Stony Brook University

one can say that it is a happy necessity. The more nearly creatures
approach this, the closer do they come to perfect felicity. (Theodicy,
Summary of the Controversy, p. 387) 37
All things have their essence, but it belongs only to God’s essence to have the highest
wisdom and goodness. So God’s will is not subject to the necessity of things because his
wisdom permits him to find the good in the highest compossibility of things. In other
words, the cognition (or consciousness) of value lifts God “above” the necessity of
events. Only with this moral consciousness can the will be said to be both free and
obligated. While moral necessity may be said to derive from wisdom, it is equally true
that wisdom just means the recognition of moral value and the ability to act on it. This is
the phronemon, the person of practical wisdom in its highest degree. But creatures may
approach this freedom through the perfection of their own will.
In conclusion, I do not find much basis for a clear distinction between early and
late uses of moral necessity. As Murray had put it, the ethical or deontic uses in the early
jurisprudential writings have little to do with these “action theoretic” uses in Theodicy.
To be sure, the later texts make use of moral necessity against what Leibniz held to be
pernicious theological doctrines. Yet in both contexts moral necessity refers to the
necessity by which a rational being determines its will according to moral principles—a
necessity that must be upheld if one is to uphold the name of the vir bonus. This
determination is nothing other than the moral quality of a rational substance. The idea
that both God and humans are bound by their moral quality, and that this quality
constitutes the being’s autonomy is well-expressed in this passage by Hostler:
Yet how are the principles of justice necessary, and why is God bound to
obey them? The answer to this comes from the very definition of a ‘good
man.’ This implies that the precepts will be binding upon any being
capable of love and wisdom; that is, upon any ‘person’ defined by Leibniz
as a being that can possess moral qualities through its having both reason
and will. Since God obviously possesses both attributes, he is the author of
justice by his very essence, not by his will—in other words, the divine
nature itself makes God subject to the moral law.” (75)
The principles of justice, love and wisdom, are necessary by their very nature. Beings
possessing rational capacities will be bound to recognize them and to determine
themselves by them. Since God is fully determined by his moral-rational nature, he is
completely autonomous. In the end, as in the beginning, it may assuredly be said that
right is the moral power of a rational substance. For human persons, this means
possessing a sufficient amount of moral recognition and self-mastery to do what is just.
Virtue makes the good for oneself compatible with the good of all moral-rational beings.
37 G.6.386: “Mais cette maniere de necessité, qui ne detruit point la possibilité du contraire, n’a ce nom que
par analogie; elle devient effective, non pas par la seule essence des choses, mais par ce qui est hors d’elle,
et au dessus d’elles, savoir par la volonté de Dieu. Cette necessité est appelée moral, parce que chez le sage,
necessaire et dû sont des choses equivalentes; et quand elle a tousjours son effect, comme elle l’a
veritablement dans le sage parfait, c’est à dire en Dieu, on peut dire que c’est une necessité heureuse. Plus
les creatures en approchent, plus elles approchent de la felicité parfaite.”
256