remarks: "I do not think that there is any difficulty in what 1 said about how 'the soul expresses more distinctly (all other things being equal) what pertains to its body', since it expresses the whole universe in a certain sense, and in particular according to the connection between other bodies and its own, for it cannot equally well express everything; otherwise there would be no distinction between souls." [G II 90/LA 113]. At one time, Leibniz seemed to me to be saying, here, that there is no distinction between souls when they are considered apart from their bodies, a view that would be consistent with his treatment of the identity of modes in his Confessio. However, it is clear to me now that he is not making that statement. Rather, he is distinguishing souls on the basis of what things they are able to most distinctly express. The fact that a soul A is able to more distinctly express a given body C than another soul C is not necessarily an extrinsic difference. There could be something about the intrinsic expressive powers of A that allows it to express C more distinctly than B. Likewise, A might be inherently more able to express and comprehend the laws of mathematics than B. 51 cite this text from Sleigh, Leibniz & Arnauld: 184. 6 Russell, The Philosophy of Leibniz: 59-60. 7 A question to ask here is how souls that are not of the highest similitude are distinguished. R Contrary to my analysis, Sleigh, in Leibniz & Arnauld: 75, claims that Leibniz held that individuals must differ intrinsically in his 1676 essay "Meditatio de principio individui." [A 6 3 490-491] Leibniz argues in that essay that it must be possible for a "wisest" being, presumably God, to determine whether a square material object was constructed from two triangles or from two parallelograms. He asserts that this possibility is due to the object being informed by a mind that has a memory of its history. The mind, according to Leibniz, is a principle of in se differentiation. But how are different minds differentiated? If also by their memories, then Leibniz's position in "Meditation de principio individui" is consistent with his views on individuation expressed in his Confessio: Unless I am mistaken, memories of physical states, are, for Leibniz, extrinsic denominations. The question, then, is whether Leibniz believed, in 1676, that a difference in extrinsic denominations entails a difference in intrinsic denominations. I do not have an answer to that question. 9 Even if men were so distinguishable, Leibniz would probably argue that it makes no difference with regard to the issue of salvation and damnation. According to him, there is no "proportion" between finite temporal actions and the eternity of salvation and damnation. Thus, if an individual A performs actions Y and B does not, the actions Y cannot be a reason for saving A and not saving B. For, relative to salvation, both Y and not-Yare nothing. [T p. 60] W In his Theodicy Leibniz states that there is "value" in "imperfection." [T Jl8] Leibniz by this means holds to the established doctrine that all perfection comes from God and the Protestant tenant that man is per se "dead to the works of God" and saved through the merit of Christ, not of himself [T 82]. By himself, according to Leibniz, limited man tends only towards more or different limitations [T 33]. 11 Martin Luther. 12 Or, equivalently, the foundation of infinitely many complete concepts. 14 Ibid.,: 79. 15 Ibid. ,: 83-89. 16Rorty, in her introduction to The Identities of Persons: 2.

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Leviathan: 110. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXVII. 19 The destruction of a complete concept could involve the construction of another. 20 Aristotle, Metaphysics Book VIII Chapter 3 a 30-35. 21 Aristotle, Metaphysics Book VII 1037 a 5-10. 22 This claim accords with Leibniz's statement at T 59 that "soul and body ... compose one and the same suppositum or what is called a person." Cf. T p. 89. Leibniz could have followed either Augustine, who held that the soul is the person, or Aquinas who held that the composite of soul and body - with its attendant accidents - is the person. For a discussion of the Augustinian and Thomistic positions on this issue see Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, Chapter IX. Mates notes [Leibniz: 141, n. 12] that Leibniz held that one and the same monad could be different persons over time. If it is consistent to suppose that this potential is never realized, it would be reasonable to interpret the "could be" as "it is consistently conceivable that." 23 This line of reasoning also applies to the following passage from DM 30: "... whence comes it that this man will assuredly commit this sin? The reply is easy, it is otherwise that it would not be this man." "This man" refers to a particular soul/experience composite: to a particular person. If a soul were to have different experiences, a different composite would result. To say that Judas would not be "this man" if he did not commit a particular sin means, for Leibniz, that he would be a different man but the same soul. Compare this analysis to Locke's view that: "... should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees that he would be the same person as the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions: but who would say it was the same man? The body too goes to the making of the man, and would, I guess, to everybody determine the man in this case." [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXVII ... ] 24 Adams, Leibniz: 53. 25 Cited from Sleigh, Leibniz & Arnauld: 195. 26 Mates, Leibniz: 109. 17

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CHAPTER FOUR COMPOSSIBILITY AND CREATION I. INTRODUCTION

In Chapter One, I argued that Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts does not entail a denial of counterfactual identity, and that it would be necessary to appeal to other of Leibniz's principles to justify the interpretive dogma that God has only one complete concept of any given individual. Commentators have appealed to Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles. More accurately, they have appealed to sundry picturesque illustrations that Leibniz provides of that principle. I have argued in Chapter 3 that the interpretations of those illustrations are very speedy and biased. In particular, the interpretations presuppose that it is not possible for a Leibnizian individual to be persons other than the person it actually is. I have seen no substantial arguments advanced by commentators to support this presupposition, and there is much more than enough textual evidence to motivate the interpretation that Leibniz meant by an individual's being different persons its having different complete concepts. If Leibnizian individuals (not persons or completed individuals)1 belong to many possible worlds what is true of them in worlds other than the actual world is counterfactually true of them. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason states that there are sufficient reasons for any truth. Among the reasons for a counterfactual truth about Adam, for example, presumably would be the purely possible conditions of his counterfactual existence, the other purely possible individuals that he possibly exists with, and how he purely possibly exists with them. Change the conditions of Adam's existence and there should be a corresponding change in Adam's accidents. In some possible world there is a purely possible woman other than Eve, call her Lilith, and this is the woman who becomes Adam's wife. Leibniz recognized, however, that his principle of sufficient reason requires that there be an explanation for why God does not create all possibles. [Grua 289] According to Leibniz, there is an explanation, indeed, only one, and it is that what God leaves in a state of pure possibility is not compatible with the denizens of the best possible world:

99 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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[W]hatever can exist and is compatible with other things does exist, because the reason for existing in preference to other possibles cannot be determined by any other consideration than that not all things are compatible. Thus there is no other reason for determining existences than that the more perfect shall exist, that is, those things which involve the greatest possible reality. [C 530 (l676)/L 169]

For Leibniz, an entity A is compatible with an entity B just in case the proposition that A exists is compossible with the proposition that B exists, that is, just in case the proposition that A exists does not imply the proposition that B does not exist. [Grua 325]2 According to Broad, however, Leibniz is not entitled to use the premise that some possibles are incompatible with others to account for there being purely possible individuals or states of affairs: We are explicitly told that, in the end, all opposition is purely contradictory opposition, i.e. the sort of opposition which there is between the presence and absence in something. If so, surely all that is positive in each of the possible worlds must be compossible. The incompossibility between two possible worlds WI and W z can consist only in the fact that some positive factor F is present in WI and absent in W 2 or present in W 2 and absent in WI. Since there can be no incompatibility between the positive features in WI and W z God can create all that is positive in both. He ought to do so, if all that is positive is wholly good. And as a perfectly good being that is morally necessitated to do the best that is open to him, he is morally necessitated to do this. Thus, in the end, Leibniz ought to come to the same conclusion as Spinoza, viz., that all that is possible is actual. 3

Broad is alluding in this passage to Leibniz's early demonstration of the possibility of the concept of an absolutely perfect being. In that demonstration, Leibniz premised that all perfections are compatible inter se. [G VII 262] Leibniz also held that all perfections in created things are emanations of God's perfections [T 167], or follow from God's essence and differ from his perfections only in degree. [L 218; E 850; Grua 559] How can the perfections in things both follow from the essence of God and also lead to moral, metaphysical, or aesthetic absurdities? Clearly, in general, the properties that follow from the essence of a possible thing alone are all compatible. In fact, if all of the properties of a thing are derived from its essence, a reduplication, of sorts, of the thing results. Leibniz, at any rate, calls God's creation a reduplication of him, and spirits, creatures that are endowed with each of God's attributes (will, power, and wisdom), "little gods," [G II 125ILA 159; cf. G IV 5621L 579; T 51] and also "images of God." [T 215; T 51; L 579] If the finite replicas of God's perfections produce absurdities in the world, should not their infinite originals lead to infinitely greater absurdities in God? How can there be injustice, wickedness, etc., for example, in possible worlds if the same are not in God? This, of course, is a version of the philosophical problem of evil: if there is incompatibility among possible things it must have God as its source. On the other hand, if there is no incompatibility in God there can be no

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incompatibility among possible things since, generally, there can be nothing in an effect that is not in its cause. 4 Given the following candid "admission" by Leibniz, it might appear that he himself considered the thesis that there are incompatible possibles quite dubious: Until now it has been unknown to men, whence arises the incompossibility of diverse things, or how it can happen that diverse essences are opposed to each other, seeing that all positive terms seem to be compatible inter se. [G VII 195]

If Leibniz in fact is admitting that his thesis that there are incompatible possibles is not consistent with his thesis that all "positive terms" or perfections are compatible, he should have given up, not only his theory of divine freedom, but his theodicy, generally. For, according to Leibniz: If all possibles existed, no reason for existing would be needed, and possibility alone would suffice. Therefore there would be no God except insofar as he is possible. But such a God as the pious hold to would not be possible if the opinion of those is true who believe that all possibles exist. [C 5301L 169]

[I]f one wanted totally to reject purely possible things, one would be destroying contingency and liberty; for if nothing were possible except what God in fact creates, what God creates would be necessary, and God, wanting to create something, could create nothing but that, without having freedom of choice. [G II 55ILA 62]

Leibniz argued elsewhere that a rejection of pure possibles entails moral neutralism, and that God creates not only a world that is not the best possible but a morally absurd world. [G IV 283-284/L 273] He also maintains in the above passage that if all possibles are scheduled for eventual existence, the bare possibility of each possible thing would be a sufficient condition for its existence. In this case, each existing thing, according to the familiar logic of the ontological argument, would exist necessarily. Leibniz regarded this last result absurd and heretical because, as Spinoza happily acknowledged, it implies that God is not a moral Gust, good, or merciful) agent. By common lights, God is a moral agent only if he is responsible for his creative actions, and he is responsible for his creative actions only if he freely chooses to create what he creates. God cannot choose to create necessarily existing beings, no more so than he can choose that he exist. The view that God is not morally responsible for his actions is one that Leibniz deplored. Yet it is a view of God that appears to follow from the proposition that all perfections are compatible in conjunction with Leibniz's doctrine of incompatibility. Leibniz, however, persisted throughout his career in holding forth that God enjoys creative liberty and that the God of the pious, a God who created the world for a good reason, is the true God. Leibniz also held fast to his notion that some possibles do not exist because they are not compatible with what does exist. [T 201; N 265] Furthermore, a careful reading of G vn 195 reveals that Leibniz does

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not explicitly concede Broad's point. He does not report that he is unable to give an account of the incompossibility among things but that "until now" (ladhuc")5 no other philosopher had come up with an account. I also am unaware of any texts wherein Leibniz concedes that he cannot give an account of the incompatibility of things. I argue in this chapter that Leibniz is not vulnerable to Broad's charge because his notion of incompatibility does not depend on the supposition that there are incompatible perfections. I propose that Leibniz based his claim that there are incompatible individuals on the supposition that Leibnizian creatures are finitely receptive of perfections, not on the supposition that they receive from God perfections that are incompatible with the perfections of other possible beings. If my proposal is correct, Broad's argument that Leibniz's doctrine of compossibility entails that all possible individuals exist is unsound. One obvious objection to my proposal is that if there is incompatibility among things, it certainly cannot be due to any absence of perfection in them, at least not according to Leibniz. Insofar as a thing lacks perfection (essence, reality), according to Leibniz, it participates in nothingness, [DM 30; Grua 365] and how can the nothingness in one thing be incompatible with the nothingness in another thing or be incompatible with whatever is positive in it? Nothingness, it would seem, is utterly innocuous and certainly consistent with itself. In addition, Leibniz does not explicitly mention nothingness as a possible source of opposition between things when he states the paradox of incompatibility. He assumes straightaway that opposition must be based upon some attribute or other and nothing has no attributes and is not itself, one would presume, an attribute. However, if oppositions between things can be obtained neither through incompatibilities among their perfections nor their imperfections (or nothingness), it follows that there is no basis within Leibniz's system for the claim that there are oppositions between things. This is because Leibnizian things consist entirely in their perfections and imperfections or their perfections and their limits. [Grua 364 - 365] Nevertheless, as I have already pointed out, Leibniz at least until the time that he wrote his Theodicy states that there are incompatible things. He could do so consistently, even if paradoxically, by rejecting the doctrine of the creation of the world from absolutely nothing, and I believe that he did reject it and quite resoundingly. My interpretation of Leibniz's doctrine of incompossibility hinges on showing that Leibniz rejected the doctrine of an absolute creatio ex nihilo. I argue that he held, instead, that individuals subsist (have being) as non-conceptual, potential beings prior to existing as full-fledged substances.

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II. LEIBNIZ AND CREATIO EX NIHILO Leibniz is widely thought to have envisaged God as looking to a store of possible worlds that are collections of individual concepts prior to creating a world and as having created the best possible among them out of absolutely nothing. 6 I think that this reading of Leibniz is deeply mistaken and cannot survive scrutiny. Yet, it survives and, I believe, has been the bedrock of flawed interpretations of Leibniz's doctrine of incompossibility and, consequently, his treatments of counterfactuals and divine freedom. It is understandable that commentators usually take it for granted that Leibniz was an advocate of the doctrine that God created the world out of absolutely nothing. The great majority of Christian theologians and philosophers from Augustine onwards through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries opposed the view of certain early Christian theologians and philosophers,? that the world either is eternal or wrought out of some primordial being that pre-dated, so to speak, God's creation of the world. For Augustine and his followers, the world is created absolutely ex nihilo; for them God is all that there is, in any sense of "is," before creation. As Anselm somewhere states, the nothing that God creates from is "not anything" at all. Augustine considered the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo a reasonable article of faith and he undertook to prove it. After surveying what he regarded as the most plausible alternatives to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, and finding them irreparably flawed, Augustine wrote in book seven of De Genesi Ad Litteram: With regard to the soul, which God breathed into the face of man, I have no firm position except to say that it is from God in such a way that it is not the substance of God; that it is incorporeal, that is, not a body but a spirit; that it is not born of God's substance and does not proceed from God's substance, but is made by God; that it is not made by the conversion of a body or an irrational soul into it; and hence it is made from nothing. s Although most Christian theologians before and after Leibniz have agreed with Augustine, it would be a mistake to think that Leibniz deferred perfunctorily to this tradition. We should keep in mind that he hoped to reduce Plato's philosophy to a system, and that an important facet of that philosophy is the idea that God created the world out of something. 9 In addition, in a 1690 note, Leibniz wrote: [C]reation from nothing is not founded in sacred scripture, but rather in a certain tradition, and in a certain reasonable sense it is acceptable, but as commonly understood, it is not free from error. The truth indeed is that it is certain that Chaos or Atoms, or another material did not exist coeternal with God from which the earth was made. But nevertheless it is false that the earth is strictly speaking made from nothing as if from matter: it is an eternal truth that nothing comes from nothing. It is more correctly said, therefore, with the author of Epistle to the Hebrews chap. eleven, verso 3, the visible is made from the invisible. [Grua 98; cf. Grua 328-329; Grua 364-365]10

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Leibniz distinguishes between a reasonable sense of the idea that God created the world out of nothing and a perverse sense. Then he declares that "it is an eternal truth that nothing comes from nothing." If it is an eternal truth that nothing comes from nothing how can there be a reasonable sense of creatio ex nihilo? According to Leibniz, the reasonableness of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo depends on how the notion of "nothing" is interpreted. "Nothing" can be taken to mean "absolutely nothing" or, following Plato, it can be taken to mean "lacking form"and thus being "invisible" (things are "seen" through their forms). For example, a sculptor will regard a lump of clay as nothing before sculpting it into something, say, a statue of a god. [A]ll things that do not exist are included in nothingness, and all things that are no longer have returned into nothingness ... [things] are bounded or imperfect by virtue of the principle of negation or of nothingness that they contain, by virtue of the lack of an infinity of perfections in them, and which are only a nothingness with respect to them. [Grua 364] Leibniz states that a thing is nothing relative to ("with respect to") perfections that it lacks. Hence, for example, a mind that lacks the perfection of existence is nothing relative to that perfection: It is not existent. Less radically, many nonhuman animals, for example, are nothing relative to God's attribute of thought, insofar as they lack rationality: They are not rational. Indeed, rational creatures, too, are nothing with repect to God's attribute of thought in so far as they lack knowledge or are not omniscient. Clearly, one may explain ex nihilo in terms of this "reasonable," Platonic sense of "nothing." God may be said to create something from nothing by bestowing form upon form bereft subjects whose relatively formless being consists in a receptivity for form. Leibniz's God creates by shedding light on that which is in the dark, translating latent potential being, which Descartes states "strictly speaking is nothing," [CSM II 32] into act. Hence: It is more correctly said ... that in the eminent world of Elohim himself there were from eter-

nity, latent in an ideal or spiritual way, seeds of the corporeal world which finally at some time were produced or excluded. [Grua 98] Leibniz states that there are from eternity (hence noncreated)1l seminal souls. Some of these souls germinate, as it were, and others of them do not. In their "latent" state souls are "spiritual" or "ideal" because they have not yet been given the forms and "light" that introduce them into the corporeal world. A seed has form, potentially, but to be in potential with respect to a form is to not have that form, to be, with respect to that form, nothing. Likewise, anything that God creates in Leibniz's "sensible" sense of "create" has form potentially and, consequently, is nothing before God creates it. Absolute nothingness is the complete absence of being including being that is a bare potentiality for form. Abso-

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lute nothing is therefore not a "seed." Thus, Leibniz does not mean that God creates souls from absolutely nothing but that he activates and "illuminates" souls that have potential being. He reduces their potentiality to act. I maintain that Leibniz sided with the likes of William of Ghent, Meister Eckart, Wyclif, Origen, Hermogenes and numerous other Christian philosophers and theologians - too many to list here - who proposed that created individuals, prior to creation, enjoyed a non-conceptual being as did preexistent Christ. 12 By "non-conceptual" I mean not deriving their being in its entirety from God's act of thinking. To be sure, the positive reality and possible existence of these beings (= potential existents) depends on their being recognized by God and an object of his will and power. 13 Leibniz's view, both early and mature, was that there are individual entities that are essentially independent of God's will, power, and intellect. In other words, Leibniz followed others before him who rejected the doctrine of creation of things "out of" absolutely nothing and who subscribed, instead, to the doctrine of a relative creation from a God-independent receptive being.14 I maintain that Leibniz's rejection of an absolute creation from nothing is crucial to how he accounted for incompossibilty and, with that notion in hand, counterfactual truth and freedom. In the following passage, Leibniz clearly denies that the soul is created absolutely ex nihilo: If the mind could have begun, it will be able to be extinguished; and just as it was made by God, so it will return to God. This would be the view, which agrees with that of Aristotle, and those who speak of a universal intellect. To me, on the other hand, it seems that no soul has ever begun or can cease. But the mind will nonetheless be created by God, since it will exist and remain by the will of God. [DSR 65]

Leibniz distinguishes clearly between a soul's being and its existence. IS This distinction tracks Descartes' distinction between God's being the cause of a thing's "coming to be" such-and-such and the "cause of its being" simpliciter. [CSM II 254] According to Leibniz, God is not the cause of a thing's being, he is the cause of its coming to exist in such-and-such a determinate manner. 16 God does not create souls from absolutely nothing, just from very nearly absolutely nothing. Elevating a soul from the status of mere potential being that is receptive of perfection to that of an existent thing or of a being that has received perfection does not involve fabricating it from absolute nothing. This "original" potential being is therefore not contingent on the will of God, but the possibility of its realization is, if it is incapable of creating itself, and Leibniz denied that creatures can produce themselves. [DSR 11] Just as God can elevate an entity in its level of being, according to Leibniz he can lower it:

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[1]f God wished a human soul to pass into the body of a hog and to forget the man and to perform no rational acts, it would not constitute a man. But if while in the body of the beast it had the thoughts of a man, and even of the man whom it had animated before the change, like the golden ass of Apuleius, perhaps no one would object to saying that the same Lucius, who had come to Thessaly to see his friends, remained inside the skin of the ass where Photis had inadvertently put him, and wandered from master to master until by eating the roses he was restored to his natural shape. [N 234]

"God giveth and God taketh away.,,17 Note that Leibniz explicitly allowed that the "immaterial spirit" of Lucius could enjoy incarnation sans his rationality and, one should think by parity of reasoning, his animality. This entails that the subject the immaterial spirit - Lucius is distinct from these (generic and specific) attributes. Yet he still would possess his faculty for receiving the attributes. God would reduce Lucius to a state of being merely potentially human and merely potentially animal were he to deprive Lucius of those forms. These two potentialities or receptivities are passive, [T 31] and only God can reduce them to act. In the same way that God raises a merely sentient being to the status of a reasoning being by means of a "transcreation," he can partially annihilate a creature by stripping it of certain of its forms. Could God by a special operation, press this annihilation to the point of depriving a creature of its act of perceiving? If God endowed the creature with the act of perceiving, and Leibniz believed that there is no other way that it could have come by that act, then God can take it away by a special operation. What would be left, however, were God to deprive a creature of its act of perceiving? Evidently, nothing other than the subject that has the potential to perceive. This potential is not something that is given to it by God. God gives perfection. He does not give the "aboriginal" [CD 79] potential to receive perfection. Some potentials God chooses to reduce to act and others he chooses to allow to remain in a state of nothingness. Consider my interpretations of Leibniz's remarks about creatio ex nihilo in conjunction with these statements of Capreolus and Saurez's critique of them: [B]eyond the nothingness, which is lack of actual existence, [emphasis added] there was an essence enjoying essential being; this essence, absolutely considered as a nature or quiddity, is withdrawable from the nothingness of existence and from the somethingness of existence. This essence in itself is always something in the order of essences, both in intelligible being and in the active power of the Creator, although not in real actual being. IS

Suarez commented on these remarks: [W]hat has nothing of existence is either simply and utterly nothing or it is not. If it is not, then God absolutely and simply did not create all things from nothing nor did he produce all beings nor all that which is truly something real and consequently He, properly speaking, created no being, but produced one thing from another, as from a real receptive and unproduced potency, namely, existence or the existing thing from a real essence which is said to be the potency, receptive of that thing unproduced. A further result of this is that the crea-

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ture can, so to speak pride itself in having something, which it does not have from God nor has been given a share by Him. But all these points and ones like them are against faith and natural reason. 19

Suarez's argument against the independent being of even the potential being of finite essences turns upon the idea that all being is perfection and that all perfection comes from God. If this is so, then existing beings can take no credit for anything good about them but must give all thanks to God for their goodness and blame themselves for any shortcomings. Suarez believed that any other attitude is sinfully prideful and against reason. Leibniz, with Capreolus, apparently thought otherwise. Leibniz distinguished two kinds of attributes in creatures, namely: [T]he positive or act, and restriction or privation are in beings as metaphysical form and metaphysical matter. Thus, the matter of material things is nothing, that is, limitation; form is perfection. [Grua 356; cf. C 430; C 604; Grua 364; Grua 328]

For Leibniz, potential beings do not receive from God their receptivity or primitive passive power. This receptivity, which Leibniz also calls "primary matter," is "nothing" but a possibility for being made into something. God, according to him, does give to creatures their "primitive active power." Leibniz held that God impresses primitive active power on passive: Primary matter is merely passive but not a complete substance; there must be added to it a soul or form analogous to the soul - a first entelechy that is, or a kind of nisus or primitive force of action which is itself the inherent law impressed upon it by divine command. [G IV 512)/L 504; Cf. GIll 637]

According to Leibniz, God supplies positive being, active force, life, and reason to creatures, [T 215] all of which are an "elevation" of the being of subjects that "demand" them but do not have them per se. [G VII 86-87] Passive force is what Leibniz called a "privative reality" which is also a "deficient cause." [T 392; T 33] Passive power, or primary matter, is a power to be acted upon and it is found in originally inchoate sensations that God does not create, [DSR 69; T 395]20 and which are not in receptive beings by the grace of God. God creates potential beings by ordering their sensations. Potential beings are passive because their sensations can be ordered (which is a way of being acted on). According to Leibniz, God creates a finite mind by synchronizing it with other minds through a lawful harmonization of their sensations. Thus he stated that to exist is to have lawfully harmonized sensations. [A 63 511IMP 63; A 6 35121 MP 65; L 158] An actual, as opposed to a merely ideal mind, for Leibniz, is a mind that is in dynamic perceptual or expressive relation to others that is based in its sensations. Its relations with other things are founded upon its and their intrinsic attributes of primitive power or their capacities to act and suffer. [A 6 1 481; CP 36]

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As Loemker points out in his notes to Leibniz's 'On the True Theologica Mystica,' Leibniz equated "nonbeing" with passivity or materia prima and being with activity, [L 369] and Leibniz also equates metaphysical matter, which he discusses in the passage just quoted, with passive power. [G VII 322] In 'Theologica Mystica' Leibniz wrote: All beings derive from God and nothingness. Their self- being [=activity] is of God, their non being is of nothing [L 368].

