Stony Brook University

will be tacitly understood. Because, by the nature of things everything
falls under possible to do or to omit, until a reasonable suspicion of the
opposite arises. 173
In sum, jurisprudence is a science, since it has been demonstrated out of the definition of
‘the good person.’ It is a science of right, since it has been demonstrated out of the
deontic categories of right and obligation, which correspond to the modal categories of
possibility and necessity. The passage seems to express Busche’s remark that for Leibniz
natural right is based on “the primacy of the possible.” Jurisprudence is the science of the
just, and the just is what is possible for a good person to do, and that is to love everyone.
The most basic elements of the science are freedom and duty. Obligation is now called
“the science of duties,” and we can clearly see that he conceives of ‘potentia’, as moral
possibility, since he says explicitly that the science of the just is what is possible and
impossible for a good person. Thus, once again the whole of the science of jurisprudence
is founded on the moral qualities, now conceived of as freedom and duty.
That this science implies freedom can be seen in the definitions immediately
following, where freedom and duty are moral powers in contrast to natural power:
Freedom is the moral power or answerability in a good person congruent
with natural power. Duty is the reduction of the natural power to the moral
power. 174
These definitions are, again, consistent with the logic of the modes of right. Freedom is a
moral power, which includes the physical power of acting morally. Duty is the power of
reducing or restraining one’s physical power. 175 Leibniz then reiterates the connection of
the moral qualities with the modes of right:
Therefore freedom is the mode by which acts are denominated either
possible or contingent (or just and indifferent) for a good person. Duty is
173 A.6.1.467: “IURISPRUDENTIA est scientia justi, seu scientia libertatis et officiorum, seu scientia juris,
proposito aliqvo casu seu facto. Scientiam voco, etsi practicam, qvia ex sola definitione Viri boni omnes
eius propositiones demonstrari possunt, neqve ab inductione exemplisqve pendent. . . . Iusti scientiam voco
sue eius qvod viro bono possibile est, qvia eadem opera apparet et qvicqvid ei possibile non est facere, et
qvicqvid ei possibile non est omittere. Scientiam officiorum voco, seu eius qvod viro bono impossibile et
necessarium, id est omissu impossibile est, ... seu possibilia et contigentia habentur. Sufficit necessaria
impossibiliaqve, imo sufficit impossibilia enumerari, inde caetera tacendo intelligentur. Qvia omnia per
naturam rerum factu omissuve possibilia habentur, donec contrarii suspicio cum ratione oboriatur.”
174 A.6.1.467: “Libertas est potentiae moralis seu cadentis in virum bonum congruitas cum naturali.
Officium est defectus potentiae moralis à naturali.”
175 This passage may be usefully compared with conceptions of subjective right found in Selden and early
Hobbes, in which right is defined as the freedom to do whatsoever one will and is capable, without
limitation, or with limitation determined only by God’s will, or by the law of nature. As Richard Tuck
writes (p. 120): “Hobbes was quite explicit in the Elements that the state of nature was the state of total
freedom hypothesised by Selden and the others: ‘Every man by nature hath right to all things, that is to say,
to do whatsoever he listeth to whom he listeth, to possess, use, and enjoy, all things he will and can. For
seeing all things he willeth, must therfore be good unto him in his own judgement, because he willeth them
and may tend to his preservation some time or other . . . it followeth that all things may rightly also be done
by him’” (Elements, I.14.10). Tuck also shows however that Hobbes in Leviathan limited this freedom
somewhat.
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