Stony Brook University

According to Sève, it turns out that we are obliged to increase the amount of perfection in
the universe. However, this is not right. Leibniz has not yet formulated an explicit
metaphysical thesis on perfection, nor does he say that we are obligated to increase the
perfection of the universe. Leibniz does not think that we have the obligation not to harm
others because harming others fails to increase the amount of perfection in the universe.
Nor are we obligated to love others because not loving them fails to fulfill the condition
of perfection. Rather, harming others is wrong due to the kinds of beings that we are—
beings endowed with freedom, responsibility, with the capacity to inflict harm, to refrain
from it, and to do good. That is, we have obligations because we have natural freedom.
Since right gives us certain moral powers, it gives us certain obligations as well.
Sève makes another (possibly) misleading point in the above passage. He is
correct to say that the good person is not defined “from a legalistic perspective,” as one
who submits to rules, but rather the rules are defined “in respect of” the good person. But
this should not be taken to mean that the good person determines what the moral rules
are. Rather, the good person is defined by the good she determines her will to do, by the
virtue she has to love everyone.
Sève however points out a problem that, as is well known, is endemic to Leibniz’s
system, namely, the problem of determinism.
If the good man necessarily does the good, in virtue of his goodness, will
it not be contradictory that he cannot do it? It serves nothing to remark that
the action contrary to duty (for example to kill an innocent) could be
accomplished if the will to accomplish it . . . is impossible for him. The
same difficulty regards any “impeccable” (incapable of sin) being, and
eminently of God: in what sense could he not create the best of possible
worlds, if this production emanates from a supreme goodness which is
included in his essence even to be the most perfect? Leibniz’s answer is
that the cause of the act is in the will. Now if this latter is necessarily
inclined to choose the good, this necessity belonging to the will or to
character defines the liberty of the subject, and is thus far from removing
[the necessity] (Sève 112).
Sève’s point is that the good man, whose will is always in accord with the good, would
be physically necessitated to do the good, thus would not be free. From this we may
conclude that without freedom the “good person” cannot be a true moral agent. However,
Leibniz could respond, as he does later in Theodicy, that this necessity, which certainly
applies to God, is a “happy necessity,” since it means that a perfect being will always act
for the best reasons. 192 But this happy necessity is just what freedom is, for Leibniz. 193 It
is most free to act according to the best reasons. Such actions are free precisely because
they are determined by the best reasons.
192 Theodicy § 191: “This so-called fatum, which binds [oblige] even the Divinity, is nothing but God’s
own nature, his own understainding, which furishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness; it is a happy
necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise.” I will discuss this point in more detatil in
Chapter Seven.
193 Letter to Wedderkopf 1671: Summa enim libertas est ad optimum a recta ratione cogi, qui aliam
libertatem desiderat stultus est (A.2.1.186).
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