If only act (activity) comes from God, [G VI 602-603] where does primitive passive power come from? And, where do individual subjects which combined with primitive force form individual substances (= complete souls) come from? In 'Theologica Mystica' Leibniz suggests that "flesh," that is, matter, is derived from the devil ("that is, an intelligent invisible power who is very great and very evil [L 561]") or is the devil [L 368; G VI 378]. In any case, Leibniz appears to have denied that matter "came from" absolute nothingness: The cabalists seem to say that matter, on account of the vileness of its essence, can neither be created nor can it exist; hence, that there is absolutely no matter. .. Spinoza denies that God could have created any corporeal and material mass to be the subject of this world, "because," he says, "those who differ do not know by what divine power it could have been created." There is some truth to these words, but I think that it is not sufficiently understood ... Matter does, in reality, exist, but it is not a substance ... primary matter is something incomplete, since it is merely potential. Substance, on the other hand, is something full and active ... Merely passive matter is something very low, that is, wanted in all force ... but such a thing consists only in the incomplete or in abstraction. [W 486-487]

Matter is corruptible. On the other hand, there is no passivity or passive power in GOd 21 who is pure act [G VII 530; G III 457] incapable of suffering (that is, being acted on) [T 328] and passion [T 388] which is an imperfection. [T 337] There would seem to be no way that a "vile" non-entity such as matter could "exist" by participating in God. It is not surprising, then, that Leibniz would see merit in the notion that God does not create matter, at least not primary matter. Pure actuality does not beget potentiality. The perfect doe not engender the imperfect, [T p. 416] or, to say the same thing, something is not the cause of nothing. III. AN ALTERNATIVE READING OF LEIBNIZ ON CREATIO EX NIHILO

One might propose that Leibniz could reject an absolute creation from nothing simply by asserting that God has in mind a representation of the world before he creates it, a representation that counts as something. According to this proposal, an absolute creation from nothing would be a creation that did not even involve a "preexisting" representation of the world, or, if it did, that God created the repre-

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sentation also. Jalabert has advanced just such a proposal. He writes in a section of his book Le Dieu de Leibniz titled "La creation ex nihilo": Leibniz admits, without needing to insist upon the point, which is agreed on among Christians. Existence of a matter, which preexisted creative action, is incompatible with divine omnipotence, which embraces the dependence of all in regard to God. Even, if we suppose eternal matter it rests contingently on divine fiat, for it does not contain within its essence its proper reason of existing. God alone is "causa sui ... " creation ex nihilo is implied in the proof from contingency. Those who admit the existence of an uncreated matter invoke the end for establishing the existence of God?2 By "creatio ex nihilo" Jalabert means a creation of the entire being of a thing including its most fundamental subjectivity, which is a potentiality to possess properties. J alabert argues that the tradition of strong support for this sense of creatio ex nihilo exempts Leibniz from having to defend his alleged allegiance to it. Jalabert offers that this release might account for why Leibniz did not "insist" on the doctrine. He also suggests that Leibniz had good reason not to reject the tradition. According to J alabert, a rejection of creatio ex nihilo is an affront to God's magnificence. Here is a brief conjecture why he thinks that it is. Suppose that God does not create all being out of nothing. It follows that he is not the efficient cause of all being but only some of it. God is supposed to be a being than which none is conceivably greater. But Aquinas wrote: It is greater for a thing to be made according to its entire substance than to be made according to its substantial or accidental form. But generation taken absolutely, or relatively, whereby anything is made according to the substantial or accidental form, is something in the thing generated. Thereby much more is creation, where a thing is made according to its whole substance ... [ST Part I Q 45 Article 3] A god who creates finite beings from absolutely nothing, a nothing that is not even a potential to exist, is a greater god than one who relies upon preexistent "stuff" in his act of creation. The lesser god merely supplies accidental and substantial forms to things. He is not as magnificent and prolific as a god who creates the very subject that takes on the accidental and substantial forms. If such a subjectcreating god is consistently conceivable, he is greater than a god who does not create subjects but only completes them. The lesser god, therefore, would not be God. Gilson, an apologist for those theologians who hold forth for creation of beings in their entire being argues: [I]t is certain that the more a productive cause is primary and perfect in the order of being, the more profoundly its action penetrates its effects. In the case where the cause considered is absolutely primary and perfect being, the action that it exercises must extend its efficacy to the total substance of each of its effects. In other words, if God produces a thing, He can only produce it integrally, and His action necessarily engenders its constitutive principles, matter and form, at the same time as the compositum ... Acting in all His being, His effect

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can only be being; the natural result then of the divine action is the bringing into existence of that which nothing preceded, except God and the void.23

J alabert sees Leibniz as an exponent of a doctrine of creation along the lines Gilson outlines in the passage above. It is a purported staple of Christian thinking, and J alabert intimates that Leibniz's sense of Christian duty impelled him to embrace it as an article of faith.24 In addition to his argument from the need to preserve divine omnipotence, J alabert maintains that Leibniz would hesitate on pragmatic grounds to spurn creatio ex nihilo. According to Jalabert, Leibniz no doubt recognized that rejecting creatio ex nihilo would sabotage his argument for the existence of God from the contingency of things. The argument for the existence of God from the contingency of things presupposes, according to Jalabert, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. That argument goes as follows. It is assumed that God creates immaterial beings other than himself. It is then supposed that if there were no absolutely necessary being there would be no contingently existing material things. But there are contingently existing material things. Ergo, there is an absolutely necessary being. If Leibniz were to admit that matter "carries in itself the proper reason for its existence," he obviously would invalidate this argument. J alabert aims to forge a connection between Leibniz's argument from the contingency of things, his endorsement of the precept that God is omnipotent, and the thesis that he also championed the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. However, in undertaking to accomplish his objective, Jalabert makes two errant assumptions. One is that Leibniz held that it is possible to create something from absolutely nothing, that is, that creatio ex nihilo, for Leibniz, is an intelligible dogma. If Leibniz denied that an absolute creatio ex nihilo is intelligible, then he would not conclude, with Aquinas, that it is greater to create something from nothing than it is to create something from some form of potential being. However, at Grua 98 Leibniz denies that creatio ex nihilo, as it is commonly conceived as a creation from absolutely nothing, is an intelligible doctrine. The second errant assumption that Jalabert makes is that Leibniz would regard an uncreated, potential being as containing in itself a principle of its existence if it comes to exist. Leibniz, however, did not regard potential things as containing the principles of their existence in themselves. On the contrary, he argued that their transition from potential to actual existence necessarily involves the concurrence of God because finite subjects cannot perform the miracle of creating themselves. Leibniz held that creation is a miracle reserved for God. 25

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IV. POTENTIAL BEINGS AS ETERNAL TRUTHS

The notion that the coming into existence of creatures is a transition from potential, relatively formless being to formed being or being in act has been deployed by theologians who sought to solve the problem of evil. Some theologians after Augustine, for example, tried to avoid the conclusion that God is the author of evil by denying the hypothesis that God creates the world of finite beings out of absolutely nothing. 26 They set forth the thesis - widely censured as heretical - that created things enjoy a being that precedes participation in God's being. I believe that Leibniz approved and tacitly adopted the strategy and thesis. When Leibniz admitted evil into his conception of the world, potential beings also made entrance, beings other than God whose ultimate subjectivity does not depend upon his will, power, or intellect. More important for the present study, however, is the fact that Leibniz could locate - I think he did locate - the source of incompatibility in the finitude of this independent receptivity for perfection. [T 135] That is my view. Jalabert demurs. He argues that Leibniz did not have to presuppose the preexistence of souls to acquit God of the charge that he is the cause of evil. According to Jalabert the "preexistence" of a priori descriptions of creatures suffices. He quotes the following passage as evidence that Leibniz took this approach: The Ancients attributed the cause of evil to matter, because they believed that it is uncreated and independent of God; but we who derive all being from God, where do we find the source of evil? The answer is that it should be in the ideal nature of the creature, as far as this nature is contained in the eternal truths of the understanding of God, independent of his will .. .It is the Region of Eternal truths which it is necessary to put in the place of matter, when it comes to seeking the source of things. [T 23]27

Leibniz's point here is that the soul, not the body, is the seat of evil. Jalabert understands him to be arguing that if the "ideal nature" of a soul ideally implies evil, then when that ideal is realized, the soul as an exemplification of the ideal is the real cause of real evil. One obvious objection to Jalabert's proposal is that if God's act of creation is that of realizing ideals, he does not, after all, create individuals out of nothing. The ideals are something. Jalabert, probably anticipating this facile objection, writes: The role of possibles in creation should not be considered as an obstacle to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The possible belongs to an altogether different place in existence; it is only a condition sine qua non. Where there has been nothing God makes to arise a universe by the efficacy of his will alone. Such is creation ex nihilo. 28

Jalabert maintains that Leibniz's claim that God knows possibilities that he does not create does not preclude his also consistently invoking the doctrine of creatio

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ex nihilo. Possibilities, he says, are not preexistent things but indispensable precreation conditions: God creates on the condition that he has a plan of action, a blueprint as it were, to follow. Jalabert is certainly right on this score. Leibniz never states that God makes the world according to nothing. Jalabert thinks that Leibniz could maintain consistently both that God makes the world out of nothing and that he refers to a plan when he makes it: that he makes the world according to something but out of nothing. 29 Furthermore, if eternal truths are propositions or descriptions and nothing else, J alabert's line of reasoning seems cogent. But, while I grant that some eternal truths are propositions/o I propose as additional viable candidates for eternal truths subjects that God immediately thinks about. Is not Aristotle's god an eternal truth insofar as he is thought thinking itself? An affirmative answer should not be deemed heterodox. Christ pronounced "I am the Truth." [John 14:6] God has been called "Truth itself," and so has "Being." (Consider: "God is not Truth", "Truth is not Being") by many orthodox philosophers and theologians. According to Descartes, for example, "Truth consists in being, and falsehood only in nonbeing,,,31 and Malebranche states, very simply that God is truth 32 and so too does Augustine. 33 Did Leibniz mean by "eternal truth" "God?" Did he mean by "eternal truth" "eternal being?" Bear in mind: if he did, this does not rule out his also having meant by "eternal truth" an eternally true proposition. Philosophers and theologians of Leibniz's and preceding eras spoke of things themselves, not just propositions about them as truths. Aquinas wrote, for example: [S]ince the true is in the intellect in so far as it is conformed to the thing understood, the aspect of the true must pass from the intellect to the thing understood, so that also the thing understood is said to be true [my emphasis] in so far as it has some relation in the intellect. [ ST Part I Q.16, Art. 2] [E]verything, in so far as it has being, is to that extent knowable. Therefore it is said in the book on the Soul that "the soul is in some manner all things," through the sense and the intellect. And therefore, as good is convertible with being, so is the true. [ST Part I Q. 16 Art. 3.] As was said above, truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is; and in things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest degree found in God. For his being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect; and He Himself is His own being and act of understanding. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that he is the highest and first truth itself. [ST Part I Q 16 Art 5]

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Not only is God the highest truth, for Aquinas, he is the highest eternal truth. Aquinas would not refer to God as a "proposition." Certainly, he would say that God is something more than that. Leibniz appears to have agreed with Aquinas: Moral truth is called "veracity" by some; and "metaphysical truth" is commonly taken by metaphysicians to be an attribute of Being, but it is a thoroughly useless and almost senseless attribute. Let us be content at looking for truth in the correspondence between the propositions, which are in the mind and the things which they are about [emphasis added]. It is true that I have also attributed truth to ideas, by saying that ideas are true or false [N 269]; but what I mean by that is the truth of the proposition which affirms that the idea is possible. And in that sense one could also say that an entity is true [emphasis added], i.e., attribute truth to the proposition which affirms its actual or at least possible existence. [N 397-398]

I have no trouble viewing "entities," even nonexistent ones, as truths. Nor does it strike me as odd that entities are possible evil agents. On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that propositions, or propositions articulated into a world plan are even ideal agents of evil. I simply do not find plausible - and I do not believe that Leibniz would have found plausible - the notion that actual individuals are responsible for their actions because their actions are contained in their a priori concepts. Rather, it seems more reasonable to suppose that the contents of individual concepts somehow correspond to the non-conceptual nature of subjects or essences This presupposes, in tum, that there is a distinction between God's concept of a subject and the subject even before the subject exists and that, for Leibniz, potentiality precedes both existence and conception. My reading of Leibniz on these points runs counter to those of Mates and Abraham, however. Mates writes: [I]n a number of respects the modern versions of the possible-worlds story do not jibe with (Leibniz's) ... Thus we now speak of individuals as existing in possible worlds, whereas for Leibniz these worlds - at least the nonactual ones - are made up of individual concepts; he does not believe in nonexistent individuals. 34

And Abraham submits that: The fascination of pure possibles on Leibniz was complete. This thing seems to have been something, as it were, further on its way to real existence than a complete concept, a sort of mean between a complete concept and an actual substance, for Leibniz invests it with material properties, notably a conatus towards existence .. Just as a seed has an "inclination" to grow into a plant, and cannot do so without that inclination, so a pure possible has a conatus or inclination towards existence as an actual substance, something it cannot become without that conatus. It is dependence on God for the translation of this conatus into existence that Leibniz calls creation. 35

I endorse, in part, Mates view, which is also Jalabert's, that a nonactual possible world is a conception of individuals coexisting and that such a conception com-

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prises complete concepts or representations of individuals, not possible individuals themselves. Nevertheless, the proposition that possible worlds do not contain individuals does not imply that there are no nonactual individuals, where "individuals" is understood to mean "receptive subjects." The former proposition is consistent with the proposition that there are nonactual subjects that are not constitutive of possible worlds that comprise complete concepts of them. As I read Leibniz, both nonactual individuals and concepts of them are in the mind of God. Nonactual individuals subsist in God's mind until God creates them. When God creates them, that is, when he gives them positive attributes and correlates them in a world so that they interact with other individuals, they exist in God's mind. Thus, I think Leibniz followed Malebranche in holding that "all creatures even the most material and terrestrial, are in God,,36 who, according to Malebranche is "the place of minds.,,37 The minds of which Malebranche speaks are surely not "concepts." I therefore grant that Mates and J alabert would be correct if they maintained only that there are no purely possible individuals coexisting with other purely possible individuals. For Leibniz, there are no possible worlds of nonactual individuals; there are only nonactual individual subjects. Purely possible worlds are conceptualizations of these nonactual individuals. Concepts of nonactual individuals belong to nonactual possible worlds. But, this is a small point. When God considers the different ways that an individual might exist, he does so using a representation of the individual, a complete representation, not the individual itself. I also agree with Abraham's suggestion that pure possibles are somehow "further along" toward existence than complete concepts. But he is wrong to suggest that actual individuals are a sort of concept/substance hybrid before they exist. There can be no negotiation on this point: pure possibles that can exist are either individual subjects or they are concepts. For Leibniz, the choice is not difficult. For Leibniz, it makes no more sense to say that concepts approach existence than to say that space and time approach existence. For him, subjects, not concepts, exist; and striving for and tending towards existence are traits of individual subjects, not of concept-like entities. Furthermore: Essence is not a concept, nor does it always concern the existence of things. It is however always prior in origin to existence, for from it a reason for existing is able to be given. [Grua 393]

Leibniz also contrasts concepts with ideas and possible objects in this passage: The connection of concepts arises from the connection of possible objects or ideas. [Grua 392]

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Again, I do not say that this contrast that Leibniz makes between concepts and possible objects and ideas settles tQ,e issue whether he held forth for a relative creation. I do maintain that it establishes that there is an issue to be settled, and that it cannot be settled simply by saying that the doctrine that God created the world from something, rather than absolutely nothing, is unChristian or heretical while Leibniz is Christian and orthodox. There are texts that appear to confirm the opposing view, however: But what, you may ask, shall we say of this primary matter itself, which belongs to the soul? I reply that it is certainly created together with the soul, or that the whole monad is created. [L 598] [E]verything is created from nothing, not from preexisting material in any given moment you please, for matter itself was created. [Grua 270] [T]hese beings have received their nature which is active as well as passive (i.e., have received both their immaterial and material features) from a universal and supreme cause. [N 440]

[T]he original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to the action of the Creator, which tends towards good. But as matter is itself of God's creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example ... and cannot be the very source of evil and of imperfection. I have already shown that this source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for this is eternal, and matter is not so. [T 380] But one should be careful in interpreting what Leibniz means in these contexts by "preexisting," "created," and "received." I have urged that Leibniz assigns different meanings to these terms. One is that of a nonexistent entity lacking form absolutely, and the other is that of an individual that exists in one form before it exists in another. Leibniz rejected the notion of matter that exists, rather than merely subsists, before God joins it to form, in a lower, less formed state, what pre-Socratics called "Chaos" or "Atoms." [Grua 98] When Leibniz states that God creates matter, or primitive passive force, he is referring to God's act of completing primitive passive force by combining it with active force. Thus, he states in the Theodicy that (secondary) matter arises with confused perceptions or when confused perceptions are referred to body. I think that he followed Aquinas who wrote: [T]hrough form, which actualizes matter, matter becomes an actual being and this particular thing. [On Being and Essence: 35] Of course, Aquinas also believed that matter, that is "prime" matter, is created from nothing "before" it is actualized. Leibniz parted company with Aquinas, and the mass of theologians on this point. We should not lose sight of Leibniz's explicit statement that creation from nothing is contrary to reason and not sanctioned by scripture. Matter is actualized by form, according to Leibniz. Matter in a sense

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is present although it is "nothing," as Aristotle stated it, "with respect to an attribute," that is, with respect to the form that makes it into a "this" [Physics Book I, Chapter 8 192a5]. According to Leibniz, a particular substance, its attributes included, begins to exist when God combines a receptive individual with active forms or attributes: Things are not produced by the mere combination of forms in God, but along with a subject also. The subject itself, or God, together with his ubiquity, gives the immeasurable, and this immeasurable combined with other subjects brings it about that all possible modes, or things, follow in it. The various results of forms, combined with a subject (emphasis added), bring it about that particulars result. [DSR 85] 38 The idea of things in us is nothing but the fact that God, the author alike of things and of mind, has impressed the power of thinking upon the mind, so that it can by its own operations produce what corresponds perfectly to events which follow from things. [G I 3281L 210]

Leibniz provides, here, a fairly clear picture of his conception of creation: 39 Things come to exist when they come to have ideas. God creates a substance by combining forms with a subject. It is the compositum that is created or made, not the forms and not the subject that are ingredients of the compositum. The compositum comes to be, not the forms and not the subject. Another interesting text might appear to conflict with my claim that for Leibniz things are ideas. In his dialogue "Conversation of Philarete and Ariste, Following a Conversation of Ariste and Theodore," Philarete, speaking for Leibniz, and responding to Ariste's talk of "eternal realities," says: One may agree with you sir, that there are eternal truths, but not everyone will agree with you that there are eternal realities which are presented to our soul when it sees these truths. It will be said that it is enough that our thoughts have a relationship in this with those of God, in whom alone the eternal truths are realized. [0 VIIL 626]

In this passage, Leibniz appears to suggest that while there are eternal truths these eternal truths are not also eternal realities. In fact, however, he does not deny that there are eternal realities, just as Kant did not deny that there are things in themselves. Rather, Leibniz's point is that eternal realities, if there are any, are not "presented to," or made present to, finite minds when finite minds grasp eternal truths. Eternal realities, according to Leibniz, are present "in person" only to God, or "realized" only in God. That is to say, only God "sees" eternal realities. Thus, there is an "infinite difference" between God's mind and the minds of his creatures. God does not think things by representations of them only, he also thinks the things themselves, as he should. Rational finite minds apprehend things in a limited way only, namely, representationally, by means of grasping, in a relatively obscure and confused manner, images and concepts of things and propositions

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about them that result from connecting or combining concepts. Leibniz wrote in this connection: Not even God would have pleasure unless he perceived various creatures, which for him take the place of images. God is the perfect mind, and that mind is the cause of its own perceptions; which is not the case with any other mind. [DSR 71]

If God perceives creatures eternally, he perceives them eternally truthfully. There is no stretching of logic here: the creatures are therefore eternal truths, whatever God knows is true and he knows creatures. Certainly, this is not how a twentieth century analytic philosopher talks. But that is not a serviceable standard for Leibniz scholarship. For Leibniz, a seventeenth century philosophical theologian there is a God whose ideas are things themselves because he produces his own perceptions rather than having his perceptions of things produced in him. Leibniz's God produces his perceptions of things by bringing those very things, not just representations of them, into his mind. Thus, Leibniz's use of the expression, "region of ideas." Finite creatures, on the other hand, think nothing but representations. In God, eternal truths are realized, that is to say, God does see the subjects of concepts and propositions themselves; God "comprehends," as Leibniz states the matter in "Conversation of Philarete and Ariste," individuals themselves. In a letter to Hansch, Leibniz explains: [M]any of the Platonic doctrines are most beautiful - that all things have a single cause; that there is an intelligible world in the divine mind, which I also usually call the region of ideas; and that the object of wisdom is the really real or simple substances, which I call monads and which, once existing, endure always [emphasis added] ... The mathematical sciences, moreover, which deal with eternal truths rooted in the divine mind, prepare us for knowledge of substances [emphasis added]. Sensible things, however, and composite things in general, or the substantiated things, so to speak, are in flux and become rather than exist. Furthermore, as Plotinus rightly said, every mind contains a kind of [emphasis added] intelligible world within itself; indeed, in my opinion it also represents the sensible world to itself. But there is an infinite difference between our intellect and the divine, for God sees everything adequately and at once, while very few things are known distinctly by us; the rest lie hidden confusedly, as it were, in the chaos of our perceptions. Yet the seeds of the things we learn are within us - the ideas and the eternal truths which arise from them. Since we discover being, the one, substance, action, and the like within ourselves, and since we are conscious of ourselves, we need not wonder that their ideas are within us. The innate concepts of Plato, which he concealed by the name 'reminiscence,' are therefore by far to be preferred to the blank tablets of Aristotle ... [L 592-593]

Leibniz states unequivocally in this passage that God sees simple substances or monads themselves, and that these "realities" belong to an intelligible world that he calls the "region of ideas." Simple substances are the objects of God's wisdom, and, for that very reason, they are in God's mind and they are his ideas. Thus Ockham, a Platonist in his own right, explicitly refers to creatures as ideas:

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[C]reatures themselves are ideas ... For a creature itself is cognized by an active intellect, and God looks to the creature itself in order to produce rationally ... He truly looks to the creature and by looking to the creature He can produce it. 4o

Perhaps there are also concepts of "realities" and propositional eternal truths about them in Ockham's and Leibniz's God's mind. But to maintain that there are only concepts in God's mind, for Leibniz, and not substances themselves, would involve baldly denying what Leibniz states explicitly in his letter to Hansch, and also what he states here: In God, there are infinitely many, really diverse substances The substance of things is an idea. Idea is the union of God and creatures, so that the action of agent and patient is one. A point is at once common to two lines or intersectors. Most apt of all, an angle is at once center and lines. N.B. There are no ideas in God except there are things outside of him. Thus a point is not a center except of lines. Now if the substance of things is an idea, and it is asked if this is everywhere, I reply that it is not everywhere, anymore than a creature is elsewhere, than in the creator, and that the act of God is in the creature, though God is everywhere ... [T]he ideas of God and the substance of things are the same in fact, different in relation, they are moreover, as action and passion. [A 61 5131L 118-119]

For Leibniz, an idea that is in God's mind, and that God thinks about, is in some cases a creature or a preexistent creature. God forms a "union" his creatures by thinking of them, a union that Leibniz call an "idea." In relation to God's mind, in so far as it is involved in the union, the creature's essence is an idea. Considered in itself, not in relation to God's mind, the creature's essence is its substance. This is stock neo-Platonism. More to the point, it provides an explanation of how a creature can be in the "region of ideas." The essence or substance of a creature is the object of God's thought, as is the subject that receives that essence. It is also a creature because it is the object of God's creative power.

v.

THE DEPENDENCE OF POTENTIAL BEINGS ON GOD'S MIND

If, as I maintained in the Introduction, Leibniz would count a metaphysical principle as true only if it does not conflict with evident and non-negotiable moral principles, it seems clear to me that he would reject the doctrine of creation from absolutely nothing. That doctrine undermines the idea that individuals are ultimately responsible for their actions no less so than the view that God cannot conceive actual individuals acting otherwise. It does not help to postulate mere representations of individuals in the divine mind. I simply do not believe that Leibniz would have found plausible the notion that actual individuals are responsible for their actions because their actions are contained in a priori concepts of them. Rather, it seems more reasonable to sup-

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pose that the contents of individual concepts somehow correspond to the nonconceptual natures of individual subjects that God conceptualizes or thinks about. Leibniz furthermore judged the doctrine of creation from nothing, "as commonly understood," contrary to reason. Leibniz asserted quite explicitly: "Ex nihilo nihilfit."[Grua 329] In the passage I quoted from Grua 98, Leibniz also states that the doctrine that nothing comes from nothing is an "eternal truth" and that there is no basis in sacred scripture for the doctrine of creation from nothing as it is "commonly understood." The "common understanding" of creation from nothing in Leibniz's day was the understanding advocated by Aquinas and Gilson. That is why I do not find Jalabert's claim that Leibniz is a subscriber to that doctrine persuasive. I believe that, for Leibniz, creation presupposes already subsisting, yet nonexistent individuals that are made to exist. Leibniz's God thinks about nonexistent subjects and this makes them part of the content of his mind. They are "in" his mind and are ideas. Anything that is thought about is an idea: a thing is rendered an idea by being thought about. They are also objects of his will power. But the subsistence of subjects as possible existents, that is, objects of God's creative will, depends upon their relation to God's mind.[Grua 723] Nothing possibly exists unless God thinks about creating it. The fact that Leibniz designated uncreated minds "ideal things" might serve to obscure the point that he believed, as he stated, that substances, themselves, not just representations of them, are realized in God. By an "ideal thing" we usually mean a mind dependent, and hence merely conceptual, entity. As Aquinas points out, things are true only in relation to a mind: things are true only through being known and they are known only by a mind. In this sense, things, considered as truths, depend upon a mind and are ideal. But, in his letter to Hansch, Leibniz also uses the term "ideal" to refer to souls as subjects not abstract conceptual entities: [Y]ou may deny the quietists, false mystics, who deny individuality and action to the mind of the blessed ... According to this view souls return to God in death ... Spinoza tends toward the same view. For him there is one substance, God. Creatures are his modifications, like figures in wax, continually arising and perishing through motion. So for him, just as for Almeric, the soul does not survive except through its ideal being in God, where it was from all eternity. [L 594]

An "ideal being," as Leibniz discusses it in the above passage, is a being that lacks individuality and action: as a soul that lacks action and individuality because it has been "absorbed into God." [L 584] A being lacks individuality and action, for Leibniz, when it no longer has individual striving dispositions (or willings) and thoughts. As I argue below, this is precisely the state of a Leibnizian potential being before God acts upon it and creates it; it is a mind that is merely passive in relation to God. [Grua 87] A Leibnizian potential being, or uncreated mind, is

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somewhat akin to the soul of the quietists and false mystics; it is a quiet, unmoved and unmoving soul: it is merely receptive and uninformed. Although I am sure that Leibniz countenanced nonexistent minds in an other than conceptual form that depends for its reality or possible existence on God's mind, I am at a loss, nearly, as to what this dependency is supposed to consist in. Perhaps, for Leibniz, non-existent minds must be present some (non-spatial)where, and he calls this non-spatial site where minds are present "God's mind." "God's mind" is the answer to the question "Where are subjects or minds before God activates them?" According to Leibniz, minds, along with their limitations and all other things, are "in" God's mind because God thinks of them. Leibniz also might have been following Plato who argued in the Phaedo that forms need minds to think them no less than minds require objects of thought in order to be immortal. Moline has argued persuasively that, for Plato, minds deserve to be counted among eidos. 41 Ideas for Plato have a relative, to a mind, existence rather than an absolute existence. If, indeed, Leibniz believed with Plato that minds are ideas this would provide an explanation for why he would say, also with Plato, that nonexistent minds depend on God. In addition, if he agreed with Descartes that a nonexistent thing is nothing, this would help to explain why he thought that there is a coherent sense of creation from nothing. Following Nicolas of Cusa and Grosteste, Leibniz was fond of referring to minds as mirrors. It is useful to think of Leibnizian minds, before God creates them, that is, before God impresses upon them active force, as blank mirrors yearning to reflect something. A mirror is completed, so to speak, when it is full, at every moment, of reflections. Of course a mirror cannot give itself those reflections. Things must be placed before it and there must be light. This is one role of Leibniz's God. He assembles possibles into worlds and illuminates them. [Grua 87] A mirror is a subject but not a complete substance. It becomes a complete substance when God illuminates it and gives it something to reflect and causes it to reflect that something. A pure possible is a mirror that eternally and futilely strives to escape darkness, emptiness, and lonliness. Even in the dark it is an eternal truth, that is to say, it is an eternal object of God's perfectly veridical vision. For Leibniz, things possibly exist, that is, God possibly creates things, only if God knows them. God cannot create that of which he has no knowledge. Thus Leibniz remarked to Arnauld that the only reality in possible things is found in God's understanding and power. [G II 54-551LA 61] Again, he meant by "reality," "possibility of existing." As Leibniz states in his letter to Eckhard, being "conceived as existing" is a perfection. [G I 266] It is only in God's understanding that a nonexistent mind rises to the status of a potential existent, for it is only in God's understanding that it is conceived as existing, because it is only in God's mind that God considers creating it.

