Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

INTRODUCTION 13
and experience.) Leibniz rejected both these approaches, and argued that scientific
laws have to be seen in relation to the wise and good purposes of God.
39 Spinoza argued that human beings have no free will, since everything in the mind
is determined by a cause, and that by another, and so on to infinity (Ethics, Pt II,
Proposition 48). His way of reconciling determinism and freedom was to say that
freedom consists, not in an absence of determination, but in self-determination.
Such self-determination occurs when the reason controls the passions, which are in
a way outside us. This view—which amounts to saying that to be free is to be
master of oneself—is a form of what Isaiah Berlin has called the concept of
‘positive freedom’ (Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, Four Essays on Liberty
(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 118–72). Leibniz, for his part,
discussed both the theological forms of the problem of freedom and the problems
posed by the thesis that every event is caused. He accepted this thesis, but argued
(contrary to Spinoza) that there is freedom of the will. In essence, his argument was
that human actions are indeed necessary, but that they are only hypothetically
necessary. That is, given that X is, at the moment, my strongest motive, then I must
act in accordance with this motive. But I still could have acted otherwise—that is,
my will is free—in that my acting in some other way is always logically possible.
On Spinoza’s views about determinism see (besides Chapter 8, pp. 294–5, and
Chapter 9, pp. 323–6) Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 315–29; R.J.Delahunty, Spinoza (London,
Routledge, 1985), pp. 35–48, 155–65; G.H.R.Parkinson, ‘Spinoza on the Power
and Freedom of Man’, in E.Freeman and M.Mandelbaum (eds) Spinoza: Essays in
Interpretation (La Salle, Ill., Open Court, 1975), pp. 7–33. A general survey of
Leibniz’s views about human freedom is provided by G.H.R.Parkinson, Leibniz on
Human Freedom (Wiesbaden, Steiner, 1970). See also, for example, A.Burms and
H.de Dijn, ‘Freedom and Logical Contingency in Leibniz’, Studia Leibnitiana 11
(1979) 124–33; Lois Frankel, ‘Being Able to do Otherwise: Leibniz on Freedom
and Contingency’, Studia Leibnitiana 16 (1984) 45–59; Pauline Phemister,
‘Leibniz, Free Will and Rationality’, Studia Leibnitiana 23 (1991) 25–39.
40 In Descartes’s terminology, I can have a ‘clear and distinct idea’ of a mind as a
being which is thinking and non-extended, but I have a clear and distinct idea of a
body in so far as this is non-thinking and extended. See Meditations VI, CSM ii, p.
54, and Replies to First Objections, CSM ii, p. 86.
41 Gassendi’s atomism influenced the young Leibniz (see especially K.Moll, Der
junge Leibniz (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog, 1982), vol 2, who was also
influenced by Hobbes (see, for example, J.W.N.Watkins, Hobbes’ System of Ideas
(London, Hutchinson, 2nd edn, 1973), pp. 87–94). Whether Spinoza borrowed from
Hobbes is a matter of controversy, but he certainly defined his position by
reference to Hobbes. See, for example, A.G.Wernham, Benedict de Spinoza: The
Political Works (Oxford, Clarendon, 1958), pp. 11–36.
42 John Aubrey, Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings, ed. Anthony Powell
(London, Cresset Press, 1949), p. 242.
43 Leviathan (Oxford, Blackwell, 1946), ch. 5, p. 29.
44 ibid.
45 ibid., ch. 7, p. 40.