From L. Carlin, "Leibniz on Conatus, Causation, and Freedom," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming)

Recently, commentators have argued that Leibniz was a causal compatibilist, that with respect to human agency, he held that human choices are both causally determined (and so causally/physically necessary) and free. Other commentators have argued that Leibniz was an incompatibilist, that he believed human choices are not determined as a matter of causal necessity (and not metaphysical/logical necessity either), but nonetheless do not violate the principle of sufficient reason.

In this paper, I shall address this issue with particular attention to Leibniz’s concept of volition, and its analogue in his physics––his concept of force. I argue that Leibniz was a causal determinist, and thus a compatibilist, and I suggest that logical consistency requires him to adopt compatibilism given some of the concepts at work in his physics. As I hope to make clear, the pressures to adopt causal determinism in Leibniz’s system are perhaps more severe than those facing the contemporary libertarian, pressures that stem from empirical considerations about the behavior of bodies in the physical world, and the "well-founding" of those bodies in simple substances.

In the first section, I discuss Leibniz’s "deliberation" requirement for free choice, and I argue that the relationship Leibniz saw between perceptions of ends and perceptions of means in the process of deliberation is governed by the modality causal necessity. However, this modality does not govern in a way that implies determinism since it does not involve volition. In the second section, I argue that the Leibnizian appetitions that drive the deliberative process are what ground the relevant causal necessity, and that they function as the analogue of the derivative forces in the physical world. In the third section, I detour slightly and argue that Leibniz’s account of deliberation fits neatly in the Aristotelian framework that he endorsed in the Theodicy and elsewhere. This proves helpful in highlighting the pressures facing Leibniz’s system, and showing how Leibniz’s account departs from those of his predecessors by incorporating his mechanistic concept of force. In the fourth section, I complete the account by arguing that Leibniz’s analysis of volition as an act of conatus implies causal determinism, since conatus is itself a causally determined act of derivative force, a force which grounds causal necessities. Thus, I conclude in that section that Leibniz was a compatibilist. In the final section, I argue that commentators have overlooked the fact that the rationale behind Leibniz’s determinist position stems equally from his reflections about the concept of force in physics as it does from any other considerations. Leibniz was perhaps further ahead of his time in this respect than has been recognized.

From L. Carlin, "Reward and Punishment in the Best Possible World: Leibniz's Theory of Natural Retribution," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 60 (2002): 139-160.

The most fundamental of all the pre-established harmonies, according to Leibniz, is that between the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace. This harmonious relation is important, we are told, because it guarantees consequences for the virtuous and the vicious:

On the surface, the idea appears to be that the world is arranged in such a way that moral crimes generate their own punishment; virtuous acts generate their own reward. That is, punishment (reward) for vicious (virtuous) acts comes not from a separate act of will from an external enforcer, so to speak, but such acts naturally lead to painful (pleasant) consequences for the person who commits them.

In this paper, I aim for a critical account of this theory of natural retribution. In the first section, I discuss how, according to Leibniz, the virtuous act rewards itself. In the second section, we shall see that Leibniz does not have the metaphysical machinery for an account of how the vicious act punishes itself. Sections three through six focus on Leibniz’s claim in a number of texts that part of the reason for the lack of an intelligible connection between vice and punishment is (what I shall call) the hiddenness of the system of natural retribution. This one doctrine raises a number of interrelated questions that have been of much discussion lately. These questions concern the grounds for belief in retribution, moral justification of punishment, and explanations of divine hiddenness in terms of punitive coercion. Through a look at some recent approaches to these issues, I shall argue in those sections that Leibniz takes a unique, and illuminating stance on these topics of recent controversy. My conclusion in section seven is two-fold: first, that all things considered Leibniz’s stance, though not without its own faults, is one which in some respects stems from a keener awareness of the intricacies involved than recent twentieth century accounts. Second, insofar as it does this, the harmony of nature and grace involves more than has generally been acknowledged by commentators.

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