The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (22 page)

I have been arguing, then, on Leibniz’ behalf and in what I hope to be something like Leibniz’ own terms, that his conviction that every proposition is analytic
in that broad, non-Kantian sense
does not in any way compromise his conviction that some propositions are contingent. But there is one further concern that we might have about this, which must be addressed. The concern is as follows. On Leibniz’ view, it is not only analytic, in that sense, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God who ensures that everything is for the best; it is also necessary. For it is a truth of reasoning: it is a truth that even we, with our finite intellects, can determine
a priori
. It follows that, in every possible world, there is a God ensuring that everything is for the best.
³⁷
Yet only in one possible world, namely that which in fact qualifies as the best,
is
everything for the best. (On Leibniz’ view, of course, that world is this world.) So must not something give (the most obvious candidate being that there is more than one possible world)?

Here is another way of voicing the same concern. Leibniz sometimes calls what is necessary ‘metaphysically necessary’, and he sometimes calls what is for the best ‘morally necessary’ (e.g.
Correspondence with Clarke
, ‘Fifth Paper’, ¶9).
³⁸
In these terms, he holds that some of what is morally necessary – some of what is actually the case, in other words – is not metaphysically necessary. But that seems straightforwardly incompatible with something else that he holds, namely that it is metaphysically necessary that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God who ensures that whatever is morally necessary is true.

Leibniz is well aware of this concern. To meet it, he urges that it is contingent what is for the best, in other words that what is for the best varies from
one possible world to another (‘On Contingency’, esp. p. 30).
³⁹
This leaves him free to say that each possible world is the best
by its own lights
. And this in turn leaves him free to accept both of the following, without denying that there is more than one possible world.

(1)
In every possible world there is a God ensuring that everything is for the best.

(2) In only one possible world, this one, is there a God ensuring that everything is for the best.

The point is this. Proposition (1) can be understood as a
de dicto
proposition about what is for the best (in every possible world there is a God ensuring that everything is for the best by the lights of that world), while proposition (2) can be understood as a
de re
proposition about what is for the best (given what is in fact for the best, by the lights of this world, this is the only possible world in which there is a God ensuring that that is how everything is).
⁴⁰

But surely, someone might object, it is preposterous to say that each possible world is the best by its own lights, and quite antithetical to Leibniz’ own non-relativistic conception of what qualifies as the best (see §1). Surely, he should hold that what qualifies as the best, and what guides God in His creative act, is itself necessary, in the most robust sense of necessity – or, if not in the most robust sense, then certainly in a sense robust enough to prevent its being true that,
whatever
form God’s creative act had taken, it would have been for the best (proposition (1)).

This objection is confused. We must not be misled by the imagery of possible worlds. Possible worlds are not like foreign countries where they do things differently.
⁴¹
Whether or not something is true in all possible worlds, in other words whether or not it is (metaphysically) necessary,
just is
a matter of whether or not it can be shown, by a finite process of analysis, not to be deniable without absurdity. All that Leibniz is saying is something to which we already know him to be committed, which is this: although such a finite process of analysis is enough to show that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God who ensures that everything is for the best, it takes a kind of infinite analysis, based on sensitivity
to the balance that needs to be struck, to determine what exactly this requires of Him.

Leibniz is really talking about how different truths are ascertained, then. And since we do not have infinite intellects, we must sometimes use our sensory faculties to determine what is required of God to ensure that everything is for the best. We must see what form His creation has actually taken. Whenever we do that, we are ruling out possibilities concerning how the balance is struck. This connects with something I said in passing earlier: that Leibniz’ conception of the possible is in certain respects like an epistemic conception indicating temporary ignorance on our part. I do not want to exaggerate these respects. For instance, it would be straightforwardly false to say that, on Leibniz’ conception, ‘It is possible that …’ is equivalent to ‘For all we know, it is true that ….’ Apart from anything else, any use of the latter expression is sensitive to who uses it and when, in a way in which no use of the former is. Still, it would be closer to the truth to say this than might be suggested by Leibniz’ use of the label ‘metaphysically necessary’, especially if we have in mind what contemporary analytic philosophers mean when
they
use such phrases as ‘metaphysically necessary’.
⁴²
What is possible, on Leibniz’ conception, is what cannot be reduced to absurdity by a finite process of analysis. It thus pertains, if not to a temporary lack of knowledge, then certainly to an irremediable lack of finite
a priori
knowledge (‘For all we finite creatures
can
know
a priori
, it is true that …’) – which finally brings us back to the question of how all of this subserves theodicy.

