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Leibniz: God Is, by Reason and by Faith
The choice of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
Confronting nature:
God is, Soul is
Leibniz, by considering that: "Aristotelianism does not deliver absolute truth for physics nor for metaphysics" (1), explores nature as fundament for his metaphysical thought. Starting from nature he advances his propositions to demonstrate the existence of God as well as the immortality of the soul. For Leibniz, nature, as the object of philosophy, obliges man to admit the idea of the existence of God.
Leibniz treats the question by feeling in himself the existence of an object:
A being is then the concept which envelopes something positive In the first case, I judge by simple perception or experience that things, that I am conscience of inside me, exist without proof, that is to say, first I who think of real things, then of various phenomena or apparitions, which exist in my mind. In fact, these two things can be proven without the intervention of anything else, since these are immediately perceived by the mind.' (2)
A. Recourse to reason:
Leibniz, exploring the perceptible in order to get to the
intelligible, attempts to use reason by laying aside faith:
Thus, if all prejudged things put aside, and by separating faith as it is in Scriptures and in history, I am committed to study the anatomy of the body, to see if we can, without supposing a physical cause, give reason to things that are within the body that may appear to give evidence of meaning.' (3)
He further defines body filling space':
But the definition of the body is to exist in space
From the term space we can conclude in the body, size and figure. In fact, the body incontinent even size and figure which they fill in space. (4)
By posing these presumptions he admits the problematic of identification:
We cannot give reason starting from the nature of the body, because the same matter is undetermined with regard to any figure, square or round.' (5)
Notion of Movement
From these assumptions Leibniz introduces the notion of movement as "change of space" because the "movement" becomes, according to him, as for Aristotle, the fundament of the link between the physical and the metaphysical and between the perceptible and the intelligible:
Because in order to be in another space as before, means being able to change space, being able to change space is being able to be moved. Movement, in fact, is change of space.' (6)
Leibniz argues in favor of the existence of God by the
perfection of His knowledge. The argument is presented in two premises:
I. Observation of nature:
It is through observation that in nature there are several perfections that are all different and which God possesses them all in unity, and that each of these perfections belongs to him in the highest sovereign degree.' (7)
II. The conclusion of perfections,
presumed, of nature in its manifestations of power as well as of science, Leibniz considers:
Consequently power and science are perfections.' (8)
From these two premises Leibniz concludes, by assumption that these manifestations belong to God.
and as they (power and science) belong to God, they have no limits. From where it follows that God has supreme and infinite wisdom and acts in the most perfect way, not only in the metaphysical sense, but even more morally speaking, and nothing ". (9)
In this passage God is a presumed assumption, deduced from a presupposed nature; itself is an idea of "power" and of "science". This passage also postulates that these two presumed manifestations, attributed to a God, are manifestations of perfections and they must represent qualities of God. Leibniz argues in a circle and by begging the question: Power and science are qualities of God and because they are qualities of God then God must exist.'
False presumptions
Nothing indicates in the argument of Leibniz that theperfection is a verifiable quality, neither that the perfection which belongs to God is also verifiable, nor that God has an infinite wisdom, and even less, that the existence of God is verifiable. Nothing in the argument can lead to the presumption that nature is the handiwork of God.
Nothing comes out of Nothing
Leibniz, like all metaphysical philosophers, makes hypothetical premises and assumes his own conclusions. He resorts to reason as a fundamental principle: We cannot demonstrate the existence
of God without the principle that 'nothing comes out of nothing' for God's existence, he mentions that "the reasoning of Descartes on the existence of the all perfect being' supposes that the all perfect being' can be conceived, i.e. possible. In fact, as soon as we pose this (idea) we have a notion of this kind; it follows that this being exists, since we have figured out that it contains immediately its existence.' (10)
The Enigma of Matter remains inexplicable
For Leibniz, links between the perceptible and the intelligible are like links between matter and God, where matter remains a total enigma without identification:
Since, in fact, the body is nothing other than matter and shape, and that in reality neither matter nor shape do not allow to understand the cause of movement: it is necessary that the
cause of movement is exterior to the body, if not, then a thinking being, or spirit, the cause of movement must be the spirit. However, the spirit which directs the universe is God.' (11)
B. Recourse to faith: Christianity
Leibniz considers that, "In God existence is not different from essence". He adds: The most significant concept of God and the most accepted that we have, is rather well expressed in these terms, that God is an absolutely perfect being.' (12) and that: God alone is our immediate object that is exterior to
ourselves, and that we see every thing through him; for example, when we see the sun and the stars, it is God who gave us and who made us conserve their ideas, and who determines us to think of them, by his ordinary help, during the time where our senses are disposed in a certain manner, and according to the laws that he has established.' (13)
Leibniz resorts to faith in the attributes of God, in the Gospel sense:
Finally, God being at the same time most just and most meek of all monarchs, and does not ask except for goodwill, provided that he is sincere and serious, his subjects could not wish a better condition, and to make them perfectly happy, he wants only that we love Him.' (14)
The Gospel Exists and So MUST God
From his Evangelic concept of God, Leibniz concludes his argument for the existence of God by direct reference to his belief in Jesus-Christ according to the Gospel: Former
C. The recourse to faith and reason:
Leibniz proclaims that: If Christ exists then God must also exist:
Philosophers had little knowledge of these important
Truths (that Jesus-Christ unveiled the mystery to mankind and the admirable laws of the kingdom of heaven, the greatness of supreme happiness that God has prepared for those who love him): Jesus-Christ alone expressed well these divinely things,
and in such a clear and familiar way, that the coarsest of minds could conceive; furthermore, his Gospel has entirely changed the face of human things; it made us know the kingdom of heaven or this perfect republic of souls which deserves the title of the City of God, Where he has unveiled for us the admirable laws.' (15)
In reality this a false argument for no historical evidence that Christ has ever existed other than what is mentioned in the four books of the Evangel.
And should Christ ever existed then there is no correlation between the existence of God and Christ.
Leibniz attempts to reconcile faith with reason and to
establish the argument of order and harmony observed by science in the mechanic structure of the universe as the handiwork of God.
He considers that natural laws arise from divine wisdom. He alludes to the view of the mechanicists who use the argument of the mechanic aspect of the universe in order to deny the need for a designer':
It also needed to reconcile between piety and reason and thus we will be able to satisfy those who are good, who understand the sequence of the mechanic or corpuscular philosophy, as if these can take us away from God and the immaterial substances, instead, and with the required correctness all well
comprehended, it must lead us to him.' (16)
Leibniz considers the universe, with all its scientific laws and order, as the handiwork of a superior designer:
He has (the principle of general order) its origin of infinity, He is absolutely necessary in geometry and in physics, because the sovereign wisdom, which is the source of all things, acts in perfect geometry, and according to a harmony to which nothing can be added. " (17)
To conclude, we observe in the arguments of Leibniz an attempt to call on reason as well as on faith to provide support for his belief in the existence of God. These arguments, like those of Aristotle, do not provide evidence or proof for such presumptions.
Leibniz has made his choice early in his adolescence to believe in God. He has spent his life time giving support to his belief drawing on his observation of the universe and life.
Leibniz made the error of falling in the trap of providing evidence for the existence of God but ended up in illusory conjectural presumptions that prove nothing.
It would have been more dignified for a philosopher thinker like Leibnizto declare his 'belief by choice' ratherthan the recourse to erroneous and sterile arguments.
