Stony Brook University

Several points are notable here: First, moral necessity essentially means the necessity that
follows from intelligence or wisdom. The perfectly wise being cannot not fail to choose
the best, because to do anything less would contradict wisdom, and because there is no
reason for the wisest being to do that. God’s sufficient reason for things is determined by
God’s wisdom. However, the impossibility of failing does not entail that God is
absolutely necessitated to choose the best. That is because the lesser good remains
possible in itself, that is, as a logical possibility. Divine freedom thus greatly depends on
this point, which, arguably, may appear sophistic. If God cannot do otherwise than X,
though Y were possible in itself, then God is quite simply necessitated to do X, whether
Y is possible or not. Nevertheless it remains true that due to the nature of logic,
alternatives remain possible in themselves. And due to the nature of ideas, alternatives are
not actualizeable through themselves. The bottom line, according to Leibniz, is that
existence is possible only through God’s power of bringing possibility into actuality
(making right into fact, as he says in the Meditation). Thus for God not to choose the best
possible world (or not to create a world at all) would be a moral absurdity, possible initself.
Clearly, if God were to create a lesser world, God could not uphold the name of the
vir bonus—or the phronemon, i.e., the person of practical wisdom.
Secondly, and again, God’s freedom, indeed his autonomy, consists in this very
wisdom. Lacking intelligence, God would not be self-determining, but would be
determined by other factors. This follows from Leibniz’s view that one of the necessary
conditions for voluntary action is intelligence, and thus beings with the most intelligence
are the most free, because most self-determining. 29 This self-determination of God is
what Leibniz calls in Theodicy a “happy necessity,” as we will see. Due to God’s
intelligence, it is a happy necessity that God never fails to choose the best. We can also
understand God’s actions in relation to the scholastic transcendentals: The Good and the
True incline God to choose the best, but do not necessitate God, since alternatives remain
possible “in-themselves,” even so God does not actualize them.
Third, notice that creaturely freedom is established on essentially the same
principles. Very important in the passage above is the idea of the imitation of God. Finite
beings do not possess perfect wisdom and goodness; but once we understand what these
consist in, we are then obliged to develop the disposition for them. As he says, we choose
the good in proportion to our disposition. God’s disposition, if one can speak of such, is
perfect such that God cannot fail to choose the good. But of course human disposition is
quite imperfect, and its perfection is proportionate to the virtue we have developed to
follow the Good and the True. Understood this way, it is appropriate to conceive of
dispositions of virtue as comprising our moral quality. We are morally good in proportion
to the strength of our moral virtue. That is, our virtue just is our potentia moralis. The
good person (vir bonus) whose moral power always overcomes her natural power, cannot
but do the good. 30 That we imitate God “in proportion to our disposition” does not mean
that we will unavoidably and without effort imitate God. Rather, through effort we may
ce qui est necessaire, l’est par son essence, puisque l’opposé implique contradiction; mais le contingent qui
existe, doit son existence au principe du meilleur, raison suffisante des choses.”
29 The other two necessary conditions for freedom are spontaneity (that a substance act from its own depths,
so to speak) and contingency. See Theodicy §301. Also see Murray (2005) “Spontaneity and Freedom.”
30 We may also recall Sève’s idea that one’s actions can be judged in relation to the theoretical vir bonus.
Good actions, as well as bad, are generic possibilities. The vir bonus performs only good actions, and so is
judged good in relation to the generic possibility of performing bad actions.
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