5. Leibniz’ Solution to the Problem of Theodicy. Its Unsatisfactoriness

The original problem was this. Leibniz’ metaphysics furnishes a proof that this is the best of all possible worlds – which it appears, pertinaciously, not to be. It is patent what Leibniz needs to do. And it is patent, for that matter, how his metaphysical story equips him to do it. Or at least, these things are patent in outline. He needs to make sense of how we make sense of things in such a way as to subvert the appearances. But the problem is more acute for him than that suggests. For he needs, obviously enough, to subvert the relevant appearances. It will be of no avail to show how we are misled about the world’s overall value, by whatever standards make this the best of all possible worlds, if those are not the standards that give us such a powerful impression of the world’s improvability.
⁴³
Leibniz’ story is perfectly suited
to account for the general possibility of a mismatch between how things appear and how they ultimately are. What is less clear, as I shall try to show in this section, is its capacity to
apply that possibility to what seems so egregious in the conclusion that this is the best of all possible worlds.

That there may be a mismatch between how things appear and how they ultimately are is an essential feature of our finitude, as it is written into Leibniz’ story. We see the world in a limited, perspectival way. The fact that we also, despite that, carry within us a full and accurate representation of the world, albeit a representation that is less distinct the less well positioned we are with respect to what is being represented, perhaps means that, for any particular question about how the world is, we can eventually, in principle, determine the answer to it. But we can never, even in principle, determine the combined answers to all such questions. We can never achieve that infinite insight into the whole which shows how everything is for the best; how there is nowhere a complexity in theories or a poverty in phenomena that is not worth enduring for the sake of a richness in phenomena or a simplicity in theories elsewhere. So while we remain in ignorance about aspects of the whole, we are liable to err, either in the judgments we make (‘Discourse’, §14) or indeed about whether we are making judgments at all, there always being a danger, when we take ourselves to be reflecting on the grand scheme of things, that what we are really doing is dallying with notions that are incoherent (‘Discourse’, §25). We may think we see possibilities for improving the world. In fact we are just fastening on isolated ‘evils’ and failing to grasp fully the implications of their elimination. Here is Leibniz:

We have knowledge of a tiny part of that eternity which stretches out immeasurably…. And yet out of so little experience we rashly make judgments about the immeasurable and the eternal…. Look at the most lovely picture, and then cover it up, leaving uncovered only a tiny scrap of it. What else will you see there, even if you look as closely as possible, and the more so as you look from nearer and nearer at hand, but a kind of confused medley of colours, without selection, without art! And yet when you remove the covering, and look upon the whole picture from the proper place, you will see that what previously seemed to you to have been aimlessly smeared on the canvas was in fact accomplished with the highest art by the author of the work…. [Similarly, the] great composers frequently mingle discords with harmonious chords so that the listener may be stimulated and pricked as it were, and become, in a way, anxious about the outcome; presently when all is restored to order he feels so much the more content. (‘The Ultimate Origination’, p. 142; cf.
Theodicy
, p. 248, and ‘Résumé’, §19)

That may seem to be as much as Leibniz needs to say, in his own terms, to provide for a theodicy. For he seems to have shown adequately how we may think we see possibilities for simpler theories or richer phenomena overall
when really all we see are such possibilities in the small. The crucial question, however, is whether that is why we think things could have been better.

