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Paper for APSA Annual MeetingSan Francisco, August 1996

The Lazy Reason and the Ethics ofLeibniz’ Theodicy

Mark LarrimoreDepartment of ReligionPrinceton University

But perhaps it is just the talk of it as if it werea single act, done once and for all, which hasmisled me into this uncomfortable talk of mysterywhen I am discussing what is in fact the mostfamiliar thing in a good life.... To bereasonable ... is not a single step that takes [theagent] from being an interesting mechanism to beinga person, but an enlargement of the person byrepeatedly stepping back from what is given,finished, and done, in order better to pursueknowledge, beauty, and justice and to enjoyaffection.... Reculez pour mieux sauter.

Lewis White BeckThe Actor and the Spectator1

Despite the considerable efforts of Patrick Riley, Leibnizis not often regarded as an important thinker on ethical andpolitical matters. While several other reasons come to mind,2 surely the main reason is Leibniz’ “optimism,” the

1 The Actor and the Spectator: The Ernst Cassirer Lectures (1974) (Yale UP 1975), 137-38.

2 One thinks of his determinism, his theism, the paternalist implications of his ethical “perfectionism,” his identification with the“medieval” political order displaced by the modern state system, and hisbeing cast as the “continental rationalist” other to Locke (not to mention the continuing repercussions of the priority conflict with Newton). Of course the schematic and undeveloped form of his ethical and

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unfortunate opinion, argued ad nauseam in his only publishedbook, the Essais de Théodicée of 1710, that this is “the best of all possible worlds,” universally regarded as a mostinauspicious point-de-départ for critical ethical or political theoretical reflection. One thinks, of course, of Voltaire’s Pangloss, who combined a dogmatic quietism with the mendacious self-deception which was to become, for Kant,the portal to radical evil.

But were the intentions behind or the implications of Leibniz’ claim the same as Pangloss’? Surely not. Indeed, Leibniz, an explicit critic of quietism of all kinds, was aware that his metaphysical claims -- like any metaphysical claims -- were liable to be misinterpreted in ways inimical to ethics. In this paper, I shall focus on Leibniz’ main discussion of the possibility of such misinterpretation (a discussion with which Leibniz prefaced or accompanied his discussions of justice human and divine in the Theodicy, as elsewhere), the refutation of the so-called lazy reason. Along the way I shall try also to sketch the way in which ithelps us appreciate familiar and unfamiliar features of Leibniz’ metaphysics as also crucial parts of a sophisticated system of ethical reflection and motivation.

My presentation today is in four parts:

I. The most basic background assumptions withoutwhich no understanding of Leibniz’ ethics is possible.

II. Leibniz’ discussion of the lazy sophism.

III. Its importance assessed by means of a consideration of a reading which overlooks it,

IV. The ethical significance of important elements of Leibniz’ thought which it helps us see.

I.

political writings may also play a part.

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Like every other aspect of his thought, Leibniz’ ethics may be approached in multiple ways. Let me start from the assumption that we are all oriented to true goods, which means that, as we per/conceive goods, we are moved by/towardthem. This means that knowledge (at least knowledge concerning human affairs) is inherently action-guiding. Of course our knowledge is generally distorted, confused, incomplete -- a consequence of (sometimes culpable) ignorance. Had we but complete and undistorted knowledge, however, we’d be moral and free: moral, since knowledge of goods is action-guiding; and free, since freedom is knowing exactly what is to be done, wanting to do it, and doing it.. . . Key is that the ethicist doesn’t need to motivate us to care for others any more than she needs to teach us to care about ourselves. She’s more like a plumber, clearing pipes, or a therapist in the Wittgensteinian philosophy-as-therapy sense.3

The task of ethical activism is enlightenment:

To contribute truly to the happiness of men, one must enlighten their understanding; one must fortify their will in the exercise of virtues, that is, in the habitof acting according to reason; and one must, finally, try to remove the obstacles which keep them from finding truth and following true goods.4

The single greatest intellectual “obstacle” is voluntarism -- the notion that goods are not objectively true but made so by some arbitrary will, God’s or man’s.5 Voluntarism generates the characteristic questions of modern ethics like“why be moral?” and “what is the nature of obligation?” and “what is the relation between self-interest and morality?” -- questions which don’t arise for anti-voluntarists like

3 Or moral philosophers generally in the mode Schneewind mentions in the conclusion of The Invention of Autonomy (forthcoming), pursuant to the Pythagoras-and-the-Hebrews story. Leibniz writes that in the Theodicy “I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification.”

4 "Memoir for Enlightened Persons of Good Intention" §12; R 105.5 As the main voluntarists with whom Leibniz was concerned one might

number Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, and, where he waxes voluntarist, Bayle.

