God Can Do Otherwise: A Defense of Act Contingency in Leibniz's Mature Period

History of Philosophy Quarterly 39 (3):235-256 (2022)
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Abstract

This paper locates a source of contingency for Leibniz in the fact that God can do otherwise, absolutely speaking. This interpretative line has been previously thought to be a dead-end because it appears inconsistent with Leibniz’s own conception of God, as the ens perfectissimum, or the most perfect being (Adams, 1994). This paper points out that the best argument on offer which seeks to demonstrate this inconsistency fails. The paper then argues that the supposition that God does otherwise implies for Leibniz (at least) that God would not be praiseworthy, which is an absurd implication—or a violation of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR)—but that this is not, strictly speaking, an inconsistency—or a violation of the principle of contradiction (POC). While praiseworthiness is a perfection—and is compossible with God’s other perfections—and so God must instantiate it, this paper argues that, given the nature of praiseworthiness for Leibniz, it in fact makes sense to say that praiseworthiness is merely a contingent perfection of God.

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Dylan Flint
Ohio State University

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References found in this work

Rationalism and Necessitarianism.Martin Lin - 2012 - Noûs 46 (3):418-448.
A Critical exposition of the Philosophie of Leibniz.B. Russell - 1901 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 9 (1):9-9.
The Modal Status of Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason.Owen Pikkert - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (1):40-58.

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