Abstract
Developing his new definition of justice in the six drafts of the Elements of Natural Law (1670–1671), Leibniz endeavors to settle two seemingly excluding assumptions underlying his preconception of justice. The first is that justice demands an active concern for the good of others. To be just, Leibniz insists, one must seek the good of others for its own sake, considering it an independent end and not only a means to one’s own benefit. The second assumption is that “there is no one who deliberately does anything except for the sake of his own good.” Adhering to the egoistic psychology of Hobbes and Carneades, Leibniz holds that “we seek the good also of those whom we love for the sake of the pleasure which we ourselves get from their happiness.” In the fourth draft, Leibniz appears to find the key to the solution of his problem. “The answer,” he writes, “certainly depends upon the nature of love.” “To love,” as he states earlier in this essay, “is to find pleasure in the happiness of another.” In this chapter I attempt of analyze the solution that Leibniz offers in this early essay and to question its coherency. I will argue further that an interesting hint of a possible solution to the problem may be drawn from his later writings on justice, where his notion of disinterested love becomes more explicit.
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Notes
- 1.
In this short lecture I discuss quite concisely Leibniz’s early definition of justice and his dialectical method. Obviously, there is much to be said about both issues, and a more developed analysis will have to wait for another article now in the works.
- 2.
I am indebted to Ursula Goldenbaum for introducing me to this important issue a long time ago and for providing me with her scholarly studies on the topic (see her 2002: 209–231, 2003). For further various perspectives of the issue, see, for instance, Mulvaney (1968: 60ff.), Hostler (1975: 47–54, 57–59), Dascal (1993: 394–396, 1994: 113–115), Brown (1995: 411–441, esp. pp. 416–417, 425–426, 2011: 265–303), Riley (1996: 144–152), Piro (1999), and Naaman-Zauderer (2006).
- 3.
- 4.
In the Preface to the Codex Iuris Gentium of 1693, Leibniz writes that love “signifies rejoicing in the happiness of another, or, what is the same thing, converting the happiness of another into one’s own” (D IV, 295/ R 171). And he sometimes formulates his definition of love in terms of perfection, stating that “to love is to find pleasure in the perfection of another” (e.g., R 83).
- 5.
“All people sense this, whatever they may say; or at least they act according to it, whatever they may believe” (A.VI.1: 464/ L136). As Christia Mercer has shown, moreover, the reflective nature of the mind and the image of the mind as a mirror, which Leibniz first develops between late 1669 and 1671 in the Elements of Natural Law, bears significant ethical implications for the increase in the goodness of other minds. See Mercer (2001: 219). The relevant passage which she addresses from the Elements of Natural Law is the following: “Pleasure, however, is doubled by reflection, whenever we contemplate the beauty within ourselves which our conscience make, not to speak of our virtue. But as a double refraction can occur in vision, once in the lens of the eye and once in the lens of a tube, the latter increasing the vision of the former, so there is a double reflection in thinking. For every mind is something like a mirror, and one mirror is in our mind, another in the mind of someone else. So if there are many mirrors, that is, many minds recognizing our good, there will be a greater light, the mirrors blending the light not only in the eye but also among each other” (A.VI.1: 464/L137). For the manner in which “Reflective Harmony,” in Mercer’s wording, enhances goodness of other minds, see Mercer (2001, ch. 6, 214–220).
- 6.
Gregory Brown has recently objected to this interpretation, for various reasons, and has offered a different account of the dilemma that Leibniz attempts to resolve in this essay and of how this can be done (2011). Discussing his arguments would require me to exceed the scope of this paper and is left for a future article on the topic.
- 7.
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Abbreviations
- A :
-
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1923–, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (eds.), Berlin: Akademie Verlag. References include series, volume, and page.
- D :
-
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1768, Opera Omnia, L. Dutens (ed.), de Tournes, Geneva.
- DM :
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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Discourse on Metaphysics. References include section.
- G :
-
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1875–1890, Die philosophischen Schriften, C.I. Gerhardt (ed.), 7 vols., Berlin: Weidmann. References include volume and page.
- GR :
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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1948, Textes inédits, G. Grua (ed.), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
- L :
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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1969, Philosophical Papers and Letters, L. E. Loemker (trans. and ed.), 2nd edn, Dordrecht: Reidel.
- NE :
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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. References include book, chapter, and section.
- R :
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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 1988, Political Writings, P. Riley (Trans. and ed.), 2nd edn, New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Naaman-Zauderer, N. (2014). Harmonizing the Poles: A Note on Leibniz’s Notion of Justice. In: Riesenfeld, D., Scarafile, G. (eds) Perspectives on Theory of Controversies and the Ethics of Communication. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7131-4_6
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