God Can Do Otherwise

Abstract

This paper locates a source of contingency1 for Leibniz in the fact that God can do otherwise, absolutely speaking.23 This interpretative line has been previously thought to be a dead-end because it appears inconsistent with Leibniz's own conception of God, as the ens perfectissimum, or the most perfect being (Adams 1994). This paper points out that the best argument on offer which seeks to demonstrate this inconsistency fails. The paper then argues that the supposition that God does otherwise implies for Leibniz (at least) that God would not be praiseworthy, which is an absurd implication—or a violation of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR)—but that this is not, strictly speaking, an inconsistency—or a violation of the principle of contradiction (POC).4 While praiseworthiness is a perfection—and is compossible with God's other perfections—and so God must in some sense instantiate it, this paper argues that, given the nature of praiseworthiness for Leibniz, it in fact makes sense to say that praiseworthiness is merely a contingent perfection of God.5