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Leibniz.6 Leibniz’ presents his (entirely traditional) response in his idea of “universal jurisprudence”: God recognizes and is guided by representations of the same goods we are.7 This means that in crucial structural ways, God’s ways are like our ways; we’re different only as finiteis from infinite. (In a more mystical vein, Leibniz states that we are each of us the “footprint or reflection of the omniscience and omnipotence of God."8) This makes moral action not an obeying of God but an imitation of God, not because God is omnipotent, or because He created us, but because He does perfectly what we do imperfectly (i.e., he does well would we would like to do well). God’s will is normative for us (“moral necessity”) because it is what our own striving aims for.9

In the context of universal jurisprudence, Leibniz’ neologism “theodicy” (theos [God] + dike [justice]) is clearly an account not only of divine justice but of justice

6 For Leibniz as the greatest of anti-voluntarists, see Mark Goldie, “The Reception of Hobbes,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J. H. Burns with Mark Goldie (CUP 1991), 589ff. J. B. Schneewind has recently asserted that the history of modern ethicsis the history of “responses to voluntarism” (APA Eastern Division Presidential Address 1995). That Leibniz cannot really be made sense of in the terms of modern, especially Anglo-American moral philosophy is demonstrated as it were unwittingly in John Hostler’s Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy.

7 See Gaston Grua, Jurisprudence Universelle et Théodicée selon Leibniz (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953).

8 In "Von der wahren Theologia Mystica," Leibniz writes that our "self-being [Selbstwesen]" contains "an eternity, a footprint or reflection of the omniscience and omnipotence of God" (L 368). Loemker has "omnipresence" here, but Gu I 411 reads "Allmacht," not "Allwesenheit." This unfortunate mistranslation (“omnipresence” doesn’t even make sense!) makes the most quoted line of this important piece undermine its main point, namely, that the true theologia mystica issuesin action, not in contemplation or the wish for absorption in God.

9 I have argued elsewhere that the greatest danger to Leibniz’ ethics of imitation boni -- one of which Leibnizis quite aware -- is the danger that people, forgetting the ways in which they cannot act as God does (e.g. without regret), “play God” to others. (See the end of the Conclusion and the Epilogue of my dissertation, “The Ethics of Leibniz’ Theodicy,” Princeton, 1994.)

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itself, that is, it’s intended for us, too.10 The Theodicy thus is not a vindication of God’s wisdom so much as a series of meditations on better and worse ways of conceptualizing the workings of perfect wisdom, power and goodness, that is, of the wisdom, power, and goodness which we, too, possess.

If we turn to what “theodicy” is thought nowadays exclusively to be about -- explaining the nature and origin of “evil,” and its place in the creation of a God omnipotentand just -- we find that for Leibniz the central mystery is not God’s wisdom or power or goodness, but “incompossibility”: that even a being infinitely wise, powerful and good can not realize all goods in one world.11 Moral tragedy is thus at the center of Leibniz’ vision of the best of all possible worlds, though God, knowing as we cannot that no better is possible, experiences no regret.12 We know the necessity for tragic choice from our own finite lives; the mystery is that such a necessity, however “happy,”13 exists even at the level of the infinite. This world does not contain all possible goods, but it’s the bestpossible world.

10 “Divine justice” functioned the same way in the “Discourse on Metaphysics.” See Robert J. Mulvaney, "Divine Justice in Leibniz's ‘Discourse on Metaphysics,’" in Akten des II. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses, Hannover, 17-22. Juli 1972, vol 3: Metaphysik - Ethik - Ästhetik - Monadenlehre (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1975), 63.

11 Never in question for Leibniz is the existence of such a God. For helpful discussions of the difference of Leibniz’ project from that of Hume (and modern philosophy of religion, for which the existence of God needs to be argued for, rationally or “evidentially”), see Diogenes Allen, "The Theological Relevance of Leibniz' Theodicy," Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa XIV (1975): 83-90, and Nelson Pike, "Hume on Evil," in The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 38-52. This actually makes Leibniz’ project much more like what Alvin Plantinga has taught philosophers of religion to call “defence” rather than “theodicy.” (See Plantinga, "God, Evil, and the Metaphysics of Freedom,"The Problem of Evil, ed. Adams and Adams, 108; Plantinga credits the distinction to Henry Shuurman.)

12 Theodicy, II §165.13 See chapter 9 of my diss.

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God’s determination of the best of all possible worlds is explained in Leibniz’ discussion of antecedent and consequent will, a topic Patrick Riley has taught us to see as laden with political implications.14 God antecedently wills to realize every possible good (and thus to repel every possible evil). Not all goods are compossible, however, and so God consequently wills the best possible combination, the best “world.” The final decretory will is not a new act of will but the balance, the sum of the antecedent wills -- like the mandate emerging from a democratic election.15

Because nothing is added in arriving at the consequent will, the determination of this will can be represented as automatic -- as, famously, in the “striving possibles” account16 -- or anthropomorphically:

The wisdom of God, not content with embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs themone against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection and imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes even beyond the infinite combinations, it makes of them an infinity ofinfinites, that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of which contains an infinity of creatures ...17

and so forth.18 Each of these representations serves a purpose. The former, automatic representation serves to assure us that God wields no arbitrary power.19 The latter, anthropomorphic representation, gives us a handle on things,since we all of us all the time, albeit imperfectly, arrive

14 The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

15 I discuss this analogy at some length in the Epilogue of my diss.16 In the manuscript “On the Radical Origination of Things” dated 23

November 1697 (G vii 302-8, AG 149-55).17 Theodicy II §225.18 The two accounts are not rivals, as Russell and other have alleged,

but fully in harmony with each other, as Theodicy II §201 shows. See D. Blumenfeld, "Leibniz's Theory of the Striving Possibles," Studia Leibnitiana V/2 (1973): 163-77.

