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Cheatography

Leibniz Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Summary of Leibniz for the first year course History of Modern Philosophy

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Interests

Leibniz was interested in both ancient and modern concerns:
- renais­sance philos­ophy: mainly Plato on knowledge, the Aristo­telian causes, orthodox Christ­ianity and schola­stics
- modern research: Huygens corpus­cul­ar-­mec­hanical natural philos­ophy, and Malebr­ance's occasi­onalism
He is most often compar­ed/­applied to Descartes and Spinoza

The "­Why­?"

The "­why­" are questions such as:
- why is there something and nothing?
- why does God allow for evil?
- why do I do things?
everything that is can answer to the question of "­why­?"

Leibniz held onto principle of sufficient reason which states that everything must have a reason or cause
-> this cause are the Aristo­telian causes
-> "­nothing happens without reason­"

the existence of something can be explained through the Aristo­telian causes:
- material cause (wood)
- formal cause (design)
- efficient cause; a mechanism (carpe­ntry)
- final cause; function (dining)
example: a table

the "­why­?"is the efficient cause: that which causes another thing to happen
final causes
teach us to search for efficient causes and these causes have to come together in the end.
 

Qualities of God

God is:
- perfection
-> what exists in the highest measure: knowledge, power, morality
-> is not: number and extension (contr­adi­ction), nor is something perfect simply because it exists (Anselmus)
- beneficent
- all-po­werful and good: he sustains everything that should be (Desca­rtes) -> god has the highest sense
- omnisc­ient: sees from every perspe­ctive
- creator of the best of all possible worlds, and the reason of all existence
He claims that God always has the option not to create the world; and, when God decides to go ahead with the project, he faces a choice among an infinite number of possible world

Empiricism

according to Leibniz:
- we gain as a tabula rasa: an individual born as a black slate (as did Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Locke)
- empirical natural philosophy is not wrong per se, but incomplete
empiricism is all about mechanism and extension

Leibniz keeps asking "why does that happen if it could be differ­ent­?"

Evil

why is there evil?
according to Leibniz, non-God substances have a limited perspe­ctive, and evil exists only from our perspe­ctive
It is this limitation that causes evil, as God chooses the best being to come to be, and only the highest beings have freedom.
-> this highest being is the most similar to God, both in perspe­ctive and reflection on perspe­ctive
basically, evil is our own fault
 

Nature

according to Leibniz, miracles and coinci­dences depart from the general will, and they only exist from our limited perspe­ctive

He states that we have a limited perspe­ctive on things, if we could see every perspe­ctive then we would come to see that there are no miracles and coinci­dences but due to the limited perspe­ctive we perceive them as such
-> which is why we believe in miracles and coinci­dences

But, everything is in order, everything has its reasons, God choose the most perfect order and so no miracles or coinci­dences exist
-> if there were miracles and things that do not fit in our world then our world would not be able to exist

Substance

= something that does not rely on something else for its unders­tanding
-> contains everything that occurs to it is harmonious with but does not interact with other substances
“[W]hen several predicates are attributed to the same subject, and this subject is not attributed to any other, it is called an individual substa­nce.”

qualities:
- indivi­sible: they can only be created or destroyed (by God)
- are completely certain
- are unaffected by other substances
- they seem to relate
- occasi­ona­lism: substances are no efficient causes of each other (God determines substances to be in harmony)

-> when harmony substances are:
- omniscient (every­thing is contained in them)
- all-po­werful (they help determine every limited substance)
- similar to God

Free will and Necessity

Necessity means that something is either a contra­diction or a rational possib­ility

God determines the actuality of possib­ility by choosing the best option and thereby determines who will freely choose in the best way
-> so freewill as providence (guided by God)
God created you and knew what you were going to do, and you still did it, so it is still your respon­sib­ility, God did not make you do something, but just knew
-> we can still be blamew­orthy for our actions