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Leibniz admitted that it is possible to conceive of essences without conceiving of God. [W 486] However, such Godless conceptions cannot involve concepts of possible existence since there is no possibility for existing without God. Without God, potential beings are merely fictions, that is, beings whose concepts do not involve the concept of possible existence. Thus: The very possibility of things, when they do not actually exist, has a reality grounded in the divine existence: for if God should not exist, there would be no possibility, and possible things are from eternity in the ideas of the divine intellect. [G VI 440] And, [N]either these essences nor the so called eternal truths in general are fictitious, rather they exist in a certain region of ideas, if I may so call it, namely in God himself, who is the source of all essence. [L 488] Descartes maintained, before Leibniz, that a "real" being as opposed to "fictitious" or chimerical ens rationis possibly exists, [CSM II 263] and, for Leibniz, something possibly exists only if it is producible, that is, only if there is an actual being capable of producing it: In order for the thing to be possible, it suffices that a thing should be possible capable of producing the thing. Generally speaking, if a thing is to be possible, it suffices that its efficient cause should be possible ... [G III 5721L 661; cf. GIl 225; Grua 288; G III 572]. But, consider also: In a word, when one speaks of the possibility of a thing it is not a question of the causes that can bring it about or prevent its actual existence: otherwise one would change the nature of the terms, and render useless the distinction between the possible and the actual. [T 235] Evidently Leibniz used the word "possibility" in two very different ways, or he contradicted himself. I think the former. Leibniz held that something is real insofar as it is producible. [Grua 266] One may abstract from this reality, but if one does one is left with a mere fiction, a possibility that does not contain possible existence. As Leibniz informed Arnauld: [T]he possibilities of individuals or of contingent truths contain in their concepts the possibility of their causes, that is the free decrees of God. [G II 51ILA 56] As for the reality of purely possible substances ... they have no more reality than that which they have in the divine understanding and in the active power of God ... one is obliged to have recourse to divine knowledge and power in order to explain them properly. [G II 5455ILA 61] Leibniz also maintained that intellect without will is absurd, [Grua 723] hence, if God entertains a consistent idea he can entertain willing it and exercising his

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power to create it and this is what makes the idea real. Thus, as has already been pointed out, Leibniz stated that a real definition includes a specification of the means for generating the thing defined or its cause. [G II 63/LA 72; DM 24; L 293] There is another way to understand, in a little more detail, what Leibniz meant by possibles deriving from God their reality. He wrote: All possibles cannot be distinctly understood by anyone, for they imply[ ]. A most perfect being is that which contains the most. Such a being is capable of ideas and thoughts, for this multiplies the varieties of things, like a mirror. Therefore God, who is necessarily a thinking being, even if he is not a being which thinks everything, will be more perfect by that very fact. A being which is omniscient and omnipotent is the most perfect. .. A thinking being is necessary so that certain things which do not exist are at least at any rate thought namely those that deserve to be thought rather than others. Therefore, though everything possible is thinkable, there will be chosen some things which will really be thought. [DSR 29]

On the whole, this passage requires a considerable amount of clarification and disambiguation. However, Leibniz makes a clear statement that bears directly on the present discussion. The statement is that although all possibles are thinkable, not all possibles are thought. In order to be an object of God's creative will, it is necessary for an entity to be conceived. That is, in order for an entity to possibly exist it must be conceived. If Leibniz understood "real" to mean "able to exist" then possibles that God does not think are not real. In addition, Leibniz could have believed that a possible participates in God's thought on account of God's thinking it. In other words, God bestows upon a possible a power to think by thinking that possible. As a mind, all of God's activities consist in thinking. How else, therefore, could he create a mind, that is make it act, other than by thinking it? This is not to say that God makes all objects actual by thinking them. Objects in Leibniz's ontology are all and only thinkable objects. Being thinkable or cognizable is a potential that is either realized or not. Early in his career, Leibniz maintained that some objects that God can think he will not think because they do not deserve to be thought. An unthought thinkable object is radically unrealized, or, to say the same thing, it is not only not existent it is not possibly existent. It is not an object of God's power because it is not an object of God's thought. If there were no God, no necessarily existing mind, there would be no actual mind to think potential beings and they could not be real, that is, there would be no possibility of their existing if there were no God. Leibniz's view that essences depend on a mind for their reality is Platonist. At Phaedo 76e-77a, there is the following exchange between Socrates and Simmias: Socrates: If all these absolute realities exist, such as beauty and goodness ... does it not follow that our souls must exist too even before our birth .. .Is this the position, that it is logi-

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cally just as certain that our souls exist before our birth as it is that these realities exist, and that if the one is impossible, so is the other? Simmias: It is perfectly obvious to me, Socrates ... that the same logical necessity applies to both. In this passage, Socrates maintains both that if there were no forms, there could be no souls, and if there were no souls there would be no forms. I take him to mean what Leibniz meant, namely, that if there were no souls, forms would be nothing real or actual. They would not exist, as Socrates states it, "in the fullest sense." They would be mere potentials for being thought. Likewise, if there were no forms, souls would not exist in the "fullest sense" because, lacking objects of thought their potentials to think would not be realized. Echoing Plato, Leibniz wrote: In the region of eternal verities are found all the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity, and this reason can only be found in the understanding. Moreover these very truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding wherein they are realized, so to speak. [T 189]

Leibniz also stated that without sentient beings nothing would exist.[DSR 113] An unthought form is unreal as is an unthinking mind. However, an unreal form or an unreal mind is still an entity, it is a potential, which, as I have already pointed out, some philosophers thought was a kind of nothing. To make a mind real it is enough that God think about it. To make a mind existent, God makes the mind act and suffer, that is, he makes it think by thinking it in a special way. He annihilates minds by ignoring them. Leibniz's claim that essences depend on God for their reality therefore is consistent with my contention that, for Leibniz, potential beings have being independent of God: They have a being independent of God that is realized "so to speak" in the mind of God. Even after God creates the potential beings that exist only for his mind they do not exist for other sentient minds unless those sentient minds perceive them. Leibniz's position is that the reality of this potential not the potential itself depends on God and other minds. VI. PERCEPTION AND RELATIVE CREATION

Leibniz often stated that the possible is that which is consistently conceived. This equation strongly suggests, at least, that the object that God conceives is no more the same as his conception of it, than (so we think) our perceptions of objects are identical with those objects. Instead, the object that God conceives is present prior

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to (although not temporally before) his conceiving it, just as the objects of our senses are there before we perceive them and even if we do not perceive them. [Grua 355] God creates a potential being by completing it or actualizing it with a continuous fulguration of power. Thus Leibniz stated that primitive (active) power is the "completion" of possibility. [G N 478/L 454] Certainly, God possesses concepts of the forms, subjects, and resulting particulars before he makes the particulars by combining these ingredients of particulars. I have argued, however, that it would be a mistake to impute to Leibniz the view that forms and subjects, the possibilities or essences of things, are merely concepts simply because they are "in" God's mind. Because God continuously creates beings, at each moment a creature is a potential being relative to the next moment. These potential beings are not hidden from God behind a veil of perception nor a veil of conception. They are immediately present to his mind, that is, they are "in" his mind. Of course, the same potential beings are not immediately present in the "kind of intelligible world" that is within the minds of finite minds. That "kind of intelligible world" is populated by representations or concepts of substances not the substances themselves. Finite minds are not themselves in the minds of other finite substances. Leibniz is a direct realist with regards to God's cognition of things but not with regards to creatures cognitions of things. Perhaps weighing against this interpretation of Leibniz is the fact that some recent Leibniz scholars of note have sought to make sense of Leibniz's characterization of potential beings as striving possibles by treating the characterization as a misleading metaphor. 42 According to them, Leibnizian possibles really do not strive. The striving, they say, is for Leibniz an abstract competition among reasons in God's mind. Insofar as there are reasons for God to instantiate a concept, that concept is said to "strive." Similarly, the "clashing" that Leibniz says occurs among possibles is a clashing of reasons, not a clashing of the possibles themselves. 43 I agree with the second assessment but not with the first. Leibniz explicitly ruled out any real clashing of entities in his system. However, his incorporation of potential beings that are not concepts into his system allows a literal reading of his doctrine of striving possibles. Wilson, I think, is on the mark with her observation that: Even in the exoteric "Principles of Nature and Grace", the struggle for existence is depicted as taking place within God's mind, leaving it open whether God is to be conceived simply as the locus of the process or as the active manipulator of his own thoughts. 44

Leibniz, as I read him, does not characterize God as simply the locus of the strivings of individuals for existence. He sees God as both the locus of the process and as a manipulator of it. The subjects that strive for existence, again, are contents of

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God's thoughts. Hence, the alternatives Wilson presents are not mutually exclusive. But from whence the striving of preexistent subjects? Here is a speculation: Evidently, for Leibniz, as for Plato and Aristotle, the very fact of being in the presence of God stimulates potential beings. With Plato, this presence involves a participation in God. As Plato relates the story in his Symposium, the participation of passive subjects in God initiates in them a striving, a desire and demand to be full-fledged substances. That is to say, God prompts them to strive after further participation, a participation in his knowledge of other things, especially "Beauty itself." This, I believe, is the Platonic thought behind Leibniz's remark that: [T]hat cause, which makes it that something, should exist, or that possibles should demand existence, also makes it that all possibles strive for Existence. [G VII 289]

According to Leibniz, God not only actualizes possibles by graciously giving them form, he is also the reason why they demand form, and strive for existence, that is, for a perception of things. 45 Leibniz's conception of creation is not that God makes the potential of finite beings out of nothing: Again, their potential, their prime matter, is their nothingness. [Grua 356; Grua 329t6 For Leibniz, in creating potential beings, in reducing them to act, God gives their limited and striving passive power for receiving perfection a structured content. He makes minds that strive to perceive, perceive. Leibnizian receptive subjects are not actual things or substances until God graces them with primitive force. This is an old neo-Platonist conception of nothing and an Aristotelian conception of the stages in the formation of finite substances. Berkeley, whose philosophy Leibniz generally approved, cast it in terms of perceptual power: When objects are said to begin or end their existence, we do not mean this with regard to God, but His creatures. All objects are eternally known by God, or, which is the same thing, have an eternal existence in His mind: but when things before imperceptible to creatures, are, by decree of God, made perceptible to them; then they are said to begin with a relative existence, with respect to finite minds. Upon reading therefore the Mosaic account of the creation, I understand that the several parts of the world became gradually perceivable to finite spirits, endowed with proper faculties; so that whoever such were present, they were in truth perceived by them ... God knew all things from eternity ... Consequently they always had being in the divine intellect. 47

Berkeley here provides a lucid interpretation of Leibniz's description of creation as "making the invisible visible." Berkeley holds that before creation all things were in the mind of God and existed relative to him: esse est percipi. In so far as they are in God's mind they are, according to Berkeley, God's ideas:

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[T]he sun, moon, and stars, earth and sea, plants and animals: that all these do really exist, and were in the beginning created by God, I make no question. If by ideas, you mean fictions and fancies of the understanding, then these are no ideas. If by ideas you mean immediate objects of the understanding, or sensible things which cannot exist unperceived, or out of a mind, then these things are ideas. But whether you do, or do not, call them ideas it matters little. 48

Berkeley followed Leibniz, Ockham, and the Platonic tradition in regarding whatever is an object of thought an idea. Since finite minds are objects of God's mind they are ideas. More strikingly stated, they are objects in God's mind. God's mind is the region of ideas, ideas are minds, so God's mind is the region of minds. Berkeley's conception of potential beings recalls the medieval conception of "being of being known." He sloganizes that conception with "esse est percipi;" and he modifies it by interpreting creation as the transition from existing only in God's mind to existing in the minds of other finite minds. Leibniz disagreed with Berkeley's Origenistic assertion that minds exist before they perceive. For Leibniz esse est percipi et percipere. Leibnizian ideas/minds do not exist until they perceive. It is not enough that God perceives them. God's perception of minds, his understanding of them, makes them real, according to Leibniz, not existent. Leibniz held that substances are complete beings and part of what it means to be a complete being is to act. To exist, a thing must have its capacity to suffer augmented by a realization of its capacity to act. Leibniz defined existing, or the realization of a capacity to suffer and to act, in terms of being sensed and sensing: We have no other idea of existence, than that we know things to be sensed. Nor are other things able to be because existence is not included in [their] essence itself of necessity. Without sensing things nothing would exist. [Grua 267-268] Existence is sense of something.[A 6 1 457] Whatever is sensed exists ... whatever exists is sensed. [A 6 2 282]

According to Leibniz, the criterion of existence of finite things is sensing and being sensed and a primitive substance is a result of God's creative act of thinking form, both substantial and accidental, into a substrate. Just as Kantian minds bring a manifold of sensations under a form when they think by uniting them into a connected field of objects, Leibniz's God gives a striving subject its own flow of thoughts when he thinks it in a creative way. It is a medieval commonplace that the matter and substantial forms of finite beings limit their participation in existence. Matter limits a thing to a place and substantial forms determine its existence by confining it to certain species and genera. To exist in a species or genus is to participate in God's existence in a limited or specific way.49 However, existent finite beings, as Leibniz states it, re-

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ceive, through participation, all and only, their perfections from God, and their matter by participating in nothing. God therefore is not the cause of their limits.[T30] Perhaps Erickson is right to suggest that the neo-Platonists influenced Leibniz on this point, that is, perhaps Leibniz thought that potential beings "contract" the perfection that God introduces into them. 50 Leibniz might have construed the receptive powers of finite minds as not only limited but also limiting. 51 In particular, they might limit substances with respect to what other substances with which they can coexist.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR I I emphasize here that Leibniz's God does not conceive of complete individuals having properties other than their actual properties. Rather, he conceives the subjects that he completes having rroperties other than their actual properties. Leibniz stated that "compatibility" obtains between things and "compossibility" obtains among propositions. [A 6 2 498] However, he sometimes spoke of propositions being "compatible" and things being "compossible." Let us say, then, that, for Leibniz, an entity A is compatible or compos sible with an entity B just in case the proposition that A exists is compossible or comatible with the proposition that B exists, that is, just in case the proposition that A exists does not imply the proposition that B does not exist. [Grua 325] Henceforth, I will use the terms in this discussion as Leibniz did, as if they were interchangeable. There has been some debate over the question of whether the notion of compossibility is logical or whether it is an architechtonic principle. As will be clear from what follows. I maintain the former. 3 Broad, C. D., Leibniz, An Introduction: 162. There are other commentators who argue that Leibniz's doctrine of compossibility implies that the actual conditions of actual Leibnizian substances are the only conditions to which they can be subject. However, their arguments depend on the premise that Leibnizian individuals have only one complete concept, a premise that I have challenged in the preceding chapters. See, for example, Rescher, The Philosophy of Leibniz: 16; and Mates, 'Individuals': 91-92. 4 "No one fittingly understands the works of God unless he sufficiently recognizes in them this fact: that the effect is the trace of its cause." [MP 178] 5 Russell, Bertrand, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz: 20 (note). Russell translates "adhuc" as "it is yet," giving the impression that Leibniz is confessing at G VII 195 that he had failed to come up with an account of incompatibility and incompossibility. Commentators after Russell have copied his translating error. 6 Rescher is the only commentator I have encountered who states this assumption explicitly. He does so in his article 'Logical Difficulties in Leibniz's Metaphysics': 183. 7 For an excellent bibliography on the subject of "departures" from the doctrine of an absolute creation from nothing see the Select Bibliography of Sorabji's, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: items 321-335. Sorabji's discussion of the subject in Chapter 13 of his book is also excellent. According to John A. Trentman, in his article 'Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century,' I am imputing to Leibniz the view that God makes rather than creates the world. Trentman writes: "When we say that God (or anybody) nakes something, what we say can be expressed in the form M - ( 3x ) (A brought it about that x is an F) To say however that something is created is to say C - (Not M) and (A brought it about that ( 3x ) (x is F)." For a lucid discussion of this distinction see Geach, "Causality and Creation": 75-85 (especially 8283) in his book God and the Soul.

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Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram: volume 2, Book 7 paragraph 43: 31. Augustine also wrote: "Wherever you see measure, number, and order, you cannot hesitate to attribute all these to God, their Maker. When you remove measure, number, and number, nothing at all remains. Even if the beginning of some form were to remain, where you do not find order or measure or number ... you must remove even that very beginning of form which seems to be the artisans raw material." [On the Free Choice of the Will: 83]. 9 G III 637/L 659: "I have always been satisfied, from my youth, with the ethics of Plato and in some ways with his metaphysics as well; these two sciences demand each other's company, as do mathematics and physics. If someone were to reduce Plato to a system, he would render a great service to mankind, and it would then be clear that my own views approach his somewhat." 10 It is important to recall Leibniz's insistence that a doctrine must be rejected if it is unreasonable. [T p. 110] II note that Leibniz wrote to Bernoulli: "When I say that God elects out of infinite possibilities, I mean the same as you when you say that he has elected from eternity." [GM III 574] However, God's act of election is not identical, for Leibniz, with his act of creating since, for Leibniz, God's power is not identical with his will: "Power and will are different faculties whose objects are also different." [T 171; cf. T 149] Thus God's election of possibles is prior [T 389] to his act of creating them. 12 For an excellent discussion of preexistent Christ 1 recommend Chapter VIII of Wolfson's The Philosophy of the Church Fathers. 13 The Scholastics referred to this kind of being as a"being of being known." The question is whether there is a being of potential beings independent of their being of being known. 14 Perhaps the most familiar of these receptive beings is Plato's "receptacle." 15 Cf. Grua 539 for a discussion of this distinction. 16 Leibniz stated it in these terms: there must be the being of the creature before act. [T 387] The act is the determination, specification, or limitation of being. 17 Here are two texts that are relevant to the present discussion: "I have shown already ... that souls cannot spring up naturally, or be derived from one another, and that it is necessary that ours be either created or be pre-existent. I have even pointed out a certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence. I find it appropriate to say that the soul pre-existing in the seeds from the beginning of things was only sentient, but that it was elevated to the superior degree, which is that of reason, when the man to whom this soul should belong was conceived, and when the organic body, always accompanying this soul from the beginning, but under many changes, was determined for forming the human body. I considered also that one might attribute this elevation of the sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree of being, namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of God." [T 397] "[Men] existed then as sentient or animal souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason. Further I believe that they remained in that state to the time of the generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they received reason, whether there is a natural means of raising a sentient soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it difficult to imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul through some special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of transcreation. This latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other forms of immediate operation by God upon our souls." [T 91] 18 Suarez, Francis, On The Essence Of Finite Being As Such, On The Existence Of That Essence And Their Distinction: 60. 19 Ibid., 60. 20 Leibniz stated that although it cannot be understood how a mind could begin, it could be understood how it comes to have sensations. [DSR 65] 21 Jolley, Leibniz and Locke. See the Appendix, Leibniz's 'On the Unitarian Metaphysics of Christoph Stegmann': 199 and 202. . 22 Jalabert, Le Dieu de Leibniz: 187-188 8

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23 Etienne Gilson, Bonaventure: 188 24 Kulstad might assert, against Jalabert, that Leibniz's early Spinozism would dispose him to reject the traditional Christian conceptions of creation. See Introduction One Chapter Three. 25 Also the possible existence of any potentiality requires the existence of a necessarily actual being: T 184. 26 Leibniz discusses this issue: "The second article of the confessions of Augustine seems to pertain to the question of the origin of the soul. The difficulty in that matter seems to me to be that the soul is either created by God having a share in the origin of sin, from which they infer that pure soul is drawn into an impure body, by which it is infected, or created originally with sin and thus God is said to be the author of sin. Against traduction: it has its difficulties because it seems to make the soul divisible, or we fall into the preexistence of souls. Therefore, wherever we turn, we arrive at a harsh outcome. I hope to hear sometime your judgment about this matter." [Grua 402] Leibniz does not rank the alternatives he lists in this passage regarding the origin of the soul. It seems to me, however, that, for him, the preexistence of the soul is the least odious of them. Leibniz elsewhere rejected as false the two consequences that he cites of the first alternative (God's creating souls that are infected by bodies), that is, he denied that the body is the source of evil [Grua 243] and he also repeatedly denied that God is the author of sin [T 135; T 140]. The author of sin according to him is Satan. [T 156; T 273] It also is very unlikely that Leibniz would have approved the second alternative, for it implies that the soul is not eternal, as he states that it is at A 63 512. Counting in favor of the surmise that Leibniz opted for the third alternative, that the soul preexists, is his explicit characterization of the soul as essence. A familiar refrain in Leibniz's writings is that God does not create or control essences [L 146; T 335; Grua 15-16; T 242] and souls are essences, that is, they are that without which there would be no existent substance. The following texts lend further support to the thesis that Leibniz subscribes to the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul: Leibniz quoted Jablonski: "It is well known that the reformists teach that human souls have their origin through a new creation in which God makes them from nothing. " Leibniz commented on Jablonski's statement: "Many evangelical theologians prefer, on the contrary, the origin through traduction, in order to avoid making God the author of evil, but they incur the reproach of making the soul divisible. There is a real divergence. We are able to let it stand, for the fathers have already accommodated themselves to it. If the soul is indivisible, traduction must yield to preexistence." [Grua 418] Leibniz informed Molanus that the Evangelicals, that is those of the Augsburg Confession, do not hold that God creates new souls as they believe that doctrine implies that God is the author of sin. To avoid that implication it is necessary to "yield," at least to some extent, to the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul. In the Theodicy, Leibniz made it clear that the yielding he spoke of is a compromise not an outright rejection of traduction. [See T 397 quoted in note 26] 27 Jalabert, Leibniz: 188 28Ibid.,: 189 29 Of course the consistency of this claim will depend on whether it makes sense to maintain that God follows a plan and that he creates the world from nothing. Descartes thought that it did not: "[A]II the purposes of god are hidden from us, and it is rash to want to plunge into them. I am not speaking here of purposes which are known through revelation; it is purely as a philosopher that I am considering them. It is here that we go completely astray. We think of God as some sort of superman, who thinks up such-and-such a scheme, and tries to realize it by such-and-such a means. This is clearly quite unworthy of God ... " [CSM III 341] 30 Leibniz, himself, stated that all eternal truths are hypothetical propositions. [N 447] He meant, I believe, that all propositions that are eternal truths are hypotheticals.

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Descartes, CSM III 377-378. Cf. Aquinas, ST: Part I Q 16 Art. 5, and Aristotle, Metaphysics 1025a35 and 1051blff. Leibniz wrote, however, in 'On The Unitarian Metaphysics of Christoph Stegmann': "Indeed relations which are nothing other than respects are not things but truths." [Jolley, Leibniz and Locke: 204.] With this statement, Leibniz appears to contrast things and truths. I maintain, however, that the "truths" that he has in mind are propositions about things. In other words, Leibniz used the word "truth" equivocally. 32 Malebranche, Search After Truth: 234. 33 Confessions, Book III Article VI. 34 Mates, Leibniz: 137. 35 Abraham, 'Complete Concepts and Leibniz's Distinction between Necessary and Contingent Truths,' Studia Leibnitiana: 277. 36 Malebranche: Search After Truth: 229 37 Malebranche, Search After Truth: 235 It was commonplace among Augustinians to regard everything as being in God, in a very literal, not metaphorical, way. As Augustine stated it: "[B]ecause there is one Word of God, through which all things were made, which is the unchangeable truth, all things are in it originally and unchangeably simultaneous .. .In it, however, these things have not been, nor are they to be, but they only are; and all thing are life, ... that life which was "the light of men,' the light certainly of rational minds, through which men differ from beasts and are, therefore, men, nor has been placed far from any of us, for in it we live and move and have our being." Consider also in this connection Watson's summary remarks to Chapter 7 of his book, The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics: 114: "(Malbranche's) important innovation is the introduction of an entity external to the ontological pattern of substance and modification common to Scholasticism and Cartesianism. He does this by denying that for something to be in the mind, it must be a moditication of the mind." For Malbranche, according to Watson, it is more appropriate to read "in" as elliptical for "in relation to." 3R I thank Mark Kulstad for bringing this passage to my attention, and for pointing out its relevance to my thesis. 39 Note, however, that Leibniz admits that we can have no clear idea of creation: N 216 .. 40 Ockham, William, Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. 5. Cited from Adams, William Ockham: 1084. 41 Moline, Platos Theory of Understanding: 93. 42 Hostler, Leibniz's Moral Philosophy: 39-40; also Hostler, 'Some Remarks on "ornne possibile exigit existere": 281-285. 43 "God is not forced, metaphysically speaking, into the creation of this world. One may say that as soon as God has decreed to create something there is a struggle between all the possibles, all of them layung claim to existence, and that those which, being united, produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day. It is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it can only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding ... " T 201 Keep in mind, that "ideal" has for Leibniz, like "essence," and "necessity," a variety of meanings. 44 Blumenfeld, David, 'Leibniz's Theory of the Striving Possibles.' Blumenfeld acknowledges in the same article [164 note 4] that Leibniz "... speaks of possible things, or possible individuals, and he sometimes creates the impression that he recognizes the subsistence of such individuals over and above the attributes and concepts he elsewhere discusses." Blumenfeld agrees with Mates, however, that if the impression is made it is mistaken and that ".. .it is difficult to see what it would mean for possible individuals - as opposed to individual concepts to subsist in the mind of God." I think the difficulty vanishes when it is seen that individuals are directly cognized by God and in this sense subsist in his mind. Frankly, I, as did Leibniz, find the idea that God creates individuals out of absolutely nothing more difficult to fathom than the idea that he elevates the being of inert finite subjects by activating them. 31

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45Christopher Shields appears to me to come very close to making this point in his article, 'Leibniz's Doctrine of the Striving Possibles': 356. 46 In 'On the Unitarian Metaphysics of Christoph Stegmann,' [Jolley, Leibniz and Locke: 199], Leibniz writes of Stegmann that "... he insinuates dangerous doctrines here, such as that matter is coeternal with God ... " Leibniz deems the doctrine "dangerous," I believe, because co-eternity with God might be misinterpreted to mean eternally coexisting with God rather than merely eternal co-being with God. 47 Berkeley, George, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phi/onus: 84. 4R Ibid., 83. 49 See, for example, Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 45. Cited from Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: 76. Also see Aquinas, On Spiritual Creatures: Art. I Ans. to Obj. 15: 28. 50 Erickson, Stephen, 'Leibniz on Essence, Creation And Existence': 480 ff. 51 Leibniz and his contemporaries assimilated Aristotle's distinction between mind considered as passive and mind considered as active. Descartes, anticipating Leibniz, wrote, for example, "I regard the difference between the soul and its ideas as the same as that between a piece of wax and the various shapes it can take. Just as it is not an activity but a passivity in the wax to take various shapes, so, it seems to me, it is passivity in the soul to receive one or other idea, and only its volitions are activities." [CSM III 232] I think that these remarks match Leibniz's reduction of a mind into appetite and perception, where "volition" is a form of "appetite," while "perceptions," or at least their contents, are "ideas." I believe Descartes also anticipates Leibniz's theory of mind with this remark: "... no incorporeal substances are in any strict sense extended. I conceive of them as sorts of powers or forces ... "[CSM III 361]

CHAPTER FIVE: PERCEPTUAL INCOMPOSSIBILITY I. INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, I expound accounts of incompossibility that I claim are straightforward consequences of Leibniz's principle that created substances are finite, perceiving creatures that coexist insofar as they are mutually perceptive. These accounts are consistent with Leibniz's principle of compatibility and his principle that all perfections are compatible. II. MORAL INCOMPATIBILITY

Broad's argument for his claim that there are no incompatible Leibnizian individuals rests on the premise that there can be no incompatible perfections in them. While I grant that there are no incompatible perfections in Leibnizian individuals, I deny that all there is in Leibnizian individuals are their perfections. There would be nothing but perfections in individuals if God created them from absolutely nothing. l The point of the preceding discussions is precisely that Leibniz's God did not create individuals from absolutely nothing. Rather, he created individuals by completing them, that is, by reducing their potential for action to action. God accomplished this reduction by supplying passive, receptive minds with an active force or individual law. The potential that Leibnizian substances have is the potential to perceive and to be perceived or the potential to act and to suffer. This potential is not unlimited, according to Leibniz, because created beings are finite. This fact about Leibnizian individuals leads fairly straightforwardly to accounts of incompossibility. That it ought to is suggested by these remarks Leibniz made to De VoIder: You seem to have rightly grasped my doctrine of how every body expresses all other things, and how every soul or entelechy whatever expresses its own body and through it all other things. But when you have uncovered the full force of this doctrine, you will find that I have said nothing else, which does not follow from it. [L 531]

