Gottfried Wilhelm LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) Pierre BAYLE (1647-1706)
§5 - AM BUN-ANTANOM SA GHRÙNND-IDÈA THAR-CHEUMNAIL DHAONNAIREACH NA RIOCHD IDÈALACH-MATAMATAIGEACH AGUS DÀIMH AN RIOCHDA SEO RIS AN T-SEALLADH-BEATHA IS -SAOGHAIL DHÒCHASACH.
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§5 - THE BASIC ANTINOMY IN THE HUMANISTIC TRANSCENDENTAL GROUND-IDEA IN ITS MATHEMATICAL-IDEALISTIC TYPE AND THE RELATION OF THIS TYPE TO THE OPTIMISTIC LIFE- AND WORLD-VIEW
The Theodicy with its apparent reconciliation of the ideals of science and personality. The optimism of LEIBNIZ.
This Humanistic metaphysics was crowned by a rationalistic theodicy, a justification of God's world-government by means of a reconciliation of the evil reality (with its mechanical laws and moral depravity) and the ethical ideal of modern man: the perfection and free self-determination of the individual.
Here LEIBNIZ concentrated the tremendous power of his intellect on the attempt to resolve the continually intensified antinomy between the mathematical science-ideal and the ideal of personality. This is the very motive that lay hidden in his Theodicy. And this attempt is that which lay behind the formal scholastic reconciliation of the "causae efficientes" and "causae finales" in the divine world-plan. It lay behind the speculations concerning the relationship between metaphysical and logical possibility, empirical reality, and mathematical necessity. And the radical optimism expressed by it is typical of the faith of the entire "Enlightenment" in the final unity of these antagonistic factors in the Humanistic transcendental ground-Idea. It typifies the faith that finally scientific thought will make humanity free.
But it was not before the great progress of mathematical thought due to LEIBNIZ' discovery of the infinitesimal analysis, that this optimistic faith could find its "philosophical justification". In HOBBES it was still in an overt contradiction to his "pessimist scientific" view of human nature.
In LEIBNIZ' Theodicy the intrinsic antinomy between the ideal of science and that of personality is arrayed in the scholastic form of the contrast between nature and grace.
The reconciliation between these two spheres, their deeper identity, as LEIBNIZ called it, was sought in the creative mathematical thought of the deity. The latter utilized the metaphysical possibilities in its creation of the world in order to choose the reality which, in the light of the Humanistic ideal of personality, appears as the best and therefore as the ethically necessary. Not long after, KANT reduced the metaphysical Leibnizian categories of possibility, reality and necessity to transcendental categories of modality, which are strictly bound to the sensory experience of natural phenomena. This indicates, that the mathematical science-ideal had lost its primacy in KANT; it also marked the end of the rationalistic optimism of the philosophy of the "Enlightenment".
The deceptive formulation of the polar tension between the ideal of science and that of personality in the terminology of the Christian doctrine of faith.
By reading LEIBNIZ' Essais sur la Bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'Homme et l'Origine du Mal, one at first gains the impression that the German thinker is actually concerned with the difficulties which arise in Christian dogmatics, when it sets forth the doctrine of God's sovereignty as Creator, His eternal predestination, and man's original sin, and at the same time maintains the personal responsibility and guilt of man.
In the first part of the Essais, LEIBNIZ divides these difficulties into two classes: The first originates from the freedom of man which seems to be incompatible with the omnipotent Divine nature; the second is concerned with the government of God: even if man should be free in his actions, an eternal predestination would seem to impute to the Divine Creator too large a share of the responsibility for the existence of both physical and moral evil.
Extremely deceptive in this whole formulation of the problem is the fact that in the light of LEIBNIZ' Idea of God the problem acquires a sense which is absolutely different from that which it possesses in Christian doctrine.
