Leibniz's Rejection of Voluntarism

Unlike Descartes who takes a belief in God through his subjective thinking that God is a perfect and that God as a perfect divine being has influenced Descartes' mind and caused him to have a perfect idea of God, Leibniz takes his belief in God more in the things in the universe and around himself as well as in the Sacred Scripture to prove for the perfect of God as he said in the following paragraph in Discourse of Metaphysics:

For I am far removed from the opinion of those who maintain that there are no rules of goodness and perfection in the nature of things or in the ideas of God has of them and who say that the works of God are good solely for the formal reason that God has made them. For if this were so, God, knowing that he is their author, would not have had to consider them afterwards and find them good, as is testified by the Sacred Scripture - which seem to have used such anthropomorphic expressions only to make us understand that the excellent of God's works can be recognized by considering them in themselves even when we do not reflect them to their cause. This is all the more true, since it is by considering his works that we can discover the creator. (185)

Thus, we see that by looking at things in the universe that God created, from inanimate beings to human beings, Leibniz can discover that their creator is God. In paragraph 3, Leibniz again confirms his confidence in God by saying that the opinion of "those who believed that God might have made things better" Is contrary to the Sacred Scripture "which assures us of the goodness of God's work." And he continues to say:

For, if their view were sufficient, then since the series of imperfections descends to infinity, God's works would always have been good in comparison with those less perfect, no matter how he created them, but something is hardly praiseworthy if it can be praised only in this way. I also believe that a great many passages from Sacred Scripture and the holy fathers will be found favoring my opinion, but scarcely any will be found favoring the opinion of these moderns, an opinion which is, in my judgment, unknown to all antiquity and which is based only on the inadequate knowledge we have of the general harmony of the universe and of the hidden reasons for God's conduct (185)

Through the above paragraph, I see that Leibniz doesn't believe in modern opinions that are unknown to all antiquity or to all the known facts about God that were told earlier in the Sacred Scripture, the Bible. Leibniz believed in the stories of the Bible about many things that God had said to the ancestors of the people on earth, had taught them his righteous gospel and had used reasoning when talking to these ancestors. I know that Leibniz believes that God is a fair and righteous being because God has shown that he was against inequality among the groups of the people on earth. Thus, Leibniz believes that God is a reasoning super being who love all the creatures that he created including humankind and whose perfection no one can compare with. To prove that God is a perfect divine being, Leibniz rejects Descartes' idea of God's voluntarism and claims that,

For to believe that God does something without having any reason for his will -- is an opinion that conforms to little to his glory. Let us assume, for example, that God chooses between A and B and that he takes A withoug having any reason to prefer it to B. I say that this action of God is at the very least praiseworthy; for all praise must be based on some reason, and by hypothesis there is none here. Instead I hold that God does nothing for which he does not deserve to be glorified. (186)

What he means by the above paragraph is that God has a reason or a will to do things, and that since God was perfect and has done perfect things, he did not do those things by arbitrary actions but with care and reasoning and a good will. Thus, Leibniz says that we, as human beings, should follow God's way and do things with care and reasoning as well as putting our wills in our actions. Leibniz says, "that the love of God requires our complete satisfaction and acquiescence with respect to what he has done without our being quietists as a result." (186) Leibniz also says, "And I believe that it is difficult to love God well when we are not disposed to will what God wills, when we might have the power to change it." (186) What Leibniz means is that since God loves us, he always wants to do things that are good and perfect for us, and everything that God does, he plans it or have a will to do it in the best way he can. Thus, I see that Leibniz doesn't believe in arbitration, but rather in will and intention. Leibniz says,

For, although the outcome might perhaps demonstrate that God did not wish our good will to have effect at present, it does not follow that he did not wish us to act as we have. On the contrary, since he is the best of all masters, he never demands more than the right intention, and it is for him to know the proper hour and place for letting designs succeed. (186)

Leibniz' key claims are:

1) On divine perfection, and that God does everything in the most desirable way:

We must also know what a perfection is. A fairly sure test for being a perfection is that forms or natures that are not capable of a highest degree are not perfections, as for example, the nature of number or figure. For the greatest of all numbers (or even the number of all numbers), as well as the greatest of all figures, imply a contradiction, but the greatest knowledge and omnipotence do not involve any impossibility. (184)

2) Leibniz is against those who claims that there is no goodness in God's works, or that the rules of goodness and beauty are arbitrary:

I confess that the contrary opinion seems to me extremely dangerous and very near to the opinion of the recent innovators who hold that the beauty of the universe and the goodness we attribute to the works of God are but the chimeras of those who conceive of God in terms of themselves. Thus, in saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God's love and all his glory. (184)

3) Leibniz is against those who believe that God might have made things better:

Nor can I approve of the opinion of some moderns who maintain boldly that what God has made is not of the highest perfection and that he could have done much better. For it seems to me that the consequences of this opinion are wholly contrary to the glory of God. As a lesser evil is relatively good, so a lesser good is relatively evil. And to act with less perfection than one could have is to act imperfectly. (184)