132 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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One thing that Leibniz "said" is that not all possibles exist because some are incompatible or incompossible with others. This claim should follow from his view that minds express all other things if they exist, if what Leibniz states above is not simply hyperbole. I do not believe that Leibniz was being hyperbolic. In Leibniz's system, the proposition that individuals cannot coexist is equivalent to the claim that they do not have the potential to perceive one another. Potentials of creatures, and these must be potentials to perceive,2 are not, for Leibniz, perfections but the possibilities for receiving perfections. Hence, the incompatibility of individuals is not due to their perfections. It is due to their potentials. Leibniz defined his notion of a perfection in an early proof of the consistency of the idea of an absolutely perfect being: I call a perfection any simple attribute, which is positive and absolute, or whatever it expresses, it expresses without any limits. [G VII 261] [A]ll affirmative attributes are compatible solely because [emphasis added] they are absolute, pure, and unlimited. For if they are modified by limits they are not affirmative, but are in a way negative. [DSR 49] A perfection for Leibniz satisfies these conditions: it must be an attribute, simple, positive or absolute [in some texts Leibniz equates "positive" and "absolute" [T 33; G VI 383], pure, and unlimited or not modified by limits. It is a "pure actuality," that is, a being that contains no potential. [Grua 371 Hence, if an attribute is a perfection, Leibniz states that it expresses whatever it expresses without any limits. For example, God's attribute of knowledge perfectly expresses all that is knowable, that is, he is omniscient insofar as he understands or grasps the reasons for all possibles, his will perfectly wills all that is good, and his power extends to all possibles, that is, he is omipotent (although not omnificient). The attributes of creatures, on the other hand, are limited. Creatures express the entire universe, but confusedly, their wills are sometimes determined by what is merely apparently good, and their power is limited, especially in so far as it is not creative. In a word, the attributes of creatures are "modified" by limitations: [W]hen force is taken to be the principle of action and passion [it] is thus modified by derivative forces ... everything accidental or changeable must be a modification of something essential or perpetual or contain nothing more positive than that which it modifies, since every modification is only a limitation - a figure of that which is varied and a derivative force of that which varies. [G II 2701L 537] For Leibniz, the modifications of finite substances are also their ideas by which they express the world about them. Therefore, since, according to Leibniz, things are limited by their relations to other things, [Grua 355; G IV 469-4701L 433] I suggest that he meant by "to express without any limits" "to express not only relationally but also absolutely." An attribute that is a perfection therefore expresses

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things absolutely, that is without limits, rather than as limited, that is, as they stand in relation to and determined by other things. God knows substances as they stand alone and, as it were, bare. Leibniz's God creates individuals by setting them into expressive relations, but creatures do not express one another in a pure manner. Whenever a created substance represents another created substance that representation is contaminated by representations of itself and other things. In other words, the finite substance confuses its representations of a particular thing with representations of other particular things. Nevertheless, owing to God's plan there is unity or order in the confusion. God fashions diverse substances into a world by connecting and harmonizing them. In the actual world, this unity or order is present at several levels. Nonrational souls, or bodies, are united and systematized into various kinds of aggregates (gold, silver, salt, etc.) according to laws of efficient causes; souls are harmonized with bodies to form organisms; the phenomena of different nonrational organisms express the same world according to the same laws of efficient causality and the phenomena of rational organisms express the same world according to laws of final causality; the laws of final causes are put into parallel with the laws of efficient causes; and, finally, different spirits (a special class of souls) express one and the same God and are thereby united into a moral community. Leibniz depicted God as imposing as thoroughgoing and elegant a harmony as possible at each of these levels, that is, he represented God as unifying things to the greatest degree possible. He did not maintain, however, that the actual world is perfectly orderly. He simply insisted that it is more orderly than any other possible world: that its inhabitants "least obstruct each other." [DM 6] Accordingly, Leibniz postulated degrees of compossibility: That is agreeable which easily coexists or is strongly compossible ... That is strongly possible for which there are few requisites. [A 6 2 492 ]

Leibniz's acknowledgment that there are degrees of compossibility is consonant with the common belief that things are more or less compatible. The degree to which things are commonly deemed "incompatible" depends upon the extent to which special adjustments are needed to coordinate them. Disagreements or conflicts among things are settled by adjusting one thing to another, that is, by making changes in them so that they accommodate one another. Such changes are "requisites" of their coexistence or cohabitation. If things are "strongly compossible" or "agreeable" few adjustments need to be made to effect the coexistence. If they are "weakly compossible" more adjustments need to be made. According to Leibniz, in creating a world, God institutes a lawful plan whereby the conflicts among the desires and inclinations of individuals are harmoniously resolved to as great an extent, and as judiciously as possible with as

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few adjustments as possible. He held that God unites opposing "goods" [Grua 97] in a way that allows each individual to have its desires met and frustrated in a way that fosters the greatest possible overall flourishing of individuals. [T 411] Hence God unites those possible individuals that agree best together [T430], into the most perfect of harmonies, [T 68] that is, the most perfectly ordered world. Leibnizian creatures thrive, attain well-being or elevation of perfection, in the presence of order. [G VII 86-87/L 425-426] For Leibniz, the more ordered a world is, the more real it is, that is, the more morally and aesthetically perfect it is. [Grua 579; Grua 379] Given this postulate and his definition of incompatibility, it readily follows that the existence and nonexistence of Leibnizian beings comes in degrees. This consequence accords with the commonplace of Scholastic and modem philosophy that there are degrees of reality and that a thing exists to the extent that its nature is realized. Thus, according to Leibniz, God exists absolutely, that is, there are no limits on his existence that negate it to any degree. [DSR 49; DSR 79] For Leibniz, to the extent that one thing impedes another's efforts to express its nature, it attenuates its existence and, therefore, is incompatible with it. An action, he says, is just the expression of one's nature; it is a state by means of which things follow from one's nature. [Grua 526-27] A thing is realized or perfected to the extent that it is active. According to Leibniz: "That impedes which diminishes, that helps which augments what would have otherwise followed in its own way." [Grua 527] Leibniz maintained that a thing's efforts to express itself, that is, its efforts to exist (= to act), will be completely successful unless those efforts are impeded by some external obstacle. [G IV 469/L 433; GM VI 234/L 435] Accordingly, the more a thing is impeded the less its nature is realized, the less it exists: "To impede is to make something not happen," [A 6 1 457] "To impede (more correctly) is to make it that nothing is done." [A 6 2491] Leibnizian beings exist by doing. Hence, when they are prevented from doing or "happening" they are prevented, to some measure, from existing. Leibniz also concluded that not all possibles exist because possibles impede one another. [Grua 305; cf. Grua 527-28; DSR 23] God perfects a world by minimizing the impediments. [Grua 600] He counteracts the "evil" or imperfection of impedance with harmony. [Grua 299] All other things being equal, if one world contains individuals that are very helpful to one another and another contains individuals that are very detrimental to one another, the former world will be better and more real, in conceptu. Still, even in the best of possible worlds, the "little worlds" within it "collide." That is when things tum morally evil and physical suffering erupts. [T 147] A rational soul or spirit goes wrong or commits evil, according to Leibniz, when it is dominated by its passions and these passions arise from the confused perceptions it has because it is joined to a body. It has confused perceptions when it "collides" with other

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embodied substances. Leibniz insisted that God permits these body induced collisions as a condition for admitting more metaphysical perfection into the universe than would have existed if he had not permitted them. [Grua 336] A world of rational souls with bodies is more metaphysically perfect than a world of rational souls without them even though when God willed that there be bodies "vice entered through that door." [T 124] God does not will that the greater metaphysical perfection have as a condition the collisions and the vice, so he is not at fault. He does not will that the union of mind and body give rise to passions and confused ideas. He would be at fault if he were the creator of conditions, of possibilities, or necessary connections as Descartes maintained he is. Leibniz followed the Augustinian tradition is identifying the defectiveness of created things as the cause of incompatibility of mind and body and its attendant evils. We should be careful, right away, to place this explanation of the cause of evil within the framework of Leibniz's theory of substance by asking the question: how is it possible that the defects of substances cause evil? By "evil" is meant that which tends per se to lessen the extent to which a thing is perfect. Such lessening occurs, according to Leibniz, whenever one finite substance acts on another. By "suffers" Leibniz meant "is determined from without." [C 514; N 210 - 211] A finite Leibnizian substance determines another and makes it suffer when it "forces" the other substance to represent it and/or pay attention to it in a way that does not depend on the other substance's will. According to Leibniz, outward forces enslave the body and inward forces, passions and inclinations that arise from its union with body, enslave the soul. [T p. 386; T 288] For Leibniz, a substance acts freely and thereby gains perfection when, by exerting its good will, it achieves control and order. It loses perfection when it loses control and order, that is, when it "abandons itself to its passions" that are products of its senses. [T 147] A rational creature confronts the material world to some measure passively and not in control of how it will experience it. Its sensible perceptions of other embodied creatures are, in a sense, forced upon.it. These involuntary perceptions confuse it, and necessarily so. When a finite created substance represents its world sensibly, it represents, owing to the principle of harmony, each of them and all of the relations amongst them. There are infinitely many bodily substances and infinitely many relations among them in the created world. If God were to create a substance so that it clearly and distinctly perceived an infinite material world he would have to create a God. But there is necessarily only one infinite substance. Hence the representation of the infinity of embodied substances and their relations in a created substance is necessarily confused. Finite rational substances cannot perceive infinitely many other embodied substances and all of their relations, past, present, and future without confusion. There must be suffering, but God's greatness consists in part in his being able to convert the

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suffering of individuals into a world that is greater than any world that does not contain moral evil and physical suffering. The evils of suffering serve to increase the happiness of sufferers; it makes the followers of Christ his imitators. [T 123] Indeed, moral evil, the cause of physical evil or suffering, provided a reason for the incarnation of Christ. [T p. 378] One might wonder then why Leibniz did not maintain that God creates everything. No matter how much moral evil there is, and no matter how much physical suffering that results from it, one might object that God should be able to transform the evil and suffering into something good. Indeed, one might speculate that the more evil there is the more there is to convert. Leibniz, however, rejected this logic: [A]ll possibles per se cannot exist along with others; otherwise many absurdities would follow. Nothing, however unreasonable, could be conceived which would not be in the world, not merely monsters but evil and wretched minds, and injustices, and there would be no reason for calling God good rather than evil, just rather than unjust. There would be some world in which all good people would be punished by eternal punishments, and all bad people rewarded, or wickedness expiated by happiness. [C 529-5301L 168]

Monsters, evil and wretched minds, and bad people inveterately and joyfully interfere with the efforts of others to be happy, that is, to complete themselves, and will rarely remove impediments to the efforts of others to be happy. Monsters presumably would render the world less harmonious or orderly and thereby less clear and distinct for its inhabitants. That is why they would make other things suffer, and they would in no way redeem themselves by making a contribution to the common good, that is the perfection of the universe as a whole. Genuine, incorrigible monsters, if they existed, would serve only to make other beings exist less and Leibniz states that God permits an evil in the world only if the evil tends towards a greater good. [T 114; T p. 385] Thus Leibniz rules out as worlds God might create worlds that include the damning of infants and other innocents, since such actions would be useless and destructive. Likewise, there is no reason to permit the existence of certain monsters and wretched minds. A good, just, wise and economical god therefore does not admit them into existence. Such entities therefore are pure possibles. III. PERCEPTUAL INCOMPATIBILITY

But why does God not create Pegasus? Presumably Pegasus is no mean and disruptive monster. He is not an evil or wretched mind, and he might contribute to the common good. Leibniz, in fact, did not claim that monsters and wretched minds are the only pure possibles, and I see no reason to impute that implausible view to him. He

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used the idea of evil minds and monsters to make his point that there are some things that do not exist and why: God is good and just. However, he did not hold that such morally absurd beings - such as damned infants - are the only possible beings that do not exist. What we might call "moral incompatibility" does not suffice for Leibniz's purposes. If Leibniz admitted that there are pure possibles other than monsters and wicked and wretched minds, however, there is a problem. He stated in a number of places that perfection is nothing other than quantity of reality. These statements provoke the question: "Wouldn't adding more 'good' possibles to existence mean that more reality is added to the world?" Here is one answer that I believe Leibniz gave. According to Leibniz, the actual world, in virtue of its being the most harmonious possible world, is inhabited by metaphysically perfected individuals. The substances that inhabit it own as many qualities, or perceptions of other things, as they can own. Actual individuals, however, cannot have perceptions of all other possible things because they are, according to Leibniz, in every way, limited creatures. Consequently, actual individuals cannot coexist with any more individuals than those they actually coexist with because, for Leibniz, individual substances coexist only insofar they interact, and they interact only insofar as they perceive one another. This delivers the conclusion, based squarely on Leibniz's theory of individual substance, that actual individuals are incompatible with other purely possible individuals. Leibniz elaborated his notion of a metaphysically perfect world - a world in which all times and places are completely filled, using comparisons of the actual world to game boards that have just so many places on which to place pieces, and to floors that have just so many places on which to lay tiles: [T]ime and space, or in a word the receptivity or capacity of the world can be taken for the outlay, or the terrain upon which a building is to be erected as commodiously as possible, the variety of forms corresponding to the spaciousness of the building and the number and elegance of its chambers. The case is like that of certain board games in which all the spaces on the board are to be filled according to definite rules ... there is a definite rule by which a maximum number of spaces can be filled in the easiest way ... once having assumed that being involves more perfection than nonbeing .. .it follows that even if there is no further determining principle there does exist the greatest possible amount possible in proportion to the given capacity of time and space (or the possible order of existing) [my emphasis], in much the same way as tiles are laid so that as many possible are contained in a given space. [G VII 303)/L 587]

In this passage, Leibniz maintains that space and time contain as much reality as their capacities permit. Still, although the existent world is perfect with respect to

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how much reality it contains, there are possible things that are not found in the spatial/temporal system of existent beings. This resembles the situation wherein there might remain pieces in the hand of a game board player once all the places on his board are occupied or tiles in the possession of a tile layer once a floor has been covered with tiles. Hence, the spatial/temporal receptivity or capacity of the actual world determines how much perfection God can put into it. It is curious and surprising that Leibniz spoke, in the passage under discussion, of space and time as if they were containers of some sort that God fills with essence. He also spoke that way in this passage: [T]here is no vacuum of forms .. .likewise there is no vacuum in space and time to the extent that this is possible. Hence it follows that no time can be designated in which something does not occur, and no space which is not as full as it can be. We must therefore see what follows from the fulness of the world. [L 157; cf. Grua 285; Grua 12]

Leibniz's manner of speaking in this passage, as well as in the preceding, is surely heuristic and metaphorical given his relational conceptions of space and time. For Leibniz, as for Kant, space and time are not absolute conditions on things in themselves, but are ways of being conscious or aware of things: they are how we represent the real order of things; they are only "modes" by which we "consider" things: "Space, time, extension, and motion are not things, but ways, that have a foundation, of considering things." [C 522/L 270] This suggests that spatial/temporal limitations are somehow for Leibniz well-founded upon mental limitations. We should therefore try to release the metaphor, and reduce Leibniz's talk about spatial/temporal capacities to talk about the mental capacities of God's creatures. I believe that this suggestion is quite sound. However, in essaying to take advantage of it, we encounter, at the outset, the following paradox that needs to be resolved before continuing.

Leibnizian individual substances mirror or represent the entire universe of things about them, and there are infinitely many of these things. 3 [G II 40/LA 43] This entails that actual individuals have the capacity to represent infinitely many things. But how can created substances have a capacity to represent infinitely many things, yet have limited representational capacities? If Leibnizian individuals perceive infinitely many other individuals it might seem quite to the contrary that they have an unlimited or non-finite capacity to perceive things. Leibniz provided a clue as to how he tried to resolve this paradox: God is absolutely perfect; perfection being nothing but the quantity of positive reality taken strictly, when we put aside the limits or bounds in the things which are limited. But where there are no bounds, that is, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite. It also follows that creatures receive imperfections that are due to their own nature, which is incapable of being limitless. [L 163]

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In this passage, Leibniz hints that some infinities are somehow greater than others, that some infinities are "bounded" and others are "unbounded." Moreover, in "An Arithmetical Disputation on Complexions," Leibniz listed the following corollary of a set of metaphysical theses he was defending." There is an infinity greater than others" [Infinitum aliud alios majus est. G IV 421L75; Cf. DSR 27] Leibniz elaborated upon this idea:: [O]ne infinity, according to our manner of speaking, is greater than another, for example the sum of this series III + 112 + 113+ 114+ 115 etc. to infinity is greater than and surpasses all assignable numbers, but nevertheless the sum of this other series III + III + III + III + III etc. to infinity is infinitely greater than the preceding.[E 744] If one infinity is indeed greater than another, it limits it, as the set of real numbers limits and sets an upper bound on, the set of integers. Likewise, Leibniz might have considered the collection of all possibilities to be a greater infinite collection than the set of possibilities that are realized in the actual world in the sense that it contains the actual world but the actual world does not, and cannot, contain it. Leibniz thus refers to the set of all possibilities as an "infinity of infinities," that is, as an infinity that contains infinities. [T 267] Since Leibniz allowed that some infinities are greater than others, it is not disruptive to speak of Leibnizian substances as having bounded infinite capacities to perceive, or "consider," things in a spatial/temporal orderly way, even though they represent infinitely many things. This would imply, however, that once created individuals have accommodated their maximum bounded infinitude of representations of other individuals, they can represent no more. They cannot sensibly represent, in particular, the entire unbounded "infinity of infinities" of possible things. The limited capacity of space/time is, therefore, probably, for Leibniz, a loose way of speaking of the limited perceptual capacities of individual substances. What Leibniz very likely meant when he stated that space and time have limited capacities is that individual substances have quantitatively limited abilities to "consider" things. In the following passages, Leibniz makes it clear that the limited capacities of created substances limits how many representations they can accommodate: [L]imitations and imperfections arise therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of creatures. [T 388; cf. T 380] There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an action of God, and such and such a reception of the creature, which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to its receptivity [my emphasis] ... The imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects in operations spring from the original limitation that the creature could not but receive with the first beginning of its being, through the ideal reasons which restrict

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it...there must needs be different degrees in the perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind. [T 31] [A]lthough each one of God's perfections is infinite in itself, it is exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things prompt it. [T 117; Cf T 119]

Leibniz portrays God as able to make the world only as perfect as the limited capacities for accomodating perfections of creatures allow. The limitations of things, he elsewhere says, are "original and essential," [G VI 602-603 art. 9IL 639] and he also agrees with Bayle that God has no "dominion" over what is essential. [T 183] Furthermore, Leibniz asserts that the limitations of creatures are "of every kind;" and counted among these limitations is their restricted receptivity. Leibniz did not state this explicity, but I think it fairly safe to presume that, for him, the restricted receptivity of creatures extends to, among other things, their receptivity for ideas or representations of things external. The restricted receptivity pertains not only to how clearly and distinctly creatures perceive these things, but also to how great an infinity of ideas of things they perceive. Recall: Leibniz did expressly hold that there is no way in which creatures are unlimited. If he was not speaking loosely or hyperbolically, and I see no reason to presume that he was, this means that, for Leibniz, there is a limit to how many things a creature can represent. I believe that this result is quite unremarkable, and I do not find anything in Leibniz's writings that recommends rejecting it. Leibnizian creatures are, after all, finite creatures. Moreover, Leibniz described the notion of limitation in this way: [T]o limit is to withold extension or the more beyond [my emphasis]. [T 384]4

According to Leibniz, the perceptual capacities of individuals extend only so far. There is a point beyond which created individuals can perceive no more. But, again, existence has as a requisite perceptibility, according to Leibniz: "An existent is that which is able to be distinctly perceived." [C 437] If an actual individual is unable to perceive any more individuals than it actually perceives, it a fortiori cannot distinctly perceive any more. If an individual substance is sensibly representing to itself as many individual substances as it can represent, it cannot, ex hypothesi, represent to itself any more - not even a single individual more much less a possible world of individuals more. Leibnizian purely possible individuals cannot coexist with individuals that inhabit the best possible world, then, because individuals inhabiting the best possible world are unable to add any more representations to their store of representations. There is a point beyond which nothing more can exist with already existing Leibnizian individuals, because nothing more can be perceived. I think

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that this is the answer that Leibniz gave to the question why some possible beings that belong to some existent species, do not exist. If a thing is not sensed by things that exist, it does not coexist with them. It is nothing for existing things. I might have an idea of Pegasus, and Pegasus might subsist somewhere in the region of possibles, striving for existence. But if God does not grant Pegasus's demand to exist, Pegasus remains outside the domain of perceived things. He remains, relatively speaking, nothing. At the same time Pegasus is something. He possesses an attribute. This attribute is his receptive power. The difference between Pegasus and existing things is that his power is never translated into action. To act, for Leibniz, is to perceive and to perceive is to exist. Pegasus demands to act: to see, to exist, but God never grants his demand. Why not? Because there is no room for him. IV. SPECIFIC PERCEPTUAL INCOMPATIBILITY

I will consider next how Leibniz answered the question: "Why doesn't every manner of species exist?" This is a particularly interesting query because one component of Leibniz's principle of perfection is the proposition that the world with the greatest possible variety exists. Thus the actual world supposedly contains a greater variety of species than any other possible world. But do all possible species exist? Leibniz's answer is "No": I have reasons for believing that not all possible species are compossible in the universe, great as it is, not only with regard to things existing at the same time, but also with regard to the whole succession of things. [N 307]

What are Leibniz's "reasons?" I have shown that the actual world is a plenum, according to Leibniz. If anything is added to it, something has to be removed since a plenum, according to Leibniz, is that to which "nothing can be added." [A 6 2 508] God does not remove anything to add something else because this action, ex hypothesi, would lower the world's level of harmony. However, would not the harmony of the world be enhanced if one member of a lowly species, say a gnat, were removed and one member of some other superior but purely possible species were added? Leibniz states explicitly that it is better that some possible men are kept out of existence to allow for the existence of other species. [Grua 336; T 198; T 118] But how could God justify the exclusion of an entire species of things? Leibniz insisted that if a thing does not exist there must be an explanation for why it does not exist.[Grua 289] His general explanation is that nonexisting things are incompatible with existing things. Since Leibniz nominally defined existence in terms of perception, it makes sense to suppose that the members of nonexistent species are somehow perceptually incompatible with existing things.

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To follow through on this suggestion, suppose that a possible individual A has the inherent ability to perceive some species of things and has an inherent inability to perceive other species of things. Likewise, suppose the members of some species of things have an ability to perceive A and others do not. In order to be an entity, A only has to have an attribute, a power to perceive and to be perceived. To qualify as an entity, A does not have to have a power to perceive every possible species of thing. Leibniz could only stipulate that possible beings lack the power to perceive certain other possible things. However, it strikes me as a reasonable enough stipulation. On the other hand, the supposition that possible beings are absolutely unlimited with respect to the kinds of things they can perceive is much less plausible. At any rate, Leibniz did, in fact, grant the plausibility of the stipulation that there are some things that existing beings are incapable of perceiving. He wrote to Eckhard: [Y]ou assume, without proof, that each substance is either a Mind or a body, an assumption that is not certain unless there are no others than those cognized by us. However, it is very likely that there are others that we are no more able to think about than a blind man is able to think about colors. [G I 2681L 179; Cf. DSR 65]

Spinoza, before Leibniz, speculated that God possesses infinitely many attributes and that humans participate in only two of them. That is, for Spinoza, humans are in relation only to modes that fall under the attributes of thought and extension, namely, minds and bodies. 5 In his letter to Eckhard, Leibniz revived Spinoza's idea, an idea that Malebranche also appropriated 6 and which Berkeley considered a possible objection against his rejection of material substance on the ground that it is unperceived. 7 The idea is that there are possibly kinds of things that we are unable to perceive. Leibniz recognized that he could exploit this idea in connection with the paradox of incompatibility: [T]here are no things given besides bodies and minds or qualities we sense, nor bodies unless they are a certain distance from us. For if they were given, we would not be able to say that they are or that they are not now. Which is against a first principle. Hence, it also follows that not all possibles exist. [Grua 263]

Leibniz explicitly derived the proposition that not all possibles exist from the proposition that no things exist except those that have qualities we are capable of perceiving and that are able to exist in space. He reasons that the class of possible things comprises more than the class of things that are perceivable by extant minds. He argues that it would be "against a first principle" for possible beings that existing creatures cannot perceive to exist. That first principle is his principle of universal expression:

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[C]ertainly there is nothing to prevent innumerable other minds from existing as well as ours, although not all possible minds exist. This I demonstrate from the fact that all existing things are interrelated. However, minds of another nature than ours can be conceived which also are interrelated to ours here. That all existing things have this intercourse with each other can be proved, moreover, both from the fact that otherwise no one could say whether anything is taking place in existence now or not, so there would be no absurd ... Now if some possible minds exist, the question is: Why not all? Furthermore, since all existents must be interrelated, there must be a cause of their interrelations; indeed, everything must express the same nature but in a different way. [G VII 321-3221L 365]

Curiously, Leibniz left it to his reader to answer for himself the question: "Why not all?" Yet he left no question as to what he thought the answer to the question is. In the second clause of the first sentence of the passage quoted, he states that not all minds exist. He goes on in the next sentence to claim that he proves this from the fact that all existing things must be interrelated. He stated elsewhere that God does nothing in a disorderly manner. It would be disorderly to have things existing that are not ordered among themselves, that is, things that are not interrelated. If things must be interrelated, and if some things cannot be interrelated with others, it readily follows that some things do not exist. Leibniz left it to the reader to supply the premise that some things cannot be interrelated. However, he supplied that premise to Eckhard. The passage presently under discussion ends with a statement of Leibniz's principle of universal expression. Leibniz's point is that it follows from the fact that all things must express all other things or the same nature, that not all possible things exist. 8 God does not admit into existence any possible minds that are not capable of expressing all other things that exist. It will not do that a thing is capable of expressing only some of the other things that exist. Consider, again, this explanation Leibniz provides of his notion of incompatibility: [S]uppose that there are the possible beings ABC D E F G, equally perfect and tending to existence, of which there are some incompatibles A with Band B with D and D with G, and G with C, and C with F and F with E, I say that one would be able to make two things to exist in fifteen ways, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, BC, BE, BF, BG, CD, CE, DE, DF, EG, FG, or three together in the following ways ACD, ACE, ADE, ADF, AGE, AFG, BCE, BEG, BFG, or four together in just one manner ACDE, which would be chosen from among all the others because by it we obtain the most that we are able to obtain. [Grua 285); cf. G VII 194]

Leibniz argues that the largest collection of things, ABCDEFG, would not be chosen, even though each member of the collection is compatible with at least one other of its members, because each is also incompatible with at least one other of its members. 9 A is compatible, ex hypothesi, with F but would not exist with F because C is incompatible with F. Similarly, C is compatible with B but A is incompatible with B. To state the main idea of Leibniz's illustration in terms of ex-

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pressibility, it does not follow from the fact that two entities A and B can express each other that the ranges of their expressive powers are equivalent. Strictly speaking, incompatible Leibnizian possible individuals are not "opposed." Rather, they are, due to their inherent perceptual limitations, in some cases unaccommodating. Leibniz based the incompatibility of possible individuals on their inability to accommodate other possible individuals. Some possible beings have qualities that others cannot perceive just as, to use Leibniz's example, a blind man cannot see colors. What causes this inability? Leibniz maintained that there is no reason for the harmony of things. JO Very likely, he also would have answered that there is no reason for the lack of harmony among things. I I In support of this speculation is his statement that the limitations of creatures are original, inherent, and essential, and do not depend upon God. There are no reasons for essences. This characterization of limitations ought to apply as well to the qualitative perceptual limitations of creatures. These limitations are the basis of the incompatibility of some species of possible beings with other species of possible beings. They are limitations that cannot be blamed on God because God did not create the world out of nothing. Hence God is not the source of this kind of incompatibility, and the notion of incompatibility can be appealed to establish the contingent existence of actual things without vitiating Leibniz's ontological proof of the existence of God. Again, this interpretation of Leibniz's notion of incompatibility is suggested by Spinoza's view that the creatures of this world participate in only two of God's infinitely many attributes, by Kant's conjecture that there are other (than space/time) kinds of mind, and by contemporary modal logicians' idea that some possible worlds, in sundry ways, are not accessible to others. It is also likely that Descartes influenced Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant with his confession that the connection between mind and body cannot be made clear and distinct (the properties of bodies cannot be expressed in minds and vice-versa.) The strongest argument against this account of incompatibility that I attribute to Leibniz is that it is unreasonable to equate coexistence with being objectively perceptually connected. If this is so, however, then - for what it is worth - Kant is also unreasonable. Another much weaker argument is that it is unreasonable to suppose that there are limitations with respect to the kinds of things creatures can perceive. This argument is weak because hardly anyone is seriously prepared to maintain that for any possible object X, some existing creature necessarily enjoys the power to perceive X. Is a thing possible only if some existing creature has the ability to perceive it? However, if one grants that it is implausible to suppose that our capacities to perceive are absolutely unlimited with respect to the kinds of possible

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thing that we can perceive, then one should also grant that my reading of Leibniz has considerable prima facie merit. 12 If we think it implausible to hold that we are absolutely unlimited with respect to the kinds of thing that we can perceive, why impute this view to Leibniz? However, if Leibniz eschewed the view in question, given his understanding of what it means for things to coexist, he was committed also to the proposition that we cannot coexist with some possible things, that is, that we are incompatible with some possible things. I acknowledge that the following speculation regarding Leibniz's notion of compossibility that Russell advanced resembles to some extent my own: [A]ll possible worlds have general laws, which determine the connection of contingents just as, in the actual world, it is determined by the laws of motion and the law that free spirits pursue what seems best to them. And without the need for some general laws, any to possibles would be compossible, since they cannot contradict one another. Possibles cease to be compossible only when there is no general law whatever to which both conform. 13

Indeed, I consider my interpretation of Leibniz's notion of compatibility an elaboration of Russell's and consistent with it. It is therefore prima facie vulnerable to Brown's critique of that interpretation. Brown cites the following passage from DM 6 in arguing that, for Leibniz, it is always possible to order lawfully any collection of individuals: God does nothing which is disorderly, and .. .it is not even possible to assume events that are not according to rule ... not only does nothing happen in the world which is absolutely irregular but one cannot even imagine such an event. For let us assume that someone puts down a number of points on paper entirely at random, as do those who practice the ridiculous art of geomancy; I maintain that it is possible to find a geometric line whose law is constant and uniform and follows a certain rule which will pass through all these points and in the same order in which they were drawn ... thus we may say that no matter how god might have created the world it would always have been regular and in a certain order.

