Leibniz: The Best of All Possible Worlds
This essay reviews Leibniz’s argument on the actual world being the best of all possible worlds.
I. Introduction
One of the most impactful projects undertaken by Leibniz is delineating and demonstrating the actual world as the best of all possible worlds. Philosophers like Moore once argued that this metaphysical picture in Leibniz’s philosophy is valuable intrinsically, as it illuminates us on the essences or natures of individual substances, including human beings. But that should not be considered the sole contribution of this project to his philosophy as a whole. For instance, it also bolsters his considerations in ethics.
Leibniz’s discussion of the best world is concentratedly reflected in his work Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. The term “theodicy” here stands for “divine justice”. This question of the justice of God can be traced back to Epicurus. Epicurus wondered: if God is infinitely powerful and just, then why would there be any evil in this world? To admit that God wills the existence of evil is to say that God is malicious; while to admit that God does not will evil but is incapable of taking it away is to say that God is feeble, neither of which is coherent with how we normally perceive God to be. In Leibniz’s time, a request for solutions to Epicurus’ question became particularly pressing and urgent in Christianity, for on the one hand, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution gave rise to groups of intelligent pagans who advocated polytheism, and on the other hand, Islamic nations challenged Christianity in Europe with their monotheistic religion. On top of the emerging new beliefs, people’s moral beliefs started to shake as well. Having witnessed the innocent suffering and evildoers fleeing from punishment, people naturally started to wonder whether being a successful criminal is a better strategy than being virtuous. In this context, Leibniz’s aim can be seen as unifying various theological considerations and reinforcing Christian philosophy, which guides its believers to act virtuously.
Epicurus’ question on evil can be separated into two parts: if evil exists, one has to either admit that God is not omniscient, or that God is not just and benevolent. These two aspects of the question are referred to by Murray as “the Holiness Problem” and “the Underachiever Problem” in the SEP entry “Leibniz on the Problem of Evil”. The main body of this essay will recount Leibniz’s project of reconciling the existence of evil and the perfection of God by focusing on how Leibniz deals with the two aspects of the problem. Then, in the closing part, I will briefly mention several problems which I find compelling and which may be difficult for Leibniz to answer.
II. The Holiness Problem
It is argued that the holiness of God is stained by the existence of evil because he does not will the best and therefore is not morally noble. As a matter of fact, accepting that God is not morally just or benevolent is how Spinoza answers Epicurus’ question. God in Spinoza’s sense is not some entity that can be applied moral predicates, but nature itself. Then, if God does not necessarily will the best, the existence of evils is compatible with the idea of a Spinozan God. But the denial of God’s benevolence will lead to moral skepticism, which is a result not acceptable to Leibniz and many other Christian philosophers.
To understand whether God wills the good, it is essential to understand what goodness is to God. It is little disputed that Leibniz interprets what God takes to be good as “harmony”. But if we further enquire what “harmony” is, opinions differ. For irrational entities, it is argued that the greatest harmony is either (a) the maximization of the essences of substances, or (b) the simplest laws governing the greatest varieties of phenomena. While for rational beings, harmony is seen as the maximization of total happiness or virtue. It seems that these three interpretations can be linked to three different kinds of perfection distinguished by Leibniz, with metaphysical and physical perfection incorporated by (a) and (b), while moral perfection is incorporated by (c).
Let us consider metaphysical goodness and physical goodness first. To Leibniz, every existence but God is metaphysically imperfect. The metaphysically perfect God uses monads, or continuous immaterial atoms, to create the world, which are in place such that each one of them is in harmony with every other actualized monad. The “harmony” here, according to Moore, is a monad’s cohering with other monads, or two monads’ coexisting in a world with the same content. But this coherence in monads does not constitute enough reason for God to create. Additionally, God wills the actual world because of different degrees of perfection in actual substances. Hence, to create the best world, God should create as many substances as possible. Meanwhile, just as geometers and architects apply the most ingenious rules in accomplishing their goals, God uses the simplest hypotheses to build the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz barely provided any further illustration of “simplicity”, yet Rutherford once indicated that “simplicity” can be considered as degrees of unification. That is, the more phenomena can be illustrated by a single natural law, the more harmony there is.
In another light, the greatest harmony can be understood as the greatest moral perfection in rational beings. A point worth noticing is that Leibniz does not regard happiness as the highest or sole aim for God when creating the world. He said in the Theodicy: “The happiness of rational creatures is one of the aims (God) has in view; but it is not his whole aim, nor even his ultimate aim.” Neither is virtue the bare aim for God. Nevertheless, the greatest moral perfection for rational beings and the greatest happiness and virtue form a subtle balance with each other such that neither can be achieved without the achievement of the other. Happiness can only persist in the presence of virtue, which means acting in accordance with wisdom, and altogether they constitute a state where moral perfection resides.
