## 1. Various Versions of the Problem of Evil in Leibniz




Before examining Leibniz's views on the problem of evil, it is
necessary to do some stage-setting in order to locate just what sort
of problem Leibniz thought evil presented. Consideration of any
present-day introductory textbook of philosophy reveals that the
problem of evil in contemporary philosophy is standardly regarded as
an argument for atheism. The atheist contends that God and evil are
incompatible, and given that evil clearly exists, God cannot
exist. Some philosophers, conceding that the claimed incompatibility
in the foregoing argument is too strong, contend, nevertheless, that
even if the existence of God and the existence of evil should prove to
be compatible, the existence (or duration, or amount, or
pervasiveness) of evil provides us at the very least with compelling
circumstantial evidence that God does not exist.




Framed in this way, the "atheistic problem of evil"
invites certain sorts of responses. In particular, it invites the
theist to explain how a being that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and
omnipotent can allow evil to exist. Present-day responses to the
problem of evil therefore focus largely on presenting
"theodicies," that is, reasons why a perfect being does or
might permit evil of the sort (or duration, or amount, or
distribution) that we find in our world to exist.




When we consider, however, the works of medieval philosophers who
address the problem of evil, the "atheistic problem" is
not to be found. Since these figures believed that the arguments of
natural theology demonstrated the existence of God, the problem that
evil presented for them was different from that engaged by present-day
philosophers. In present-day terminology, medieval philosophers did
not engage the "evidential" problem of evil: rather, they
engaged the "aporetic" problem of evil, in order to try to
resolve the apparent logical incompatibility between God's attributes
and the existence of evil. [On the distinction between these
problems, see Adams and Adams (1990), pp. 1-3.] The problem,
therefore, was taken to be that of explaining the compatibility of the
existence of evil with divine moral purity or holiness. These
philosophers believed that God is the author of everything that
exists, and given that evil is one of the things that exists, it might
seem that God is therefore the author of evil. And if an agent is an
"author of evil," he is therefore implicated in the evil
and cannot be morally pure or holy. Thus, God cannot be morally pure
nor holy. Let's call this version of the problem of evil the
"holiness problem." Before moving on, it should be noted
that in light of the fact that Leibniz and his predecessors shared a
commitment to God's existence, one might think that their approach to
the problem of evil begs the question against the atheistic critic who
charges that the existence of evil provides evidence that God does not
exist. But this issue simply did not arise for Leibniz and his
predecessors, given their antecedent belief in God's existence, and
therefore it is inappropriate to charge these philosophers with
begging the question.




Traditional theists held--and present-day theists still do
hold--that God is the "author" or cause of
everything in the cosmos in at least three different respects, so
discussions of the holiness problem often branch off in three
correspondingly different directions. First, God is regarded as the
*creative cause* of everything in the cosmos. Everything that
exists contingently is brought into existence by means of the creative
activity of God. Second, it is held that God is the *conserving cause* of
everything that exists. So God not only creates every created being, but every created
being that continues to exist does so in virtue of God's continuously
*maintaining* it in existence. Third, every action caused by a
created being requires direct divine activity as *concurrent
cause*. So every whack of a hammer, every strike of my fingertip
on the keyboard, every tug of a magnet on a piece of iron, requires
not only that the created being act, but also that the creator act
concurrently with the created being in order to bring about the
particular effect of the cause in question. [For a classic exposition
of these various modes of divine causal involvement see St. Thomas
Aquinas, *Disputationes de Potentia Dei*, Q.3, a.7, resp.]




Given that on this traditional account, God is intimately intertwined
with the workings of the cosmos, the holiness problem seemed all the
more intractable. In light of the intimate connections between God and
the created world, the problem is not just that God created a world
that happens to include evil, but that God seems to be causally (and
thus morally) implicated in, for example, every particular act of
murder, every earthquake, and every death caused by
plague. Consequently, responses to the holiness problem sought to
explain not only how God could remain holy despite
having *created* a world such as ours, but also how he could
remain holy despite *conserving* the world in existence and
causally *cooperating* with all the events that occur in it.