Brown comments on this passage: [I]f "no matter how God might have created the world, it would always have been .. .in a certain general order," then it would seem that the Russell-Hacking interpretation of compossibility leaves the compossibility problem unresolved. For if every combination of individual concepts (including, of course, the combination that includes every complete) should give rise to a world of a certain order ... Thus given Leibniz's views about "general order" and "general laws," the Russell-Hacking interpretation of compossibility seems once more to lead to Broad's complaint: "Leibniz ought to have come to the same conclusion as Spinoza, viz., that all that is possible is actual." 14

Brown prescribes a remedy for the defect that he alleges invalidates the RussellHacking l5 account of compossibility. I disagree with Brown's diagnosis, and think that his remedy is unnecessary. A careful examination of DM 6 shows that Leib-

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niz clearly is making the point that any possible individuals that can coexist would coexist in an orderly manner if they were to coexist. He is not claiming that all possibles can coexist. The act of jotting inkspots on paper could not occur unless they were antecedently (as possible inkspots) compatible. This hardly suggests, by way of simile, that all possible individuals can coexist or that all possible individuals are compatible. The point should not be lost sight of that the incompatibility of Leibnizian individuals is a condition for those individuals belonging to more than one possible world.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE I I am aware that this point is contentious, and was a subject of much debate by ancient theologians. I favor the position of those who held that there is no explanation for the existence of evil in things if God created the world out of absolutely nothing. 2 Leibniz states that every act presupposes a potential: T 87. 3 According to Leibniz, "... all existents must be interrelated." [G VII 322/L 365; cf. G III 635 art. 3; G VI 603-604/L 651 art. 3; GIl 40/LA 43; C 437] 4 Leibniz stated that the inertia of bodies is a "perfect image" of the original limitation of creatures. [T 30] According to Leibniz, there is more perfection in motion than there is in rest. [T p. 391] Hence, in being moved a body is perfected and in resisting being moved, or being inert, a body limits its being perfected. But, presumably, a body's inertia is its limited capacity to receive motion. Likewise, the perfection of minds is perceiving and there is a limit to how much detail they can perceive and how many things they can perceive. The "inertia" of minds is their stupidity. L 163; cf. T 335, T 380; DM 30; and L 159: "... we can clearly be assumed to be infinitely small in comparison with another world of infinite magnitude, yet bounded. Hence it is clear that the infinite is other than the unbounded, as we surely assume popularly. This unbounded infinite should more rightly be called the immensum." See also Spinoza, Ethics, Part I Definition 2. Descartes also wrote to Mersenne: "You said that if there were an infinite line it would have an infinite number of feet and of fathoms and consequently that the infinite number of feet would be six times as great as the number of fathoms. I entirely agree. 'Then this latter number is not infinite.' I deny the consequence. 'But one infinity cannot be greater than another.' Why not? Where is the absurdity? In Philosophical Letters: 12. 6 Spinoza, Ethics: 253 7 Malebranche, The Search After Truth: 249; cf. 229. 8 Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: 60-61 articles 77-79. 9 An important lesson to extract from this observation is that it is false that Leibniz held that each actual individual coexists with every other possible individual that it is compatible with, as some Leibniz scholars maintain that he does. In addition, Leibniz's example in the passage implies that the compossibility relation is not a transitive relation as Rescher and Mates maintain that it is Rescher, The Philosophy of Leibniz: 17; Mates, 'Leibniz on Possible Worlds': 34. IO A 2 I 118/L 147: "What, therefore, is the reason for the divine will? The divine intellect...What then is the reason for the divine intellect? The harmony of things. What the reason for the harmony of things. Nothing. For example, no reason can be given for the ratio of 2 to 4 being the same as that of 4 to 8, not even in the divine will." II Also, lack of harmony is a form of metaphysical evil and Leibniz states that evil needs no explanation. [T 153] 12 I assert this mindful of the fact that Leibniz remarks in DM 26:" ... our soul [expresses] God and the universe, and all the essences as well as all the existences." beings, as an effect expresses its

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cause." I suspect that Leibniz means that by dint of the fact that we grasp laws of reasoning and possess innate notions of being, self, substance, etc. that we have a very abstract idea of any possible being. For example, we know of any possible being that it cannot both be and not be and that all possible things can be numbered. [G VII 184] The principle of non-contradiction, the law of identity, and mathematical truths express, according to Leibniz, all possible beings, and insofar as God implants these principles and truths in us, we express all possibles. Nevertheless, the fact that we express all possible beings does not imply that we are capable of sensing them. Again, for Leibniz, we coexist with those finite possible beings that we sense and that sense us. l3 Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz: 67. 14Brown, 'Compossibility, Harmony, and Perfection in Leibniz' 179-180. 15 Hacking makes his contribution to the Russell-Hacking thesis in his article 'A Leibnizian Theory of Truth': 192-194.

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INFINITE ANALYSIS AND COUNTERFACTUALS I. INTRODUCTION Leibniz maintained that the logical difference between truths of reason and truths of fact consists in the fact that the former are finitely demonstrable while the latter are not. He stated this criterion quite often, clearly, and unambiguously as he does here: The criterion for distinguishing necessary from contingent truths emerges from the following feature, which those who have in them a tincture of mathematics will easily understand: in the case of necessary truths an identical proposition will be reached in carrying the analysis sufficiently far, which amounts to demonstrating the truth with geometrical rigor; whereas in the case of contingent truths the analysis proceeds to infinity, with reasons given for reasons, in such a way that there never is a complete demonstration although the underlying reason for the truth will always be there, perfectly understood by God, who, with one stroke of thought, goes through the whole infinite series. [Grua 303] Leibniz does not state in this passage that the denials or opposites of true contingent propositions are consistent. He also does not state that they are inconsistent. However, in the following passage he does state that they are possible: There are also two kinds of truths, truths of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary, and their opposite is impossible. Truths of fact are contingent, and [emphasis added] their opposite is possible. [M 33] Leibniz declares both that truths of fact are contingent and that their "opposites" are possible. If Leibniz also held that the opposites of truths of fact are inconsistent, he was committed to the peculiar view that there are possible, inconsistent propositions. l If Leibniz did hold this view, what could he have meant by the "possibility" of the opposites of truths of fact? "Possibility" is ordinarily understood to mean "freedom from contradiction" without any consideration of whether that contradiction is subject to discursive disclosure or not. It is taken also usually to mean "conceivably otherwise, and consistently so." In addition, a possible proposition is thought to be one that "is satisfiable," "realizable," "has a model," or "is true of some possible world." Is any inconsistent proposition any of these? Is it

149 R. O. Savage, Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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within Leibniz's (not Descarte's or Bayle's) God's power to make existent an inconsistent state of affairs because he cannot prove that it is so? I have already argued that the answer to each of these questions is "No." Some commentators have proposed, however, that with the infinite analysis account in hand Leibniz did not need a possible worlds account of counterfactual truth. Indeed, some commentators have maintained that Leibniz did not intend his doctrine of possible worlds to provide a semantics for counterfactuals. I argue in this chapter that this view is wrong. I maintain that a single account of counterfactual truth and freedom comprises both Leibniz's infinite analysis postulate and his possible worlds ontology, and that Leibniz did intend his doctrine of possible worlds to provide a semantics for counterfactual truths. The account, I believe, is a belated outgrowth of a promising and, unfortunately, prematurely terminated dispute between him and Arnauld over the question of how to interpret the idea that substances have open futures. I maintain that Leibniz intended to show that the futures of individuals are open, and uses his infinite analysis postulate as a means of accomplishing this. With the infinite analysis postulate Leibniz preserves the idea that individuals are "actively potent" with respect to the contraries of their future states. Leibniz defined "active potency" as "possibility for action." [Grua 527] If a subject possesses a potential for action that it will never use (a purely possible potential), it should be possible to consistently conceive of the never-to-be-realized state in the subject. This being so, there must also be, according to Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason, an explanation of how the state could be realized in the subject. The explanation would be constitutive of an alternative complete concept of the subject and of a possible world. II. HYPOTHETICAL NECESSITY AND THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON

The distinction between substances and their accidents, as Leibniz understands it in terms of accidents being entities "added to" substance, clearly provides a basis for a theory of counterfactual truth. If a substance, indeed, is distinct (in the sense described) from its accidents, then there cannot be, according to Leibniz, a necessary connection between them, as there is no necessary connection between a spirit and its act of loving God. If there is no necessary connection between a subject and one of its accidents the proposition that the subject possesses a contrary of the accident is possible. Nevertheless, Leibniz states that it is possible to demonstrate that the individual possesses an accident even though there is no necessary connection between it and the accident. The demonstration consists of the sufficient reasons for its having the accident. According to Leibniz, the fact that there are sufficient reasons for a proposition does not entail that it is inconceivable

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that the subject of the proposition lack the property predicated of it in the proposition. This holds true not only for Leibnizian creatures but also for Leibniz's God. For. Leibniz, there are sufficient determining reasons for the actions of God and his creatures yet it is conceivable that they not perform those actions. Leibniz acknowledged that his view that God's creation of the best possible world is both free and determined is paradoxical. He also argued assiduously, however, that God's being determined to create the best possible world because it is best does not entail that he could not have created another - albeit inferior - possible world rather than it. Furthermore, taking the offensive, he credited the Schoolmen with having long before him "pounded" and "reduced" the problem of freewill and determinism to its essence, [T 170] so, to his mind, there was no excusing philosophers who followed the Schoolmen who: [H]ave confused a problem which, properly speaking, is the easiest problem in the world. After that it is no wonder that there are very many doubts, which the human race cannot abandon. The truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a kind of ramble of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to attention, to order, to rules. It seems as though we are so accustomed to games and jesting that we play the fool even in the most serious occupations, and when we least think we do. [T 57] Leibniz was convinced that the solution to the problem of freewill and determination consisted in paying careful attention to the distinction he incessantly cited between metaphysical, geometrical, or absolute necessity and moral, physical, or merely hypothetical necessity. Contingent actions, according to Leibniz, are necessary under the hypothesis that God knows in advance that they will occur, the hypothesis that true propositions are determinately true, and the hypothesis that the sufficient causal requisites for the occurrence of actions are in place before they occur. However, he insisted that God's foreknowledge, the determinacy of truth, and the connection of causes with effects do not render detennined actions necessary in themselves, that is, absolutely necessary. An absolutely necessary action, according to Leibniz, is one whose opposite is unconditionally unintelligible, that is, whose conception implies, under any hypothesis whatsoever, a contradiction. Leibniz maintained that opposites of determined actions that are merely hypothetically necessary are not impossible in this sense: Philosophers agree today that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say, that contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they will happen: for it is certain that the future will be, as it is sure that the past has been. It was true already a hundred years ago that I should write today, as it will be true after a hundred years that I have written. Thus the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less contingent; and determination, which would be called certainty if it were known, is not incompatible with contingency ... This determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere, and in the first place from the foreknowledge of God, which many have held to be contrary to freedom. They

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say that what is foreseen cannot fail to exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is foreseen is necessary, for necessary truth is that whereof the contrary is impossible or implies contradiction. Now this truth which states that I shall write tomorrow is not of this nature, it is not necessary. Yet supposing that God foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass, that is, the consequence is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is infallible. This is what is called a hypothetical necessity. But our concern is not this necessity: it is an absolute necessity that is required, to say that an action is necessary, that it is not contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice. [T 36-37] [I]t will be found that this demonstration .. .is not as absolute as that of numbers or of geometry but that it presupposes the sequence of things which God has freely chosen ... every truth which is based on this kind of decree is contingent, even though it is certain, for these decrees do not change the possibilities of things ... [they do] not prevent something less perfect from being and remaining possible in itself, even though it will never happen, for it is not its impossibility but its imperfection which causes God to reject it. Now nothing is necessary whose opposite is possible ... all contingent propositions have reasons for being as they are rather than otherwise or what amounts to the same thing, that they have a priori proofs of their truth which make them certain and which show that the connection between subject and predicate of these propositions has its basis in the nature of both. But we must consider too that these proofs are not demonstrations of necessity, since these reasons are based only on the principle of contingency or the existence of things, that is to say, on what appears to be the best among several equally possible things. [DM 13]

Leibniz surmised that philosophers, not taking advantage of the insights and accomplishments of the Schoolmen, make the mistake of concluding that actions that are determined and foreseen are absolutely necessary. They refuse, in his estimation, to subject their reasoning to the distinction between absolute and merely hypothetical necessity and confuse, consequently, that which is not an object of God's consequent will with that which is not an object of his power. For Leibniz, it does not follow from the fact that an object is not an object of God's consequent will that the object is not an object of God's power: Power and will are different faculties, whose objects are also different; it is confusing them to say that God can do only that which he wills. On the contrary, among various possibles, he wills only that which he finds the best. For all possibles are regarded as objects of power, but actual and existing things are regarded as objects of his will. [T 171] 2

Leibniz denies that God's foreknowledge, the connection of causes and effects, and the determinacy of truth, all elements of his predestinarian outlook, deprive God and creatures of the power to act otherwise. For Leibniz, even though God is determined by his goodness and the goodness of possible things to act as he does, he retains the power to act otherwise. He thus claims that the derivation of a predicate of a factual proposition about Judas from his complete concept is contingent because it is not "as absolute" as the demonstration of a proposition about a number from its definition. The meaning of the expression "as absolute" is not evident. The following example might help to clarify it.

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"2 is greater than 1" is provable from the definition of 2 (and the definitions of the other terms of this inequality). Given that definition, and given the proof, we know that it is impossible for 2 not to have the property of being greater than 1. "2 is greater than 1" is demonstrable, in other words, from the concept of 2 without addition. Furthermore, absolutely no reasons can be adduced for the proposition that "2 is not greater than 1." According to Leibniz when no reasons can be given for a proposition, that proposition is impossible. [DSR 93] A corollary of the principle just mentioned is that if there are any reasons at all for a proposition the proposition is possible. The fact that there are sufficient reasons for a factual proposition does not entail that there are no reasons for its opposite. Leibniz maintained the contrary position, namely, that the opposites of truths of fact are possible. This means, according to his principle that propositions for which there are no reasons are impossible, that there are reasons for the opposites of truths of fact. This further entails that the concept of the predicate of the truth of fact that Judas betrayed Christ, for example, is not provable from a concept of Judas that includes nothing but information about Judas. If it did, it would be provable from an identity and absolutely necessary. Something must be added to Judas, as it were, to facilitate the deduction of truths that involve the attribution of accidental properties to Judas, namely, concepts of "external" circumstances and laws (=free divine decrees) that cause Judas to betray Christ. Propositions that assert, among other things, that these freely decreed laws and circumstances obtain constitute a deduction of the proposition that Judas betrays Christ. If God abstracts from Judas's complete concept the hypothesis of his free decrees and the concepts of the external causes of Judas's betraying Christ, he will not be able to deduce the proposition that Judas betrays Christ from its remaining content. The residual content defines Judas but it does not define how he shall exist in a world. I maintain that, for Leibniz, reasons sufficient to secure possible though not actual truth 3 can be given for the proposition that Judas does not betray Christ. This is because some of the reasons for Judas's betraying Christ are external causes. Recall: [A]bstract specific concepts contain only necessary or eternal truths, which do not depend upon God's decrees ... but the concepts of individual substances, which are complete and capable of wholly characterizing their subject, and which consequently embrace truths of contingency or of fact, and the individual circumstances of time, the place, etc., must also embrace in their concept, considered as possible, the free decrees of God, also considered as possible, because these free decrees are the principal sources of existences or facts. [G II 49ILA 54-55]

Leibniz, to my knowledge, nowhere stated that it is impossible for God to decree alternative, or counterfactual, "individual circumstances of the time, the place, etc." of Judas, that could figure, as causes, into how Judas possibly behaves. If

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Leibniz did not maintain that view tacitly one would think that, for him, there are concepts of Judas in circumstances in which the freely decreed causes of him not betraying Christ are present and sufficient. I believe that this is why Leibniz asserted that "... the predetermination of events by their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of destroying it, and the causes incline the will rather than necessitating it." [T p. 381] Thus, Judas will not betray Christ ifhe gets lost on his way to the Roman camp. On the other hand, Judas might think that it would be better if fifty were less than seventy (because he receives fifty pieces of silver not seventy), but his preferences could not matter in this case. Neither Man nor God can make it true that seventy is less than fifty. Seventy is less than fifty has its reasons,4 but there are no "external" reasons for its truth that are subject to God's will: All things therefore have a reason, either in themselves and from their terms, as things that are necessary through themselves, or from elsewhere, as things that are free and contingent or, so to speak, non-essentially, or hypothetically necessary. [Grua 273] [A] cause is a reason for the thing that is outside the thing, or a reason for the production of the thing.s

A cause is a reason for a change in a thing of one sort or another. Individual substances are subject to change, numbers are not. But a mutable thing does not change from being as it is to being otherwise, from being on this side of the Rubicon to being on that side of the Rubicon, due to its being itself. Leibnizian substances need to be acted on, in Leibniz's peculiar sense of "acted on," from without to move from one state to another: Power in general, then, can be described as the possibility of change. But since change - or the actualization of that possibility - is action in one subject and passion in another, there will be two powers, one active and one passive. The active power may be called 'faculty' and the passive one might be called 'capacity' or receptivity. [N 169]

Leibnizian finite substances change because they are acted upon, and they can be acted upon because they are potential beings receptive of forms that complete them and that are not consequences of their proper natures but are representations of things external. Leibniz assumes a principle of inertia, of sorts, for created beings: no changes occur in them unless there are reasons outside of them for changing. 6 Other things "act" on a substance, according to Leibniz, when they "contain or express more particularly the reasons which determine [it] to certain thoughts," [DM 27] or when they contain reasons for the changes that it undergoes. To be sure, Leibniz states that one created being cannot act transeuntly on another, and that individual substances are spontaneous. Still, created substances reflect their world; and their "appetites" for these reflections provoke their pursuit

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of one after another. To behave in a certain way because of the reflection it has of something external is to be caused to act by the thing reflected. Thus, Caesar sees the Rubicon and desires to cross it. His behavior is explicable in terms of a perception that he has that "points towards" something other than himself, namely, the Rubicon, or the banks on the other side of it. Of course, Leibniz adds that God is the ultimate efficient cause of Caesar's actions. [DM 32] Truths of fact or existence, such as that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, involve greater reasons for being facts than other possible truths about the behaviors of created substances. [Grua 289; Grua 305] However, the fact that truths of fact have a greater reason for "existing," so to speak/ does not mean, for Leibniz, that the opposites of truths of fact are not fully explicable. Indeed, Leibniz states that they are objects of God's simple intelligence, while truths of fact are also objects of God's vision. [CDI417; G II 44ILA 48] The opposites of truths of fact are possibly true, and therefore there must be sufficient reasons for them. However, the sufficient reasons for their truth are not "great" enough to secure their actual truth, only their possible truth, that is, their being true of some nonactual possible world. According to Leibniz, as I read him, the proposition that Caesar did not cross the Rubicon is possible because the opposites of truths of fact are possible and, consequently, are objects of God's simple intelligence. [CD 14-17; G II 44ILA 48] That is, they are possible because they are understood and given an accounting for by God: God understands Caesar's not crossing the Rubicon even though he has no vision of it, just as created beings have understandings of perfect circles but no perceptions of them. Hence, commentators are correct to construe Leibniz's possible worlds as collections of complete concepts: complete concepts contain the reasons for truths about individuals. In understanding a pure possible, God has a complete concept of it. In understanding a possible world, he has an understanding of a set of complete concepts. Even in the case of a non-exemplified truth, God therefore grasps all of the truthmaking reasons for it. Even in the case of a true counterfactual proposition about Caesar, God grasps all of the truthmaking reasons for it. The fact that there are truth conditions for opposites of truths of fact - including counterfactuals - provides, according to Leibniz, a definite distinction between them and propositions that are absolutely necessary. A proposition is absolutely necessary, Leibniz held, if and only if it is true under every hypothesis and no reasons can be adduced for its opposite .. The proposition that 2 is greater than 1 is true under every hypothesis, including the hypothesis that God does not decree such and such circumstances, while the proposition that Judas betrayed Christ is true under some hypotheses and the proposition that Judas remained faithful to Christ is true under others.

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From another perspective, no proposition is completely absolutely nece~ary, for Leibniz, if there are not sufficient reasons for it in every possible world. There are not sufficient reasons for Judas betraying Christ in every world, but, trivially, there are for the proposition "2 is greater than 1" since, as we would say, "2 is greater than 1" can be proved from the empty set. This analysis suggests an alternative to the standard interpretation of the much discussed Theodicy 414 as presenting a counterpart theory of counterfactuals. At Theodicy 414 Leibniz writes: Here are representations not only of that which happens but of all that which is possible. Jupiter having surveyed them before the beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds, and chose the best of all .. .! have only to speak, and we shall see a whole world that my father might have produced, wherein can be represented anything that can be asked of him... and in this way one may know also what would happen if any particular possibility should attain into existence. And whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there shall be as many worlds differing from one another as one shall wish, which shall answer differently the same questions in as many ways as possible when the conditions of a required point do not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them, they all fall into what geometricians call a locus and this locus is often a line which will be determinate. Thus you can picture to yourself an ordered succession of worlds, which shall contain each and everyone the case in question, and shall vary its circumstances and its consequences. But if you put a case that differs from the actual world in one single definite thing and its results, a certain one of the determinate worlds will answer you. These worlds are all here, that is, in ideas ... You will find in one world a very happy and noble Sextus, in another a Sextus content with a mediocre state, a Sextus, indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms. [T 414]

Commentators usually recommend the last few melodramatic sentences of Theodicy 414 as evidence for the counterpart theory reading of Leibniz's possible worlds ontology, and ignore the remainder of it. Yet, it is precisely in other parts of the text that Leibniz tries to give a relatively more clear and distinct illustration of what he means when he says that there are many possible Sextuses. The following more complete example clarifies the illustration. Suppose an endpoint A lies on a line L. A is in relation to each point on L, and is defined, within L, by these relations. L is a fully determinate entity because it is just the collection of all of these points and the relations between them. L does not, however, absolutely determine A. To see this, plot a circle C about A. Each point along the circumference of C in conjunction with A defines a line that contains conditions that determine A. None of them, however, absolutely determines A or determine A in every possible way that A can be determined. Given any line (not necessarily a straight line), plotted from a point along the circumference of C to A, there will be truths about A that will not be modeled by this line. Hence one and the same point A is determined in infinitely many different ways, that is, A belongs to infinitely many loci. In these different loci, A is definitely described in different ways. Hence, in a manner of speaking, A is not

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the same thing in these different loci if we mean by "thing" an entity taken in its totality, that is, not conceived in abstraction from its local extrinsic denominations. Each locus determines a different possible A. If God conceives A apart from these denominations, however, such a conception will be an incomplete or indeterminate conception of A. Generally conceived, A is the same entity in all of its diverse determining loci. Analogously, a Leibnizian possible world is a set of determining conditions on indeterminate, determinable individuals. Leibniz referred to individuals as "atoms of substance." [G IV 4821L 546] Thus, his illustration of his notion that there are many different possible Sextuses in his Theodicy suggests that he also regarded possible worlds as loci, of a sort. Possible worlds contain for any given moment of time t infinitely many possible determining conditions upon points of substance or subjects. However, they do not contain all possible determining conditions upon them. I think the following less picturesque passages involve the same idea: 8 Many future conditionals are inconsistent; thus, when I ask what would have happened if Peter had not denied Christ, it is asked what would have happened if Peter had not been Peter; for denying is contained in the complete notion of Peter. But it is permissible [excusibile] that by the name Peter should be understood what is involved in those traits [of Peter] from which the denial does not follow, while at the same time there must be subtracted from the universe everything from which it does not follow; and then sometimes it can happen that the agreement [decisio] follows per se from the remaining things posited in the universe, but sometimes it will not follow unless there is added a new divine decree because of the best [ex ratione optimitatis]. If there is no natural chain or consequence from the remaining things posited, it will not be possible to know what would have happened (my emphasis) unless on the basis of a decree of God in accord with what is best. Therefore, the issue depends either on the series of causes or on a decree of the divine will ... [Grua 358]9 I understand Leibniz to be maintaining, here, that if reference is made to Peter through his actual world complete concept in a future conditional (with a false antecedent) that conditional is inconsistent. Is it possible, according to Leibniz, that such a future conditional not be inconsistent? It is possible. However, the reference must be made to Peter through a concept other than his actual world complete concept. Leibniz describes a method for setting up such reference for Peter. First, analyze Peter's complete concept into traits of Peter that a given consequence - say Peter's denial of Christ - depends on (call these traits "A") and attributes of Peter that the consequence does not depend on (call these traits"B"). Second, divide the conditions of Peter's world into those on which the consequence depends (call these conditions "C") and those on which the consequence does not depend (call these conditions liD"). Peter's denial of Christ might follow directly from A alone, or from C alone or from the conjunction AC. To guarantee