In §2 I adverted to the scepticism that we may feel, in the face of Leibniz’ argument that this is the best of all possible worlds, about whether we really understand its conclusion. Precisely what I had in mind was the possible objection that Leibniz’ argument uses standards of assessment that are foreign to us. As David Wiggins puts it, ‘a world could furnish by the simplest means the greatest possible variety of forms yet be brutally indifferent to all human concerns and moral purposes’ (Wiggins (
1996
), p. 126; see further ibid., §11). Almost immediately after the passage quoted above, Leibniz tries to forestall any such objection by urging that his standards take due account of ‘the good of individual people’ (ibid., p. 143). ‘As for [our] afflictions,’ he continues, ‘… [these] are for the time being evil, but in effect good, since they are short cuts to a greater perfection’ (ibid., pp. 143–144). But there is at least one form that the objection can take that is completely immune either to this or indeed to any other response at Leibniz’ disposal.

It takes this form in the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoevsky’s novel
The Brothers Karamazov
. Ivan’s heart is rent by stories of suffering among innocent children. He proclaims, ‘I don’t want harmony [whose price this suffering is]. I don’t want it, out of the love I bear to mankind…. Too high a price has been placed on [it]’ (Dostoevsky (
1982
), p. 287). The target of his outcry appears to be the value accorded, as he says, to harmony (in whatever way harmony is to be understood in this context – it is not, of course, the notion of harmony introduced in §3). But a more fundamental target is the value accorded to sheer existence. For the protest is really that if
this
is the price that has to be paid to attain the best version of a world such as ours, then it would have been better had there never been a world such as ours; it would have been better had nothing been created at all. It is all very well for Leibniz to reply that this protest ignores the larger picture. But the protest is precisely that no larger picture can be relevant – save insofar as a blank canvas counts as a larger picture.

Leibniz writes:

There is a perpetual and most free progress of the whole universe towards a consummation of the universal beauty and perfection of the works of God. (‘The Ultimate Origination’, p. 144)

Ivan says:

I believe in the underlying order and meaning of life. I believe in the eternal harmony into which we are all supposed to merge one day. I believe in the Word to which the universe is striving and which itself … [is] God…. [But] I refuse to accept this
world
of God’s….

We cannot afford to pay so much for admission…. It is not God that I do not accept…. I merely most respectfully return him the ticket. (Dostoevsky (
1982
), pp. 275 and 287, emphasis added)

Leibniz, in his most general attempt to make sense of things, seemed to achieve the ultimate prize: a way of coming to terms with how things are. But he cannot genuinely be said to have achieved this prize unless his metaphysics engages properly with what we antecedently recognize as coming to terms with how things are. To be sure, he is entitled to disturb or challenge our preconceptions. But if we are to accede to his metaphysics, or even to make sense of it, then there had better be a firmer connection within it than there appears to be between what he says matters in
the end and what matters now, to us. Otherwise, although what he says need not be untrue, it will be untruthful.
⁴⁴

1
Throughout this chapter I use the following abbreviations for Leibniz’ works: ‘A Specimen’ for Leibniz (
1973c
); ‘Correspondence with Arnauld’, for Leibniz (
1962
);
Correspondence with Clarke
for Leibniz and Clarke (
1956
); ‘Discourse’ for Leibniz (
1998
); ‘Introduction’ for Leibniz (
1973a
); ‘Metaphysical Consequences’ for Leibniz (
1973j
); ‘Monadology’ for Leibniz (
1973k
); ‘Nature and Grace’ for Leibniz (
1973l
); ‘Necessary and Contingent’ for Leibniz (
1973e
);
New Essays
for Leibniz (
1996
); ‘New System’ for Leibniz (
1973g
); ‘On Contingency’ for Leibniz (
1989
); ‘On Freedom’ for Leibniz (
1973f
); ‘Reflections’ for Leibniz (
1956
); ‘Résumé’ for Leibniz (
1973i
);
Schriften
for Leibniz (
1923
– );
Textes Inédits
for Leibniz (
1948
);
Theodicy
for Leibniz (
1985
); ‘The Ultimate Origination’ for Leibniz (
1973h
); and ‘Universal Synthesis’ for Leibniz (
1973b
). All unaccompanied references are to Leibniz (
1875
–1890), with Roman numerals representing volume numbers and Arabic numerals page numbers.