19 This becomes the model for the government of a republic, too, the executive all but invisible. See the Epilogue of my dissertation.

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at consequent wills through the more or less fair weighing of antecedent ones. This helps us see that the absence in this world of particular possible goods is not necessarily an argument against the perfect justice of God.

People have a hard time seeing the Theodicy as a book about justice not just because of the fate of the word “theodicy,” but also because of what seem the unethical, indeed reactionary implications of the central argument thatthis is the best of all possible worlds.20 Nicholas Rescher speaks for the greater part of Leibniz scholars when he writes of the implications of Leibniz’ ethics:

Any way of improving this-here-now would exact a sacrifice in the goodness embodied in the world's goodoverall.... The world's arrangements are systematically interconnected. If we improved something here, even more would come unstuck over there -- an 'improvement' at one point of the system always has damaging repercussions at another.21

The argument that this is the best of all possible worlds entails no such thing, however, for (at least) two kinds of reason. The first is that there’s no room in Leibniz’ dynamic thought for a notion of a status quo ante to preserve.22 The other, on which I want to focus today, is that the claim involves a confusion of levels of discourse (a category mistake, if you will). Discussion of the “lazy

20 The major cause here is, of course, Voltaire’s Candide, a critique -- however off-target ‘with respect to Leibniz -- the more powerful forits being the self-exorcism of a once far-less-careful ‘optimist’ than Leibniz ever was. (Indeed, the term optimist’ was invented for the early Voltaire, not Leibniz!)

21 Nicholas Rescher, G. W. Leibniz's Monadology (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 304, 308. The first sentence comes from Rescher's gloss on the final section of the "Monadology"; the rest comesfrom his gloss of the Theodicy’s myth of Sextus, which I read as an exhortation, however mystical, to action; see the conclusion of my diss.

22 What about a clockwork, an organism, a “divine corportion”? Yet Leibniz was bothered enough by the European state of affairs to call, however rhetorically, for missionaries from the Chinese!

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reason” is where Leibniz most clearly demonstrates his awareness of and concern about this problem.

II.

The lazy sophism, which Leibniz probably encountered in Cicero’s De fato or perhaps in Origen’s Against Celsus (botharguably referring to a now lost discussion by Chrysippus)23 appears in all the important precursors to the Theodicy, starting with Leibniz’ earliest known engagement with the problem of evil in 1670 or ‘71.24 It is central to the argument of the “Preface” of the Theodicy, and is the lead-in to the clearest articulation of Leibniz’ ethics in the body of the work.

In the “Preface,” the lazy reason is introduced right after the “two famous labyrinths” of freedom-and-necessity and continuity. “[I]f the knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry,” Leibniz writes, “that ofnecessity is none the less so for practical application; and

23 See Cicero, De fato XII 28ff; Origen, Against Celsus 2.20. See R. W,Sharples, Cicero: On Fate , Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (Warminster,England: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 1991), 76-79 for Cicero, 93 for Celsus. The argument that their common source was Chrysippus is made by JonathanBarnes, “Cicero’s De fato and a Greek source,” in Histoire et Structure:à la mémoire de Victor Goldschmidt, ed. J. Brunschwig et al. (Paris 1985), 229-39, and discussed in Sharples, 22n5, 179. See also Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, colligit I. ab Arnim, Vol. II, Lips. 1903, 277f, #956; references in Cp 168n109). Long and Sedley note that classical sources "overwhelmingly link" Stoic determinism -- not its refutation -- with Chrysippus' name (A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic philosophers [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987], I 392).

24 For discussions of "raison paresseuse," "sophismus ignavus," "sermo ignavus," "syllogisme paresseux," "sophisme paresseux" and "faule Regel," see "Von der Allmacht und Allwissenheit Gottes" of 1670 or 1671 (A vi 540-42); Confessio philosophi of c. 1673 (Cp 69f); §4 of the Discourse on Metaphysics of 1686; a short dialogue of 1695 (Gr 363); the"Convérsation sur la Liberté et le Déstin" of c. 1699-1703 (Gr 483); notes for Burnet of c. 1705 (Gr 458f). (References from Confessio philosophi: ein Dialog. Kritische Ausgabe mit Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar von Otto Saame [Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967], 168n109) This makes the lazy sophism an element of Leibniz’ thought frombefore he encountered Malebranche, Bayle, etc.

