Freedom in God, and on the Great Principle of Sufficient Reason
Table of Contents
Leibniz’s Principles, perhaps pushed too far. His seductive reasoning. Reply. New arguments against the principle of indiscernibles.
Newton maintained that God:
- is infinitely free as He is infinitely powerful
- has done many things by His will alone, such as:
- the planets moving from west to east rather than the other way around
- there being such and such a number of animals, stars, and worlds rather than another
- putting the finite universe at this point in space, etc.
Leibniz claimed the opposite.
He relied on an ancient axiom once used by Archimedes:
Nothing happens without a cause or without a sufficient reason. God has done everything for the best, because if He had not done it in the best way, He would have had no reason to do it. But there is no “best” in things that are indifferent, said the Newtonians; but there are no indifferent things
Your idea leads to absolute fatalism. You turn God into a purely passive being who acts by necessity. That is no longer God.
Your God is a capricious worker, who acts without sufficient reason.
The will of God is the reason
No 2 bodies are entirely alike. If they were alike:
- It would show in an all-powerful and all-fertile God a lack of fecundity and power.
- There would be no reason why one would be in this place rather than the other.
- It is false that several similar beings indicate sterility in the power of the Creator.
If the elements of things are absolutely alike in order to produce similar effects—
if, for example, the elements of the eternally red rays of light must be the same to give these red rays;
if the elements of water must be the same to form water—this perfect resemblance, this identity, far from detracting from God’s greatness, is to me one of the most beautiful testimonies of His power and wisdom.
Only an infinitely powerful Being can make things perfectly similar.
No matter how hard a man tries to make such works, he will never be able to do so, because his sight will never be fine enough to discern the inequalities of the two bodies;
one must therefore see even into infinite smallness to make all the parts of one body identical to those of another. It is thus the unique domain of the Infinite Being.
- The Newtonians fight Leibniz with his own weapons.
If the elements of things are all different, if the primary parts of a red ray are not entirely similar, then there is no longer any sufficient reason why different parts always produce one and the same unchanging color.
- Atom A is in one place while atom B, entirely similar, is in another place because of the movement that pushes them.
That movement came from God who ordered this movement to accomplish what His wisdom had planned,
But why this movement to the right rather than to the left, toward the west rather than toward the east, at this point in time rather than another?
Must we not then fall back on the Creator’s will of indifference?
This is what is left for every impartial reader to examine.