In light of the fact that Leibniz lived in between these two eras,
eras in which evil was taken to present different problems for the
monotheistic philosopher, we are immediately led to wonder what sort
of problem he sought to address. Leibniz expends a great deal of
effort attempting to solve the holiness problem, but he also takes up
something akin to the atheistic problem. It would be anachronistic,
however, to claim that Leibniz was engaged with the atheistic problem,
for in his time the existence of evil was taken to be an argument for
an unorthodox form of theism rather than an argument for
atheism. Thus, for example, a group of thinkers collectively known as
the "Socinians" held, among other things, that the
existence of evil was not incompatible with God's *existence*,
but that it was incompatible with the existence of an
*omniscient* God. The Socinians therefore held that God must
not be omniscient, and that he must at the very least lack knowledge
of future contingent events. [For Leibniz's view on the Socinians
see *Theodicy* 364 (H343; G VI 318) *et passim*. More
details on Socinianism can be found in Jolley, c.2, and
Maclachlan.]




We might then characterize the problem raised by atheists in our own
century and by the Socinians, to cite just one example from the
seventeenth century, more broadly as the "underachiever
problem." According to the underachiever problem, if the sort of
being that traditional monotheism identifies as God were to exist, the
existence of this world would represent a vast underachievement on his
part: therefore there is no such being. Atheists take this conclusion
to prove that there is no God; the Socinians take it to show that God
is not the sort of being that the traditional theist supposes him to
be.




Although Leibniz is concerned about the underachiever
problem, it is the Socinian, and not the atheistic, version of the
problem that he engages. The winds of atheism had
not reached the gale force proportions that they would in succeeding
centuries. Consequently, this stronger conclusion was not yet taken as a
serious, or at least the main, threat presented by the existence of evil.




It is important to distinguish between these versions of the problem
of evil since we cannot understand Leibniz's treatment of evil in a
given text until we know what problem it is that he means to be
addressing in that text. Having set the stage in this way, we can now
consider Leibniz's solutions to the problem of evil: we first consider
the underachiever problem, and then turn to the holiness problem.


## 2. The Underachiever Problem




The core of Leibniz's solution to the underachiever problem is
straightforward. Leibniz argues that God does not underachieve in
creating this world because this world is the best of all possible
worlds. Many thinkers have supposed that commitment to the claim that
this world is the best of all possible worlds follows
straightforwardly from monotheism. Because God is omnipotent and
omniscient, nothing can prevent him from creating the best world, and
his omnibenevolence obliges him to create the best world. So the
created world is the best world.




Leibniz's reasoning to this conclusion does not, however, follow this
straightforward path: among other things, this reasoning is not cogent
as it stands. A number of seventeenth-century figures recognized that
God would not be obliged to create the best world if there were no
such thing as the best world. There would be no best world if the
series of possible worlds formed a continuum of increasingly good
worlds *ad infinitum*. And if there is no best world, God
cannot be faulted for failing to create the best one since to do so
would be as impossible as, say, naming the highest number. There is no
such number of course, and likewise no such world. So while God may be
obliged to create a world that has at least some measure of goodness,
he cannot be obliged, on this view, to create the best. And therefore
it might be the case that God simply chose arbitrarily to create one
of infinitely many morally acceptable worlds. [This line of argument
was common among certain Jesuit scholastics of the period. For
discussions of this issue, see, for example, Ruiz de
Montoya, *Commentaria ac Disputationes in primam partem Sancti
Thomae. De voluntate Dei et propiis actibus eius*, Lyon 1630,
disp. 9 and 10, and Diego Granado, *Comentarii in primam partem
Summae Theologicae S. Thomae*, Pont-a-Mousson, 1624,
pp.420-433.]




Leibniz was aware of this argument denying God's obligation to create
the best, but he was firmly committed to rejecting it, in virtue of a
central principle of his philosophical system, the Principle of
Sufficient Reason. According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason,
for any state of affairs, there must be a sufficient reason that
explains why that state of affairs and not some other state of affairs
obtains. When it comes to our world, then, there must be some reason
that explains why it, and not some other world, obtains. But there can
be no such reason if it is the case that the goodness of worlds
increases *ad infinitum*. Leibniz therefore concluded that
there can be no infinite continuum of worlds.