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it, together with the questions therewith connected, to wit,the freedom of man and the justice of God, forms the object of this treatise.”25 And then immediately:

Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the ancients called the "Lazy Reason," because it tended towards doing nothing, or at least towards being careful for nothing, and only following inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now the future (so they say) is necessary, whether because the divinity foresees everything, and even pre-establishesit by the control of all things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth, which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events ...26

Leibniz calls the fatalism to which the “lazy reason” leads Fatum Mohametanum or "fate after the Turkish fashion,"because "it is said of the Turks that they do not shun danger or even abandon places infected with plague, owing touse of such reasoning."27 The Orientalism is largely rhetorical: Leibniz indicates elsewhere in Theodicy that he doubts the veracity of the reports.28 But he knows that the charge of Oriental fatalism is a potent one when applied to Europeans (as it had been to Hobbes),29 and alleges: "most men, and even Christians, introduce into their dealings somemixture of fate after the Turkish fashion," especially in

25 Theodicy preface ¶8, (G vi 30) FH 54. Note two things here: (i) the problem of evil is not even mentioned, and (ii) “practical application” is the object of the Theodicy.

26 Theodicy preface ¶9, (G vi 30) FH 54.27 Ibid. See also Theodicy I §55, “Causa Dei...” §106.28 Theodicy I §55.29 Mark Goldie reports that it was common “to call Hobbism ‘the

Mahometan religion’” in the seventeenth century. (“The reception of Hobbes,” 613)

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cases of important decisions like choosing a profession, arranging a marriage, or waging a war.30

This mixing, besides being inconsistent, "is taking unfairadvantage of this alleged necessary fate to employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism."

I have often heard it said by smart young persons, whowished to play the freethinker, that it is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what is written is written, and our behaviour can change nothing therein.Thus, they would say, it were best to follow one's inclination, dwelling only on such things as may content us in the present.... Some even go further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood to make the Divinity accessoryto their licentious way of life.31

Here we see one of Leibniz' main concerns in the Theodicy --people who "play the freethinker" in order to shirk their responsibilities, who make ethical exertion and exhortation appear pointless. It is Leibniz’ hope that the various arguments and demonstrations of his book will expose the errors of “libertines” and dispel the worry which paralyzes others with doubt -- in the process assuring us that ethics is not futile.32

30 Theodicy preface ¶11, (G vi 31) FH 55.31 Theodicy preface ¶13, (G vi 32) FH 56-57.32 Cf. Theodicy preface ¶6: “The old errors of those who arraigned the

Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible power ofGod when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have observedthat these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny;and I have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give explanations on these important matters. But finally I have been compelled to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, andto impart them to the public. It is this that I have undertaken in the

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The Lazy Reason is, of course, a sophism. "It is untrue that the event happens whatever one may do: it will happen because one does what leads thereto; and if the event is written beforehand, the cause that will make it happen is written also."33 As Leibniz explains in a discussion within the body of the Theodicy, “your laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain nought of what you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would by acting with care have avoided.”34 The bed we lieon is the bed we made. Cicero’s and Origen’s example was Laius before he was the father of Oedipus, who would have derailed the Delphic oracle’s prediction that he would be killed by his own son by from thenceforth sleeping with no woman.35 “We see, therefore, that the connexion of causes with effects, far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides rather a means of obviating it.”36 We shall see thatLeibniz’ kind of compatibilism is connected to what I shall call the “indirect” understanding of freedom which lies at the heart of Leibniz’ ethics and politics.

What kind of argument is the refutation of the lazy sophism: metaphysical, psychological, phenomenological, epistemological? I dunno -- it seems like a G. E. Mooreian hand-waving -- but it doesn’t really matter. What matters isthat Leibniz has reminded us that metaphysical views cannot serve as guides for actions in real life. While actions are in fact determined by the spontaneity of each monad, and while exhaustive explanation in terms of the impersonal causal nexus described by mechanistic scientific explanations would be “well-founded,”37 the appropriate

Essays which I offer here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil.” (29/53) See also Leroy Loemker, Struggle for Synthesis.

33 Theodicy preface ¶13, (G vi 33) FH 57.34 Theodicy I §55.35 For interesting variations and interpretations of Laius and the

Oracle, see Sharples, 180-81. 36 Theodicy I §55.37 While stated in Leibnizian language, these are the two components of

Kant’s noumenal/phenomenal dualism. But we shall see that it is wrong toderive a dualism from them for Leibniz.

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language for reflection on human actions is that of a more concrete contingency and choice. Remarking that there are many occasions “where our ignorance is beneficial,”38 Leibnizasserts:

The whole future is doubtless determined: but since weknow not what it is, nor what is foreseen [by God] or resolved [by us], we must do our duty, according to the reasons God has given us ...39

The refutation of the lazy sophism hardly seems a feat of philosophical brilliance (it’s certainly not new), but its implications are radical, since it shows the insufficiency of metaphysical accounts -- of freedom no less than of determinism -- to the lived experience of the (moral) agent.That this is the best of all possible worlds is likewise toogeneral a statement to guide our choices, especially since Leibniz never claims that we can know what precisely makes this world better than others we can imagine.40 It is not forus to discern and affirm the divine consequent will to create this world, since that can be comprehended only by a mind vast enough to contain all antecedent wills, that is, knowledge of all possible goods in any world and their (in)compossibility.

