Stony Brook University

about it, or whether it is a valid distinction to make. 3 For it seems that God has no choice
but to obey the principles of wisdom and goodness; and if so, there is no sense is talking
about God’s freedom as distinct from logical necessity, because God cannot do otherwise
in either case. The only thing that is clear about Leibniz’s distinction is that Leibniz
sought to maintain it.
My purpose in this chapter is not to determine whether Leibniz’s distinction is
valid or whether it solves the dilemma involving God’s freedom. An overabundance of
work has already been done on this topic. Rather, I wish to determine the relationship
between his early and late uses of the term ‘moral necessity.’ This relationship is rarely
discussed among commentators, and when it is, the early usage is dismissed as irrelevant
to the later, consigned to the specific context of his early writings on jurisprudence. 4 Yet
as I have shown throughout this dissertation, it is a mistake to cut off these writings,
especially the earliest ones, from the rest of his practical philosophy, let alone from his
metaphysics in general. My general purpose in this chapter, then, is to show why this
relationship must be taken seriously.
As we saw in Nova Methodus (1667), Leibniz originally defines moral necessity
as obligation, as one of the moral qualities: “thus, moral power is called Right, and moral
necessity is called Obligation.” 5 In the Elementa Juris Naturalis (1671) right and
obligation become the moral qualities of the vir bonus (the good person). 6 The good
person is then defined as “one who loves everyone.” The question is whether there is any
relevant conceptual similarity or relation between the early and late employments of
‘moral necessity.’ In what follows I will show that from early to late ‘moral necessity’
refers to the obligation a rational agent has to perform the moral good. This obligation
has its source in the agent’s very essence, that is, in its moral qualities of right (jus) and
obligation. Furthermore, we can understand that part of what constitutes the agent’s jus is
its wisdom and goodness. Furthermore, understanding this relationship between early and
late uses of moral necessity makes Leibniz’s argument for God’s freedom more clear:
Freedom consists in being morally necessitated, i.e., necessitated by one’s own rationalmoral
essence. We thus understand that human freedom consists in determining ourselves
by the virtue we have in part, but which we are capable of acquiring. Moral necessity will
be understood to be derived from potential moralis, as are the metaphysical requirements
of the best possible world.
These are bold claims. To understand what is at stake in them I begin with some
recent commentary. In his article, “Pre-Leibnizian Moral Necessity,” (2004) Michael J.
Murray claims that the early (1667) and late (1702) uses of “moral necessity” are
conceptually distinct. He claims that the early texts employ moral necessity in “strictly
deontic contexts” (such as those I have just cited above); and so these specifically
“ethical” or “deontic” uses are conceptually distinct from the “action-theoretic” uses in
Theodicy and after:
3 The reader may consult any number of books and articles on this topic, especially R.M. Adams (1994).
4 A perfect example of this view may be found in R.M. Adams, “Moral Necessity” (2005). Another
example will be discussed, below. In his Leibniz, zur Einfürung (2005, p. 186), Hans Poser calls this type
of necessity “ethical necessity” (ethische notwendigkeit) to be distinguished from the moral necessity used
in the context of divine freedom.
5 A.6.1.301.§14: “ita potentia moralis dicitur Jus, necessitas moralis dicitur Obligatio.”
6 A.6.1.465: “Ius est potentia: Obligatio necessitas: viri boni, qvas Grotius vocat Qvalitates Morales, nihil
sunt aliud qvam qvalitates viri boni.”
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