Special exhibition: Leibniz and free will

In the seventeenth century, the predominant view was that God had already predetermined the course of the world. Accordingly, a person’s actions followed divine destiny. Regardless of whether a person was an elector or a villain, their entire future as an individual was already predetermined. This idea, however, is difficult to reconcile with the idea of free will. If what I do is predetermined, then it appears impossible that I can do something else – and free will therefore also does not exist. Naturally, Leibniz raised this issue. In his text “De libertate” (On freedom), Leibniz wrote that the existence of all predicates within a subject reflects the fact that a substance always already carries all of its states within it as a necessary consequence of its original state. Terminological logic, geometry or mathematics – everything is subject to universal rules: “Nothing occurs without a reason.” This means that an individual’s every action is also determined through a chain of causes; however, this individual can freely make decisions. Because the lived moment, which presupposes all causes and effects, is the one which God made real. Because God can see all past and future events, according to Leibniz. However, he brought only this world into existence. All other possible decisions belong to other possible worlds. In Leibniz’s multiverse of possibilities, we live in the only world brought into existence by God, one which enables a free will and is simply the best of all possible worlds.