One need only remember that this idea of God is in essence only the final hypostasis of creative mathematical thought: the existing cosmos is only the realized choice out of an infinite possibility of worlds and such a choice demands a rational cause: "The cause of the world must have had regard or relation to all these possible worlds in order to determine one of them. And this regard or relation of an existent substance to simple possibilities cannot be anything else but the understanding which has the Ideas of them; and determining one of them cannot be anything else but the act of the will which chooses. And it is the power of this substance which renders the will efficient" (1).
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(1) ERDMANN, p. 506: "II faut que la cause du Monde ait eu égard ou relation à tous ces Mondes possibles; pour en déterminer un. Et cet égard ou rapport d'une substance existante à de simples possibilités, ne peut être autre chose que l'entendement qui en a les idées; et en déterminer une, ne peut être autre chose que l'acte de la volonté qui choisit. Et c'est la puissance de cette substance, qui en rend la volonté efficace."
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In other words the divine substance is the creative mathematical thought that itself is only bound to the "vérités éternelles". Will and power belong to the essence of this thought as the creative origin of the cosmos.
This final hypostasis of the mathematical ideal of science now clashed with the postulate of the ideal of personality. It clashed with the autarchical self-sufficiency and absolute freedom of the finite spiritual monads and with the postulate of the happiness and perfection of man, who by means of pure thought ought to participate in this good.
The apparent solution of this antinomy is construed by mathematical thought itself in the speculations concerning the metaphysical relation of possibility, reality, and necessity, and in the synthesis between "nature" and "grace".
In order to understand the course of LEIBNIZ' argument as it is related to the transcendental basic Idea of his mathematical idealism, it is necessary to return for a moment to his discovery of the differential and integral calculus. This discovery, according to LEIBNIZ' own testimony, is connected with the most basic foundations of his entire philosophy.
The basic antinomy in the Humanistic transcendental ground-Idea acquires in LEIBNIZ the mathematical form of the antinomy of actual infinity.
The basic antinomy in the Humanistic cosmonomic Idea in LEIBNIZ' metaphysics was formulated, as it were, as a mathematical problem. It was formulated as the reduction of the discreteness of the monads (into which the individualistic ideal of personality had withdrawn itself) to the continuity of the mathematically comprehended science-ideal and vice versa.
The mathematical antinomy of actual infinity is hidden in the metaphysical concept of the monad.
The differential number is actually only an approximative one. It derives all its definiteness exclusively from the principle of progression. But as the infinitesimal it can never possess an actual existence. LEIBNIZ himself has constantly pointed out the merely methodological origin of his concept of the infinitesimal (2).
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(2) CASSIRER II, 155 ff.
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Viewed mathematically, the infinitesimal in LEIBNIZ is not a smallest part of spatial matter. This was imagined in the atomism of GASSENDI, but this conception, formerly adhered to by LEIBNIZ himself, was intrinsically contradictory (3).
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(3) "Mais les atomes de matière sont contraire à la raison: outre qu'ils sont encore composés de parties; puisque l'attachement invincible d'une partie à l'autre, (quand on le pourrait concevoir ou supposer avec raison) ne détruiroit point leur diversité," Système Nouvelle 11 (ERDM., p. 126). ["But the atoms of matter are contrary to reason — not considering that they are still composed of parts — because the invincible attachment of one part to the other (if one could conceive or suppose it reasonably) would not destroy their diversity."]
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The infinitesimal must be viewed as an ideal ὑπόθεσις for the mathematical process of thought in which reality is created as a logically continuous coherence — which is its noumenal essence.
In the face of empirical reality, the differential is a mathematical fiction. It does not possess any factual individual existence. In a letter to JOHANN BERNOULLI, LEIBNIZ characteristically expressed it as follows: "the differential is not present in the parts of matter. Its place is in the ideal grounds through which things are regulated as through their laws."
Nevertheless, LEIBNIZ' metaphysics elevated the differential to actual reality in the concept of the monad. His metaphysics needed this hypostasis in order to reconcile the science-ideal with the still individualistically conceived ideal of personality (4).