[W]e must always presume that God is prompted towards the good we know, until the event show us that he had stronger reasons, although perhaps unknown to us, which have made him subordinate this good that we sought to some other greater good of his own designing, which he has not failed or will not fail toeffect.41

38 Theodicy I §57. 39 Theodicy I §58. 40 Leibniz would therefore hardly approve, I think, of efforts (Gregory

Brown, Donald Rutherford) to get specific about what makes this world the best; for finite beings like ourselves, the point is to get a betterunderstanding of goods, what Leibniz calls “wisdom,” while the kind of second-order knowledge useful to us is based on a posteriori experience of the world God knew to choose.

41 Theodicy I §58. Cf. also “Monadology” §90: “a genuine pure love,

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Our duty is discussed in terms of God’s antecedent and consequent will, and the best of all possible worlds argument which it brings us back to is now shown to be as important for consolation in the wake of (unsuccessful) action as it has proved useless in the determination of action. The argument that this is of all possible worlds thebest is relevant once we have done what we can of what we think is needful, not before or in place of it. One might say that the best of all possible worlds argument does the same work as religious hope does for Kant: when attempts through action to realize what we know to be genuine goods are stymied by “fate” (the very times when we are most tempted to think God indifferent or even malicious), we are encouraged by the knowledge or hope that “fate” is itself under the control of a good God, who cares for us and for what we care about.42

In this context Leibniz introduces two alternatives to theFatum Mahometanum: a Fatum Stoicum and, his candidate, a Fatum Christianum.43 Fate after the Stoic fashion is not as unfortunate as that after the Turkish, because it does not so much "divert men from the care of their affairs" as "givethem tranquility" in the face of necessity. But while tranquility is no bad thing to have, the Stoics can only which makes one take pleasure in the felicity of the beloved ... [is what] makes wise and virtuous people work for everything that seems in conformity with the presumptive or antecedent divine will, and nevertheless content themselves with what God actually brings to pass byhis secret, consequent or decisive will. (AG 224)

42 Of course Kant’s religious hope is connected to a philosophy of history -- God is letting happen what must happen if humanity is to achieve its purpose (though the argument could also be made that the historical narrative is no more than an edifying fiction, “subjectively necessary”) -- while Leibniz’ understanding of a best of all possible worlds is not. Leibniz (especially in the years after Theodicy) thinks things are getting better, but this is not needed for his “theodicy,” since it is enough to know that the world is the work of a perfect beingto know that no better is possible. It isn’t necessary that it get better over time: this may be as good as it gets. Or maybe the best has already been.

43 The three kinds of Fatum are discussed also in §13 of Leibniz' fifthletter to Clarke (G vii 391).

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"impart a forced patience,"44 a (Spinoza-like) acceptance of the way things are because that is the way they must be. TheFatum Christianum, by contrast, imparts tranquility through "thoughts more sublime,"

and even instructs us in the means of gaining contentment by assuring us that since God, a being altogether good and wise, has care for everything ... our confidence in him ought to be entire. And thus we should see, if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even possible to wish for anything better (as much in general as for ourselves) than whathe does. It is as if one said to men: Do your duty andbe content with that which shall come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine providence, or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquility, but not for contentment), but also because you have todo with a good master.45

How do we know that we are dealing with a good master? By the same a priori arguments which establish that this, as the creation of a being instantiating all perfections, can only be the best of all possible worlds.46 Leibniz is very careful never to suggest that this is something which needs to be (or could be) backed up by a posteriori evidence. A priori we know that this must be the best of all possible worlds; we learn about this world a posteriori; but we’ll never know enough to be able to see what makes this world better than other possible worlds, just what goods it contains, and which it doesn’t. The best of all possible worlds argument lets us understand disappointments in this

44 Theodicy preface ¶10 (G vi 30), FH 54.45 Theodicy preface ¶9 (G vi 30), FH 54-55. The Stoics may have been

less like Spinoza than Leibniz implies (Chrysippus said that one’s foot,if it had understanding, would be glad to be covered with mud [Epictetus, Diss. 2.6.9f. = SV 3.191 = LS 58J], quoted in Sharples 10n1), and Leibniz thus more like them, but it’s worth noting that Leibniz does not identify himself as Stoic.

46 Well, the a posteriori fact that there is something is needed to getLeibniz’ version of the ontological argument (a perfect being is necessary if possible) off the ground.

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world as signs of God’s perfect wisdom, rather than as indications of imperfect goodness or power.

III.

