Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in 1646 and died in 1716. He was a great philosopher often considered a “genius” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He made important contributions to metaphysics, religion, physics, mathematics, geology, and many other things. The views that I will be comparing and contrasting to those of Baron D’Holbach’s, are those of free will, existence of God, and the immaterial soul.
Leibniz’s views on free will still remain debated, since it is believed that Leibniz was deterministic, just like Baron D’Holbach, only to some extent. In his correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz says “When two options are absolutely indifferent – meaning that there’s nothing to choose between them – there is no choice, and consequently no election or will, since choice must be based on some reason or principle. A simple act of will without any motive (“a mere will”) is a fiction. It is contrary to God’s perfection, chimerical and contradictory, inconsistent with the definition of will, and sufficiently confuted in my Theodicy” (Leibniz, G.W., Alexander). Leibniz apparently believed that there was no free will when it came to having the option of two identical things. He believed that there was no free will only when it came to an act without motive.
Even though Leibniz’s view on determinism and free will fluctuates with interpretation, it is evident that Baron D’Holbach had strong opposing views on free will. Baron D’Holbach believed determinism and that there was no such thing as free will and having the freedom to choose. “As a part subordinate to the great whole, man is obliged to experience its influence. To be a free agent it were needful that each individual was of greater strength than the entire of Nature; or that he was out of this Nature: who, always in action herself, obliges all the beings she embraces, to act, and to concur to her general motion; or, as it has been said elsewhere, to conserve her active existence, by the motion that all beings produce in consequence of their particular energies, which result from their being submitted to fixed, eternal, and immutable laws” (System of Nature, Ch. XI). Baron D’Holbach thought that free will goes against nature, and that everything is fixed. “The will, as we have elsewhere said, is a modification of the brain, by which it is disposed to action or prepared to give play to the organs” (System of Nature, Ch. XI). Baron D’Holbach believed that the will was the brain. Everything, for Baron D’Holbach, was physical. “Choice by no means proves the free-agency of man; he only deliberates when he does not yet know which to choose of the many objects that move him, he is then in an embarrassment, which does not terminate, until his will as decided by the greater advantage he believes be shall find in the object he chooses, ot the action he undertakes” (System of Nature, Ch. XI).
One major difference between Leibniz and D’Holbach was their belief of the existence of God. Leibniz was religious and believed in God. In the same correspondence between him and Clarke, Leibniz uses God in some of his arguments. In Leibniz’s second paper, he says “I am not saying that the material world is a machine that runs without God’s intervening, and I have pretty strongly insisted that the things he has created need his continual influence. But I do say that the material world is a watch that runs without needing to be mended by God; otherwise we would have to say that God changes his mind. God has foreseen everything; and for anything that might go wrong he has provided a remedy in advance. There is in his works a harmony, a pre-established beauty.” In contrast with D’Holbach, he had a strong belief that God exists and that there is more than the physical.
Baron D’Holbach did not believe in God. He was an atheist with opposing views towards religion. “Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore under divers names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, ‘a God of armies,’ a ‘jealous God,’ and ‘avenging God,’ a ‘destroying God,’ a ‘God,’ who is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him” (Le Bon Sense). He was shed in a negative light due to the fact that he did not believe in God. His reasoning was that he saw religion as an obstacle to freedom and the common good.
Leibniz argued also, that there are immaterial substances called monads, which are the core, simple, indivisible components of everything and make up the universe. He argued that these are immaterial and lacked spatial extension (meaning that these are not physical things). “Moreover, everyone must admit that perception, and everything that depends on it, is inexplicable by mechanical principles, by shapes: and motions, that is. Imagine there were a machine which by its structure produced thought, feeling, and perception; we can imagine it as being enlarged while maintaining the same relative proportions, to the point where we could go inside it, as we would go into a mill. But if that were so when we went in we would find nothing but pieces which push one against another, and never anything to account for a perception. Therefore, we must look for it in the simple substance, and not in the composite, or in a machine. And that is all we can find within a simple substance, namely perceptions and their changes; and that is all that the internal actions of simple substances can consist in” (Leibniz, G.W., & Strickland). Leibniz did agree that there are immaterial things and substances that make up the Universe.
Baron D’Holbach, however, believed that there is no such thing as the immaterial. He argued that everything was composed of physical substances and that everything was divisible and occupied space. “Thus it will be seen, that those who, conquer insurmountable difficulties, have supposed in a man an immaterial substance, distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves” (System of Nature, Ch. VII). Baron D’Holbach was a physicalist and thought that any man who believes that there are immaterial substances, has not truly understood himself.
After comparing Leibniz and D’Holbach, it can be concluded that they are similar in some things and different in others. On the matter of free will, Baron D’Holbach argues that there is no such thing, whereas Leibniz only agrees to some extent. Leibniz was also religious and believed in God, whereas D’Holbach did not believe in God and was an atheist. Another thing they differ in is that Leibniz believed in immaterial substances called “monads” that made up the Universe; however, Baron D’Holbach argued that everything in the Universe is physical and nothing is immaterial.