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(4) Compare Réflexions sur l'essai de Locke (ERDM p. 138): "...ainsi le véritable infini ne se trouve point dans un tout composé de parties. Cependant il ne laisse pas de se trouver ailleurs, savoir dans l'absolu, qui est sans parties, et qui a influence sur les choses composées, parce qu'elles résultent de la limitation de l'absolu.
Donc l'infini positif n'étant autre chose que l'absolu, on peut dire qu'il y a en ce sens une idée positive de l'infini, et qu'elle est antérieure a celle du fini." ["...consequently the veritable infinite is not to be found in a totality composed of parts. However, it is found elsewhere, namely in the absolute, which is without parts and has influence over the composed things, because they result from the limitation of the absolute.
Consequently, because the positive infinite is nothing but the absolute, one can say that in this sense there is a positive Idea of the infinite, and that this Idea precedes that of the finite."]
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Now the logicist principle of continuity must in the final analysis come into conflict with the discreteness of the monads. This is the intrinsic antinomy in LEIBNIZ' mathematical idealism, in which he wished to overcome naturalism, as well as dualism.
This antinomy acquired a Humanistic religious meaning. In his Theodicy the actual infinity of the cosmic monads (as differentials) must be finite in contrast to that of the divine monad (the infinite analysis of the divine creative mathematical thought). And their imperfection and the metaphysical evil of the world lies in this finitude. The cosmos is only possible in a metaphysical-logical sense, if it consists of such finite and therefore imperfect beings.
"Metaphysical evil" as an eternal necessary truth in creative mathematical thought.
The monads must be finite substances which are autarchical with respect to each other. They must be confined within their own borders. For if this were not the case, everything in the cosmos would flow together into a formless whole. This can only be prevented by the finite discreteness of the monads. The spiritual soul-monads participate in mathematical thought and as such, together with the deity, they constitute a part of the civitas Dei. With respect to them LEIBNIZ observes, that if they were not limited, at least in as much as they encounter a definite limit for the mathematical analysis in sensory perceptions, everyone of them would itself be the unlimited deity (5).
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(5) Théodicée, Partie I, 64 (ERDM. 520) : "l'âme serait une Divinité, si elle n'avoit que des perceptions distinctes."
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On account of its participation in mathematical reason, however, the finite spiritual monad is only "une petite divinité dans son département" (6) (a little deity in its department).
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(6) Monadologie 83 (ERDM. 712).
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Metaphysical evil in the cosmos — i.e. the discrete limitation and finiteness of the created monads — is necessary, if a cosmos is to be possible. In this way "the metaphysical origin of evil" is derived from creative mathematical analysis itself: the origin of evil lies in the eternal truths of mathematical thought (7).
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(7) Théodicée, Partie I, 20 (ERDM. 510).
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It is extremely interesting to notice the ground on which LEIBNIZ rejects the conception of ancient philosophy which sought the origin of evil in "matter". The ground for this rejection is that the ancients viewed matter as uncreated and independent of God (8).
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(8) Théodicée, Partie I, 20 (ERDM. 510) : "Les Anciens attribuoient la cause du mal à la matière, qu'ils croyoient incréée et indépendante de Dieu; mais nous qui dérivons tout Être de Dieu, où trouverons-nous la source du mal? La réponse est, qu'elle doit être cherchée dans la Nature idéale de la créature, autant que cette Nature est renfermée dans les vérités éternelles qui sont dans l'entendement de Dieu, indépendant de sa volonté." ["The ancients ascribed the cause of evil to matter which they thought to be uncreated and independent of God; but we, who deduce every being from God, where shall we find the source of evil? The answer is, that it is to be sought in the ideal nature of the creature, insofar as this nature is included in the eternal truths which are in the understanding of God, independent of His will."]