One might be tempted to resist Leibniz's argument by saying that even
according to the view on which there is an "infinite continuum
of good worlds," there is something that can serve as the
sufficient reason for existence of this world, namely, *God's
decree that this world be actual*. But such a response, Leibniz
observes, would merely push the problem back, because the Principle of
Sufficient Reason applies to free choices just as it applies to any
other event or state of affairs. Thus, we would have to provide a
sufficient reason for God's choice of this world instead of some other
world on the continuum of morally acceptable worlds. And it seems that
such a sufficient reason cannot be given on the infinite continuum of
good worlds view. Note that the sufficient reason cannot be derived
from some feature or fact about the world that is actually chosen, for
this would raise the obvious question: Why did *this* feature
in particular serve as the sufficient reason for God's choice? The
only possible answers, it appears, would be: (a) Because God
arbitrarily selected that feature as the one he would favor in
deciding which world to create; or (b) Because that feature made that
world better than all its competitors. But notice that neither of
these answers is acceptable. The first is inconsistent with the
Principle of Sufficient Reason. The second is incompatible with the
hypothesis at issue, that there is no "best world."




One might think that declaring this world to be the best possible
world does not constitute a valid response to the underachiever
problem. Indeed, such a response might be taken to provide the basis
for a new underachiever argument along the following lines:


1. If God were all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good,
then this world would be the best possible world.
2. But surely this world is not the best possible world.
3. Thus, God is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.




Leibniz believes, however, that there was overwhelming evidence that
the conclusion of this argument was false. He therefore must take one
of the two premises in this argument to be false. Given that he
himself is committed to the first premise, he must reject the second
premise. And this is precisely what he does. 




What reason, Leibniz asks, does the critic have for thinking that (2)
is true? When Leibniz addresses this issue, he usually has the critic
say something along the following lines:



> Surely this world is not the best possible world since we
> can easily conceive of possible worlds that are better. Take some
> token instance of suffering: the tragic bombing of the Oklahoma City
> federal building. Surely a world without that event would be better
> than the actual world. And there is no reason why God couldn't have
> created the world without that event. Thus, this is not the best
> possible world. [See *Theodicy* 118-119 (H
> 188-191; G VI 168-172).]




Leibniz's response to this sort of criticism comes in two stages.
First, Leibniz says that while we can think of certain token features
of the world that in and of themselves might be better than they are,
we do not know whether it is possible to create a better world lacking
those features, because we can never be certain of the nature of the
connections between the token events in question and other events in
the world. If we could improve or eliminate the token event in
question without otherwise changing the world, we might well have a
better world. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether such a
change to the token event would leave the world otherwise unchanged,
or might instead make things, on balance,
worse. [See *Theodicy* 211-214 (H 260-2; G VI
244-7) and Gr, p.64f., for examples of this sort of
response.]




Second, examples such as these are deceptive because they presume that
God utilizes standards of world goodness that he may not in fact
use. For example, it may presume that a world is good only if each
part taken in isolation is good (a standard, we have seen, that
Leibniz rejects), or it might presume that a world is good only if
human beings enjoy happiness in it.




Leibniz argues in numerous texts that it is parochial to think that
human happiness is the standard whereby the goodness of worlds is to
be judged. A more reasonable standard, according to Leibniz, would be
the happiness of all sentient beings. But once we admit this, it may
turn out that the amount of unhappiness in the created realm is quite
small, given that for all we know, the sentient beings on Earth might
constitute a very small percentage of the sentient beings created by
God. Here Leibniz includes not only preternatural beings such as
angels, but also the possibility of extraterrestrial rational beings
[*Theodicy* 19 (H 134-5; G VI 113-4)].




There is disagreement among Leibniz scholars about the basis for
judging the goodness of worlds. Various scholars have defended one or
more of the following:


1. The best world is the one that maximizes the happiness
(i.e., virtue) of rational beings.
2. The best world is the one that maximizes the "quantity of
essence."
3. The best world is the one that yields the greatest variety of
phenomena governed by the simplest set of laws.




