Leibniz' response to the problem of evil and suffering

Machina

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) is generally known in the academic world as one of the inventors of the mathematical theory known as calculus.  (The other inventor was the natural philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, known as the father of classical physics because of his development of the classical laws of motion and gravity.)  But for present purposes, Leibniz scientific and mathematical work is not directly relevant.  Instead, the focus is on Leibniz' clear and perceptive discussion of the problem of evil and suffering.  Leibniz may not now be generally recognized as a Christian thinker, and he wrote only briefly about the problem of evil and suffering, but in my opinion he is one of the few Christian writers to see the problem fully, and to propose a clear philosophically sophisticated response.

(If you want to read Leibniz' own expression of his views on the problem of evil and suffering, a good place would be his essay entitled (in translation) "A Vindication of God's Justice Reconciled with His Other Perfections and All His Actions".  This essay is included in the Library of Liberal Arts collection of Leibniz' work, titled Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays.  It's not easy reading.)

Leibniz held firmly to the view that the physical universe requires a divine creator and sustainer God for its existence at all times.  That is, everything that goes on in our world happens only because God is constantly maintaining the existence of everything.  This creator God has to know all the details about everything that has ever happened and that ever will happen -- and in fact knew all those details before deciding to create the universe.  God also knew the entire range of other possible universes that could have been created instead of this one, and exactly how each one of those possible universes would play out.  (This is part of what is commonly referred to as God's omniscience.)   Moreover, God has to have enough power to be able to bring into existence and sustain any possible universe.  So, out of all the possible universes, God chose to create and sustain the actual one we live in.  Since God had the power to bring any possible universe into being, God's choice was a free choice on his part -- nothing forced God against His will to create the actual universe.

In this way, Leibniz sets up the problem of evil and suffering quite forcefully.  The obvious question is why did God freely choose to create and sustain a universe that contains so much evil and suffering, knowing full well in advance what that universe would be like, and having an infinitely large collection of other possible universes to choose from?

One possible answer is that God is cruel or indifferent to evil and suffering.  Leibniz rejects that answer.  For a creator God with all the power and knowledge would also have to be perfect.  A perfect God does not make mistakes and does not create anything less than the best possible thing.  So, there is only one conclusion: this universe was created and is sustained by God because this universe is the best possible one!  We can't prove that this universe is the best possible one by looking at the details of how it operates.  The argument that this universe is the best possible one is based on what Leibniz claims to know about the nature of God.  So, don't expect Leibniz to be able to tell you why a mother raccoon gets hit on the highway, leaving her babies to suffer and die in the ditch.  All he can say about such things is that they have to be part of an overall design or plan for the best possible universe.

We do know some general principles, though, about what makes one universe better than another one.  There are apparently two of these general principles, which Leibniz seems to think are clearly true and that anyone who thinks about it hard enough will agree to:

So the most elegantly organized universe with the most stuff in the greatest variety is the best.

Notice that the criteria for being the best don't specifically mention anything about cutting down on the amount of suffering or evil.  Leibniz is committed, though, to another idea about evil: he sees it as a limitation or defect.  So, a perfect God is also good, and it would seem to follow that the more evil there is in the world, the less perfection there is.  So, now we have an issue to think about.  How can the best possible universe contain any evil at all?  Wouldn't it always be better to have less evil and more good?  So how can this be the best possible universe?  More needs to be said before we can see how Leibniz can respond.  Leibniz' final response comes at the end, below.

The standards of perfection are not determined by God's will.  Leibniz was very concerned to discredit the idea that God can arbitrarily declare something to be good and thereby make it count as good.  To Leibniz, the idea that God's will determines what counts as good is a cheat, since if that idea is accepted, then anything at all can count as good, and God's will becomes totally arbitrary.  So, the standards of perfection laid down by Leibniz are seen by him as being independent standards, not subject to being changed by God.  (Leibniz was not troubled by the objection that the existence of such standards limits God's power.  I think he would say that God can't make a triangle have four sides, either, but so what?  Triangles can't have four sides and neither can chaos be a good thing, no matter what God does.  This doesn't limit God in any meaningful way.  God can still do whatever it is possible to do.)

Now we can see what Leibniz can say about the mother raccoon and her babies: we know, according to Leibniz, that the death of the mother and the suffering and death of the babies must contribute somehow to the richness and fullness of existence in this universe, combined with the elegant ordering of the way the universe operates.  In other words, individual instances of suffering (or evil) all make a contribution to the big picture, and from God's perspective in which the entire big picture is clear, those instances of suffering contribute to the perfection of the whole.

What about evil?  Can we explain why God allows the presence of evil in the world by using the "free will defense" of God?  That is, can we say that it is part of the perfection of this universe that people have free will, and so when people freely choose to be evil, that is just part of the price that has to be paid for having the perfection called free will?

Leibniz' discussion of this "free will" defense of God is quite impressive to me.  He seems to think that people indeed do have free will and so can act voluntarily, and that often this does lead to people's being evil.  However, he also argues that this does not get God off the hook, for God surely knew from eternity what each person would freely choose to be like, and God went ahead and created a universe containing these evil people, and He/She keeps them alive.  Recall that God has laid out before Him/Herself all the possible universes, with full knowledge of how each one plays out in detail if it is created.  So, to put this in Leibnizian terms, the free will defense fails, because it doesn't answer the question of why God created a universe containing people who would freely choose to do evil, when God knew all along that these people would be like that.  Why didn't God create a universe with better people in it -- more people who would freely choose to do less evil?  (Markham is essentially talking about this same point on page 93.)

So, Leibniz deals with evil, not by citing the free will defense, but by maintaining his basic principles.  Evil people exist in this world because they are all needed to make this world the best possible one -- that is, they are all needed to make this world have the maximum richness of forms of existence coupled with the most elegant order.  Each evil is a defect, or limitation, considered locally, within a limited frame of reference.  A given person on a given occasion would have been better, leading a richer and fuller life, if they had not been evil on that occasion.  But the local defects and limitations all make a contribution to the perfection of the universe as a whole.  If you ask Leibniz to prove that all the mass murderers, all the terrorists, all the war-mongers, all the drug dealers, all the rapists, and all the corrupt CEO's, etc., etc., are needed in order to make this the best possible universe, he will simply repeat the arguments given above.  We know, he thinks, that all such evil is a necessary part of the best possible universe because this has to be the best possible universe, since God creates and sustains it.

To me, this sounds just a bit like the answer to the problem of suffering given at the end of the book of Job.