"Nature never makes leaps" (The concept of the continuum)

"We live in the best of all possible worlds"

Liebniz on Metaphysics

Liebniz held that the universe is composed of countless conscious centers of spiritual force or energy, known as MONADS. Each monad represents an individual microcosm, mirroring the universe in varying degrees of perfection and levels of awareness and developing independently of all other monads- making Leibniz a Pluralist, rather than a monist or dualist.

While monads form independently, they all mirror each other in that they all possess similar features. They are also all connected to each other through commonalities. Lastly, these monads are connected to each other in another way - through their creation by an omnipotent and omniscient mind.

The universe of monads is the harmonious result of a divine plan. Humans, however, as mortal beings with a narrow scope and a limited view timewise, cannot accept such evils as disease and death as part of a universal harmony, marking Leibniz as a believer in Pre-established Harmony.

A problem with "cognitive" Monads

Having ascribed to his monads indestructibility, self-sufficiency, and imperviousness to extrinsic causality, Leibniz distinguished them from truths of reason, - in his "Principle of Sufficient Reason", Leibniz states that every fact has a sufficient reason for why it is the way it is and not otherwise. The principle is at the heart of the cosmological argument for the existence of God . The Principle can be seen to be a generalization of the dictum ex nihilo nihil fit, "nothing comes from nothing".

God, choice, and how the universe works

Leibniz was interested in the mind/body problem that Descartes worked on, as well as the problem of free will. He put forth that mind and body both exist, but that one does not control the other. They are both controlled by god, well in advance, for the good of all humanity. This viewpoint is known as "Pre-determined Harmony".

As odd as this theory is, it is scientific, in that it is a deterministic view. However, the problem is that Leibniz felt strongly that man had free will. Also, his theory of monads implied this, because monads formed and acted independently. As to how he settled this contradiction - well, let's return to this in a later section.

God's part in the equation - and The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is a refutation of omnipotent god claims:

1 If god exists, then there is a being that is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and creative.
2 If there is a being that has these characteristics, then this is the best of all possible worlds (Liebniz)
3 IF this is the best of all possible worlds, there is no unnecessary evil.
4 Rape and murder exist
5 Natural evil exists 5 Rape and murder and natural evil are all unnecessary evils
6 There is unnecessary evil
7 Therefore, god does not exist

If a theist is to reject this argument, he must reject 6. In Liebniz's "Theodicy", Liebniz defended the idea that all evil is necessary evil. Leibniz explained how God ran things in Theodicee. The work was motivated as an optimistic response to "Bayle's Dictionary's" skeptical view of religion.

In the Leibniz-ian universe, we live in "the best of all possible worlds", because any other world would have led to greater percentages of people being damned to hell. We know this, because god is good, and he therefore wants to save as many people as possible. So, we should basically be happy about what we have.

This optimistic work was satirized as a utopia by the French author Voltaire in his novel Candide (1759), in which, a series of unfortunate incidents push the hero to a breaking point that finally leads him to reject the idea that he lives in the best of all possible worlds, despite the optimistic philosophy of his teacher, Dr. Pangloss (Liebniz). Voltaire uses Candide to show a more realistic view of the world, and the misery in it, stemming mainly from man's aggressive nature and his religious intolerance, towards his fellow man.

Betrand Russell also writes on Theodicee in "Philosophy's Ulterior Motives", and I parphrase him here:

In this work he (Liebniz) sets forth, in the authentic style of Dr. Pangloss, the grounds of optimism. He holds that there are many logically possible worlds, any one of which God could have created; some of them contain no sin and no pain; yet (without the benefit of learning from evil) the number of the damned is incomparably greater than the number of the saved. Worlds with more evil also lead to greater numbers of damned. So, just as in the fairytale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, God has chosen the "just right world for us" - leading to the greatest possiblity of salvation.

Leibniz and Queen Sophie Charlotte (who he wrote the book for) who did not consider themselves likely to be among the damned, apparently found thist type of optimism satisfying.

Leibniz wished to escape from the implications of an omnipotent god, who planned out every single action, lead to - that all things were determined. Leibniz preferred to believe man had free will, since it helped solve the problem of evil that plagued theologians. Morever, he felt that god freely chose freewill for man, in preference to other possible worlds. However this leads us to another problem: a choice implies that god is not necessarily good, he simply prefers the good. Nothing constrained him towards doing good.

So Leibniz is at an empasse - either god is necessarily good and lacks choice, or he has choice, and is not necessarily good.

Liebniz shrinks from the determinism that his main tenet implies - that god is necessarily good. How then, does he solve the free will dilmena?

Leibniz' solution is as Russell says "to take refuge in obscurity and ambiguity. By great dexterity he avoids a sharp contradiction, but at the expense of the diffused muddle which pervades his whole system (of thought).