There is scholarly dispute about whether Leibniz believed that the
maximization of the happiness or virtue of rational beings is one of
the standards by which God judges the goodness of the world. [For
supporters of this claim see Rutherford, c.3; Blumenfeld, Brown; for
detractors see Russell, p. 199, Gale.] It is unlikely that Leibniz
believed that (1) alone was the true standard of goodness of the world
in light of following comment on an argument advanced by Bayle: 



> the author is still presupposing that false maxim ...
> stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God.
> [*Theodicy* 120 (H 192; G VI 172)]




In part, the dispute over this standard hangs on whether or not (1) is
compatible with the more metaphysical standards embodied in (2) and (3),
since it is these more metaphysical standards that Leibniz seems to
endorse most consistently. In some cases, Leibniz writes as if the
standard of happiness is fully compatible with the more metaphysical
criteria. For example, within a single work, the *Discourse on
Metaphysics*, Leibniz entitled Section 5 "What the rules of the
perfection of divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the
ways is in balance with the richness of effects," and he entitled Section
36: "God is the monarch of the most perfect republic, composed of all
minds, and the happiness of this city of God is his principal purpose."
So Leibniz seems to advance both standards (1) and (3) in the same work
[For another example, see R p. 105 (K X pp.9-10)]. In other places
however, he writes as if they compete with one another [See *Theodicy*
124 (H 197-8; G VI 178-9).] 




Whatever position one comes to hold on this matter, Leibniz often
points to the more metaphysical standards as the ones God utilizes in
assessing the goodness of worlds. But there is further controversy
over exactly which metaphysical standard, (2) or (3), Leibniz
endorses. In general, Leibniz holds that God creates the world in
order to share his goodness with created things in the most perfect
manner possible [Gr 355-6]. In light of the fact that created
beings, in virtue of their limitations, can mirror the divine goodness
only in limited respects, God creates a variety of things, each of
which has an essence that reflects a different facet of divine
perfection in its own unique way. Since this is God's purpose in
creating the world, it would be reasonable to think that maximizing
the mirroring of divine goodness in creation is the goal that God
seeks to achieve. And this in fact is one of the standards Leibniz
seems to endorse. We might call this the "maximization of
essence" standard. Leibniz seems convinced that the actual world
meets this standard and that creatures are to be found that mirror the
divine perfections in all the sorts of ways that creatures can do
this. Thus, there are creatures with bodies and creatures without,
creatures with freedom and intelligence and creatures without,
creatures with sentience and creatures without, etc. [See, for
example, MP pp. 75-6 and 138 (G VII 303-4 and 310).]




In some texts, however, Leibniz frames the standard of goodness in
what some have taken to be a third distinct way. In these places he
argues that the goodness of a world is measured by the ratio between the
variety of phenomena that a world contains and the simplicity of the laws
that govern that world. Here Leibniz emphasizes the fact that the perfection
of a world that maximizes the variety of phenomena it contains is
enhanced by the simplicity of its laws since this displays the
intelligence of the creator who created it.




Some scholars have argued that one or the other of these
two more metaphysical standards represents Leibniz's settled view on
the true standard of goodness [Gale, for example]. Other scholars have argued
that, in the end, the two standards are not exclusive of each other.
[See Rutherford, cc.2-3 and Rescher, c.1 for two very different ways of
harmonizing (2) and (3).]




Regardless of which of these interpretations is correct, if these are
the standards by which God judges the world's goodness, it becomes
much more difficult to defend the claim that this is not the best
possible world. We can use standard (3) to illustrate. In order, for
example, for God to eliminate the Oklahoma City bombing from the
world, what would be required in order for him to do so? There are
presumably a number of ways in which this might be done. The most
obvious would involve miraculous intervention somewhere in the chain
of events leading up to the explosion. God might miraculously prevent
the explosives from detonating, or he might eliminate the truck and
its contents from the world. But this sort of miraculous intervention
would require that the laws governing the world become more
complex. Consequently, Leibniz, and others who share this view of what
the goodness of a world consists in, such as Malebranche, think that
miraculous intervention is generally repugnant and would require
vastly outweighing goods to result from a miraculous intervention in
order for such an intervention to be
permissible. [See *Theodicy* 129 (H 192-3; G VI 182).]