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that the denial of Christ is eliminated as a possible consequence, set both A and C to the side. Leibniz then argues that Peter's decisio or affirmation of Christ might follow from B alone, D alone or the conjunction AD as a natural, or lawful consequence. If Peter's affirmation of Christ does not follow from A, D, or AD as a natural consequence, if it does not follow from his nature or the nature of the world, then God can make it follow as a supernatural consequence, that is, God might intervene and Peter could miraculously confess his loyalty to Christ; or God might augment the concept of Peter in a way that generates Peter's affirmation of Christ. Granted, for Leibniz the Peter referred to in the proposition "Peter affirms Christ" is a different person than the Peter who denied Christ. He is merely the same subject as that Peter. At Grua 358, Leibniz proposes that in order to make sense of a future conditional that has as a consequence that Peter affirms Christ one must vary Peter's circumstances in a way that leads to the generation of that consequence. Thus, let S be the concept of a individual in itself, C the concept of circumstances that individual is conceived to exist in, and L the concept of laws that individual is conceived to be subject to. The complex of concepts SCL, then, is a complete concept of S and defines the complete individual substance A. Label this complete concept Q. Because Q contains S, C and L as proper subconcepts (that is, S, C, and L are proper components of Q), Q is, in this sense, identical with C and L. Hence, Q is S, Q is C, and Q is L, where the "is" in these propositions is an "is" of, following Leibniz, "part/whole" identity. However, the subconcepts of Q, namely S, C and L, are not identical: S is not C, S is not L, and L is not C. There is no "part\part" identity among the subconcepts of Q. If S is not identical with C and L, S can presumably be consistently combined with alternative laws and conditions L * and C* to form the alternative complete concept Q* of S. Q* defines the alternative possible complete individual substance A*, which is an alternative complete determination of the subject S. There is, then, an identity of subjects across possible worlds but not an identity of complete individual substances, unless one wishes to say that A and A * are identical in virtue of their involving the same subject. This analysis comports with Leibniz's definition of an accident in terms of particular propositions: An accident is a subject both in a particular affirmative proposition and in the negative with the same subject. So some men are learned and some men are not learned, therefore learning is an accident of man. If some a is b and some a is non-b then b is an accident of a. [G VII 226 /L 246]

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Leibniz held that singular propositions are equivalent to particular propositions, [G VII 211] and that singular propositions may be interpreted as universal propositions as long as what we would call the "universe of discourse" is restricted to the actual world. [G VII 211] There is only one Socrates in the actual world. However, there are infinitely many Socrates abroad. If anyone of these Socrates is not snubnosed then both the proposition "Some Socrates is snubnosed" (since Socrates is actually snubnosed) and the proposition "Some Socrates is nonsnubnosed" are true. Thus, according to Leibniz, "being snubnosed" is an accident of Socrates. Unfortunately, Leibniz, himself, never spelled matters out in this detail with particular regard to singular propositions. Indeed, he did not even address at length the question whether there are concepts of individual subjects that do not implicitly, at least, involve a concept of their world. I believe that he did not because he simply took over the traditional and generally un controversial Aristotelian distinction between composite substances and the subjects that enter into composites. This distinction involves what Sleigh aptly calls one of Leibniz's "attitudinal principles."IO Leibniz did not have to argue for his adoption of this distinction because it was not controversial and hardly anyone needed to be persuaded of it. I have yet to come across any textual evidence to motivate the contention that Leibniz abjured these standard conceptions of substance. If he had rejected them, one should expect that he would have made that rejection quite explicit, as he made explicit, for example, his rejections of the commonly accepted conceptions of absolute space and efficient causal interaction between substances. But he did not. In the absence of any explicit arguments by Leibniz against the traditional distinction between substances and their accidents - circumstantial or otherwise the burden of proof is upon those who maintain that Leibniz held that there is no logical distinction between accidental and essential properties. I argue that this burden cannot be borne by the texts. Those who think that it can be probably fail to note or appreciate the systematic ambiguity of Leibniz's expression "concept of an individual." For Leibniz, there is both the concept of an individual-in-a-world and the concept of an individual that is not a concept of an individual in-a-world. Thus, when Leibniz states: I say that whatever happens in conformity to these divine anticipations is assured but not necessary, and that if anyone were to do the contrary, he would not do anything impossible in itself, though it would be impossible ex hypothesi for it to happen. [DM 13]

He is making a tacit appeal to the distinction between the concept of a subject-ina-world and the concept of an undetermined (by accidents) subject, which could

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be determined (by accidents) as a subject-in-a-world. For Leibniz, at the time he wrote his Discourse, the proposition that Caesar did not cross the Rubicon is impossible when we assume that Caesar exists in this world. It is impossible when the "concept of" Caesar we have in mind is a concept of Caesar-in-this-world, who is subject to worldly modifications, and who is somehow distinct from his modifications. III. INFINITE ANALYSIS AND COUNTERFACTUALTRUTH

Let us tum again to the paradigmatic passage concerning the possibility of Spinoza's dying at Leyden. In that passage, Leibniz is not arguing that the proposition that Spinoza could have died in Leyden is possible because, although it is a contradiction, it cannot be reduced to an explicit contradiction in a finite number of steps. Rather, he asserts that it is possible because it contains no contradiction. However, as we have seen, according to Leibniz a counterfactual is possible if and only if an explanation can be given of it, that is, if and only if it is derivable from some complete concept of its subject. Such a concept would contain information about the subject as it exists in counterfactual circumstances that contribute towards its behaving as it would in those counterfactual circumstances. Yet this account of counterfactual truth, by itself, is inadequate for libertarians who maintain that, given a "complete" set of conditions C that obtains in the world at a time t, God is able to make the world in any way that he pleases the next moment. Thus, for such a libertarian, the world could have been exactly the way that it was just prior to. the time that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and God could have made it so that Caesar did not cross the Rubicon at the "next" moment. As the libertarian Molina wrote: [T]hat agent is said to be free, who all the requisites for acting having been posited, can act or not act, or so perform one action that he is still able to do the contrary. I I

Molina maintains in this passage that even if all the requisites for acting have been posited, an individual retains the potential, in those circumstances, to act otherwise. Molina, surprisingly, is in agreement with Arnauld: [O]ne can conceive of possibilities in the natures which [God] has created, because since they are not being itself by essence, they are necessarily made up of potency and act, which allows me to conceive of them as possible, as I can also do with an infinite number of modifications which are in the power of these created natures, such as the thoughts of intelligent natures and the forms of extended substance. But I am much mistaken if there is anyone who dares to say that he can conceive of a possible, purely possible, substance. [G II 32ILA 31-32]

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I understand Arnauld to have meant by his statement that the possibilities of accidents are not "being itself by nature," that the subsistence of these possibilities in a subject does not imply that it will eventually exemplify them. For example, the possibility of my seeing the Vatican does not imply that I will see the Vatican, and the possibility of the stones making up the Vatican being used to make a farmhouse does not imply that they will be used to make a farmhouse. According to Arnauld, in finite beings potency does not imply actuality. Thus, Arnauld held that actual finite beings potentially have modifications that they will never have. Perhaps I will never see the Vatican, but I nevertheless am able to see the Vatican. Perhaps the stones that the Vatican is made of will never be used to make a farmhouse, but they could be used to make a farmhouse. Paul Ree elaborated on this idea: Every object - a stone, an animal, a human being - can pass from its present state to another one. The stone that now lies in front of me may, in the next moment, fly through the air, or it may disintegrate into dust or roll along the ground. If, however, one of these possible states is to be realized, its sufficient cause must first be present. The stone will fly through the air if it is tossed. It will roll if a force acts upon it. It will disintegrate into dust, given that some object hits and crushes it. It is helpful to use the words "potential" and "actual" in this connection. At any moment

there are innumerably many potential states. At a given time, however, only one can become actual, namely, the one that is triggered by its sufficient cause. 12 I do not know if Arnauld would approve of Ree's subscription to the principle of sufficient reason, as Ree formulates it, but he would cede Ree's other point, namely, that there are "competing" potentials in things, not all of which will be realized. Yet Arnauld also believed that the fact that created things do not realize all of their potential does not entail that there is an unused potential in God. According to Arnauld, God does not have the power to do the impossible, and it is impossible for created, finite things to manifest, at the same time, contrary possible accidental properties. God cannot arrange things so that Adam both sins at a certain time t and that he does not sin at that same time t. Nevertheless, God, according to Arnauld, can conceive all of the possibilities or potentialities in a created thing some of which it will never exemplify. For Arnauld, the contingency of things resides in what he called God's "active and infinite potency." [G II 32/LA 32] For Arnauld, an individual possesses a property contingently if the individual, owing to God's power to act on it as he will, is actively potent with respect to its opposite. The potency tends, as certain Scholastics would say, towards realization even if it is eternally determined that it will not be. Arnauld proposed that at any given moment, and for any two contradictory accidental predicates A and B of the appropriate type (physical, mental), a created substance is actively potent with respect to both A and B. The dual po-

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tency obtains even though it is certain that God has decided to realize A or to realize B no matter what laws are in force and no matter what events have preceded. This, according to Arnauld, is why God freely creates things even though he foresees what he will create. The fact that God forsees that a potential in a thing will not be realized does not negate the potential. Thus, Arnauld maintained that: We are aware that he [God] knows all things, and knows them by a single and very simple act, which is his essence. When I say that we are aware of it, I mean that we are assured that it must be so. But can we understand it? And must we not recognize that however assured that we are that it is the case, it is impossible for us to conceive how that can be so? Similarly, can we conceive that whereas God's knowledge is his very essence, wholly necessary and immutable, he nevertheless knows an infinite number of things that he might not have known, because these things might not have been? The same holds true for his will, which is also his very essence and contains nothing that is not necessary. And yet he wills and has willed from eternity things that he might not have willed. [G II 31ILA 30-31]

Arnauld assumed the commonplace that God knows only true propositions and he equates true propositions about substances with facts. Thus, God does not know the proposition that Adam did not eat the fruit and he does know the proposition that Adam ate the fruit. However, this situation might be reversed. Why? It can be reversed because it is possible that the proposition that Adam ate the fruit be false and that the proposition that Adam did not eat the fruit be true. Why? Because God could have willed that Adam not eat the fruit. Arnauld confesses that these possibilities are quite mysterious, and that we cannot "conceive" them. Leibniz agreed that it "is very difficult to see how God has a knowledge that he might not have had." [G II 44ILA 48] He did not concede, however, that God cannot have it. Arnauld never surrendered his conviction that if the proposition that Adam will sin is contingent then Adam must be potent with respect to the property of not sinning before he sins; and Leibniz never urged him to give it up. The conviction, to me, seems reasonable. If Adam lacks the potential not to sin, how can it be contingent that he sins? Does not the proposition that Adam has no potential to not sin mean that he cannot not sin? 13 In keeping with commonsense, Arnauld acknowledged that the impossibility of Adam's simultaneously sinning and not sinning at t does not rule out his having, before t, both the potential to sin at t and the potential not to sin at t. Perhaps surprisingly, for some students of Leibniz, Leibniz appears to have agreed with Arnauld: [A]bsolutely speaking, our will, considered as contrasted with necessity, is in a state of indifference, and it has the power to do otherwise or to suspend its action altogether, the one and the other alternative being and remaining possible. [DM 30]

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I say that the above remarks are "perhaps surprising" in light of the following claims that Leibniz makes: I say that whatever happens in conformity to .. divine anticipations is assured but not necessary and that if anyone would do the contrary, he would not do anything impossible in itself, though it would be impossible ex hypothesi for it to happen [emphasis added]. For if some man were able to carry out the complete demonstration by virtue of which he could prove this connection between the subject, who is Caesar, and the predicate, which is his successful undertaking, he would actually show that the future dictatorship of Caesar is based on his concept.. .and that there is a reason in that concept why he resolved to cross the Rubicon rather than stop there ... and why it is reasonable and .consequently assured that this should happen. [DM 13]

Further: [E]very truth has its a priori proof, deduced from the concepts of its terms, although it is not always in our [my emphasis] power to achieve the analysis. [G II l2ILA 5]

If every truth has an a priori proof, truths of fact have a priori proofs, even if we are unable to construct these proofs owing to our finitude. Leibniz's doctrine of complete concepts, as Leibniz formulated it at the time of their correspondence, appears to be inconsistent with the doctrine of infinite active potencies. To see that it is, suppose God wills some sequence of things S, and that there occurs in S some event A. According to Leibniz's doctrine of individual concepts, A's occurrence, even if it is miraculous, is demonstrably in conformity with universal laws of order. [DM 7] This means that A is a lawful consequence, at some level, of the states that precede it. Under the hypothesis that the laws in force and that the states preceding A have occurred, it necessarily follows that A occurs: It is true that when the assumption of the decrees effecting the consequence is added to the first assumption of God's decision to create Adam, which was the antecedent, to make one single antecedent out of all these assumptions or decisions, it is true, I repeat, that then the consequence is accomplished. [G II 38ILA 40]

A substance S obviously cannot be potent with respect to the contrary of A if A is an absolutely necessary consequence of laws that S is subject to and S's antecedent states: if those antecedent states demonstrably "accomplish" A. We have reason, then, to doubt that Blumenfeld's suggestion that: Leibniz uses [his per-se] account of contingency to show that Caesar has the power to refrain from crossin¥. the Rubicon, even though the notion of his crossing is contained in his complete concept. "

is true of Leibniz at the time he wrote his Discourse. Quite to the contrary, at the time that Leibniz wrote the Discourse and at the time of his correspondence with Arnauld, if a state A of a Leibnizian subject S implies a state T of S then S cannot be simultaneously in potency with respect to T and not-T. Even Descartes would

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seem to agree that God cannot have the power to realize a state for which there is no potentiality. [CSM ill 208] It is therefore not surprising that Leibniz wrote at about the time of the writing of his Discourse: The definition of freedom, which is the power of acting or not acting with all requisites to acting posited and with all things being equal in the object and agent is an impossible chimera, which goes against the first principle which I stated. [C 25]

At C 25 Leibniz states explicitly that if sufficient conditions for an action are in place "in the subject and object" the action must occur and this means that the agent is stripped of the power to act otherwise. In Leibniz's system, moreover, the conditions are in place from the very beginning of an agent's existence, they are all pre-established in the individuals initial state. Hence, if Leibniz were to hold fast to what he maintains at C 25, he should admit also that there would be no potential in individuals to act otherwise than they are determined to act. Leibniz's determinism, then, would conflict with the venerable metaphysical principle that Arnauld abided by, namely, that accidental or contingent properties in subjects are always accompanied by their contraries in potentia. A traditional distinction between accidental properties and essential properties was that a subject is in potency with respect to an accidental property and its contraries, while it is never in potency with respect to the contraries of essential properties because essential properties do not have contraries. Leibniz's doctrine of truth and his doctrine of complete concepts, very likely, are what led him to assert what he did at C 25, and they ostensibly pit him against the tradition. However, there is some evidence that Leibniz, in his correspondence with Arnauld, was at least somewhat inclined towards accepting that potentials for the opposites of the actual properties of individuals reside in those individuals. I take this to be the point of these comments by Leibniz on Arnauld's reaction to his summary of his doctrine of complete concepts: 15 I had said in the 13th article of my summary that the individual concept of each person contains once for all everything that will ever happen to him; from it he deduces the consequence that everything which happens to a person and even to the whole human race mQst happen through a more than fatal necessity. As though concepts or previsions made things necessary ... [G II 17ILA 12]

A plausible interpretation of these remarks is that, according to Leibniz, what actually happens to "things" in the actual world is not necessary so long as there is a potential in them for their opposites. Thus, God's prevision of an event in the history of an individual does not destroy in that individual the potential that is in the individual for the opposite of the event. For example, Leibniz speaks of a "potential memory which can always be aroused" in his correspondence with Arnauld, [G II 57ILA 64] God might have a prevision of an individual not remembering at a

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certain time that he became a theologian at age 24. However, the fact that God has the prevision does not mean that the individual lacks the potential to remember that fact about himself. Moreover, if the individual has that potential, God conceives of that potential in him and, being omniscient, he should understand exactly why that potential will not be realized and under what conditions it would be realized. According to Leibniz, if something is conceivable it is distinctly conceivable, [Grua 535] and the mark of a distinct conception of a thing is knowing the reasons for it or having a proof of it.[N 219] Nevertheless, in the following passage Leibniz admits that there is a problem reconciling his doctrine of truth with the idea that the opposites of truths of fact are possible. He also indicates how he negotiated the problem. [A] famous philosopher of our century ... expressly affirms somewhere that matter successively receives all the forms of which it is capable. This opinion cannot be defended, for it would obliterate all the beauty of the universe and any choice of matters, not to mention here other grounds upon which the contrary can be shown.

Having thus recognized the contingency of things, I raised the further question of a clear concept of truth, for I had a reasonable hope of throwing some light from this upon the problem of distinguishing necessary from contingent truths. For I saw that in every true affirmative proposition, whether universal or singular, necessary or contingent, the predicate inheres in the subject or that the concept of the predicate is involved in the concept of the subject. I saw that this is the principle of infallibility for him who knows everything a priori. But this very fact seemed to increase the difficulty, for, if at any particular time [my emphasis] the concept of the predicate inheres in the concept of the subject, how can the predicate ever be denied of the subject without contradiction and impossibility, or without destroying the subject concept? [Fe 179/L 263-264]16 In these passages, Leibniz states that he had already concluded, before he discovered his infinite analysis account of contingency, that created things do not take on all the forms they can take on. He had also concluded that individuals contingently possess their actual (accidental) forms for this reason: they could have taken on other forms. Finally, he claims that actual things are contingent existents because other possible things might exist in their place. Yet Leibniz goes on to admit that more is needed to give a complete solution to the problem of the contingency of truths. I submit that Leibniz is acknowledging that he needs also to explain how it is possible that the state of the world as it exists at a given time is freely chosen and created by God. Leibniz wondered how this can be the case if future states "inhere" in the concept of the subject, that is, if the antecedent states of the subject imply all of its subsequent states or that the subsequent states are pre-established in its precedent states. God can freely give to an individual at a certain time t a property P only if before that time the individual is potentially other than P. And an individual, it seems, cannot be potentially other than God will create it if Leibniz's doctrine of truth is true.

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Leibniz eventually confessed that his claim that there are a priori demonstrations of truths of fact conflicts with the proposition that God freely continuously creates!7 the world and that his continued concurrence is needed to conserve it. He recognized that if it is absolutely true that Adam will sin given the hypothesis of his preceding states or given his definition (= complete concept) then God cannot be said to freely create Adam as a sinner. God does not freely create what must absolutely necessarily exist. If a state S of a substance A logically implies a later state T, God would be compelled to create A with the state T after S, for he cannot act, or even antecedently will, contrary to logical implications. There would be just one "ray of potency" rather than infinitely many emanating from A at t. Leibniz maintained, however, that there are infinitely many such rays. Leibniz's recognition of this fact led him to revise his metaphysics. He argued later that the antecedent states of individuals do not, strictly speaking, imply their subsequent states: [T]here is no truth of fact or of individual things which does not depend upon an infinite series of reasons, though God alone can see everything in this series ... contingent truths require an infinite analysis which can only be performed by God, so that he alone can know them a priori and with certainty. For although the present state can be explained by the preceding, this preceding state can again be explained, so that the ultimate reason is not reached within the series ... any truth which is not susceptible of analysis cannot be demonstrated by reason, but receives its ultimate reason and certainty from the divine mind alone, is not a necessary truth. [Fe 80-811L264]18 There is an essential difference between necessary or eternal truths, and truths of fact or contingent truths, and they differ from one another much in the way that rational numbers and surds differ. For necessary truths can be resolved into a common measure; but in the case of contingent truths, as in the case of surds, the resolution proceeds to infinity and is never terminated. Therefore the certitude and perfect reason of contingent truths is known only to God, who grasps the infinite in a single intuition. When this secret is known, the difficulty concerning the absolute necessity of all things is removed and the difference between the infallible and necessary is clear. [G VII309IMP 75]

Leibniz remarked elsewhere that not even God can complete the analysis of a truth of fact, that is, a temporal truth, "for that would involve a contradiction." [Fe 1841L266] God, nonetheless, "sees" by an infallible infinitely synoptic vision all the reasons why a temporal predicate inheres at a particular time in a subject. Leibniz counts this infallible seeing as a proof, of sorts, of the truth of a proposition. It exhibits the truth of a proposition, but not in a discursive way. One temporal event "follows" another, but naturally rather than "metaphysically." According to Leibniz, natural connections can be "prevented" while metaphysical connections cannot be. [T 383] !9 A discursive demonstration of a truth would involve reducing the truth to an identity, or its denial to a contradiction, and this can be done only if the truth can

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be connected one by one to prior truths. However, the truths about an individual that exists in time, a time that is a continuum,2o cannot be connected in this way; and unlike the points in certain infinite mathematical series, they cannot be reduced to an equation because they are not sufficiently homogeneous. 21 According to Leibniz's infinite analysis account of contingency, no matter how many reasons one uncovers for a given truth of fact, there will be infinitely more reasons for each of those reasons. Leibniz stated that this shows that while the reasons tend towards an identity, they can never terminate in one, just as an asymptote can never terminate on a line that it approaches. 22 The fact that the series of factual conditions cannot terminate in an identity establishes that there is no first, unconditioned term in the series that would be the ultimate condition for all subsequent terms, not that there is one in the sequence that cannot be reached. In particular, the subjects of the truths of fact are not the ultimate origins of those truths. The nature of the absolute subject Adam, [Grua 540] for example, does not by itself explain why he has the history that he does. An explanation is needed that goes beyond Adam and beyond the history to account for why it is Adam's history. The history perhaps inclines towards Adam as an explanation. But, whatever historical state of Adam is presented, there will be some reason why Adam has that state that is not: "Because Adam is Adam." Adam does not have the relation that he has with Eve because Adam is Adam. If that were so, an identity would be the ultimate foundation for this truth of fact about Adam. Leibniz's point is not that there is an identity within the sequence of created things to which truths of fact about Adam cannot be reduced. His point, instead, is that there is no identity, or nature, at least not in the created world, to which the truths of fact can be reduced. A full explanation of any truth of fact requires going beyond the facts of the world. 23 Recall these remarks by Leibniz: Everything occurs in every substance as a consequence of the first state which God bestowed upon it, and extraordinary concourse excepted, his ordinary concourse consists only of preserving the substance itself in conformity with its preceding state and the changes that it bears. [G II 91-92ILA 115]

God did not bestow this first state on Adam, according to Leibniz, simply because of his decree to create Adam: Now every individual substance of this universe expresses in its concept the universe into which it enters. And not only the assumption that God decided to create this particular Adam, but also that of any other individual substance contains decisions made for everything else, because it is the nature of an individual to have such a complete concept, whence can be inferred everything that one can attribute to it, and even to the whole universe because of the connections between things. [G II 41ILA 44]

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God, whilst he decides to choose this series, by that very fact he also makes an infinite number of decrees concerning all that is involved in it. [MP 104]

To the question, "Why did God take Eve from Adam's side?" there are infinitely many answers. For each answer one may ask again why did God decide that? In this way one generates infinitely many questions for infinitely many answers, and vice-versa. "Because Adam is Adam," standing alone is never an answer as "Because a triangle is a triangle" is an answer when it comes to theorems about that object. It is always "Because Adam is Adam and ... and that because ... " The answer is not completeable except by going outside of the sequence of created secondary causes. However, when one goes beyond that sequence to explain something about an object in it, that explanation is not a proof. A proof involves showing that a truth follows from the natures or definitions of the terms of the truth alone and without addition, for example, without the "addition of time." If one cannot show this, one cannot show that the opposite of the truth is not possible, but that is what it means to prove a truth. Leibniz goes further. He maintains that if there is no proof of a truth the opposite of the truth is possible. That is precisely the thinking of contemporary logicians: if there is no proof of a proposition from a given set of premises then the conjunction of the negation of the proposition and the premises is consistent. One cannot say that a given momentary state in the history of a Leibnizian individual is implied by its closest prior state because there is no closest prior state in a history that is a continuum. As far as Leibniz was concerned, this shows that the fact that God creates the world having certain properties at a given time does not imply logically that he will create it having certain other properties at some later time. Given the hypothesis that God foresees and preordains an event, it is hypothetically necessary that it occur. However, God's prevision and preordination do not, and cannot, forge necessary connections between events that cannot be connected one by one. Such a connection is needed to get a strictly logical or geometrical demonstration off the ground about truths of fact that concern created, temporal things. It therefore cannot be said that God is compelled by the states of things to create the world in a certain way after any moment of its existence. Indeed, Leibniz went so far as to assert: It is evident that existing things continually emanate from this source [God], that they are being and have been produced by it, since no reason appears why one state of the world should issue from it rather than another, that of yesterday'S rather than today's should flow from it. It is clear, too, that God acts according to the laws of physics but freely. [G VII 40SIL 488-489]

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Leibniz's point here is that the states of the world and the laws in force at a moment t do not imply that God will continue to create the world in accordance with what the laws prescribe. Leibniz's God turns out to be something like a rule utilitarian: if the laws conflict, Leibniz maintains that God will not comply with them, that is, he will perform a miracle instead. This noncompliance requires that there be no absolutely necessary connections between the states of the world or of an individual. Indeed, according to Leibniz, there is barely a hypothetical necessity: Thus all being ordered from the beginning, it is only because of this hypothetical necessity, recognized by everyone, that after God's prevision or after his resolution nothing can be changed: and yet the events in themselves remain contingent. For (setting aside this supposition of the futurition of the thing and of the prevision or of the resolution of God, a supposition that already lays it down as a fact that the thing will happen, and in accordance with which one must say that 'when it is it is so necessarily and because it will be it is necessarily future. '), the event has nothing in it to render it necessary and to suggest no other thing might not have happened in its stead. And as for the connection between causes and effects, it only inclined without necessitating, the free agency, as I have just explained; thus it does not even produce even a hypothetical necessity, save in conjunction with something from outside, to wit, this very maxim, that the prevailing maxim always triumphs. [T 53] I have no doubt that Leibniz's infinite analysis account of contingency stands behind these remarks, as he states that account later in the book. [T p. 419] On Leibniz's infinite analysis "account" of contingency, actual individuals have open futures. On that account what Arnauld called the "active potency" of God with respect to an individual and with respect to contrary events A and B is preserved at each moment prior to the occurrence of one or the other of them. Both potentials remain even though there are sufficient reasons for whichever one of them will actually occur. This could not be the case if the antecedent states of the individual implied A or B. Still, Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason guarantees that in the actual world it is certain that A will be realized or that B will be realized and also certain that one of them will not be realized. Leibniz therefore applied his infinite analysis postulate, the postulate that truths of facts are not finitely demonstrable, within the framework of his possible worlds ontology, to the problem of reconciling his doctrine of complete concepts with the doctrine that God freely continuously creates the world. God could not freely continuously create individuals, that is, freely create each of their successive states, as Leibniz maintained that he does, if their futures were closed. Their futures would be closed if all of their states were connected and the connections were demonstratively contained in their complete individual concepts. Such connections would rule out individuals' being potentially otherwise in the actual world than they certainly will be in the actual world. To summarize: Propositions that assert that an individual performs some action in a given world are contingent, according to Leibniz's infinite analysis pos-

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tulate, if they are not finitely demonstrable. Counterfactuals, on the other hand, are true, according to Leibniz if they are true of some, but not of all possible worlds. These two accounts are nonequivalent because there are inconsistent propositions that are neither finitely demonstrable nor true at any possible world, for example, the proposition that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in the best of all possible worlds. I cannot leave this topic without offering an interpretation of these remarks from Theodicy 414: [I]n which it will be found, not exactly the same Sextus that you have seen [in the actual world] (that is impossible); he always carries with him what he will be), but similar Sextuses, who will have everything that you already know of Sextus, but not everything that is already in him without being noticed, nor consequently everything that will happen to him [emphasis added].