The importance of the refutation of the lazy reason appears most clearly when one considers what happens when itis overlooked. I won’t bother with interpretations which seeLeibniz as unconcerned with “practical application,” or concerned mostly for science, but turn to what is surely oneof the most important recent contribution to our understanding of the ethical dimensions of Leibniz’ thought,Michael Seidler’s indispensable “Freedom and Moral Therapy in Leibniz” of 1985.47

Seidler starts with the important assertion that Leibniz’ “main concern” was “how to insure the enabling conditions for moral praxis in the world.” (17). He points out that Leibniz’ writings are peppered with hints for self-cultivation to which Seidler gives the happy name “moral therapy.”48 As a “perfectionist”49 Leibniz is indeed more a part of classical ethics than of modern morality, and bears many debts to Stoicism. Seidler sees Leibniz as an important “transitional thinker” on the way from the Stoa toKant, which acounts for Leibniz’ thought being, in Seidler’seyes, “a breeding ground for inconsistencies” (34). The problem, as Seidler sees it, is that:

Leibniz analyzed human freedom on two incompatible levels. Besides a logical-metaphysical freedom from necessity secured by well-known theoretical considerations, Leibniz also identified a moral-psychological freedom from the passions. The latter emerges especially in those passages where Leibniz details techniques for organizing one’s affective life

47 "Freedom and Moral Therapy in Leibniz," Studia Leibnitiana XVII/1 (1985): 15-35, esp. 24-28.

48 Seidler uses this term referring back to the “psychic therapy (Seelenleitung) offered by Seneca and his Neostoic disciples” (24).

49 Schneewind calls Leibniz a “counterrevolutionary perfectionist” in The Invention of Autonomy (forthcoming).

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through virtuous habits, elaborating a kind of moral art for the benefit of sensate individuals amid concrete psychological and social circumstances. (35)

It is this art which Seidler means by “moral therapy.” Unfortunately, Seidler continues,

This moral art ... assumes an openness to genuine novelty and personal creativity that is precluded by the logical closure serving to define the very possibility of logical-metaphysical freedom. (35)50

The problem is not just that Leibniz’ system disallows the kind of “openness” his recommendations for moral self-improvement seem to Seidler to presuppose, but, more fundamentally, that the metaphysical account breaks down once one tries to "particularize [Leibniz’] general, metaphysical determinism, that is, to identify the specific (sufficient) conditions for human activity." Attempt this, Seidler asserts, and you step "onto the path of self-refutation."

As soon as the deterministic case (expressed in terms of reasons, causes, inclinations, or whatnot) is translated into concrete examples (such as confront moral agents and advisors), one all of a sudden realizes that there is this or that step that one can take in order to change this or that supposedly determining circumstance51.... Hence, gradually, the metaphysical determinism comes apart at the seams, stitch by stitch. There is a sudden shift from the spectator to the actor stance that occurs in the depthof concreteness. As more and more areas of one's supposedly determined behavior actually give way to self-originated change, the abstract metaphysical claim simply unravels. (35)

50 The problem is connected to the difficulty of reconciling an “atemporal, static metaphysics” with time and change (33n75), an odd difficulty to accuse dynamist Leibniz of.

51 Seidler’s presenting this crucial awareness in an eternal present issymptomatic of his “pre-Kantian” reading of Leibniz, as we shall see.

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This is well put. But it is exactly the argument implied by the dismissal of the lazy reason as sophism! But my pointis more than that Leibniz saw the problem Seidler thinks he didn’t. Far more importantly, Leibniz thought it a problem he had adequately solved. Seidler claims to find a “pre-Kantian ‘ought implies can’ position” in Leibniz, by which he “rescued himself” (24n28), but thinks that the “tension in Leibniz’ account of freedom” can only really be decisively resolved by a “‘two standpoints’ doctrine” like Kant’s.52

human action may be seen from both a spectator and an actor stance. From the standpoint of an observer, freedom means only | the logical (vs. factual) possibility of alternatives in a world wherein everything is lawfully given in relation to everythingelse. The deterministic implications of this view are clear, Leibniz’ claims of spontaneity and contingency notwithstanding. But from an actor stance which is invoked when the previous approach becomes hard-pressed on the level of practice (as we have seen in Leibniz’s case), freedom is a moral-psychological postulate underlying all our parenetic and self-improvement activities, as well as a varyingly experienced capacity of self-control exercised by actual moral agents over their choices and actions. (34-35)

This is almost right: a two standpoints doctrine is at the heart of the moral therapeutic exhortations Seidler shows us. But it is not “pre-Kantian” (unless Kant is more like Leibniz than is commonly supposed) and indeed points in a very different direction. Far from demonstrating the

52 Seidler appeals to Kant and to Lewis White Beck, but Beck’s own argument (in The Actor and the Spectator) discusses an actor and two kinds of spectator (the first of which is no metaphysician), and even acknowledges that we can be the spectators of our own actions (33, etc.), although he doesn’t let this influence his argument until the very end, at which point it, to use Seidler’s term, “unravels.” (See my epigraph above.)

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bankrupty of pre-Kantian Stoic ethics, Leibniz Theodicy shows, I think, a different tradition of ethical reflection at its best.