In any event, Leibniz holds that we are simply unable to know how
changing certain events would change the world's capacity to meet the
standards of goodness described in (2) and (3). Thus, according to
Leibniz, we are not justified in claiming that this world is not as
good, all things considered, as some other possible world. According
to Leibniz, then, the underachiever problem cannot get off the ground
unless the critic is able to defend the claim that this world is not
the best possible world. It should be noted that Leibniz's approach to
the underachiever problem thus seems be immune to the line of
criticism pressed by Voltaire in *Candide*, namely, that it is
obvious that this world is not the best possible world because there
are so many manifest evils in it. Leibniz does not believe that each
individual event is the best possible event, and he does not think
that it is possible for finite minds to demonstrate that every
individual event must be a part of the best possible world: rather, he
believes that the world as a whole is the best possible world. (That
said, it should be noted that there is considerable scholarly
controversy as to whether Voltaire's target in *Candide* is
indeed Leibniz: it has been claimed, for example, that the
"optimism" lampooned in *Candide* is closer to that
of Pope (see Rutherford (1995); on the general reception of Leibniz in
France, see Barber (1955)].) In any event, on Leibniz's view, our
inability to know how changing certain events in the world would
affect other events and our inability to know how such changes would
affect the overall goodness of the world make it impossible to defend
the claim that the manifest evils in the world constitute evidence
that this is not the best possible world.


## 3. The Holiness Problem




Far less scholarly attention has been devoted to Leibniz's treatment of
the holiness problem, if only because this conception of the problem
has only recently been recognized by Leibniz scholars. As noted
above, the main problem here is that God's character seems to be
stained by evil because God causally contributes to the
existence of everything in the world, and evil is one of those things.
[For two recent treatments see Sleigh (1996) and Murray (2005)]



The standard solution adopted by medieval thinkers was to deny an
assumption of the preceding argument, namely, that evil is
"something." Evil was claimed not to have any positive
reality, but to be a mere "privation" or
"lack" of being. On such a view, evil has no more reality
than the hole in the center of a donut. Making a donut does not
require putting together two components, the cake and the hole: the
cake is all that there is to the donut, and the hole is just the
"privation of cake." It therefore would be silly to say
that making the donut requires causing both the cake and the hole to
exist. Causing the cake to exist causes the hole as a
"by-product" of causing a particular kind of cake to
exist. Thus, we need not assume any additional cause for the hole
beyond that assumed for the causing of the cake. 




The upshot of our pastry analogy is this: given that evil, like the
hole, is merely a privation, it requires no cause (or as the
medievals, and Leibniz, liked to say, it needs no "cause *per
se*"). God does not "causally contribute to the
existence of evil" because evil *per se* is not a thing
and therefore requires no cause in order to exist. And since God does
not cause the existence of evil, God cannot be causally implicated in
evil. Thus, the holiness problem evaporates.




Early in his philosophical career, Leibniz, like other
seventeenth-century philosophers, scoffed at this solution to the
holiness problem. In a short piece entitled "The Author of
Sin," Leibniz explains why he thinks the privation response to
the holiness problem fails. Leibniz argues that God is the author of
all that is real and positive in the world, and that God is therefore
also the "author" of all of privations in the world.
"It is a manifest illusion to hold that God is not the author of
sin because there is no such thing as an author of a privation, even
though he can be called the author of everything which is real and
positive in the sinful act" [A.6.3.150].




Leibniz explains why he takes this response to be a "manifest
illusion," through the consideration of an example. Suppose that
a painter creates two paintings that are identical in every respect,
except that the one is a scaled down version of the other. It would be
absurd, Leibniz remarks,



> ... to say that the painter is the author of all that is
> real in the two paintings, without however being the author of what is
> lacking or the disproportion between the larger and the smaller
> painting... . In effect, what is lacking is nothing more than a
> simple result of an infallible consequence of that which is positive,
> without any need for a distinct author [of that which is lacking].
> [A.6.3.151]




So even if it is true that evil is a privation, this does not have as
a consequence that God is not the author of sin. Given that what is
positively willed by God is a sufficient condition for the existence
of the evil state of affairs, in virtue of willing what is positive in
some state of affairs, God is also the author of what is privative in
that state of affairs. [A similar early critique is found at
A.6.3.544]. 




