Stony Brook University

It is agreed that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the
question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God
wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and
goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal
truths about the nature of things, as do numbers and proportions (RM
45). 44
Leibniz’s answer is that the meanings of the good and the just are as unchangeable as the
truths of mathematics. They are not determined by God’s will, but are found in God’s
understanding, along with all real definitions, eternal truths, and the precepts of natural
right. His argument against the voluntarist amounts to a kind of reductio ad absurdum,
but he also advances positive claims for the meaning and criteria of right, just, obligation,
and justice, as we shall see. 45
First we need to know more specifically what Leibniz takes the voluntarist thesis
to be. We already have some idea from his criticism of Pufendorf, but his main target in
the Meditation seems to be Hobbes. For Leibniz, voluntarism generally holds that the
meanings of right, just, and justice, are determined by the will or command of a superior
power (i.e., a lawgiver or God) by means of sanctions; or, that their meanings are
contingent upon the conventions of language; or, that justice serves the interests of the
powerful. Leibniz objects to these claims because they get our ideas about language, God,
and even logic wrong—not to mention justice. In sum, voluntarism permits arbitrary,
inconsistent, inadequate, certainly false, and even dangerous ideas about justice.
Let us consider these objections more specifically. He holds that if the meaning of
justice is determined by God’s will, command, or power, but not by his reason, then
nothing less than the foundations of religion and morality are destroyed. As he says,
quoting Juvenal, “Stat pro ratione voluntas, my will takes the place of reason, is properly
the motto of the tyrant” (RM 46). This “would not sufficiently distinguish God from the
devil,” and it would allow God, if he so willed, to “justly” condemn the innocent (RM
46). Thus the voluntarist is essentially impious, since he implies that God is to be feared,
rather than revered and loved for his justice. 46 Voluntarism also leads to contradictory
applications of justice in the human sphere: If, as according to Thrasymachus, the just is
44 M 41: “On a convient que tout ce que Dieu veut, est bon et juste. Mais on demande, s’il est bon et juste,
parce que Dieu le veut, ou si Dieu le veut, parce qu’il est bon et juste, c’est-à-dire, si la justice ou la bonté
est arbitraire ou si elle consiste dans les vérités necessaires et éternelles de la nature des choses, comme les
nombres et les proportions.”
RM = “Riley Meditation” and refers to Riley’s translations in Leibniz’s Political Writings.
45 In Theodicy (sec. 182) Leibniz indicates several sources for his anti-voluntarist view, including the
Euthyphro. Bayle and Calvin agree with him that the rules of justice and goodness are “anterior to the
decrees of God.” He then dismisses Pufendorf as being virtually confused on the matter, since he opposes
the absolute decree but then “approves what is worse in the opinions of the champions of this decree.” He
continues: “Aristotle was very orthodox on this matter of justice, and the Schoolmen followed him: they
distinguish, just as Cicero and the Jurists do, between perpetual right, which is binding on all and
everywhere, and positive right, which is only for certain times and certain peoples. I once read with
enjoyment the Euthyphro of Plato, who makes Socrates uphold the truth on that point, and M. Bayle has
called attention to the same passage.” On Aristotle’s notion of “perpetual” or universal justice, see Rhetoric
1373b2, as cited above.
46 The voluntarist may want to counter that God’s will is not arbitrary since it is always good. However, for
Leibniz that would simply beg the question as to what ‘the good’ means and how it is determined.
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