Leibniz was as unimpressed by the “lively sense of freedom” (to use Descartes’ phrase) we feel in choice situations as was Spinoza before him.53 The sense of indetermination we often feel in situations like this is notfreedom but bondage to ignorance.54 Consequently, the addressee of Leibniz’ moral therapeutic exhortations is not the agent who feels free at all, but a spectator, albeit a different spectator than the metaphysician of Kant, Beck, and Seidler. While Leibniz’ refutation of the lazy sophism shows his agreement with Kant-Beck-Seidler that the view of the detached metaphysical spectator is of no use to ethical reflection, he is as concerned about the inadequacy of the view of the agent, deluded by ignorance into thinking herself free. The important stance for Leibniz is that of the interested observer of the immediate situation, who seesthe actual constraints on the agent, and the options open tothe agent to work towards mastery of them -- interested because she shares the concerns of the agent. Indeed, it is the agent, at a temporal remove from her various actions. Leibniz is concerned with the wisdom which comes of watchingoneself act, seeing what distractions, inducements, companions, environments most interfere with one’s deliberation -- for in the cool eye of retrospect (or of a friend or counselor) we see that we weren’t nearly as free as we thought we were at the time. At the same time, seeing what constraints we were unwittingly overcome by, we can seek means of preempting or building resistance to these constraints.

53 See Ethics 3P2S: “experience teaches us no less clearly than reason,that men believe themselves free simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.”

54 Indeed, Beck concedes this too. Cf. Actor and Spectator, 123: “it may well be that ... ‘chance decisions’ are more transparently caused than decisions we ascribe to reasons.”

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This is the point of the refutation of the lazy sophism, and also the point of “moral therapy.” The key discussion inTheodicy is this one:

[T]he power of the soul over its inclinations is a control which can only be exercised in an indirect manner.... Working ... upon oneself, one must do as inworking on something else; one must have knowledge of the constitution and the qualities of one's object, and adapt one's operations thereto. It is therefore not in a moment and by a mere act of the will that onecorrects oneself, and that one acquires a better will.55

Leibniz is what’s now called a “virtue” or “character” ethicist.56 I want to say that such freedom as we have is “indirect,” and occurs over time in the ways in which -- with help from others -- we achieve mastery over ourselves. Character is a self-regulating process, trading on the dialectical identity of spectator and actor -- but also of individual and society.

IV.

This leads me to three bald assertions I’d like to make inclosing, concerning ethical dimensions of Leibniz’ thought which become apparent once we recognize the refutation of the lazy sophism as Leibniz’ way precisely of not becoming Kant.

(1) First, just as our power over our inclinations is likeour power over other things, so also do others have enormouspower over us, and we power over them. Consider in this light one of the most striking examples in the Theodicy, onewhich is sometimes mentioned to emphasize our powerlessness before “chance”:

55 Theodicy III §§327-28.56 See, e.g., Leroy Loemker, "The Ethical Import of the Leibnizian

System." In The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World, ed. Ivor Leclerc (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1973).

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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, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by the soundest truths ofreligion, exercised in the virtues that it commends tous, dying with all the feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the misfortune of the former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from being saved like his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance should have decided his fate for eternity.57

What is striking about this scenario is not just the “slightcircumstance” that separated the twins, but how many bad things are done to the one twin, and good things are done for the other -- done by other people. As the many sections of the “Memoir for Enlightened Persons of Good Intention” show, much can and needs to be done for us. Moving the focusof ethical reflection to a slight remove (if only a deep breath’s time) from individual action inevitably takes us beyond our individual present not only to our habits and character but also to our social surroundings. The directionin which Leibniz is leading is an Aristotelian politics, that where a good political order is needed in order that individuals be brought up who develop the right sort of character for lives of justice. (Leibniz’ discussions of political structure and legitimacy make it clear that statesexist only to contribute to the flourishing of their citizens.) Leibniz’ account of human action and virtue thus gives us reason to be interested in others, even before we recall that the representation of the good of others may move me in the same way as does that of my own. For the sakeof others, and not just for my own sake, a just society is crucial.58

57 Theodicy I §101.58 So the opposite of liberal contract views where we get together to

maximize and stabilize our own interests; see the Epilogue of my diss. The way egoism and altruism (were one to take them separately) converge here is a typical Leibnizian move.

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(2) A second thing to notice is that, while Leibniz’ ethics does trade on a relationship of actor and spectator, these are for us dialectically related and, like all distinctions in Leibniz, differences of degree and not of quality. Indeed, we can understand them fully only when we understand their conceptual interpenetration.

