Spinoza and Leibniz's

Introduction

At this point, the contrast with Spinoza's concept of God could hardly be starker - and that is precisely the point behind the vision. The difference goes back to that simple-sounding question: Does God have a choice? Spinoza says no; Leibniz says yes. Spinoza says that God has only one world to choose from, namely, the one that follows ineluctably from its own Nature. Leibniz counters that God always has the option not to create the world; and, when God decides to go ahead with the project, he faces a choice among an infinite number of possible worlds. Spinoza's God has no need for anthropomorphic encumbrances such as a will or intellect, for it has no choices to contemplate and no resolutions to affirm. Leibniz's God, on the other hand, looks much more like you or me: he must have a capacity for thought and action in order to make his choices. Finally, whereas Spinoza's Substance is well beyond the merely human categories of good and evil, Leibniz's God is the ultimate do-gooder, as he shuffles through all possible worlds hoping to locate “the best” (Lodge, pp. 575-600).

Discussion and Analysis

The difference between human and other souls

There is nothing particularly original about Leibniz's list of capacities which distinguish humans from animals — self-awareness ('apperception', or 'reflection'), knowledge of universal and necessary truths, and a conception of God. Interestingly, despite his belief in the importance of a correct notation in reasoning, he doesn't follow Hobbes in mentioning the use of language(Goldenbaum, pp. 551-574).

The question is whether these capacities mean that humans are ontologically different from animals. The simple answer is that they are not — but there are some complicated twists to this answer.

Leibniz explicitly rejects Descartes' belief that humans are distinguished by an immaterial and immortal soul, which is required to account for these special human capacities. But he also rejects Hobbes's belief that human as well as animal capacities can be accounted for in terms of matter alone. Instead, he claims that it is perception which requires an immaterial and immortal soul; and since all animals are perceivers, they must also have immaterial and immortal souls. Indeed, since all physical objects are ultimately aggregates of microscopic, perceiving animals, the whole universe is full of immaterial, immortal souls.

The same might be the case with humans. For Leibniz, humans are a sub-class of what he calls 'spirits', which includes angels. Angels are far superior to ourselves (they are more rational, and less subject to bodily influences); but they belong to the same kind. As it happens, we humans on earth as we know it are less far above animals than angels are above us. For example (on Leibniz's estimate), we spend three-quarters of our time reasoning like animals, and one-quarter reasoning like angels. So it is a question of degree. There could be (and perhaps, in accordance with Leibniz's principle of continuity, there must be) entities which display human characteristics just above the threshold — a once-in-a-lifetime flash of self-consciousness, or ...