Stony Brook University

just because a principle is not known distinctly in conscious awareness does not mean
that it cannot play an effective role in action and thought. 43
As we increasingly find, Leibniz’s positions most often depend on the quite
distinct principles of pleasure and reason. It is fitting then that at this point in the dialogue
Leibniz specifically distinguishes between pleasure and the just. This distinction also
involves a very important but brief discussion of the so-called Golden Rule. For the first
time in the Nouveaux Essais, we are shown a specific moral rule that is not based on
either the principles of pleasure and pain or on theological assumptions. As this section of
the dialogue begins Locke is shown to reject yet again innate practical principles, based
on this argument: If a moral rule needs a proof, then it is not innate. But even that rule
which is “the foundation of all social virtue” needs a proof. Therefore, etc. The rule is
this: do to others only what you would like others to do to you. 44 Leibniz has two
responses to Locke’s argument. The first clarifies how innate truths may be known, i.e.,
by illumination and by instinct; the second offers an important clarification of the Golden
Rule. Both responses elucidate a point about what is just. We will take each response in
order.
But there are two ways of discovering innate truths within us: by
illumination and by instinct. Those [innate truths] to which I have just
referred are demonstrated through our ideas, and that is what the natural
light is. But there are [conclusions] of the natural light, and these are
principles in relation to instinct. This is how we are led to act humanely:
by instinct because it pleases us, and by reason because it is just.[ 45 ] Thus
there are in us instinctive truths which are innate principles that we sense
and that we approve, even when we have no proof of them – though we
get one when we explain the instinct in question. (NE 1.2.4.91) 46
pleasure and avoid pain. However, as Locke points out, this is not what is usually meant by an innate
practical principle. On whether we have innate characters or propositions, whether practical or speculative,
Leibniz does not show that they could not have been learned. But he must, if his argument is to be cogent.
In one passage he says, “a derivative truth will be innate if we can derive it from our mind” (NE 1.2.4.91).
But this proves too much, since then virtually any truth could be said to be innate in this sense. For the
knowledge to be innate, it would have to be shown that it could have been derived only from the mind,
without having been learned. However, in brief, Leibniz makes a stronger case for innateness in the “Letter
to Sophie Charlotte: On What is Independent of Sense and Matter” (1702). He argues that certain ideas,
such as ‘I’, ‘being’, ‘substance’, and even ideas from logic and ethics, are purely intellectual, could have
come only from the mind and not from the senses. That is, “there is nothing in the understanding that did
not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or that which understands” (AG 188/G.6.502).
Virtually the same passage may be found in the Nouveaux Essais at p. 111. Yet Leibniz does not in these
contexts cite a specific ethical idea, let alone explain what he means by “ethics.”
43 These implications are in fact quite dramatic, when one considers Leibniz’s doctrine of petites
perceptions. This doctrine shows in a variety of ways how action, thought, and deliberation depend
essentially on the presence of infinite degrees of perception. But this is a topic that should be discussed
under moral psychology and will not be discussed here.
44 This is my English translation of Coste’s French version of Lock: on ne doit faire aux autres que ce
qu’on voudroit qu’ils nous fissent. Lock himself says: ‘that one should do as he would be done unto.’ The
rules are virtually the same, the positive version of the Rule.
45 RB translation has ‘right,’
46 A.6.6.91: “Mais il y a des verités, que nous trouvons en nous de deux façons, par lumiere et par instinct.
Celles que je viens de marquer, se demonstrent par nos idées, ce qui fait la lumiere naturelle. Mais il y a des
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