Leibniz--Necessity and Contingency

Leibniz--Necessity and Contingency

  • Submitted By: kuch
  • Date Submitted: 03/24/2010 2:35 PM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 437
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 526

The monads are a self-contained subject which contain within them all of their predicates. The entire universe is mirrored in one subject when the relational qualities of the subject with other subjects—past, present and future, are all contained within the subject. Seemingly, this implies that everything is pre-determined from the time of creation. Leibniz holds that, any universe was possible, but that God chose the best world for existence. Leibniz seems to give accounts of human freedom yet at times claim to believe that the world is pre-destined. It appears rash to think of Leibniz’s pre-determinism as denying human freedom, for what Leibniz means instead is that there are reasons for choosing one course of action over another. It is such that we are given freedom of choice given a set of circumstances or causes to act out our own will.

The freedom of God is called into question, as God being omnipotent there should be no limitations to His power. Though if God is limited by his omnipotence to generate the best possible world, then it appears as though God could only create that world and thus God is not free. But this can be ruled out by the fact that God hasn’t the desire to create another world because it would not be as good. As such, if everything is pre-determined then it is thus necessary, but Leibniz claims that within a pre-destined universe there can be the distinction between necessary and contingent truths. He defines them as follows: necessary truths are those for which the opposite is impossible, and that contingent truths are those which their opposite is possible. Contingent truths are possible in other possible worlds as Leibniz puts it: “the resolution into particular reasons could be continued endlessly, because of the immense variety of things in nature, and because of the infinite divisibility of bodies”. The contingent truth could be stated only after the subject of the proposition was observed. Leibniz asserts that:...

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