Leibniz therefore sought to develop a different strategy in order to
clear God of the charge of being the author of sin. In
the *Philosopher's Confession*, his most significant treatise
on evil aside from the *Theodicy*, Leibniz claims that although
God wills everything in the world, his will with respect to goods
is *decretory* , whereas his will with respect to evils is
merely *permissive*. And Leibniz argues that God's permissive
willing of evils is morally permissible if and only if such permission
of evil is necessary in order for one to meet one's moral
obligations..




It should be noted that Leibniz does not think that the
permission of evil is morally justified on the grounds that such permission
*brings about a greater good that may not otherwise be
achieved*. Such an explanation, according to Leibniz, would make
it the case that God would violate in the Biblical injunction
"not to do evil that good may come" [*Causa Dei* 36
(S 121; G VI 444)]. Leibniz therefore claims that the evil that God
permits is a *necessary consequence of God's fulfilling his
duty* (namely, to create the best world). Leibniz characterizes
(morally permissible) permission as follows:



> *P* permits *E* iff: 
> 
> 1. *P* fails to will that *E*
> 2. *P* fails to will that not-*E*
> 3. *P* brings it about that the state of affairs *S*
> obtains by willing that *S* obtains
> 4. If *S* obtains then *E* obtains
> 5. *P* knows that (4)
> 6. *P* believes that it is *P*'s duty to will *S* and
> that the good of performing one's duty outweighs the evil entailed by
> *E*'s obtaining
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [This account is distilled from A.6.3.129-131]
> 
> 
> 




This, Leibniz believes, resolves any holiness problem that might arise
in so far as God is considered as the creator of the
universe. However, after writing the *Philosopher's
Confession*, Leibniz became increasingly concerned that a tension
might arise in his account when it was applied to the holiness problem
in the context of *concurrence*. Recall that traditional
theists held that God was not only creator and conserver of all
created things, but that God also was the concurrent cause of all
actions of created things. 




There were heated debates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
concerning the nature of divine concurrence. The dispute centered on
the respect in which God concurred with the free acts of
creatures. This was an especially pressing problem for the obvious
reason that positing too close a connection between God and created
beings in cases where moral evils are committed runs the risk of
implicating God in the evil, thus raising the holiness problem all
over again. This debate often focused on a certain type of proposition
and on what made this type of proposition true. The propositions in
question are called "conditional future contingents",
propositions of the form:



> If agent *S* were in circumstances *C* and
> time *t*, *S* would freely chose to *f*.




Propositions of this form were particularly important in discussions
of philosophical theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
because it was believed that it was necessary that God know
propositions of this type in order to exercise providential control
over the free actions of created beings. In order to exercise
providential control over free actions in the created world, God must
know precisely how each such being will choose to act in each
circumstance in which it will find itself. If God, for example, did
not know what Eve would choose to do when confronted by the serpent,
or what I would choose to do when confronted with a tuna sandwich, God
could not know in advance the order of events in the universe he
deigns to create. 




But *how* does God know whether or not a token proposition of
this type is true? In general, disputants in this period held that
there are only two possible answers to this question. God knows that a
token proposition of this type is true either because he wills that
that proposition be true, or he knows that proposition to be true
because something independent of his will makes it true, and God, in
virtue of his omniscience, therefore knows it to be true. Following
recent scholarship, we will call the first view the
"postvolitional view" (since the truth of the proposition
is determined only after God wills it) and the latter view the
"prevolitional" view (since the truth of the proposition
is independent of what God wills). In his early writings on the topic,
Leibniz seemed inclined to postvolitionalism. So take the token
proposition:



> If Peter were accused of consorting with Christ during
> Christ's trial, Peter would deny Christ.




The early Leibniz holds that this type of proposition is true because
God decrees that it would be true: that is, God decrees that Peter
would deny Christ under these circumstances [see C 26-7 and Gr
312-3]. Furthermore, those who held this view generally held that it
was in virtue of divine concurrence that God makes the proposition
true in the actual world. So, in virtue of causally influencing Peter
at the moment of his decision, God brings it about that Peter denies
Christ in these circumstances.




This view obviously faces a number of difficulties. For our
purposes, the most pressing one is that it seems to undercut Leibniz's
solution to the holiness problem based on permission. For if the above
proposition is true because God wills that it be true, then it would seem that
God wills that Peter sin, and if he wills that Peter sin, he cannot
merely permit it, in light of condition (1) of the definition of
permission given above. Consequently, it appears that Leibniz must abandon his
initial answer to the question of "what makes conditional future
contingents true" and adopt the alternative answer.




