Reason in the World

Following Allen Wood, Leibniz’s theodicy can be seen as both totalitarian – it claims that divine wisdom informs every single part of creation – and wholesale – it proves this only in general terms. This chapter explores the criteria Leibniz considers to be criteria of goodness and how he argues, in wholesale fashion, for their instantiation. Leibniz’s criteria can be divided into two categories: metaphysical, which concern properties and features of being as such, and anthropocentric, which bear on the morality and happiness of human beings. What unites them is an overarching conception of goodness as rational intelligibility: a maximally good world provides a maximal number of actual opportunities for rational creatures to appreciate its goodness and thereby perfect themselves. Closer attention to Leibniz’s handling of criteria, however, reveals a danger that anthropocentric ultimately dissolve into metaphysical criteria, the practical into the theoretical. As a result, Leibniz’s project is threatened with dialectical contradiction: the existential concerns that govern his theodicy’s underlying motivation cannot be articulated in the theoretical terms of its execution.