Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical ExpositionDewey, John
Philosophy
Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition
Dewey, John
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
is to say that it follows an immanent principle, that it is independent
of foreign influences,--in a word, that it is self-determined.
But here again it seems as if Leibniz had stated a principle
altogether too wide to throw any light upon the nature of moral
freedom. Spontaneity is no more an attribute of human activity than it
is of all real activity. Every monad, even the unconscious, as truly
follows its own law without interference from without as does man
himself. If the spontaneity of action constitutes its morality, we are
not in a condition to ascribe morality to man any more than to any real
thing. We are thus thrown back again upon the conception of rationality
as the final and decisive trait of freedom and of ethical conduct. Just
as "contingency" gets a moral import only in connection with conscious
ends of action, so "spontaneity" comes within the moral realm only when
conjoined to reason.
Why is there this close connection between reason and freedom? The
reader has only to recall what was said of Leibniz's theory of
causality to get a glimpse into their unity. Causality is not a matter
of physical influence, but of affording the reason in virtue of which
some fact is what it is. This applies of course to the relation of the
soul and the body. "So far as the soul is perfect and has distinct
ideas, God has accommodated the body to it; so far as the soul is
imperfect and its ideas are confused, God has accommodated the soul to
the body. In the former case the body always responds to the demands
of the soul; in the latter the soul is moved by the passions which
are born of the sensuous ideas. Each is thought to act upon the other
in the measure of its perfection [that is, degree of activity], since
God has adjusted one thing to another according to its perfection or
imperfection. Activity and passivity are always reciprocal in created
things, because a portion of the reasons which serve to explain what
goes on is in one substance, and another portion in the other. This is
what makes us call one active, the other passive."
If we translate these ideas out of their somewhat scholastic
phraseology, the meaning is that the self-activity of any substance
is accurately measured by the extent to which it contains the reasons
for its own actions; and conversely, that it is dependent or enslaved
just so far as it has its reasons beyond itself. Sensations, sensuous
impulses, represent, as we have seen before, the universe only in a
confused and inarticulate way. They are knowledge which cannot give
an account of itself. They represent, in short, that side of mind
which may be regarded as affected, or the limitation of mind,--its
want of activity. So far as the mind acts from these sensations and
the feelings which accompany them, it is ideally determined from
without; it is a captive to its own states; it is in a condition of
passivity. In all action, therefore, which occurs from a sensuous
basis, the soul is rightly regarded as unfree.
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