Newton, Spinoza, Stoics and Others: A Battle Line in Leibniz’s Wars of (Natural) Religion

Abstract

Starting from Leibniz’s complaint that Newton’s views seem to make God the soul of the world, this paper examines Leibniz’s critical stance more generally towards God as the soul of the world and related theses. A preliminary task is determining what the related theses are. There are more of these than might have been thought. Once the relations are established, it becomes clear how pervasive the various guises of the issue of God as the soul of the world are in Leibniz’s thought and how central they are in his debates with contemporaries about the truths of natural religion and even more strictly philosophical issues. Leibniz’s arguments against God as the soul of the world are reconstructed and evaluated, and the difficult question of the exact meaning, or meanings, that Leibniz ascribes to the thesis that God is the soul of the world is taken up. The clearest core of meaning discussed in this paper is most directly relevant to Leibniz’s criticisms of Spinoza and the Stoics, as well as of Descartes. Less clear, but obviously important, are meanings relevant to Leibniz’s debates with the occasionalists and Newtonians. I begin with two of Leibniz’s criticisms of his contemporaries, one criticism fairly well known, the other not well known at all. The more familiar criticism appears in the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence of 1715-16. In that correspondence, Leibniz is, among other things, attempting to find a theological Achilles’ heel in the Newtonians’ world view, just as Clarke is attempting to do the same in connection with Leibniz’s. In this context Leibniz claims that Newton’s views seem to make of God the soul of the world, the anima mundi. Leibniz makes the point, with varying degrees of intensity, several times during the correspondence, and with reference to a diverse aspects of Newtonian theory.1 Here is one of the examples, drawn from Leibniz’s Fourth Paper: There is hardly any expression less proper upon this subject, than that which makes God to have a sensorium. It seems to make God the soul of the world. And it will be a hard matter to put a justifiable sense upon this word, according to the use Sir Isaac Newton makes of it. (LC 4, sec. 27; G VII 375)