4) What rules of the perfection of divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the ways is in balance with the richness of the effects:

We can therefore say that one who acts perfectly is similar to an excellent geometer who can find the best constructions for a problem; or to a good architect who makes use of his location and the funds set aside for a building in the most advantageous manner.... That is why we mustn't doubt that the happiness of minds is the principal aim of God and that he puts this into practice to the the extent that general harmony permits it. (186)

5) God does nothing which is not orderly and it is not even possible to imagine events that are not regular:

The volitions or acts of God are commonly divided into ordinary and extraordinary. But it is good to consider that God does nothing which is not orderly. Thus, what passes for extraordinary is extraordinary only with some particular order established among creatures; for everything is in conformity with respect to the universal order. This is true to such as extent that not only does nothing completely irregular occur in the world, but we would not even be able to imagine such a thing. (187)

Descartes also has some ideas that are like Leibniz's rejection of voluntarism because Descartes asserts that the mind is free while the body is controlled by natural laws. Thus, the free mind can do whatever the will wants to do; in other words, the will controls the mind or instructs the mind to plan things, to use reasoning in order to achieve what the will wishes. The minds, according to Descartes can transcend the body, and be a slave for the will. Similarly, Leibniz thinks that God uses his will to know what God wants and then uses his mind to plan things, to reason and to create a perfect world in which we are living our lives. In Meditation 4, Descartes discusses that human minds are the possessions of free wills like God, and it is more important that we are most free when we are making choices according to the knowledge provided by the understanding. Thus, according to Descartes, we become freer, more like God, as we acquire more knowledge. Indeed, if we had God's knowledge, we would never have to worry about making a wrong choice, that is sinning. And as we acquire knowledge, we become more and more independent of our bodies. The similarity between Leibniz and Descartes is that they both believe in the power of the mind and the will as the headquarter that controls the mind. They both believe that reasoning, and making choice allow us to be more like God because God uses his will and his intelligent mind to create a perfect universe. One difference between Leibniz and Descartes is Leibniz's account of the nature of individual substances or monads:

Monads are psychological entities which are hierarchically organized. Extension is, on Leibniz's account, relative to our perception and not a fundamental attribute of real things. Leibniz's reason for claiming that monads must be conceived of as rather like souls is that extension is inconsistent with simplicity and unity. Anything which is extended, which takes up space, must have parts; and since monads are simples - atoms - they cannot be extended. Thus, extension, one of Descartes' two sorts of substances is banished from Leibniz's universe. (Scott-Kakures 159)

Leibniz's rejection of voluntarism causes him to explain the notion of individual substance which is called a monad which is mentioned in the above paragraph. In his Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz claims the following sentences about the individual substance:

And since actions and passions properly belong to individual substances, it will be necessary to explain what such an individual substance is. It is indeed true that when several predicates are attributed to a single subject and this subject is attributed to no other, it is called an individual substance... Not it is evident that all true predication has some basis in the nature of things and that, when a proportion is not an identity, that is, when the predicate is not explicitly contained in the subject, it must be contained in it virtually... Thus, the subject term must always contain the predicate term, so that one who understands perfectly the notion of the subject would also know that the predicate belongs to it. (188)

Each individual substance is in harmony, pre-established by God, with other individual substances so that each individual will fit into an arrangement with every other individual substance:

Now, first of all, it is very evident that created substances depend upon God, who preserves them continually by a kind of emanation, just as we produce our thoughts... Nevertheless, it is very true that the perceptions or expressions of all substances mutually correspond in such a way that each one, carefully following certain reasons or laws it has observed, coincides with others doing the same... And God alone is the cause of this correspondence of their phenomena and makes that which is particular to one of them public to all of them; otherwise, there would be no inerconnection. (192)

Finally, for the question: Is leibniz's view of God's nature more or less problematic than Descartes? I would answer that his view is more problematic than Descartes' view because he doesn't account on the mind-body problem as Descartes does for his mind-body interaction (the mind appears to act upon the body and the body upon the mind), and for Leibniz, all substances are to be understood as mental sustances; there are, as a matter of fact, no extended substances. Leibniz' account on the mind-body is the following: it is crucial to see that this is no longer the mind-body problem, as it is traditionally conceived. For example, the will acts upon the body in such a way as to raise the arm. For Leibniz, a priori reason which constitutes the raise of the arm is to be found in the state of the soul:

... as long as we recognize that all contingent propositions have reasons to be one way rather than another or else (what comes to the same thing) that they have a priori proofs of their truth which render them certain and which show that the connection between subject and predicate of these propositions has its basis in the nature of both. (191-192)

Leibniz later develops ways of reasoning such necessary and sufficient conditions and other important concepts related to individual substances, and of course, his views of the soul, the mind, of freedom and the will of God construct more systematic concepts than Descartes' views regarding these matters.



Works Cited

Leibniz, G. W. "Discourse on Metaphysics". Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Eds Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. 184-207.

Scott-Kakures at al. Eds. History of Philosophy. New York: HaperCollins Publishers, 1993.