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This conception is in conflict with the creation-motive in LEIBNIZ' mathematical ideal of science, which here clearly discloses its secularization of the Biblical creation-motive. The cause of evil must also in a metaphysical sense be derived from God, as absolute thought, bound to the "vérités éternelles". Even sensory matter is rationalized by the analysis of the infinite completed in the divine mind.
The human spiritual monad is limited in its thought, it is not omniscient, and therefore it can err in thinking and fall into moral faults.
Metaphysical evil as the root of physical and moral evil (sin!).
LEIBNIZ distinguishes evil in a physical and moral sense from metaphysical evil. Physical evil consists in suffering and moral evil is "sin".
Physical and moral evil are not necessary, as is metaphysical evil. But, because of the eternal truths, they are possible. And this is sufficient to explain their origin. They are a possible consequence of the necessary metaphysical imperfection. And the latter is itself nothing positive; it is a privatio, a mere lack of perfection.
The metaphysical cause of evil is not a causa efficiens, but a causa deficiens, according to LEIBNIZ' scholastic formula. And the activity of God is directed solely toward the positive, toward perfection and the good.
It is true that physical and moral evil are not necessary in themselves. But they are a negative condicio sine qua non for the realization of the good. This good manifests itself physically as pleasure, and ethically as the freedom of personality. And because of this freedom the latter is a member of the "Kingdom of Grace", the "société de la raison". A cosmos without physical suffering and sin would have been possible, but then it would be very inferior to the one existing now. Such a cosmos would not leave any room for the free rational personality of man, nor for an organic union of soul- and material monads, i.e. a union of body and soul under the direction of the latter as central monad. And this would be a deficiency, because in this case the continuity in the species of substances would not be actualized, and a breach of the principle of continuity would imply a "vacuum formarum" (9).
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(9) Theodicee I, 13 and 14 (ERDM. 507).
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How LEIBNIZ attempted to resolve metaphysical evil into the continuity of infinite mathematical analysis.
Ergo, the moral freedom of personality is required by the principle of continuity of the mathematical science-ideal. And the same principle of continuity requires relative physical and moral evil, because the relative imperfection, as implied in the gradual diversity of clarity in the representations of the monads, is a pre-requisite for the ever greater perfection in the mathematical order of development of the cosmos.
Physical and moral evil possess empirical but not metaphysical reality: they belong to the obscure, sensory confused representations.
The analysis of the universe is accomplished uno intuito in the creative mathematical thought of the deity. Therefore, in the actual infinity of this analysis, the individual evil of the monads disappears in the relative perfection of the total cosmos, as the latter is conceived of in the spaceless continuity of creative mathematical thought. The kingdom of nature, the "phenomenon", is identical in its root with the kingdom of grace, the intelligible world of the clear and distinct concept. The "causae efficientes" are brought into perfect correspondence with the "causae finales" by the "harmonia praestabilita". They are brought into complete harmony with the appetitions in the continuous transition of the representations of each monad. And these appetitions originate in the metaphysical nature of the monads and have as a goal the realization of good and evil.
In this way LEIBNIZ attempts to solve theologically the basic antinomy in his transcendental ground-Idea between the ideal of science and that of personality.
But in spite of its ingenious design, this attempt was bound to fail. In his Theodicy LEIBNIZ entangled himself in constant contradictions. On the one hand, he made individual metaphysical evil to be something logically negative, i.e. a mere lack of pure analysis, and, on the other, he elevated it as the condicio sine qua non for the metaphysical reality of perfection, i.e. the good of the cosmos.
Thus the finite discreteness of the monads, as the metaphysical differentials of the cosmos, becomes both an actual metaphysical reality and a logical negative.
Even in its metaphysical form the concept of actual infinity continues to be intrinsically antinomic. The continuity of the movement of thought must necessarily break through the discreteness of the monads and, vice versa, the discreteness of the monads must necessarily contradict the lex continui.
LEIBNIZ and BAYLE.
