Stony Brook University

and penalties” but rather are able “to enjoy felicity as a necessary corollary to virtue.”
Thus the wise love God and act honorably toward others because they know that God has
made virtue is its own reward.
This, I think, is Leibniz’s most consistent position, if not his more frequent one.
However, this position is not without problems. First, it makes the other motives morally
superfluous. If virtue is its own reward, then the other motives ought to be either
unnecessary for acting virtuously or insufficiently virtuous. The motives of punishment
and reward only provide incentives for the insufficiently virtuous, but they are not the
motives by which we ought to act. Leibniz implies that one ought to act with honor
because it is right. One ought to have the virtue of justice because it is just. But his
account of motives obscures this fact.
Secondly, it may be objected that the virtuous are still motivated by the pleasure and
happiness they receive from being virtuous; thus, Leibniz cannot really avoid basing the
three precepts on self-love and hedonist motives. There is actually a lot at stake in this
objection. But whether it holds depends on the cogency of Leibniz’s argument for noncalculating
(or disinterested) love. As we saw in the Elementa, to love is to find pleasure
in the happiness of another. This sort of love is honorable, as long as it is done for
another’s sake and not solely for one’s own. This argument may not be convincing. To
make it work it must maintain that gaining pleasure is not the end of action, but virtue is,
and pleasure accompanies this virtue. If we do not find pleasure in acts of virtue, this
does not mean that we have acted wrongly; it means rather that we have not acquired the
right disposition. The right disposition is to find pleasure in virtue, so that virtue may be
done well.
It must also be asked, what, really is honor, for Leibniz? He does not analyze this
concept, even so it is one of his most important. Elsewhere however he does offer at least
one definition of it, one which interestingly resonates with his definition of right.
Truly indeed the honorable is that which we are. It is our mind (the mind
indeed is what most chiefly perfects us). However, perfection of the mind
is the power (potentia) of one in regard to the affects and motions of the
body, which if we are able to restrain sufficiently, nothing may prohibit us
from following reason, which means to cultivate virtue. 53
As rational substances (minds) we have the capacity or power to follow reason, to
cultivate virtue. To be honorable is to act according to that virtue which restrains the
passions and follows reason. This is very much a stoic formulation, but it resonates very
well with the capacity we have (the moral power and obligation) to follow right reason.
More specifically, to live honorably means not to use others for one’s own ends; it means
to tell the truth, to keep promises, and to do good for others, as long as these acts are done
for the sake of others. Indeed, the objective of honor is not only the perfection of oneself
but the perfection of society. Respecting God is supposed to incite us to perform
honorable acts, but it is not really necessary to love God in order to act honorably. What
53 TI: “Vere enim honestum est quicquid nos, id est animum nostrum (animus enim potissimum est id quod
sumus perficit. Perfectio autem animi est potentia eius in corporis affectus motusque, quos si satis
compescere possimus, nihil est quod nos prohibeat rationem sequi id est virtutem colere” (p. 620). This
passage is from a piece titled “De Jure et Justitia” dated 1677-78.
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