HKB
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Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · the nature and attributes of God · soul and body · reason and the intellect · providence and divine governance · perception and the senses · logic, method, and demonstration · fate, destiny, and necessity · well-grounded seemings · the problem of evil and theodicy · system of pre-established harmony · spontaneity
Usually: argument (8) · detachment (7) · reflection (4) · skepticism (4) · crisis of belief (3) · wonder (3) · censure (1) · curiosity (1) · exhortation (1)
“Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing continually.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · vivid
“In such choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate simply between shaped and given possible schemes.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · insight
“For this reason one may say also in a metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and the body upon the soul.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · insight
“Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them in good.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · observation
“Thus praise and blame, rewards and punishments would preserve always a large part of their use, even though there were a true necessity in our actions.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · precept
“It so happens that the ancient Stoics were not far removed from this system.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · observation
Responding to skepticism, it claims minds represent the world from within their own monadic perspective, distinguishes “well-grounded seemings” from dreams, and then questions why harmony must be pre-established by God.
is generated. Death is the reduction and generation the enrichment of some existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the enrichment or the reduction of the monad's mental life. 'But,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from what sense and science make of them. If the real universe is what you say it is, why do our minds rep…
The text criticizes Leibniz by arguing that genuine choice includes artistic creativity, not just determined preference, suggesting that divine creative choice resembles a more intuitive turning and reshapes “pre-established harmony.”
freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. But so mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a late-seventeenth-century philosopher. One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a choice of mere ca…
The author argues that, like a singing animal needing a tablature to know which note follows, the soul would require countless ordered instruments to follow fixed divine “laws,” which is impossible for an immaterial substance.
shall show that the soul has not the instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it I shall make use of a comparison. 'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in s…
Leibniz argues that Bayle’s limits on divine power are unsupported, using analogies and preformation to defend pre-established harmony: once preformed, organism and soul-body correspondence follow naturally.
of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by means of their influence one upon the other. This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore purposed to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms organic bodies himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to intelligences whose power an…
Leibniz defends his view that the soul and body have a metaphysical union without physical disturbance of laws, and he answers critics by citing earlier replies and misunderstandings by writers in Paris.
of talent are still occupied with it, while the public also follows it attentively, I take this to be a fitting moment for the publication of certain of my ideas. It will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon the [69] body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one to disturb the laws of the other, I b…
He elaborates on alternative universal-soul doctrines (monopsychism) and related mystical or quietist views, arguing they can mislead but can be corrected by the System of Pre-established Harmony.
once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our souls. 11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were persuaded that their dogma was proved conc…
He argues that determinism via causes does not erase a genuine spontaneity of the will, explained by pre-established harmony where soul and body coordinate without physical interaction.
that would not prevent me from ordering freely all that I should please, although the action of the automaton that would serve me would not be in the least free. 64. Moreover, since all that passes in the soul depends, according to this system, only upon the soul, and its subsequent state is derived only from it and from its present state, how can one give it a greater *independence*? It is true that there still rem…
He explains that both punishments for the damned and rewards for the blessed persist because of a fitness-based harmony, while also contrasting punitive justice with corrective justice under fatal-necessity scenarios.
the chastisement did not contribute towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius wrote against the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the answer of Crellius thereto. 74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them…
Leibniz explains miracles as operations that cannot be explained by created natures, and he argues God chooses the simplest, most uniform, and most productive general laws consistent with order.
on account of what they are. The more intricate processes take up too much ground, too much space, too much place, too much time that might have been better employed. [258] 209. Now since everything resolves itself into this greatest perfection, we return to my law of the best. For perfection includes not only the _moral good* and the *physical good_ of intelligent creatures, but also the good which is purely *metap…
He claims pre-established harmony secures spontaneity while avoiding apparent indifference, endorsing Aristotle’s spontaneity definition and arguing that genuine freedom excludes absolute equipoise and chance-like choice.
took place in that little deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause or reason. Epicurus had introduced it in order to evade necessity, and[311] Cicero with good reason ridiculed it. 304. This deviation had a final cause in the mind of Epicurus, his aim being to free us from fate; but it can have no efficient cause in the nature of things, it is one of the most impossible of chimeras. M. Bayle himself refutes i…
Leibniz explains that although the soul is active, it cannot be absolutely indifferent; under pre-established harmony, the soul’s determinations are grounded in its ideal nature and reasons in eternity.
with evils. This reply is of no value either: for he ought to have taken into account that what we know is also a very small part of the universe. 335. But let us return to the cylinder of Chrysippus. He is right in saying that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds. He was met with the objection that God formed them, and he could only reply by pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not…
He credits the system of pre-established harmony over occasional causes for explaining body-soul relations and argues Bayle’s doubts and shifts reflect unresolved thinking rather than sound philosophy.
who, in showing him the hall of the Sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some centuries. What conclusions have been reached? he said to them. 354. M. Bayle goes on (p. 166): 'It is true that since the laws of motion were instituted in such forms as we see now in the world, it is an inevitable necessity that a hammer striking a nut should break it, and[338] that a stone falling on a man's foot…