In accordance with the three perfections mentioned above are three different types of evils—metaphysical, physical, and moral. The first type does not bother Leibniz much, as it is only absent in God himself. But physical evils (sufferings) and moral evils (sins) do require our closer attention, as they may be absent in some possible worlds. The presence of these evils in the actual world, Leibniz argues, is still not sufficient for us to accuse God of having a malicious will, for God does not cause them to exist, but only permits them to be there. Additionally, Leibniz maintains that evils are not even existences, but merely deprivation or lack of being.
III. The Underachiever Problem
Now that the doubt on God’s willingness to create the best world is cleared, we just need to show that the actual world is better than any other possible world, and also better than nothingness, to answer Epicurus’ question.
Reasons why one may reject the actual world as the best one are plain to conceive. First of all, human beings suffer from seemingly dispensable catastrophes, regardless of their qualities and virtues—earthquakes, floods, droughts—all of which may be disposed of in other possible worlds, and human suffering thereby alleviated. Moreover, quarrels, fights, and betrayals prevail in the world in almost any time period. If God is benevolent, why not create every rational being as wise and virtuous, and eliminate disputes from the world?
One approach to dismissing such objections is to say that sufferings and sins are by-products of goodness. If one has never tasted bitterness, he will never know that sweetness is good. Likewise, goodness is only manifest when sufferings are known to rational beings. In other words, sufferings prepare us for greater happiness, and the happiness gained outweighs the suffering human beings encounter overall, which makes the existing world more desirable than nothing. Additionally, there are moral reasons to assume this world to be perfect, where sins are punished and good deeds are rewarded for a spirit by God in some unperceivable ways, for in the mundane world, crimes go unpunished and sacrifices go neglected at times. A denial of the best and just world would devalue what is morally good.
But still, some sufferings are so unintelligible that we cannot conceive them as the slightest good—for instance, a flood that inundates hundreds and thousands of people. Leibniz would respond to this by saying that such suffering is not harmonious except in the limited picture that people as limited beings may perceive, but appears harmonious to God, who is an omniscient infinite being. As Leibniz described in On the Ultimate Origination of Things:
We know little but a small part of the eternity which extends without measure, for how short is the memory of several thousand years which history gives us… Look at a very beautiful picture, and cover it up except for some small part. What will it look like but some confused combination of colours, without delight, without art; indeed, the more closely we examine it the more it will look that way. But as soon as the covering is removed, and you see the whole surface from an appropriate place, you will understand that what looked like accidental splotches on the canvas were made with consummate skill by the creator of the work. (AG 153)
God and God’s will in this sense remain incomprehensible and unspeakable to human beings, but this attempt to place finite human intelligence before infinite divine intelligence leaves huge ground for Christian theology to argue.
IV. Conclusion
In general, to answer Epicurus’ question and reinforce Christianity, Leibniz provided a relatively coherent metaphysical picture. He asserts that the actual world which God created is the best of all possible worlds—most perfect in both physical and moral senses according to God’s will. The presence of evils in this actual world does not prevent it from being the best one, for evils are by-products of goodness, and even prepare us for the better. Even if some evils appear unintelligible as good, it is only because we are not able to comprehend them due to the finitude of human nature.
Leibniz’s whole project of demonstrating the world as the best of all possible worlds brings us to a stage at which we can neither verify nor falsify, but only believe. Although hardly any fatal fault can be found in his demonstration, Leibniz’s project may sit in an awkward place in the Christian tradition. To illustrate, Christianity depicts heaven as a place of eternal bliss and permanent happiness. If Leibniz accepts the existence of heaven, then would it not be implausible for this earthly world to be created? On the other hand, if he rejects the idea of heaven, then more arduous work would be needed to depict the unperceived afterlife or future world. Also, his project can only persuade us that it is possible for this world, where evils are present, to be the best of all possible worlds; yet it has not given any hint as to why it is impossible for a world devoid of evils to be better than the existing world. After all, human painters may fail to construct pictures harmonious both on the whole and in the part due to their limited capacity. But since God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, why can’t he create a world that is not only harmonious on the whole, but also harmonious when viewed from every part of it?
References
[1] Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Roger Ariew, and Daniel Garber. Philosophical Essays. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett, 1989.
[2] Murray, Michael. “Leibniz on the Problem of Evil.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013.
[3] Jolley, Nicholas. Leibniz. London: Routledge, 2005.
[4] Wilson, Catherine. Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989, ch. viii.
[5] Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995, chapters 1–3.
[6] Lodge, Paul. “Theodicy, Metaphysics, and Metaphilosophy in Leibniz.” Philosophical Topics 43.1 (2015): 27–52.