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S. M. Struble | PHI 206: Intro to Early Modern Philosophy | Spring 2021 Asynchronous | 9
Alfred Barlotta :
The dominant theme throughout Leibniz’s abridgements of the basic arguments was about the question of evil in relation to God. In the first segment, he aims to prove that evil is a necessity in this world created by God in order to establish a greater perfection. At first read, I didn’t completely understand how an evil can lead to a greater good, but my question was somewhat answered in the later abridgements. Although, I do wish he would have given an analogy or example other than the “incarnation of the Son of God”. Leibniz further justifies this argument by saying if God had to go out of his way to stop every evil, that would be an imperfection because God would have to go against his own will to make changes in a universe that he created. I thought this was very similar to Malebranche’s philosophy of a passive creator where God created laws, and constantly needing to alter them would be an imperfection.
Moving on, I found the way Leibniz described good and evil in both quantitative and qualitative fashions to be very interesting. He defines humans as intelligible and rational creatures capable of vast amounts of good and evil, whereas non-human animals are capable of doing more good in large quantities. He then remarks that non-human animals are not reasonable or blessed like us humans, so it would be a false comparison. This pushed me to question how he came up with these assumptions about animals, and also where he got his definition of evil throughout the abridgements. I was much less critical of the third segment where morality and voluntary human action, apart from God’s will, came into play. This cleared up one of my concerns with his first abridgement because, although evil is necessary for a greater good, this does not expunge people from accountability of their harmful actions. This is definitely a really good reminder that morality still exists when discussing God and his impact on good and evil. Another part of the abridgements I was confused about was in the sixth segment where Leibniz says that God will help those who have good will. I was confused because in the first segment, constant interference from God would be an imperfection. I guess a distinction he made is that preventing evils requires much more effort from the creator than supporting his followers. Some other questions I would have for Leibniz is if there was an evil act being done to harm God’s followers, would it make sense for God to intervene and prevent the evil? In the last section, Leibniz says that God is not free because he is always trapped into choosing the best option. Why would not being free, in a world that he created, not be considered an imperfection?
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