Ishiguro interprets Leibniz as meaning by what he says here that the actual Sextus and some counterpart of his may have the same properties up to a certain point and then, at that point, have their histories diverge?4 Wilson has subjected her interpretation to severe and judicious criticism. 25 More recently, Adams argues that Leibniz's remarks should be taken as evidence for the thesis that "No individual substances in (qualitatively) different possible worlds are exactly alike, qualitatively, during an initial portion of their histories. ,,26 Adams adds: It follows ... that an Arnauld who married, in another possible world, must have had there from the very beginning of his existence, different characteristics from those of the actual Arnauld. Leibniz evidently thinks that those differences would be sufficient for denying transworld identity .. .! think our strongest intuitions of transworld identity are of individual identity in alternative possible continuations of a world - that is, in alternative possible continuations of exactly the same history, of the world and of the individual, until the time at which the alternatives diverge. A convincing argument against the possibility of such alternative continuations of the same history would greatly weaken the intuitive support for transworld identity. 27

Adams takes Leibniz to be advancing an argument against the possibility of alternative continuations of the same history at Theodicy 414. However, I think that Leibniz is making a quite different point. According to Leibniz, all of the properties that individuals have at different points in their histories are in them at every point of their histories more or less distinctly. For Leibniz, accidents do not suddenly appear "out of nowhere" in a substance at a given moment. That would violate his principle of continuity. Rather, the substance grows into a more distinct consciousness of an less distinctly perceived object of consciousness and subsequently shrinks again into a less distinct perception of it. [N 56-57] Thus:

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[W]hen a man is reduced to a state where it is as though he were in a coma, and where he almost has no feeling, he does lose reflection and awareness, and gives no thought to general truths. Nevertheless, his faculties and dispositions, both innate and acquired, and even the impressions he receives in this state of confusion, still continue: they are not obliterated, though they are forgotten. [N 139] [T]he mind expresses all its future thought and already thinks confusedly of everything of which it will think distinctly ... [DM 26] The soul, too, must actually be affected in a certain way when it is thinking of something, and therefore must have within it, in advance, a passive power of being thus affected, a power already entirely determined, but also an active power by virtue of which it has always had, within its own nature, marks of the future production of this thought and the disposition to produce it at the proper time. All this already enfolds the idea embraced in this thought. [DM 29] It is true that the soul does not always perceive distinctly the causes of the prick and of its future pain, when they are still hidden in the representation of the state A, as when one is asleep or otherwise fails to see the pin approaching, but it is because the movements of the pin make too little of an impression then, and although we are already affected in a way by all these movements and the representations in our soul, and although we thus have within us the representation or expression of the causes of the prick and consequently the cause of the representation of the same prick, that is to say the cause of the pain, we cannot distinguish them from many other thoughts and movements except when they become considerable. [0 II 114ILA 146-147]

Consider two Sextuses at the beginning of their existences in different possible worlds. According to Leibniz's doctrine of marks and traces, there are "presentiments" [N 239] of all of their future states in their first states: Their first moments are "big with their futures." [N 55] By this Leibniz meant that those future states are already present in the first state and that they may be "developed" over time. [N 57] Some petites perceptiones will never make it into consciousness, they will never be noticed. None of the future states of either of the Sextuses is noticed, at any rate, until their designated time. Even if we did know everything that there is to know about the two Sextuses that has happened or is happening to them, there is much already in them that we cannot yet notice because their futures are yet to arrive. This is what Leibniz has in mind when he states that we do not know everything that is already in Sextus: some of that "everything" includes Sextus' future states; thus Leibniz's conclusion "consequently everything that will happen to him." What we don't know is Sextuses future, the future that is in him now, a future that we don't notice. Since there are different futures in the two Sextuses at each moment, the two Sextuses are different at each moment. However, it does not follow that what "happens," or is noticeable, in the lives of the two Sextuses up to a given point is not the same. The two Sextuses can have identical past noticed things that have happened to them, and identical present noticable things that are happening to them but different futures that will hap-

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pen to them and be noticed. Sextus's past has been noticed (or has "happened"), and his present is being noticed. But his future has yet to be noticed, at least by us. God sees it, and knows that in the first moment of his existence it is true of Sextus that he will noticeably rape Lucretia. This fact about his future makes Sextus different from another Sextus in the first moment of his history even if at that first moment every other statement about the future of Sextus up to the time that he rapes Lucretia is true also of the other Sextus. Their different histories from that point onwards can be explained by a difference in laws of their worlds or by one or more miracles. I therefore do not believe that Leibniz is challenging our intuitions about alternative possible continuations of a history. He is challenging, instead, our intuition that the future is not with us until it happens. The future, according to Leibniz, is always with us: in potentia, in a petite way. With his infinite analysis account of contingency, Leibniz secures our other intuition that at any moment, many futures lie, in potentia before us, as the future of an otherworldly Sextus lies in a never to be realized potentia, in him, in this world. 28

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX I Adams imputes this view to Leibniz in his article, 'Predication, Truth and Transworld Identity in Leibniz': 237. 2 An object needs only to be an object of God's antecedent will to be an object of God's power, for Leibniz. 3 For this reason, Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason is not equivalent to his principle of the best, as Parkinson maintains. 'Philosophy and logic': 209 The principle of the best concerns actual truth, the principle of sufficient reason any truth whether merely possible or actual. 4 Its reason is the principle of contradiction. S I cite this passage from Mates, Leibniz: n. 34 p. 159. 6 I do not overlook the fact that Leibniz held that individuals are spontaneous: they spontaneously respond to information provided to them, ultimately, to the first state that God imposes on them. 7 Leibniz, in fact, defined "truth" as the existence of a proposition. [A 6 1 457] 8 Mates cites this passage in The Philosophy of Leibniz: 139-140 as evidence that Leibniz believed that future conditionals are senseless if understood literally. In his article 'Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge,' Sleigh comments on this passage: "After removing relevant items from Peter's complete concept and making associated adjustments to our conception of the rest of the universe, we first determine whether what remains is sufficient to causally determine a truth value for the consequent of the relevant conditional; if not, then we need to know what God would have willed in those circumstances." We would also need to know how Peter would have responded to God's willing. 9 I follow Sleigh and Mates in reading "ex quibus non sequitur" in Grua as "ex quibus sequitur." 10 Sleigh, Leibniz & Arnauld: 6. II Molina, Concordia 14. Cited From Sleigh, "Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge": 559. Leibniz ~uotes this definition of freedom in his Confessio: 68. I Ree, The Illusion of Freewill, in Feldman, Introduction to Philosophy: 3. 13 Thus Leibniz states in his Theodicy; "[I]t is not possible to act on the past state, that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some effect on the future. Yet the hypothetical necessity

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in both is the same: the one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it will not be possible for it to be changed either." T 170. The difference beween the past state and the future state is that the the opposite of the past state is no longer potent with respect to it, whereas the opposite of the future state is potent with respect to it. I Blumenfeld, 'Things Possible in Themselves': 309. If Blumenfeld were to grant that acting otherwise is truly an object of Caesar's power, he should also allow that it is within God's power to create Caesar so that he crosses the Rubicon. In this case, he should reject the superessentialist thesis and its anti-Leibnizian trappings. But he does not, [Ibid.: 310-311] even though he cites Leibniz's remark that the "will has the power to act otherwise." [G IV 454/L 322]. Certainly, if an individual has the power to act otherwise it must be possible to conceive of it acting otherwise. How could it be that Caesar have the power not to cross the Rubicon yet it be inconceivable that he cross it? However, to say that one conceives of Caesar not crossing the Rubicon is tantamount to ceding his possibly having properties other than those he actually has. 15 According to Sleigh, Leibniz wrote the following at the time of his correspondence with Arnauld: "Now, since every truth that is not an identical has its reasons or its a priori proof, this must be held not just for eternal truths, but also for truths of fact. The only difference is that in the case of eternal truths, the connection between the subject and the predicate is necessary and depends on the possibility or impossibility of essences, or indeed on the understanding of God; and in the case of truths of fact or existence, this connection is contingent and depends in part only on the will of God, or some other rational creature. Eternal truths are demonstrated on the basis of ideas or definitions of terms. Contingent truths do not have demonstrations, properly speaking, but they must have their a priori proofs or reasons, which let us know with certainty why the matter turned out one way or another." Cited from Sleigh, Leibniz & Arnauld: 194. 16 Loernker dates these essays earlier than the Discourse. His dating of the essays conflicts with my interpretation. 17 For textual evidence that Leibniz is committed to the doctrine of continuous creation see T 28, T 31, and MP 175. 18 See note 15, this chapter. 19For an interesting and informative discussion of the distinction between following "naturally" or "physically" and following "metaphysically" see Sleigh, 'Leibniz on Malbranche on Causality': section 3. For more on contining naturally versus continuing by an act of God see T 383 and T 385. 2°GM VII 25/L 671): "... continuity is found in time, extension, qualities, and movement - in fact, in all natural changes, for these never take place in leaps." Cf.: L 493; L 473; L 502. Maher ['Leibniz and Contingency': 239] has criticized Leibniz's infinite analysis account of contingency on the ground that every term in the analysis of a truth of fact must show up at some finite stage of its analysis. However, this is obviously not the case in the instance of propositions whose truth depends upon continuurnly many reasons, as truths of fact in Leibniz's system do. 21 C 388ILP 77-78. Leibniz noted that certain incommensurate infinite series, although they also are not reducible to equations, have been "mastered." [cf. L 265] Nevertheless, he denies, without explanation, that an infinite series of truths of fact can be mastered. Leibniz probably thought that mathematical infinite series had some property that allowed them to be mastered, other than their being homogeneous. 22 LP 77-78: "A true contingent proposition cannot be reduced to identical propositions, but is proved by showing that if the analysis is continued further and further, it constantly approaches identical propositions, but never reaches them. Therefore it is God alone, who grasps the entire infinite in his mind, who knows all contingent truths with certainty. So the distinction between necessary and contingent truths is the same as between lines which meet and asymptotes, or between commensurable and incommensurable numbers. But a difficulty stands before us. We can prove that some line - namely, an asymptote, constantly approaches another and (also in the case of asymptotes) we can prove that two quantities are equal,

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by showing what will be the case if the progression is continued as far as one pleases; so human beings will also be able to comprehend contingent truths with certainty. But it must be replied that there is a likeness here, but there is not a complete agreement. .. we can no more give the full reason for contingent things than we can constantly follow asymtotes and run through infinite progressions or numbers." Another reason that Leibniz could give for his claim that there is no "full" demonstration of contingent facts is that, according to him, there is no idea of the universe [DSR 81] and that the universe cannot be be considered as a whole [N 151] nor is it a true whole. But the universe plus the will of God are the reason for a contingent truth. 23 Leibniz marshals his familiar argument for this proposition in 'On the Radical Orgin of Things.' G VII 302. 24 Ishiguro, Leibni'l.'s Philosophy: 124-125. 25 Wilson, 'Possible Gods': 721-723. 26 Adams, Leibni'l.: 76. 27 Ibid., 76. 28 Leibniz might have used his infinite analysis postulate to preserve also the criterion that demonstrable propositions are necessary. It might be maintained that the finite demonstration of a contingent truth would go to show that demonstrability is not a criterion of necessity since we know that truths of fact are not necessary. In this case, the demonstration of God's existence from his definition would not establish that he exists necessarily, only that his existence can be proven.

CONCLUSION Leibniz quotes Bayle towards the end of the last of the three essays that make up his Theodicy: Everything comes back in the end to this: Did Adam sin freely? If you answer no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. You may write a hundred volumes against one or the other of these conclusions, and yet you will confess, either that the infallible prevision of a contingent event is a mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in which the creature which acts without freedom sins nevetheless is altogether incomprehensible. [T 368]

Leibniz answers Bayle: Either I am greatly mistaken, or these two alleged incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions ...When one asserts that a free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusing freedom with indetermination, or with indifference that is complete and in equipose; and when one maintains that the lack of freedom would prevent man from being guilty one means a freedom exempt not from determination or from certainty, but from necessity and from constraint. This shows that the dilemma is not well-expressed ... [T 369]

Leibniz's "solutions" to the difficulties consisted in his articulating what he thought were clear conceptions of freedom, determination, possibility, necessity, and predestination. He claims that the clarifications reveal that dilemma is "not well-expressed," and that, viewed clearly, the paradox dissolves. In attempting to understand Leibniz's clarifications of the notions of freedom, determination etc., and how they figure into his account of counterfactuals and freedom, twentieth century commentators have been prone to begin relatively late in his logico-metaphysical story. Typically, they begin with his doctrine of complete concepts or his criterion of truth. If the right question is not asked after beginning in this way, it is easy to reach the conclusion that Leibniz is a closet Spinozist. According to this conclusion, Leibniz's system of principles entails that every true proposition is analytically true whether he admits that this is so or not. If this is so, there really are, in his system, no intelligible, much less, true, counterfactuals. The right question to ask is: "What are the absolute subjects, ontologically speaking, of singular propositions in Leibniz's system?" The correct answer to this question helps to exonerate Leibniz of the charge that he is a Spinozist. The correct answer might seem to be: "an individual subject, bare except for its primitive law." But it is not. As I have argued, for Leibniz, a finite entity's primitive 175

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power is an endowment from God. Leibniz stated that God "puts" individual laws, that he identified with primitive power, into finite subjects. [G IV 548] In Leibniz's system, absolute subjects are subjects boasting only their passive receptivity for primitive power. The fact that subjects are receptive of a gift of power is entirely independent of God. The only truly analytic propositions about absolute subjects must then concern their receptive nature. There must be reasons outside the subject for why it possesses any other attribute or accident. Hence, any other true propositions about a created subject are at best hypothetically necessary because some among the sufficient reasons for their truth do not reside in the subject proper. These reasons pertain to the specific nature God imposes on it, the possible or actual ways in which the subject is positioned in a world (its "point of view"), the laws that govern how its position would vary from moment to moment, and its particular law that ".. .is only a variation of the general law that rules the universe." [G IV 553-554] According to Leibniz, the complete individual concept of each individual contains an individual law and concepts of all of its circumstances. One might propose that conceiving of a possible individual, e.g. Caesar, in another possible world is tantamount to conceiving of his complete individual concept being exemplified in that world. However, if Caesar is conceived in another possible world, the circumstances that obtain in that world - circumstances that are ex hypothesi contrary to his actual world circumstances - must also be contained in Caesar's complete individual concept. It easily follows that if Caesar is conceived to exist in another possible world his complete concept is inconsistent. However, this is not possible since Caesar's complete concept is realized in the actual world and no inconsistent complete concept is realizable. The above line of hackneyed reasoning has been widely endorsed by Leibniz scholars. Nevertheless, as I have urged at length, it is based on a misunderstanding of what Leibniz meant by his statement that the complete concept of an individual must "contain" a concept of circumstances the individual exists in. The consensus among Leibniz scholars appears to be that Leibniz meant that God cannot conceive individuals without conceiving of their circumstances. However, Leibniz explicitly stated only that any conception of a subject that suffices for deducing all that will happen to it in a world must comprise, in addition to a concept of the subject, a concept of circumstances that obtain in that world. This statement amounts to the fairly unremarkable idea that God's knowledge of a subject's history in a world somehow involves both a knowledge of the subject proper and knowledge of the conditions that obtain in that world. Leibniz called the concept that results from combining the concept of a subject with the concept of world a complete individual concept. Knowledge of a subject not combined with knowledge of other subjects and its relations to them is relatively deductively incom-

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plete: it cannot yield information about how the individual will interact with other individuals. Leibniz followed Aristotle in dividing the mind or soul into two facets, passive intellect and active intellect.[Grua 86; L 118] Passive and active intellect not united are incomplete. God creates a complete Leibnizian soul by uniting these incomplete entities. In creating individual substances God creates a composite being, an individual substance, but he does not create primitive active power and he does not create absolute subjects. Leibniz stated that the law of the monad (primitive active force/active soul) develops the confused perceptions of the monad. [G VI 540-541IL 587; G N 523 IL 496; G N 485IL 458 (15)] It is easy to conclude from this that, according to Leibniz, the data that an individual law is applied to are confused perceptions. These confused perceptions are the substance's primitive passive force. The individual law reduces confused perceptions to an orderly sequence, as Aristotle's forms impose order on matter. I Individual laws "complete," as Leibniz stated it, primitive passive power. [G II 250IL 529] They inform primary matter. Paraphrasing Kant, we can say that, for Leibniz, primary matter without an individual law to perfect or order and make sense of it is a blind striving after the Good, while an individual law not united to primary matter (or mind insofar as it is receptive of form) is "meaningless." [G N 509IL 502] There is, of course, a salient analogy here to prevailing conceptions of laws of nature. Laws of nature are thought to govern, guide, or inform the behavior of matter: individual laws inform and govern the development of primary matter. I do not think that the analogy is merely coincidental. It is helpful to think of the primitive law as analogous to a function. The primary matter is then analogous to an argument on which the function "operates." Finally the "derivative force," is the analog of the value of the function. (Values are also "derived" from arguments and functions). A function considered apart from its arguments is incomplete. Likewise, an individual law conceived apart from primary matter that it informs is not, of course, a complete individual concept. If not applied to possible data, an individual law, just like a general law (I am not saying here that an individual law is a general law), will not yield derivative data about an individual. It will not yield a possible sequence of individual "empirical" predicates that, taken together with primitive force, completely characterize an individual substance in concreto as a unique member of a particular species. [G N 518IL 493; G N 4841L 587; T 291] These observations are consistent with Leibniz's view that a complete individual is an individual determined in all respects, down to the very last details. These details include properties that a subject possesses because it coexists with other individuals: properties that "reflect" those other individuals. As Leibniz suggests, however, this hardly rules out the possibility of apprehending a subject con-

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ceptually as a subject without taking into account all of the extrinsic, or, as it were, "reflective" truths about him. Leibniz held that God has a concept that sets an individual subject before the mind to an extent sufficient for him to identify that individual without having to call to mind a complete concept of it. The indeterminacy of in se primitive subjects permits their being conceived under infinitely many possible sets of determining conditions. Waxing metaphorical, Leibniz intoned: It is true that God makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills; but he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble only that which he judges to be best, and who judges well. [T 130; Cf. T 174; cf. T 103; GIl 19/LA 14; T 130]

Leibniz's God has in mind, perfectly clearly and distinctly, what an individual is both before and after he imposes on it an individual law. He sees how the law will harmonize and govern the individual's dispositions and sensations. God's concept of the individual includes the information that the application of the law to the passive power of the individual will yield a certain sequence of accidental properties, or actions and ideas. But God is like a sculptor who sees in a block of marble both a statue of Hercules and a statue of Venus. [N 52; G IV 426/L 294] God can make whatever he sees (presuming that he cannot "see" whatever is unintelligible). Hence, the in se indeterminacy of primitive subjects is the reason why they can be otherwise than they actually are, why counterfactuals are true in Leibniz's metaphysical scheme, and why God chooses from among real alternatives. I do not find Leibniz ever claiming, or even suggesting, that God cannot apprehend a subject in a way that does not imply its entire history of relations with other subjects. I also see no good reason to impute this extraordinary view to him. Why would Leibniz wish to hold such a startling, peculiar, and boring view? What systematic advantage would he gain from holding it? Which of his doctrines would he contradict by denying it? Leibniz only intended to accommodate the tenet that God has a deductively complete conception of each thing; he did not wish to promote the disruptive thesis that each conception that God has of a thing is deductively complete. One might reply that Leibniz, on account of his doctrine of complete concepts, has no systematic warrant to maintain, as he did, that Spinoza could have died at Leyden. This reply betrays a seminal misconstrual of Leibniz's doctrine of complete individual concepts. According to Leibniz, Spinoza is a subject originally limited in ways that no other possible subject of existence is. He occupies a unique place in the great chain of becoming. Every existent subject has a unique intrinsic degree and type of receptivity and a unique primitive disposition to act if it is empowered to act. This is simply the idea that the principle of the identity of indiscernibles applies to Spinoza and other existent subjects sans les vttements de

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nature. Thus, no matter what world of subjects God conceives Spinoza to exist in, he sees in Spinoza his original a priori receptivity for perfection and disposition to resist receiving it. God's cognition of Spinoza's unique receptivity for perfection and disposition to resist receiving it - his unique recalcitrant nothingness - makes possible God's distinguishing Spinoza from all other possible subjects of existence and identifying him no matter what world of subjects he is conceived to exist in. Moreover, he calculates Spinoza's history of inclinations in any possible world by taking into account Spinoza's unique primitive dispositions, those of all of the other subjects he is conceived to exist with, his initial ideal relations with these individuals, and the laws of order he (God) would decree to regulate their development. [G VII

540/L 587] A law governed universe, a universe informed by the principle of sufficient reason, need not be an "Optionless Universe." 2 We do not conclude from the fact that there is a law that predicts the velocity of a body at a given time t given a certain initial velocity that the velocity of the body at t could not be different if its initial velocity were different. But, if we do not draw this conclusion we should also not conclude the law of a Leibnizian individual substance prevents God from thinking of it in different initial states and seeing what would be its subsequent states given those initial states. The same general natural law can be appealed to in predicting what the velocity of a body at a given time will be no matter what its initial conditions are and general natural laws do not predict initial conditions. Likewise, the same individual law can be appealed to predict the successions of perceptions an individual substance would have if its initial state were different. In addition, as different laws applied to the same initial data might yield different possibles histories, different individual laws applied to the same subject teeming with dispositions might yield different histories. 3 It is no wonder, then, that I have not found Leibniz asserting anything which would justify attributing to him the view that individual laws are not to be viewed along the lines of general natural laws. I have found no textual evidence that comes even remotely close to establishing a prima facie case for the view that Leibnizian individuals are initial condition "bound." A subject that God creates is at each moment nothing. That is, at each moment that it exists there are states in which it can be but is not. At each moment it contains a potential for being otherwise. Its potential for being otherwise in certain ways that it can be otherwise will not be realized, not even over the whole of time. There are perfections that the substance can have that it will never have. That is why Leibniz states that a finite creature is essentially incomplete. [Grua 436] It is complete with respect to possessing at each moment as much perfection as it can possess, that is, it is full as it can be at each moment. On the other hand, it is in-

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complete because there are perfections that it does not receive, even though it is full, owing to its limited capacity to receive perfections. There are also degrees of perfection of the perfections that it does receive that are beyond it. Nature would have had a different history if it had had a different beginning. If the laws of nature were applied to different initial natural data a different natural history would be predicted. Likewise, if an individual substance had a different beginning, i.e. a different initial representational state, or a different law, a different history would be predicted for it (at least non-discursively by God). Leibniz does not say that the initial state of an individual substance is to be explained by rrleans of the law. 4 If it were so explicable, then a substance could not have a different initial state under the law. It is rather the consequent states of the individual substance that are explained by means of it. Nor does God appeal to the law of the individual substance alone to predict its future states. He appeals to the law and the original state of the individual substance. It should therefore not be surprising that Leibnizian individuals, even though their histories are law governed, do possibly have different histories. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that Leibniz raised the question of whether there are individual laws which govern the histories of particular, concrete individuals; laws which interpret, so to speak, particular individual initial circumstances. It is even more remarkable (witness Arnauld's response) that Leibniz gave an affirmative answer to this question in the form of his notion of a complete individual concept. The surprise should abate, however, in light of the fact that the answer is demanded by Leibniz's commitment to a doctrine of individual substances and his principle of sufficient reason. This demand is not only consistent with but is the veritable mooring for Leibniz's metaphysics of counterfactual truth. Some final thoughts: Leibniz is an idealist, and the consequences of that fact ought to be heeded: They usually are not. The idealist's ontology consists of minds and their ideas. The activities of minds, according to Leibniz, are thoughts. This holds true for all minds, including God. It follows trivially that, for Leibniz, God's act of creation is an act of thought and, more than this, the result of that act of thought can be nothing other than another thought, no matter that its content, its idea, is a creature. God's thinking differs from the thinkings of other minds in a number of ways, and one of them is that God's thinking is creative, that is, the product of God's thinking is something that exists and acts while the ideas of finite beings are "dead."[L 520] God's ideas to varying degrees resemble him, if only because an effect resembles its cause. God thinks an object and his thinking brings it, so to speak, to life, if that object is fortunate enough to belong to a universal plan that pleases God enough to prompt him to gaze upon it especially intently, to have, what Leibniz called, a "vision" of it.

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It should be clear that the difference between an existing object and a nonexisting object must consist, for Leibniz, in how God thinks it, for that is, again, all that Leibniz's God does. Call it willing, if you will, but willing is a form of thought and the objects of thought, one and all are ideas, that is, objects of thought. When Leibniz's God thinks creatively, he fulgarates, and fills what ever is struck with a light: that makes what was previously disorderly and therefore invisible to it visible. Thus creatures have within them a "ray of the divine." What causes God to fulgarate? Leibniz would say that it is his action upon himself. God acts upon himself by combining the ideas that are in him in "infinitely infinite ways." The combinations are possible worlds. Stories, literally, about possible things. In creating finite minds, God shares a particularly glorious story with them, a story made even more glorious by the fact that it casts them as characters with Satan as its villain and Christ its hero. The phenomenal life of a mind is a "theater" [CD 143] that is not "really real" as Plato would say. But it is real enough. It is connected and makes sense. Everything in it has an explanation that brings into account everything else, as should be the case in a good story. The plot is simple but there is a great deal of variety and a great deal of action. Some souls get better seats in the house than others, or better points of view. 5 Points of view change over time for better and for worse. Overall, and in the long run, however, Leibniz states that the tale gets more interesting, more perfect, at least for spirits. [DSR 61; DSR 83] We should have hope and faith that it will work out to our very best advantage. A good life for a mind can consist of nothing other than good thoughts. The best thoughts are thoughts of God and his perfections, perfections that are hidden in the symbolism of the story of life. [CD 142] We need to think of this perfect being, according to Leibniz, to achieve happiness. He held that piety, love of God, and knowledge of God's perfection, are the sole end of man, and in effect the same, namely, true and eternal happiness or salvation. [M 90] Salvation, for Leibniz, is nothing other than an eternal admiration of God, and damnation is nothing other than an eternal hating of him. [T 271] Spirits are defective or limited, Leibniz wrote, insofar as they do not aspire to a greater love of God. [T 32-33] Complaining about how bad life is exacerbates this defect. No one who reflects attentively and honestly on God's perfections, Leibniz maintained, has any grounds for complaint. It is fully within our power to make life bring us joy and that very fact, when understood, is a source itself of joy. All that we need do is love God. [DSR 31] According to Leibniz, it was Christ's mission to make that love possible, a mission that was begun by Moses. [T p. 51] To understand Leibniz, it is crucial to understand that he saw himself as, more than anything else, continuing the work of Christ.

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NOTES TO CONCLUSION 1Aristotle,

Physics 252a12. I borrow this expression from a conversation with Gareth Matthews. 3 It is important to bear in mind that, for Leibniz, individual laws are not, as Russell would put it, "identical" with their subjects or, to say the same thing, Leibniz denied that attributes are identical with their subjects. This raises the question, however, of whether different individual laws could be applied to the same subject. This question resembles the question of whether subjects can have different accidents. If individuals have different individual laws in different possible worlds this would not prevent their being identified across possible worlds. Identification across possible worlds is made on the basis of dispositions that are governed and developed by individual laws, not on the basis of individual laws. 4Sleigh makes an allied point in 'Leibniz on Malbranche': (162): "According to (Leibniz's) thesis of spontanaiety every non- initial, non-miraculous state of every created substance has as a real cause some preceding state of that very substance." 5 "[T]he laws of nature do not prevent man from being more perfect: but the place God has assigned to man in space and time limits the perfection he was able to receive." [T 341] 2

ABBREVIATIONS A

G. W. Leibniz. Siimtliche Schriften und Brie/e. der Wissensschaften. Darmstadt, Leipzig, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966.

AG

G. W. Leibniz. Philosophical Essays. Ed. and tr. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.

C

Opuscules et fragments inedits de Leibniz. Ed. Louis Couturat. Reprint. Hildesheim: George Olms, 1966.

CD

G. W. Leibniz. Causa Dei. In S: 114-145. Cited by article number.

CP

Confessio philosophi. Ed. and tr. Y. Beleval. Paris: J. Vrin, 1970.

CSM

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Tr. J. Cottingham,R. Stuthoff, and D. Murdoch. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

DM

G. W. Leibniz. Discourse on Metaphysics. Cited by article number. Tr. and ed. by Leroy Loemker in L: 303-330.

DSR

G. W. Leibniz. De Summa Rerum, Metaphysical Papers, 1675-1676. Ed. and tr. G. H. R. Parkinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

E

G. W. Leibniz. Opera Philosophica Omnia. Ed. J. Erdmann. Berlin: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1840.

