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The Modal Status of Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2020

OWEN PIKKERT
OWEN PIKKERT*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTOowen.pikkert@mail.utoronto.ca
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Abstract

Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason (PSR) is the claim that everything has a sufficient reason. But is Leibniz committed to the necessity or to the contingency of his great principle? I argue that Leibniz is committed to its contingency, given that he allows for the absolute possibility of entities that he claims violate the PSR. These are all cases of qualitatively indiscernible entities, such as indiscernible atoms, vacua, and bodies. However, Leibniz's commitment to the contingency of the PSR seems to stand in tension with his inference of the PSR from his theory of truth. I argue that this apparent tension can be resolved satisfactorily. When it comes to his modal views on the PSR, Leibniz's position is entirely consistent.

Keywords

Leibnizprinciple of sufficient reasonidentity of indiscernibles
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 40 - 58
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Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2020

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Footnotes

I am grateful for helpful comments from Donald Ainslie, Deborah Black, Marc Bobro, Michael Della Rocca, Karolina Hübner, Martin Lin, Robert Mason, Jeff McDonough, Stephen Puryear, William Seager, two anonymous referees, and, most especially, Marleen Rozemond. I am also grateful for helpful feedback from audiences at the Leibniz Society of North America meeting at the University of Houston, the Princeton-Penn-Columbia Graduate Conference in Early Modern Philosophy at Princeton University, the Berlin-Groningen-Harvard-Toronto Workshop at the University of Groningen, and the American Philosophical Association (Eastern) meeting in Savannah. Financial support was generously provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as by the Balzan Styles of Reasoning project at the University of Toronto.

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