The alternative answer also raises problems. What does it mean to say
that the truth of the proposition is determined independently of God's
will? Defenders of this view usually hold that the human will cannot
be determined. When an agent chooses freely, nothing can
"determine" or "cause" the choice, for
otherwise the ehoice would not be free. Thus, for those who defended
this view, the answer to the question of "what makes conditional
future contingents true" ought to be "nothing." For
if something *made* future contingents true, then *that
thing* would determine the choice, and the choice would not be
free.




Given his commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, however,
Leibniz could not endorse such a view. Does Leibniz, then, have an
answer to this question that will rescue him from the holiness
problem? There is scholarly disagreement about this issue. Some have
held that Leibniz is obliged to hold the postvolitional view despite
the difficulties that it raises for him. [See Davidson (1996), Sleigh
(1994).] Others have held that Leibniz tried to forge a third
alternative in order to avoid this seemingly intractable dilemma. [See
Murray (2005); for an alternative to Murray (2005), see Cover and
Hawthorne (2000)]. I will close by considering the latter
suggestion.




According to Leibniz, free choice in humans is brought about through
the activity of the human intellect and the human will working in
concert with each other. The intellect deliberates about alternatives
and selects the one that it perceives to be the best, all things
considered. The intellect then represents this alternative to the will
as the best course of action. The will, which Leibniz takes to be an
 "appetite for the good,", then chooses the
alternative represented to it as containing the most goodness
[*Theodicy*, 311 (H 314; G VI 300-1].




On this view, it appears that there are two ways in which I might
exercise "control" over my acts of will. First, I might be
able to control what appears to me to be the best course of action,
all things considered. That is, I might control the process of
deliberation. Second, I might be able to control which alternative is
presented to the will as containing the greatest good. Leibniz seems
to accept both of these possibilities. In certain passages, he argues
that by engaging in some sort of moral therapy, I can control which
things appear to me to be good, and thus control the outcome of my
deliberations. In other passages, he seems to say that while the will
does "infallibly" choose that which the intellect deems to
be the best, the will nevertheless retains the power to resist the
intellect because the intellect does not "cause" the will
to choose as it does. [Concerning the first strategy, see, for
example, *Reflections on Hobbes*, 5 (H 396-7; G VI 391-1). For
more on this aspect of Leibniz's view of freedom see Seidler
(1985). Concerning the second strategy see, for
example *Theodicy* 282 (H 298-300; G VI 284-5).]




Both suggestions face difficulties. Consider the first. How might I
go about engaging in "moral therapy"? First, I would have
to choose to do something to begin to bring about a change in how I
see things. But of course I can make a choice to do this only if I
first deliberate about it and see that making this change is the best
thing for me to do. But did I have control over this process of
"coming to see that a change is the best thing for me to
do"? It seems that I may have control here only if I have
control over the actions that led me to see things this way in the
first place. But do I have control over those actions? If the answer
is yes, it is only because I had control over my prior deliberations,
and it looks as if this will lead us back in the chain of explanation
to certain very early formative stages of my moral and intellectual
life, stages over which it is hard to believe I had any control. It
therefore seems that this line of reasoning will be difficult to
sustain.




Let us consider the second alternative then, according to which I have
control because the will is never "causally determined" to
choose that which the intellect deems to be best in those
circumstances. Leibniz holds that the will is not causally determined
in the act of choice but merely "morally necessitated."
There is scholarly disagreement about the interpretation of this
phrase. Some think it just means "causally necessitated."
But if this is right, it appears that God, who establishes the laws of
nature, determines how creatures act, and this leads us back to the
suggestion that Leibniz was a postvolitionalist in these matters. As
we noted above, this is a troubling position for Leibniz to adopt
since it seems to undermine his response to the holiness problem. [For
various positions on the nature of "moral necessity," see
Adams, pp. 21-2, Sleigh (2000), Murray (1995), pp. 95-102,
and (1996), esp. Section IV].




