At the outset of his Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), Leibniz says that "there are several entirely different perfections in nature" (Hackett edition, p.1). Leaving aside his constant reference to God, who "possesses all of them together" (ibid.), what's important is knowing "what a perfection is" (ibid).
Not every thing is a perfection, and, for instance, Leibniz excludes numbers and figures. But he does include power and knowledge. The path is cleared for the centrality, in his metaphysics, of the notion of an individual substance. The individual substance may not be called a perfection, but perfection does pertain to its notion. The correctness of this interpretation may be checked against the following example: "Since Julius Caesar will become perpetual dictator and master of the republic and will overthrow the freedom of the Romans, this action is contained in his notion, for we assume that it is the nature of such a perfect notion of a subject to contain everything, so that the predicate is included in the subject" (p.13).
The point is that perfection does not imply a contradiction, and thus it is not open to contingency. But whatever happens in everyday life (truths of history, political actions, ethical choices) does. For Leibniz, then, events are certain and yet contingent. That is, certainty does not imply necessity, as one might usually think. Certainty is a word indicating the highest degree of probability. It is probability itself approaching the threshold of certainty, changing into it with the realization of the event.
John Duns Scotus' idea that something is not simply contingent, but that it is caused contingently, still applies. The potentiality-not-to often discussed by Giorgio Agamben on the basis of a reading of Aristotle, is still carried along within the potentiality that passes into actuality, that is, into the event.
The notion of an individual substance is also its haecceity (i.e., Duns Scotus' concept, borrowed by Leibniz in his metaphysics), that is, that in virtue of which a being is this being and without which it wouldn't - it would be another, or perhaps not be. Haecceity is the complete notion of a complete being (another name for individual substance; cf. p.8), and thus a perfection.
However, since Leibniz is concerned with freedom, one practical question to ask is: Can an incomplete and imperfect being (one on its way to the completion and perfection of its notion) rebel against this notion itself? Can one be another?
We can only appreciate Leibniz' somersaults of subtleness (almost worthy of Duns Scotus), when he tries to extricate himself from the obvious objection that his philosophy denies freedom and describes a theory of destiny and fate (certainly not the chance-driven denial of freedom one finds in Spinoza). The question is whether he succeeds in establishing, in the realm of practice, the essentiality of contingency.
Citations:
G.W. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays, trans. Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew. Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991.
8 years ago
