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second degrees. As a precept of piety, it consists in the recognition of God as the perfect
executor of natural right. Thus piety may be derived from the definitions in three ways:
(1) To live honorably means to act in view of the perfection of God, who possesses the
moral qualities of right and obligation to the highest degree. God’s potentia consists of
the highest power and wisdom in distributing and executing the law. As we saw,
however, “God is not the subject of any true obligation.” 160 Yet this means only that
while God has no superior, God remains bound by the rules of wisdom and reason. What
these rules are Leibniz has not made explicit; however, they are implied in his allusion to
the mathematical kinds of justice borrowed from Aristotle, i.e., commutative and
distributive justice, or, respectively, arithmetical equality and geometric proportion. 161 To
live honorably then means to apply equality and equity to their highest degree. This
means, moreover, that rights are to be granted not only to particular individuals or
particular states, but to the whole of humanity. (2) To live honorably means to realize
(both to recognize and to bring about) the coincidence of private utility and honor (moral
rectitude). Just as God has brought it about that everything prudent is also useful, so we
may find our own good in performing the good for another. In addition, as God’s
creations, we are obligated not to harm ourselves or others. This follows from right and
obligation; since moral quality entails the right of possession, God holds the right of
possession over us. (3) To live honorably means to be motivated by God’s power of
retribution. We are motivated to act rightly, knowing that God will guarantee that
rewards for the just and punishments for the unjust will be delivered, if not in this life,
then in the next.
With the whole of Leibniz’s science of jurisprudence in view, it is appropriate to
point out a few criticisms, beginning with his method. As he stated in the beginning of
Part I, his aim is to establish not only a science of jurisprudence, but also a method for it.
Let us review what that method was supposed to consist of, beginning with “analytics,”
as stated in Part I:
Analytics, or the art of judging, seems to me to be almost completely
reducible to two rules: (1) no word is to be accepted without being
explained, and (2) no proposition is to be accepted without being proved.
(LL 88 § 25) 162
This “art of judging” we can recall, was intended to refine the judgment of the
jurisconsult. However, this appears to have been more of an ideal for the jurisconsult
rather than an actual practice in the Nova Methodus. Many of the main definitions were
accepted with little explanation, and no propositions were demonstrated. Nevertheless,
Leibniz thought that the science of jurisprudence might follow the Euclidean method of
establishing definitions and their corresponding precepts, as he had expressed in §6 of
Part II: “Didactic jurisprudence could, in imitation of Euclid’s Elements, not ineptly be
called Elements, [. . . ] The elements encompass these two: The explication of terms or
160 A.6.1.301.§15: “Sed DEUS est subjectum juris summi in omnia, nullius vero Obligationis.”
161 More will be said about these mathematical kinds in later chapters. We will also see the sense in which
God is “obligated” by the eternal truths of reason, in Chapter Six.
162 A.6.1.279-80: “Analytica seu ars judicandi, mihi quidem videtur duabus feré regulis tota absolvi: (1.)
Ut nulla vox admittatur, nisi explicata, (2.) ut nulla propositio, nisi probata.”
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