display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
11 ideas
| 19437 | Prayers are useful, because God foresaw them in his great plan [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Not only cares and labours but also prayers are useful; God having had these prayers in view before he regulated things. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], Abridge III) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I'm struggling with this one. So I can't skip prayers today, because God has foreseen them and included them in his great plan? Hard to motivate yourself, like starting a game of chess after you've already been declared the winner. |
| 12912 | Immortality without memory is useless [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Immortality without memory would be useless. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.07.4/14 X) | |
| A reaction: I would say that having a mind of any sort needs memory. The question for immortality is whether it extends back to human life. See 'Wuthering Heights' (c. p90) for someone who remembers Earth as so superior to paradise that they long to return there. |
| 12917 | The soul is indestructible and always self-aware [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Not only is the soul indestructible, but it always knows itself and remains self-conscious. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.11) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not even self-aware during much of my sleeping hours, and I would say that I cease to be self-aware if I am totally absorbed in something on which I concentrate. |
| 12918 | Animals have souls, but lack consciousness [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It appears probable that animals have souls although they lack consciousness. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.11) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would say that they lack souls but have consciousness, but then I am in no better position to know the answer than Leibniz was. Arnauld asks what would happen to the souls of 100,000 silkworms if they caught fire! |
| 5058 | Animals have thought and sensation, and indestructible immaterial souls [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I hold (against the Cartesians) that brutes also have thought, and hold that they have sensation, and souls which are, properly speaking, immaterial, and as incapable of perishing as the atoms of Democritus or Gassendi. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Insect heaven will be a bit crowded. I can never grasp why theologians would claim that souls are 'indestructible', when they are held to come into existence at a particular moment in space-time. Transmigration of souls is a much more rational belief. |
| 19339 | Evil is a negation of good, which arises from non-being [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The cause of good is positive, but evil is a defect, that is, a privation or negation, and consequently, it arises from nothingness or nonbeing. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Dialogue on human freedom and origin of evil [1695], p.114) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to illustrate his idea from mathematics. He is modifying Augustine's view that evil is an absence of good, by adding nonbeing as the driving force behind it. Doesn't sound very persuasive to me. |
| 13164 | God only made sin possible because a much greater good can be derived from it [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We must believe that God would not have allowed sin nor would he have created things he knows will sin, if he could not derive from them a good incomparably greater than the resulting evil. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Dialogue on human freedom and origin of evil [1695], p.115) | |
| A reaction: Why 'must' we believe this? Do we have to imagine all the genocides shrinking to insignificance once we grasp the wonderful goods that can be derived from them? The end justifies the means. Genocide is actually a good thing. Hm. |
| 19337 | How can an all-good, wise and powerful being allow evil, sin and apparent injustice? [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is this question of natural theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy? | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], p.098), quoted by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.IV | |
| A reaction: His answer is, roughly, that there is an unavoidable trade-off, which humans cannot fully understand. Personally I would say that if there is a God, the evidence for his benevolence towards humanity is not encouraging. |
| 19345 | Being confident of God's goodness, we disregard the apparent local evils in the visible world [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Being made confident by demonstrations of the goodness and the justice of God, we disregard the appearances of harshness and justice which we see in this small portion of his Kingdom that is exposed to our gaze. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], p.120), quoted by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.IV | |
| A reaction: Hm. If this locality is full of evils, and the rest of it is much better, how come we are stuck in this miserable corner of things? God is obliged to compromise, but did he select us to get the worst of it? |
| 5037 | God doesn't decide that Adam will sin, but that sinful Adam's existence is to be preferred [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: God does not decide whether Adam should sin, but whether that series of things in which there is an Adam whose perfect individual notion involves sin should nevertheless be preferred to others. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Specimen of Discoveries [1686], p.78) | |
| A reaction: Compare whether the person responsible for setting a road speed limit is responsible for subsequent accidents. Leibniz's belief that the world could have been made no better than it is (by an omnipotent being) strikes me as blind faith, not an argument. |
| 5050 | Evil serves a greater good, and pain is necessary for higher pleasure [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Evils themselves serve a greater good, and the fact that pains are found in minds is necessary if they are to reach greater pleasures. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §23) | |
| A reaction: How much pain is needed to qualify for the 'greater pleasures'? Some people receive an awful lot. I am not sure exactly how an evil can 'serve' a greater good. Is he recommending evil? |