Jeffrey McDonough

In a stimulating recent paper, “Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza),” Michael Della Rocca argues that rationalists face a daunting dilemma: either abandon the Principle of Sufficient Reason or embrace a radical, Parmenidian-style monism. The present paper argues that neither historical nor contemporary rationalists need be afraid of Della Rocca’s dilemma. The second section reconstructs Della Rocca’s argument in five steps. The third section argues that Leibniz’s treatment of relations undermines one of those steps in particular and thus provides him—as well as contemporary rationalists—with a way out. The fourth section argues that a similar way out is available to Spinoza, and that it’s a better way out than either of the two options Della Rocca offers on Spinoza’s behalf. The essay concludes with an historically-minded suggestion for those eager to revitalize the once-again popular notion of grounding.

Confronting the threat of a Spinozistic necessitarianism, Leibniz insists that not all possible substances are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together—and thus that not all possible worlds are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together. While it is easy to appreciate Leibniz's reasons for embracing this view, it has proven difficult to see how his doctrine of incompossibility might be reconciled with the broader commitments of his larger philosophical system. This essay develops, in four sections, a novel solution to the "puzzle of incompossibility." The first section frames the difficulty more carefully and briefly argues that the two dominant strategies developed by Leibniz's commentators fail to solve it fully insofar as they require simply abandoning one or another of its motivating commitments. The second and third sections show how Leibniz's guiding analogy of a geometrical packing or tiling problem may be applied to solve the puzzle of incompossibility in the context of finite and infinite worlds composed of extended corporeal substances. Finally, the fourth section shows how the strategy of Leibniz's packing analogy might be applied even in the context of a thoroughly idealist metaphysics in which the only true substances are nonextended, mindlike "monads." The essay concludes by drawing some connections between Leibniz's thinking about the puzzle of incompossibility and the development of his views concerning the status of corporeal substances and extended bodies. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati What's this?