Giving Birth the Principle of the Best: Natural Law, Moral Necessity and Divine Justice in the Young Leibniz (1663-1671)

Abstract

The young Leibniz faced the question of divine justice, firstly, from the standpoint of a natural law theory, based on Erhard Weigel’s doctrine of moral entities. Leibniz took from that doctrine the concept of moral necessity, which is used, in this period (1663-1671), to define the concept of obligation. However, this jurisprudential framework does not allow him to explain divine justice, because, for Leibniz, God is free from any moral-juridical obligation. Therefore, Leibniz seeks in the doctrine of universal harmony a reason to explain divine equity or piety. And it seems that this search takes him to introduce, by 1671, the principle of the best, as a principle that rules divine actions, based on an intellectualist conception of freedom.