At the center of Leibniz’ understanding of things is (infinitesimal) movement along a continuum which reaches from the finite and limited to the infinite, to God.59 The God’s eye view is the goal, but it can be approached only byattention to the way immediately before us; trying to jump the gun, to leap to the conclusion, is not just hubristic but unproductive and self-deluding. In an interesting paradox, we are less godlike when we play the infinite God than when we learn the specificity of our finiteness.60 Distinctions which for other thinkers (Pascal, Bayle, Kant) represent agonizing (though often edifying) abysses are for Leibniz more like maps which assure us that, while the terrain is rough and the distances great, progress from A toB is possible -- and possible only through the rough terrain. Indeed, it is far closer to the mark to see Leibnizas a quasi-pragmatist “problem solver”61 than as a representative of “rationalist metaphysics.” Abstract knowledge, for all its certainty and promise of future understanding, is barren; attend to the details.62 We have seen how character, understood as a self-regulating process,forces us to attend to the details of the particular situation and the habits, strengths and weaknesses of the

59 A suggestive summary account of this view may be found Miodrag Cekic, "Die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Leibnizens Infinitesimalrechnungund seiner Monadologie," Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa XIV (1975): 357-82. See also R. W. Meyer, Leibniz und die europäische Ordnungskrise (1948), trans. by J. P. Stern as Leibnitz and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1952).

60 This is the real point of a passage of the Theodicy Catherine Wilsonhas characterized as “nightmarish,” II §147. See my dissertation, 224ff.(Of course the specificity of our finiteness is our identity.)

61 Stuart Brown helpfully describes Leibniz’ as a “problem-solving philosophy.” See his Leibniz (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1984), 206.

62 Indeed, for Leibniz the ontological status of anything but individuals is highly uncertain.

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agent. This can be represented as a dialectic of actor and spectator, but we have seen that Leibniz would have us work towards the collapsing of actor and spectator into each other.63 This emphasis is the opposite of that of thinkers who would have us attend to polarities and oppositions, and makes Leibniz surprisingly attractive to an age weary of meta-narratives.

(3) Finally, the contrast with Kant’s standpoint theory brings us back to the ethical purport of possible worlds analysis. In our deliberation, as long as we are finite, we should always be attempting to do God’s antecedent will. Often the fruits do not materialize, and, as I’ve argued, this is the point at which the Fatum Christianum kicks in: “ah,” we are to say, “that particular good which I tried to bring about does not fit into the best of all possible worlds.” But these flashes of awareness are always of the past, and we generalize them at our peril. Our reference when we look forward, when we deliberate among possible avenues of action, is never -- except accidentally -- this world, but neither is it a distinct realm of freedom, a heavenly city which transcends the world of our experience. Rather do we refer to other possible worlds.

In this way, Leibniz’ “metaphysical postulates” of the moral life are dramatically different from Kant’s. Whereas for Kant, as for Plato, there is an ideal world which we,

63 We will never know enough to experience every choice as the happy necessity of purest positive freedom, but we can move in that direction.Examples of this are legion, a fine example being the distinction between the kinds of pleasure Leibniz discusses in the fragment “Of felicity.” Moral self-consciousness, especially the kind fostered by theStoicoid “moral therapy” to which Seidler draws our attention, trades onthis dialectic. This is not the Kantian actor/spectator split Seidler endorses, since for Leibniz neither of the Kantian perspectives is available in the concrete case. The determinist “spectator” stance cannot be particularized, and the Stoic-Kantian theory of freedom is, for Leibniz, looking in the wrong place. There is a kind of spontaneity in every act, but this metaphysical view is as unwieldy in the concrete case as determinism. We are much better served by a compatibilist understanding of agency as the dialectical, social, and self-correcting process of character. Indeed, as Leibniz argues in refuting the lazy sophism, that’s the only way to think about human action.

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perhaps futilely, strive through action to pretend we’re in,for Leibniz, as for Aristotle, things ethical are a great deal more complex. Justice involves a phroneisis, a practical reasoning which is not the application of rules with reference to an easily graspable model of an ideal order. All the rules are but rules of thumb, and moral discernment is about knowing how to balance them, how to trade off among them, but really how to see beyond them to the salient features of particular situations. Far from encouraging us to accept or reject the actual world in toto,Leibniz calls us to abandon thinking about the “world” as such and attend to possible goods it may be in our power to effect. We participate in the best of all possible worlds bybeing moved by representations of the various goods in possible worlds, leaving to the outcome whether various realpossible goods are meant to be actual in this one.64

In this paper I hope to have given at least a general impression of the ethics of Leibniz’ Theodicy, something we can never reconstruct by asking the questions of modern moral philosophy, inquiring about the metaphysics of freedom, or obligation, or whatever. The Fragestellung must be Aristotelian rather than Platonic, Christian rather than Stoic. As its placement in his works suggests, Leibniz thought the refutation of the lazy reason an appropriate gateway to understanding such a view.

64 Cf. Leibniz’ riposte to King’s blatant world-accommodationism: “[King] says rightly ... that in order to be happy we must adapt our choice to things, since things are scarcely prone to adapt themselves tous, and that this is in effect adapting oneself to the divine will. Doubtless that is well said, but it implies besides that our will must be guided as far as possible by the reality of the objects, and by true representations of good and evil.” ("Remarques sur le livre de l'originedu mal, publié depuis peu en Angleterre" appended to the Theodicy, §26).