Alejandro Suárez

PHIL 310R, Johns

Midterm Paper, Draft
March 28, 2018

Saving God from the “principle of the best”

Leibniz opens his Discourse with the most basic and most widely recognized
definition of God: “God in an absolutely perfect being”1. God possesses all perfections
without any limit. From this definition “it follows that God, possessing supreme and
infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner”2. Without a doubt, this claim refers to
Leibniz’s “principle of the best”. Leibniz supports the idea that, among all the different
worlds that God could have created, He created the best: “Nor can I approve of the
opinion of some moderns who maintain boldly that what God has made is not of the
highest perfection and that he could have done better”3.This paper argues briefly that
this principle compromises God’s freedom.
“The principle of the best” is extremely important and interesting, at least for
two reasons. Firstly, it hooks up with the medieval discussion on whether God’s will is
subordinated to his intelligence or it is rather the opposite. Medieval philosophers and
theologians in the last epoch of the period would argue that God creates by the pure
power of his will, without being subordinating to any reason. Secondly, Leibnizian
doctrine on the “principle of the best” also touches the central discussion, both ancient
and modern, on evil. The problem could be stated like this: if God is infinitely wise,
powerful and good, could he not avoid evil? In other words, evil seems to compromise
either God’s infinite wisdom, or his infinite power, or his infinite good; and if one of
this divine attributes is compromised, God himself is compromised, at least as the
Perfect Being as Leibniz and philosophers commonly conceive Him.
The “principle of the best”, in my view, tries to solve both problems. In the
dichotomy between God’s will and intelligence, Leibniz makes intelligence prevail:
God’s will creates according to the best reason, or to the reason of what is best. The
subordination to the best reason does not eliminate God’s freedom, because Leibniz
conceives freedom precisely as acting “in perfection following the sovereign reason”4.
In relation to the problem of evil, the “principle of the best” tries to solve it in a direct
manner: God exists and He is infinitely wise, powerful and good; therefore He knows
what the best possible world is, He has the power to create it and He actually creates it
because of his infinite goodness. The world we know is the best possible world.
Obviously, Leibniz will argue then why the best possible world still contains evil and he
does so by appealing to the idea of unavoidable metaphysical evil.

1
Discourse on Metaphysics, section 1, page 35. Page numbers in this paper are taken from Leibniz’s
Philosophical Essays, translation by R. Ariew and D. Garber, Hackett Edition.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., section 3, page 36.
4
Ibid., section 3, page 37.
 These two discussions and the solutions Leibniz gives to them are more related
than what may seem at first glance. However, the solution given (the principle of the
best) undermines God’s attributes. I will give four arguments to show the different
oppositions such a principle implies with God’s attributes and to propose a better
solution.
The first argument talks about the cancellation of God’s freedom. If someone
cannot do but one thing, he is not free. God cannot do but what is best from all the
possible options. Therefore, God is not free. Leibniz is aware of this refutation and tries
to solve the problem by appealing to the distinction between metaphysical and
hypothetical or conditional necessity5. God is not subjected to metaphysical necessity
but just to a hypothetical or conditional necessity: “The possible that occurs is the one
more perfect than its opposite, and that this happens not because of its nature but
because of God’s general resolve to create that which is more perfect”6. This necessity
depends on the accomplishment of a previous premise (“it will necessarily happen,
assuming that it will happen”7), which gives Leibniz the opportunity to propose the fact
that there is not absolute of metaphysical necessity as a solution. However, it can be
affirmed that, as conditional necessity of producing the best depends on the principle of
the best and the principle of the best is actually absolutely needed (not producing the
best would go against God’s attributes according to Leibniz), conditional necessity is in
fact reduced to absolute necessity. God is reduced to making the best world and his
freedom is cancelled.
The second argument talks about Leibniz’s fallacy of unjustifiably moving from
“way of producing” to “effect of production”. As Leibniz affirms, God’s wisdom,
goodness and omnipotence imply that he acts “in perfection following the sovereign
reason”8. Nevertheless, acting in perfection and under the best reason refers to God’s
way of producing, not to the effect of his production (or final product), which is the
creation. Acting under the best reason or best good is not the same as producing the best
good. In other words, the way or manner in which God chooses is the best, according to
his infinite wisdom and goodness, but there is no justification to affirm then that the
world He produced is the best He can produce.
The third argument follows from the last one and shows that the principle of the
best cancels God’s wisdom and omnipotence. As it has been just been argued, using
now a comparison, a good architect will design a good building, but not necessarily the
best building he can build. This is especially true if the architect is infinitely wise and
powerful: no design of a building can be either the best he can conceive, or the best he
can design. This third argument is based on the idea that “infinite” implies no limit. If
this world is the best possible world that can be conceived and created, God’s wisdom
and power have a limit. If these attributes have a limit, then they are not infinite, which
goes against the very essence of God. Therefore, God’s infinite wisdom and

5
See On Freedom and Possibility, page 20, or Dialogue on Human Freedom and the Origin of Evil, page
112.
6
On Freedom and Possibility, page 20.
7
Dialogue on Human Freedom and the Origin of Evil, page 112.
8
Discourse on Metaphysics, section 3, page 37.
omnipotence can just be maintained if He can always conceive and create a better
world.
The forth argument talks about the cancellation of God’s goodness. First, it has
to be admitted that someone who does certain good with necessity is worse (less good)
than someone who really has the possibility to choose the good and does it freely.
Therefore, if God necessarily (even with conditional necessity) makes the best of the
possible worlds, then another Being capable of making that same world freely could be
conceived. This Being would then be more perfect (or “more good”) than God, which is
absurd. In order to be infinitely good, God should be really capable of creating good
freely, without any trace of necessity.
To conclude, the conception of a God that acts under the principle of the best,
that necessarily produces the best option, goes against the attributes of God: freedom,
wisdom, omnipotence and goodness. On the contrary, due to these attributes, the world
God creates is good and chosen under the sovereign reason, but it is not the best He
could create. On the one hand, a conception free from the principle of the best gives a
better explanation of the relationship between God’s will and intelligence: freedom of
God’s will is not eliminated by the “principle of the best” and rationality of the
intelligence is still maintained over an arbitrary will. It remains open for further study,
however, the question on why then God did not create a better world or why there is
evil. It seems that the solution will come from the consideration of the fact that evil is
nothing, it is the lack of goodness. As a consequence, God is responsible of the
goodness in the world and not of the evil, and therefore the evil of the world does not
imply that He “acts with less perfection”9.

9
Ibid.