The basic problem in LEIBNIZ' theodicy is, as we saw, that of the reconcilitation between the Humanistic ideal of science and that of personality. This is still more evident, when we remember that the voluminous and popular theological work of LEIBNIZ was pointed directly against PIERRE BAYLE. By means of his sceptical arguments against the Cartesian cogito and the mathematical axioms, the latter had undermined the very formations of the mathematical science-ideal.
BAYLE'S nominalist doctrine of the two sorts of truth (10) set forth an absolute cleft between Christian faith and natural reason.
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(10) One can say that, with respect to the intensification of the antithesis between the Christian faith and the Humanistic science-ideal, BAYLE filled a similar role as had been played in the disruption of the Christian faith and AristoteIian metaphysics by WILLIAM OF OCCAM, and even more strongly by the Averroist SIGER OF BRABANT. BAYLE laid bare this antithesis in its sharpest form; he accepted a positive conflict between the Christian faith and Humanistic thought.
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This view did not interest LEIBNIZ, because of his concern with the absoluteness of the Christian religion. In fact, he always conceived of the Christian "dogmas of faith" as contingent truths, bound to the sensory representation. Mathematical thought must transform them into the eternal mathematical-metaphysical truths of the religion of reason! It was indeed a quite different aspect of BAYLE'S scepticism that disturbed LEIBNIZ.
In his sceptical attitude toward the Cartesian ideal of science BAYLE indeed granted primacy to the ideal of personality in natural reason, the so-called "practical reason". He had tried to show that moral commandments do not derive their intrinsic value from the Christian religion but from "practical human reason". Thereby "practical reason" had been completely emancipated from the Humanistic science-ideal.
BAYLE considered the Christian religion to be independent of, or rather in open conflict with human reason. He had sharply opposed the Idea of a "Vernunftreligion". His intention had been to retain a place for Christian religion in the "heart". This could only appear to LEIBNIZ as blasphemy against sovereign reason (11).
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(11) This LEIBNIZ continually evidences in his polemics with BAYLE. Compare, Theodicy III, 353 (ERDM. 606) where he attacks BAYLE as follows: ;"Il s'accommodoit de ce qui lui convenoit pour contrecarrer l'adversaire qu'il avoit en tête; son but n'étant que d'embarrasser les Philosophes, et faire voir la foiblesse de notre Raison: et je crois que jamais Arcésilas ni Carnéade n'ont soutenu le pour et le contre avec plus d'éloquence et plus d'esprit." ["He availed himself of what suited him to cross the adversary which he had in view; for his goal was only to confuse the philosophers, and to show the weakness of our reason: and I believe neither Arcesilaus nor Carneades ever have defended the pro and con with more eloquence and more genius."]
And especially the introductory Discours de la conformité de la foi avec la Raison, 71-82. See no 81: "Mr BAYLE poursuit: "qu'il faut alors se moquer de ces objections, en reconnoissant les bornes étroites de l'esprit humain." Et moi, je crois que bien loin de-là, il y faut reconnoitre des marques de la force de l'esprit humain, qui le fait pénétrer dans l'intérieur des choses." ["Mr BAYLE continues: "that one ought to mock at these objections, when one acknowledges the narrow boundaries of the human mind." And I believe, on the contrary, that one ought to acknowledge in these objections marks of the power of the human mind which makes it penetrate into the very interior of things."]
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He wrote his Theodicy in order to bring the ideal of personality again under the domination of the mathematical science-ideal. He wished to reduce the Christian religion again to a lower function of the "religion of reason".
But the extremely refined antinomies which lay hidden in LEIBNIZ' haughty metaphysics, and which can be traced back to the basic antinomy in the transcendental ground-Idea of Humanistic thought, were soon to be subjected to the scrutiny of KANT'S Critique of Pure Reason in order to break the primacy of the ideal of science at its very root.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 2 /§5 pp 252-261)