Others have held that moral necessity is a philosophical novelty,
invented to explain the unique relationship between intellect and will.
On this view, the will infallibly follows the determination of the intellect,
without thereby being causally determined. Leibniz sometimes hints at
this reading, as in the following example derived from Pierre
Nicole:



> It is considered impossible that a wise and serious
> magistrate, who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly
> commit some outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run
> about the streets naked in order to make people laugh [*Theodicy* 282
> (H299; G VI 284)]




Here, the wise magistrate is not causally determined to refrain from
streaking to make people laugh. Instead, he just considers streaking
to be so unseemly that "he can't bring himself to do it."
Something about his psychological constitution prevents him from
seeing this as something that he might actually do, even though there
is surely some sense in which he nevertheless
*could do it*. 




If we allow Leibniz to locate control over actions in a will that is
only morally necessitated by the intellect, is there a way for him to
avoid the postvolitional/prevolitional dilemma discussed earlier? The
answer is not obvious. One would have to say that the will's
infallibly choosing in accordance with the deliverances of the intellect
is a fact whose truth is *independent of God's will*, while
also saying that the deliverances of the intellect provide a
*sufficient reason* for the will's choice. If this can be done,
Leibniz may have a way of avoiding the difficulty posed by conditional
future contingents.




However we might think these questions should be resolved, Leibniz
himself appears to have thought that the prevolitional route was the
one to take. He does not think that God makes it the case how human
beings would act if they were created; rather, Leibniz believes God
"discovers" in the ideas of the possibles how human beings would act
if they were created [on this topic see Sleigh (1994).] [Leibniz
speaks of these truths about how human beings will act as
"limitations" that prevent God from making them, and the
world that contains them, more perfect. In the end, it is these
limitations, Leibniz argues, that prevent there from being a better
world than the actual one. [On the notion of "limitations"
see AG 60-2, 11, *Theodicy* 20 (H 86-7; G VI
114-5), *Causa Dei* 69-71 (S 128-30;
457-8).] If this interpretation is correct, then we might think
that the permission strategy will work as a solution to the holiness
problem both when it comes to defending God as creator and as
concurrent cause of all effects in the cosmos.




Interestingly, however, Leibniz comes to favor, in later life, the
scholastic "privation" view that he rejected in his
earliest writings on the problem of evil. [See, for
example, *Theodicy* 20, 30, 153 (respectively, H 86-7,
91-2, 219-20; G VI 114-5, 119-20, 201.]
Leibniz's conception of privation in general, and the relation between
his earlier and later views on the topic, has recently received a
sustained and searching examination in Newlands (forthcoming), to
which readers interested in the topic are directed.




The issues that arise in thinking about Leibniz's views on the problem
of evil have only in the past couple of decades begun to receive the
sustained scholarly attention that they deserve in virtue of their
manifest significance for Leibniz. In the last few years in
particular--probably not coincidentally, the
three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of
the *Theodicy* was celebrated in 2010--considerable
interpretive attention has been devoted to the details of Leibniz's
treatment of the problem of evil and related topics. [Rateau (2008)
is the first book-length treatment of Leibniz's work on the problem of
evil; the essays in Rateau (2011) and Newlands and Jorgensen
(forthcoming) are devoted to particular topics related to Leibniz's
treatment of the problem of evil.] Given the fact that Leibniz's
treatment of the problem of evil draws on medieval sources and also
was taken as a target by later writers such as Voltaire and Kant,
renewed interest in Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil,
combined with the resurgence of interest in contextual history of
philosophy, have inspired recent work on the general historical
significance of Leibniz's work on the problem of evil that seeks to
illuminate later approaches to the problem of evil as well as the
nature of the problem of evil itself. [See, *inter alia*,
Larrimore (2004), Neiman (2002), and the essays in Rateau (2009).] In
light of the fact that new translations of Leibniz's central texts
devoted to the problem of evil have either only relatively recently
been published (CP) or are in process--a new edition and
English translation of the *Theodicy*, by Sean Greenberg and
R. C. Sleigh, Jr., is well underway and under contract with Oxford
University Press-and given that other new texts, like DPW, that
bear on this nest of issues may well be discovered, there is reason to
expect that this topic will continue to be an active area of Leibniz
scholarship, and therefore that any conclusions about Leibniz's views
on the problem of evil must, for now, remain tentative and subject to
revision.