F

G. W. Leibniz. Nouvelles Lettres Et Opuscules Inedits De Leibniz. Ed. A. Foucher De Careil. Paris, 1857. Reprint. Heldesheim: Georg Olms, 1971.

G

G. W. Leibniz. Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Ed. C. I. Gerhardt. 7 vals. Berlin: Weidmann, 1875-90. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1978.

GLW

Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz und Christian Wolff. Ed. C. I. Gerhardt, Halle: H.W. Schmitt, 1860. Reprint. Hidelsheim: Georg Olms, 1963.

183

Ed. Deutsche Akadernie and Berlin. Reprint.

184

ABBREVIATIONS

GM

G. W. Leibniz, Die mathematischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Ed. C. 1. Gerhardt. 7 vols. Berlin: A. Asher; Halle: H. W. Schmitt, 1849-90. Reprint Hildesheim: Georg alms, 1978.

Grua

G. W. Leibniz. Textes Inedits. 2 vols. Ed. G. Grua. Paris: University Press of France, 1948.

H

Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays. Ed. M. Hooker, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

L

G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters. Ed. and tr. L. Loemker. 2nd edition. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1969.

LA

The Leibniz - Arnauld Correspondence. Ed. and tr. H. T. Mason. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967.

LP

G. W. Leibniz. Leibniz, Logical Papers. Ed. and tr. G. H. R. Parkinson, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

M.

G. W. Leibniz. Monadology. In L, 643-652.

MP

G. W. Leibniz. Leibniz Philosophical Writings. Ed. G. H. R. Parkinson. Tr. G. H. R. Parkinson and Mary Morris. London: Dent, 1973.

N

G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding. Ed. and tr. P. Remnant and J. Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

RL

G. W. Leibniz. Lettres de Leibniz Arnauld d'apres un manuscrit inedits. Ed. G. R. Lewis. Paris, 1952. Reprint. New York and London: Garland, 1985.

S

G. W. Leibniz. Monadology and other Philosophical Essays. Tr. P. Schrecker and A. Schrecker. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.

T

G. W. Leibniz. Theodicy. Tr. E. M. Huggard. La Salle: Open Court, 1966. I cite texts either by page number and book abbreviation, e.g. liT p. 43" or by article number, e.g. liT 43."

W

G. W. Leibniz. Selections. Tr. and ed. P. Wiener. New York: Scribner, 1951.

a

BIBLIOGRAPHY TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Aquinas, Thomas, On Spiritual Creatures. Translated by Mary C. Fitzpatrick and John J. Wellmuth, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1949.

_ _ _ . Summa Theologica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. Aristotle, Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross in The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon editor, New York: Random House, 1941.

Nicomachaean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Translated by G. R. G. Mure. In The Basic Works of Aristotle. Armstrong, David M., A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram. 2 volumes. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. New York: Newman Press 1982.

_ _ _ . On the Free Choice of the Will. Translated by Anna S. Benjamin. Indianapolis: Bobbs - Merrill, 1964. Bayle, Pierre, Selections. Translated and edited by Karl C. Sandberg. New York: Ungar, 1963. Berkeley, George, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979.

_ _ _ . A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Edited by Colin M. Turbayne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1957. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by V. E. Watts. London: Penquin Books, 1969. Descartes, Rene Philosophical Letters. Translated and edited by Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

185

186

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_ _ _ . The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Feldman, Fred, Introduction to Philosophy. New York: McGraw Hill, 1993. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929. _ _ _" Inaugural Dissertation. Tanslated by John Handyside, Westport: Hyperion Press, 1929. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Samtliche Schriften und Briefe. Edited by German Academy of Science. Darmstadt, Leipzig, and Berlin: Georg Olms and Akademie Verlag, 1923-. _ _ _ . Opuscules etfragments inedits de Leibniz. Edited by Louis Couturat, Paris: 1903. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966. _ _ _ . Confessio philosophi. Edited by Yvonne Beleval, Paris: J. Vrin, 1970. _ _ _ . Discourse on Metaphysics. In Loernker, Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters: 303-328. _ _ _ . Opera Philosophica Omnia. Edited by Johann Eduard Erdmann, Berlin: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1840. _ _ _ . Nouvelles lettres et opuscules inedits de Leibniz. Edited by A. Foucher De Careil, Paris: 1857. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1971. _ _ _ . Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Edited by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. Berlin and Halle, 1875-1890. Reprint. Hilsdesheim: Georg Olms, 1965. _ _ _ . Die mathematische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Edited by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. Berlin and Halle, 1849-1863). Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963. _ _ _ . Textes in edits, 2 vols. Edited by Gaston Grua, Paris: University Press of France, 1948. _ _ _ . Philosophical Papers and Letters. Edited and translated by Leroy Loernker, 2nd ed., Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1969. _ _ _ . Philosophical Essays. Translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.

REAL ALTERNATIVES

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The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence. Edited and translated by H. T. Mason, Manchester, 1967. Reprint. New York and London: Garland, 1985. _ _ _ . Der Briefwechsel des Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in der Koniglichen offentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover. Edited by Eduard Bodemann, Hanover: 1895. Reprint. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966. _ _ _ . Logical Papers. Edited and translated by G. H. R. Parkinson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. _ _ _ . Monadology. In Loemker, Philosophical Papers and Letters: 643-652. _ _ _ . Leibniz: Metaphysical Papers. Translated by G. H. R. Parkinson, New Haven: Yale University Press 1992. _ _ _ . New Essays on Human Understanding. Translated by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. _ _ _ . Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays. Translated by Schrecker, Paul and Anne Martin Schrecker, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Theodicy. Translated by E. M. Huggard, La Salle: Open Court, 1966. Leibniz: Selections. Translated and edited by Peter P. Wiener, New York: Scribner 1951. Lewis, David, On the Plurality o/Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Malebranche, The Search After Truth. Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980. Plato, Phaedo. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. In Readings in Ancient Philosophy, S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, and C. D. C. Reeve, eds. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995.

_ _ _ . Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Revised by C. D. C. Reeve. In Readings in Ancient Philosophy, S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, and C. D. C. Reeve, eds. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995. _ _ _ . Symposium. Translated by P. Woodruff and A. Nehemas. In Readings in Ancient Philosophy, S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, and C. D. C. Reeve, eds. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995.

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Plotinus, The Six Enneads. Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952. Ree, Paul, The Illusion of Freewill. Translated by Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, Berlin, 1973. Spinoza, Ethica. In Spinoza Opera, Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925 _ _ _ . Ethics. Translated by Samuel Shirley, edited by Seymour Feldman, Indianapolis: Hackett 1982. Suarez, Francis, On The Essence Of Finite Being As Such, On The Existence Of That Essence And Their Distinction. Translated by Norman J. Wells, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1983. Theodore G. Tappert, Translator and Editor, The Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959.

SECONDARY LITERATURE Abraham, W. E., 'Complete Concepts and Leibniz's Distinction between Necessary and Contingent Truths.' In Studia Leibnitiana (1969) 114263-279. Adams, Marilyn McCord, William Ockham, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1987. Adams, Robert, Letbniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. _ _ _ . 'Predication, Truth and Transworld Identity in Leibniz.' In Bogen and McGuire, How Things Are: 235-283. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz's Theories of Contingency.' In H: 243-283. _ _ _ '. 'Theories of Actuality.' In Loux, The Possible and the Actual: 190-209. _ _ _ . 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity.' In The Journal of Philosophy, volume 76, No.1, January 1979: 5-26. David Blumenfeld, 'Superessentialism, Counterparts, and Freedom.' In H: 103-123. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz's Theory of the Striving Possibles.' In Studia Leibnitiana, 1973: 163177.

REAL ALTERNATIVES _ _ _ . 'Leibniz on Contingency and Infinite Analysis.' Phenomenological Research 4, June 1985: 483-514.

189 In Philosophy and

Bogen, James, and James E. McGuire, ed. How Things Are: Studies in Predication and the History of Philosophy and Science. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985. Broad, C. D., 'Leibniz's Last Controversy with the Newtonians.' In Woolhouse, Leibniz, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science: 157-174.

_ _ _ . Leibniz, An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Brown, Gregory, 'Compossibility, Harmony, And Perfection In Leibniz.' In The Philosophical Review, Volume 96, Number 2, April 1987: 173-203. Brown, Stuart, Leibniz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Copp, David, 'Leibniz's Thesis That Not All Possibles are Compossible.' In Studia Leibnitiana (5) 1973,26-42: 27. Cover, J. A. and Mark Kulstad, Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990. Curley, Edwin, 'Leibniz on Locke on Personal Identity.' In H: 302-326. Davidson, Donald and Harman, Gilbert, editors, Semantics of Natural Language, 2nd ed. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972. Erickson, Stephen A., 'Leibniz on Essence, Existence, and Creation.' In Review of Metaphysics, 1965: 477-487. Frankel, Lois, 'Being Able to do Otherwise: Leibniz on Freedom and Contingency.' In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Critical Assessments. Ed. Roger Woolhouse. London: Routledge, 1994. Frankfurt, Harry G., editor, Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Doubleday, 1972. Gale, George, 'On What God Chose: Perfection and God's Freedom.' In Studia Leibnitiana (8/1) 1976: 69-87. Geach, Peter, 'Causality and Creation.' In Geach, Peter, God and the Soul, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969

190

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Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. Translated by A. H. C. Downes. New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1940. Grimm, Robert, 'Individual Concepts and Contingent Truths.' In Studia Leibnitiana 1970: 200-223. Hacking, Ian, 'A Leibnizian Theory of Truth.' In H: 185-195. Hooker, Michael, editor, Leibniz: Critical and Interpretative Essays Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Hostler, John, Leibniz's Moral Philosophy, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975. _ _ _ 'Some Remarks on 'omne possibile exigit existere," in Studia Leibnitiana, 1973: 281-285. Hunter, Graeme, 1981,123-32.

'The Superessentialist Misunderstanding.' In Studia Leibnitiana 13/1

Ishiguro, Hide, Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. Jalabert, Jacques, Le Dieu de Leibniz, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1947. Reprint, New York and London:Gariand 1985. Jarrett, Charles E., 'Leibniz on Truth and Contingency.' In Jarrett, King - Farlowe, and Pellitier, eds. New Essays on Rationalism and Empiricism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supplementary volume 4 (1978). Jarrett, King - Farlowe, and Pellitier, editors, New Essays on Rationalism and Empiricism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supplementary volume 4 (1978). Jolley, Nicholas, Leibniz and Locke, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Kripke, Saul, 'Naming and Necessity.' In Davidson and Harman, Semantics of Natural Language: 253-355. Kulstad. Mark. 'Did Leibniz incline toward Monistic Pantheism in 1676?' In Leibniz and Europe. Proceedings of Sixth International Leibniz Congress. Hannover: 424-428. Loernker, Leroy, 'Boyle and Leibniz.' In Leclerc, The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World: 248-275

REAL ALTERNATIVES

191

_ _ _ . 'On Substance and Process in the Philosophy of Leibniz.' In Leclerc, The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World: 52-77. LeClerc, Ivor, editor, The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1973. Loux, Michael, editor, The Possible and the Actual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. Lovejoy, Arthur 0., The Great Chain of Being. New York: Harper 1936. Maher, Patrick, 'Leibniz and Contingency.' In Studia Leibnitiana, 1980: 236-242. Mates, Benson, 'Individuals and Modality in the Philosophy of Leibniz.' In Studia Leibnitiana 4 (1972), 81-118. _ _ _ . The Philosophy of Leibniz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz on Possible Worlds.' In Frankfurt: Leibniz: 335-364. Mondadori, Fabrizio, 'Understanding Superessentialism.' In Studia Leibnitiana, (1985) 17/2,162-190. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz and the Doctrine ofInter-World Identity.' In Studia Leibnitiana 7, 1975: 21-57. Parkinson, G. H. R. Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. _ _ _ . 'Philosophy and logic.' In The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 199-223. Rescher, Nicholas, 'Logical Difficulties in Leibniz's Metaphysics.' In Leclerc, The Philosphy of Leibniz and the Modern World: 176 - 188. _ _ _ . The Philosophy ofLeibniz. Inglewood Heights, N.J: Prentice Hall, 1967. Rorty, A. 0., The Identities of Persons. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. Russell, Bertrand, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. London: Allen and Unwin, 1900. Shields, Christopher, 'Leibniz's Doctrine of the Striving Possibles.' In Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. xxiv Number 3, July 1986: 343-357.

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Sleigh, Robert C., Jr., Leibniz & Arnauld. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge.' In Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 11, No.4 October 1994. _ _ _ . 'Leibniz on Malebranche on Causality.' In J. A. Cover and Mark Kulstad, Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990: 161-193. _ _ _ . 'Truth and Sufficient Reason.' In H: 209-244. Sorabji, Richard, Time, Creation, & The Continuum. Ithica: Cornell University Press 1986. Trentman, John A., 'Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century.' In the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzman, et al., New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982: 818-837: 825. Watson, Richard, The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1987. Wilson, Catherine, Leibniz's Metatphysics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Wilson, Margaret D., 'History of Philosophy in Philosophy Today; and the Case of the Sensible Qualities.' In The Philosophical Review, Volume 101, No.1 (January 1992): 191243. _ _ _ . 'Possible Gods.' In The Review of Metaphysics, 1979: 717-733. Wolfson, H. A., The Philosophy of the Church Fathers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956. Woolhouse, R. S., editor. Leibniz, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Yost, R. M., Leibniz and Philosophical Analysis. University of California Publications in Philosophy, vol. 27. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954. Reprint. New York and London: Garland, 1985.

REAL ALTERNATIVES

Abelard, 53 Abraham, W., 113, 114, 130 absolute nothingness, 105, 130, 147 absolute subject, 83, 177 absolutely impossible, 51 absolutely necessary (absolute necessity), 17, 18, 110, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 163,166,169 absolutely perfect being, 23, 100, 133 accidental properties (accidental predicates; accidents), 25, 26, 28, 39, 33,35,37,48,85,86,96,98,150, 153,159,161,164,170,178,182 action and passion, 70, 118, 133 active force (power), 115, 120, 154 active intellect, 118, 177 actively potent, 150, 161 actual decrees, 26 Adams, R., 11, 13, 14, 18, 19,32,50,51, 53,58,59,60,61,62,67,68,75,76, 78,92,93,95,96,130,170,174 addition of time, 168 alternative possible Gods, 51 alternative possible continuations of a history, 170, 172 analytic, 23, 24, 47, 176 analytically false, 11 analytically true, 11, 175 annihilation, 106 antecedent inclinations, 53 antecedent states, 169 antecedent will (willings), 31, 52, 71 appearance of self, 92 Aquinas, 36, 37, 45, 98, 109, 110, 112, 113,115,119,130,131 Aristotle, 14,23,47,89,90,98, 105, 112,116,117,125,130,131,177, 182 Arnauld, 11,24,25,26,27,28,36,37, 38,47,48,49,67,72,92,93,95,97, 120,121,150, 160,161,162,163, 164,169,170,172,173,180 attitudinal principles, 159

193

Augsburg Confession, 3, 8,9, 15, 16,65, 129 Augustin~ 1,63,98, 103, 128, 129, 130 author of sin, 129 Bayle, 4, 5, 6, 7, 17,42,44,51,54, 141, 150,175 Berkeley, 125, 126, 131, 143, 147 Bernoulli, 128 Bishop Bramhall, 17 Blumenfeld, D., 10, 18, 130, 163, 173 Broad, C., 10, 15, 18, 100, 102, 127, 132,146 Brown, G.,146, 148 Capreolus, 106 causal expression, 69 causes and effects, 29, 152, 169 certainty, 23, 67,166,173,174,175 Christ, 16,94,97, 112, 153, 181 Christian theologians, 87, 103 Stegmann, 130 claims for existence, 8 clear and distinct conceptions (thoughts), 20, 63, 64, 137, clear and distinct thoughts, 63 clearly and distinctly perceived, 42, 66, 136 compatibilism, 8 compatible, 12,44,99, 100, 101, 127, 132, 133, 134, 144, 147 complete concept, 11, 13, 18,20,22,25, 26,28-36,37,38,39,47,48,55,64, 85,89,91,99,113,114,150,152, 155,157,158,160,163,164,166, 167,176,178 compositum, 109, 116 compossible, 24, 43, 100, 127, 134, 142, 146 compound substance, 93 conatus, 56, 113 concept of time, 27, 34, 37,47 concomittance, 69 conditional event, 29 conditioned existences, 28, 54

194 confirmed in good and evil, 64 confused perceptions (conceptions), 31, 35,66,115,127,135,177 consequent and final will., 31 consistently conceivable (consistent conceptions), 10, 11,52,59,62,98 contingent propositions, 28, 149, 152 conversion, 3 counterfactual complete concepts (counterfactual conception), 24, 29, 64, 83 counterfactual conditionals, 28, 29, 172 counterfactual existence, 99 counterfactual identity, 11, 12, 13,26, 28,29,30,32,39,50,54,58,83,85, 86,96,99 counterfactual knowledge, 29 counterfactual properties, 26 counterfactual truth, 13,39,99, 105, 150, 160, 180 counterpart, 50,75, 170 counterpart theory, 73, 74, 75, 156 Cover, J., 48 creatio ex nihilo, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 110, 112 creation, 8,25,51,99, 100, 103, 105, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 173, 180 criterion of truth, 11,21,28,45,96, 175 Curley, E., 48 damnation., 8, 39, 97 De VoIder, 57, 132 decretory will, 82 deficient cause, 66, 107 degrees of compossibility, 134 deliberation (deliberate) 7,8, 10, 18,21, 23,31,50,53,54,58,60-64 demand for existence, 8 demonstration, 45, 47, 48, 149, 150, 152, 163, 168, 174 Descartes, 14, 17, 18,42,72,104,105, 112,120,121,130,131,136,145, 147, 163 despotic power, 6, 9

INDEX determinate reason, 8, 41 determination, 6, 7, 18,40,66,67,71, 72,151,175 devil, 3, 17, 108 discursive demonstration, 166 dispositions, 4, 171, 178, 179, 182 distinctions of reason, 34 distinctly conceivable, 43, 165 divine substance, 83, 94 doctrine of compossibility, 102, 127 doctrine of incompatibility, 101 Eckhard, 120, 143, 144 efficient causes, 33, 46, 67, 68, 69, 72 election, 16, 82, 128 ens rationis, 121 entelechy, 107, 132 Epicurus, 3, 23 epistemically possible, 56, 57, 58 Erickson, S., 131 essence, 18,22,26,27,28,33,34,35, 36,37,45,47,57,62,64,78,79,83, 90,92,94,97,100,102,106,107, 108, 109, 118, 121, 122, 126, 129, 130, 139, 151, 160, 162 essences, 20, 27, 30, 34, 46, 63, 64, 79, 101,106,107,113,121,122,123, 124, 129, 145, 147, 173 essential properties (predicates), 25, 28, 85, 159, 164 essentially incomplete, 179 essentially independent, 105 eternal realities, 116 eternal truth, 45, 46, 47,103, 104, 111, 112, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 129, 173 Evangelical (Evangelicals, Evangelicalism), 1,9,55,78,79,80, 82, 129 extrinsic properties, 95 faith, 15, 16, 17, 19,25,80,110,181 Filioque, 83 final cause, 67, 69 first principles, 14 first state, 33, 34, 36,167,171,172

REAL ALTERNATIVES foreknowledge, 151, 152 Formula of Concord, 8,16 Frankel, L., 56, 57, 58, 62, 76 free action, 7, 22, 50, 60 free (divine) decrees, 13,26,27,28,36, 46,121,153 freedom of indifference, 7 freewill, 16,65,72,79,81,151 freewill in bondage, 65 full concepts, 46 general concept, 33 general good, 18 general natural laws, 179 Gilson, E., 98, 109, 110, 119, 129 good will, 1,3,16,18,82 goodness, 4, 17,44,47,51, 122, 152 grace, 1,3,16,54,66,79,80,81,82,87, 107 Hacking, I., 146, 148 Hansch, 117, 118, 119 harmonized sensations, 107 harmony, 9, 10, 19,82, 134, 135, 136, 142, 145, 147 Hawthorne, J., 48 Hermogenes, 105 Hobbes, 17,42,43,47,88 Holy Scripture, 28 Holy Spirit, 3, 93, 94, 96 homogeneous, 167, 173 Hostler, J., 130 Hunter, G., 24, 48 hypothetical impossibilty, 43 hypothetical necessity (hypothetically necessary), 18,36,151,152,169,172 ideal, 104, 119, 130, 140 ideal agents of evil, 113 ideal being, 119 ideal nature, III ideal relations, 179 identity of indiscernibles, 11, 83, 84, 85, 94,99, 178 image of God,S, 16, 70 impede, 135 imperfections, 63, 97, 102, 135, 139, 140

195

in signo ralionis, 52 inclinations, 17, 57, 134, 179 incompatible, 3, 20, 31,100,101,102, 109, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 142, 144,145,146,151 incompossibility, 100, 101, 102, 103, 127,132 incompossible, 133 indeterminate, 41, 84 individual functions, 13 individual natures, 26 individuality, 32, 33, 37, 119 infima species, 46, 84, 95 infinite analysis account of contingency, 12,165,167,169,172,173 inherent dispositions, 81 inherent law, 107 inseparable, 13, 18,25,36 intelligible, 21, 29, 38, 45,106,124,175 intelligible world, 117, 124 intrinsic expressive powers, 97 Ishiguro, H., 170, 174 Jalabert, J., 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 119,128,129 Jarrett, C., 47 Jolley, N., 130, 131 judgment, 10,47,61,66,67,70,79, 129 justice, 4, 17,47,62 Kant, 24, 47, 116, 139, 145, 177 Keilah,29 Kulstad, M., 78,97, 130 Lactantius, 16 limitations, 66, 83, 97, 120, 133, 139, 141,145 Locke, 17,48,88,89,93,98,130,131 Loemker, L., 19,77,108,173 logically impossible, 52 logically possible, 10 Lovejoy, A., 131 Malebranche, 112, 114, 130, 143, 147 Manichaeans, 9 Mates, B., 29, 30, 32,41, 49, 96, 98, 113,114,127,130,147,172

196 mediate knowledge (middle knowledge), 28,29,39 Meister Eckart, 105 Melanchthon, 9, 16 merit, 8, 80, 82,97, 146 metaphysical connections, 166 metaphysical necessity, 7, 52, 67 metaphysically necessary, 72 metaphysically perfect, 138 miracles, 36, 53, 65, 67, 68, 71, 73,172 mirroring principle, 29, 30 modes, 43, 45, 46, 78, 79,80,97, 116, 139, 143 modifications, 35,119,133,160,161 Molanus, 129 Molina, 29,54, 160, 172 Moline, 1., 120, 130 Mondadori, F., 11, 12, 13, 18,39,42,88 moral community, 134 moral evil, 9, 10, 137 moral necessity (morally necessary), 52, 72 morally impossible, 52 morally justified, 10 morally necessary, 72 Moses., 181 Mysteries, 71 natural dispositions, 81 natural theology, 4 necessary connection, 150 neo-Platonism, 118 New Pelagians, 16 Nicolas of Cusa, 120 nonactual individuals, 114 non-conceptual, 102, 105, 113, 119 nonexistent possibles, 12 nothingness, 63, 79, 102, 104, 106, 108, 125,179 numeric functions, 13 Ockham, 117, 118, 126, 130 omniscient, 20, 21, 22, 23, 70,122,165 Optionless Universe, 179 Origen, 105 origin of sin, 129

INDEX original imperfection, 115 original sin, 3, 5, 63 Original sin, 1, 16 Parkinson, G., 11, 16, 18,45, 172 particular will, 82 passions, 7, 17, 31, 66, 76, 135 passive, 34, 35, 108 passive force (power), 35, 108, 125, 171, 178 passive intellect, 177 passive receptivity, 176 Pelagianism., 82 perceptual expression, 69 perfect parallelism, 69 petites perceptiones, 171 phenomena, 27 piety, 6, 17, 181 Plato, 14,71,72,78,103,104,105,117, 120,123,125,128,181 plenum, 142 Pope, 5 potential beings (existents), 102, 104, 105,107, 110, 111, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128 potential existents, 105 potential memory, 164 practical reasoning, 56 predestination, 3, 175 predetermined, 31 pre-established, 164 pre-established harmony, 30, 37, 68 preexistence of the soul, 111, 129 preexistent Christ, 105 prevision, 164, 168, 169, 175 primary matter, 34,107,108,115,177 primary requisites, 78 primiti ve active, 177 primitive active force (power), 34, 35, 107, 177 primitive force (power), 34, 35, 56, 90, 96,107,177 primitive passive force (power), 34, 35, 108, 115, 177 principle of perfection, 142

REAL ALTERNATIVES principle of sufficient reason, 6, 17,58, 59,72,80,99,150,161,169,179, 180 principle of the best, 51, 72, 172 private miracle, 67, 68, 70, 72 problem of evil, 3, 100 proper deliberation, 64 punishment, 3, 9,18,40,55,57,58 pure possibles, 71, 101, 113, 114, 137, 138 purely possible worlds, 8 real alternatives, 10, 15, 178 receptive, 82, 102, 105, 106, 114, 116, 120,125,154,176,177 receptivity, 104, 107, 111, 138,139, 140,141,154, l79 reduced to an equation, 167 reflection, 8, 30, 64, 70,155,171 region of ideas, 117, 118, 121, 126 relative creation, 115 requisites, 43, 78,134,151,160,164 resistance, 3, 41, 66, 81, 82, 83 reward, 9, 58 right intention, 18 Rorty, 87, 88, 97 RusselI, B., 19,33,34,49,79,97, 127, 146, 148, 182 RusselI-Hacking thesis, 146 Rutherford, D., 3, 15, 16, 19 Saint Anselm, 103 Saint Augustine, 60, 79, 103, Ill, 112 salvation, 3,4,8,17,39,62,66,75,80, 81,82,97,181 Satan, 5, 94, 129 Saurez, 106 Schoolmen, 81,151,152 self-control, 71, 72 self-determination, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73 semi-Pelagianistic, 81 sentient being, 106 separability, 13 separate decrees, 75 Sextus, 156, 170, 171, 172 simple intelIigence, 28, 155

197

simple substances, 117 singular nature, 25 singular proposition, 11, 22, 23 singular propositions, 11, 21, 22, 23, 24, 45, 58, 159, 175 singulars, 20, 21, 23, 45 Sleigh, R., 13, 19,38,39,46,49,85,97, 159, 172, l73, 182 Socinians, 23 Sorabji, R., 127 species differentiation, 95 Spinoza, l7, 42, 46, 47, 78,100,101, 108,119,143,145,146,147,178 sp~h,63,64,89, 135 spontaneous, 7, 8, 154, 172 St. Paul, 19, 82 St. Thomas, 84 stateless substance, 34 Steno,79 Stoic fatum, 6 Stoic philosophers, 9 striving dispositions, 119 Suarez, 106, 107, 128 substance in concreto, 34, 177 substantial forms, 35, 56, 57, 109, 126 superessentialist, 44, 85, 96, 173 superintrinsicalism, 39, 85 suspensions of judgment, 70 TertulIian, 5 The Book of Concord, 3 traduction, 129 transcreation, 106, 128 Trentman, J., 127 Trinity, 83, 93 truths of fact, 27,149,155 unconditionalIy unintelIigible, 151 universal expression, 143, 144 universal harmony, 36, 80 universals, 20, 21, 45, 46,69 vision, 15,23,28,29, 120, 155, 166, 180 Watson, R., 130 William of Ghent" 105 Wilson, c., 124, 125 Wilson, 50, 170, 174

198 worldbound, 24, 30, 44, 85 Wyclif,105

INDEX Yost, R., 78, 96 Zwingli, 16