That Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics casts a long shadow over the history of philosophy goes without saying. That its influence continues to be felt among philosophers in the seventeenth century, particularly those recognized as quintessentially modern thinkers, is a more contentious proposition whose affirmation requires considerable qualification and argument. Textbook accounts of early modern philosophy emphasize its sharp break, especially in natural philosophy and metaphysics, with the doctrines of Aristotle. In part, this is a result of taking at face value the rhetoric of early modern figures who stress their independence and distance from Aristotle. More often than not, however, what these figures are eager to reject is not so much the content of Aristotle's own texts, as the accretions of commentary on Aristotelian doctrines that comprise the body of scholastic philosophy, along with the methods of commentary and disputation on which that tradition relies. The imperative of the moderns is to address head-on the problems that nature has set for us, not X's criticisms of Y's interpretation of Aristotle's answer to a given problem. There are, to be sure, places at which characteristically modern accounts of matter, mind and causation directly challenge the content of Aristotle's theories. Yet even here there has been a growing recognition of the danger of reading seventeenth-century philosophers as monolithic in their rejection of central Aristotelian doctrines, such as teleology and hylomorphism.

The early moderns’ relation to Aristotle's practical philosophy, and especially his ethics, has received much less attention in the literature, and consequently suffers less from the weight of received opinion. In part, this reflects the fact that until recently relatively little attention had been devoted to the practical side of early modern philosophy, as against topics in epistemology and metaphysics, and to a lesser degree natural philosophy. In the domains of ethics and political philosophy, there are obvious places at which seventeenth-century philosophers stress their disagreement with Aristotle: Gassendi's qualified defense of Epicureanism; Hobbes's arguments for the artificiality of justice and the state; the movement in Grotius, Pufendorf, Cumberland and Locke toward a conception of morality founded on law rather than virtue. In these ways and others, we find the development of alternative conceptions of moral philosophy in the early modern period, which stand opposed to the teachings of the Nicomachean Ethics and are consequential for the subsequent development of the discipline.

A NEW BEGINNING?

What we know today as early modern philosophy was forged in the opening years of the seventeenth century, in the writings of such thinkers as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and René Descartes. We think of this period as the beginning of modern philosophy in part because these philosophers saw themselves as the vanguard of an intellectual revolution, whose goal was to break with the philosophy of the past. Here they identified their most important target as Aristotle, whose teachings in logic and metaphysics had dominated educated opinion in Europe through most of the previous millennium. Almost all of the best-known philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth century saw Aristotle’s views as a significant impediment to the advance of knowledge, and believed that progress could only begin once the edifice of Aristotle’s system had been razed and philosophy could begin to rebuild on solid foundations. The metaphor of demolishing the old to make room for the new is familiar to students of philosophy from Descartes’s First Meditation, but the English philosopher Francis Bacon had employed it some twenty years before Descartes. In his New Organon (another allusion to Aristotle, whose logical works were known as the organon, or “instrument”), Bacon declares: “It is futile to expect a great advancement in the sciences from overlaying and implanting new things on the old; a new beginning has to be made from the lowest foundations, unless one is content to go round in circles for ever, with meagre, almost negligible, progress” (New Org., I.31).

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have long been recognized as an especially fruitful period in the history of Western philosophy. Most often this has been associated with the achievements of a handful of great thinkers: the so-called “rationalists” (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and “empiricists” (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), whose inquiries culminate in Kant’s “Critical philosophy.” These canonical figures have been celebrated for the depth and rigor of their treatments of perennial philosophical questions, concerning, for example, existence, modality, causality, knowledge, obligation, and sovereignty, as well as for their efforts to push philosophy in new directions, challenging many of the assumptions of ancient and medieval philosophy. In this connection, it has been argued that epistemology assumes a new significance in the early modern period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human knowledge. Yet early modern philosophers make major contributions in almost every area of philosophy, and in many cases their conclusions continue to serve as starting points for present-day debates. The chapters in this Companion are designed to acquaint the reader with the most important developments in early modern philosophy and to point the way toward more advanced studies in the field.

Descartes wrote little in the way of moral philosophy, but he regarded the topic as of the utmost importance. As he describes it in the preface to the French edition of his Principles of Philosophy, the uppermost branch of the tree of philosophy is occupied by la morale, “the highest and most perfect moral system, which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom” (AT IXB 14/CSM I 186). This moral system would be more than just the final element of Descartes' philosophy; it also defines the end, or telos, of his ordered reconstruction of knowledge. In an important sense, the prior, theoretical parts of his philosophy are established for the sake of the practical benefits that follow from them. To those skeptical about what philosophy has to offer, Descartes confidently replies that the difference between his principles and those of other philosophers, “as well as the long chain of truths that can be deduced from them, will finally make them realize how important it is to continue in the search for these truths, and to what a high level of wisdom, and to what perfection and felicity of life, these truths can bring us” (AT IXB 20/CSM I 190).

Descartes is usually seen as the quintessential modern philosopher, yet in his broader conception of philosophy's goal we find repeated a central ancient theme: philosophical knowledge is valued not only for its own sake, but as the basis of the best sort of human life – one in which we realize the greatest perfection and happiness.

Christian Wolff has often been seen as Leibniz's direct philosophical descendant. Superficially, there is something to be said for this. On a personal level, Leibniz went out of his way to assist his younger compatriot in securing an academic position and looked favorably on Wolff's contributions to the advancement of learning in Germany. On a philosophical level, there is no doubt that Wolff drew heavily on the resources of Leibniz's philosophy and laid out one path along which that philosophy might be developed. Still, it is easy to exaggerate the depth of the relationship between the two men. Despite the extensive correspondence they carried on for over decade (1704–16), Leibniz and Wolff each were not intimates. As Leibniz viewed the matter near the end of his life, Wolff was a bright and enterprising young academic, who had shown an interest in Leibniz's views and was now principally engaged in teaching mathematics. Wolff was no more eager to claim a close kinship with Leibniz. As a bright and enterprising young academic, he above all wished to secure his reputation as the founder of a philosophical system that was indisputably his own. The last thing he wanted was to be known as a mere epigone of Leibniz.

History, though, does not always respect the wishes of its agents, nor historiography the facts of history. Despite what Leibniz and Wolff each may have thought of their relationship, it has come to loom large in the subsequent telling of the history of philosophy.

Stoicism casts a long shadow over early modern moral philosophy. In the late sixteenth century, the efforts of Justus Lipsius and Guillaume Du Vair to formulate a coherent Christian Neostoicism sparked a succession of works aimed at assimilating, or rebutting, central claims of Stoic ethical theory. The impact of Stoicism on the major figures of seventeenth-century philosophy, particularly those of the second half of the century, takes a more subtle form. Among these thinkers, there is little interest in confronting Stoic views directly, either to refute them or defend them. Yet Stoicism makes a vital contribution to the ethical theories of a number of later early modern philosophers, including, most prominently, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The theories of these three philosophers differ significantly in their details and in their proximity to Stoic orthodoxy, yet each involves a creative appropriation of Stoic ideas.

A growing body of literature relates the ethical views of Descartes and Spinoza to those of the Stoics. Much less has been written about the Stoic background to Leibniz's ethics. In one sense, this is unsurprising, since it is difficult to extract a systematic ethical theory from Leibniz's fragmentary writings. At the same time, the case demands attention, for Leibniz confronts more directly, and more critically, than Descartes or Spinoza the ramifications of Stoicism for morality, and does so in part by identifying his rationalist predecessors as the modern inheritors of the mantle of Stoicism.

The topic of theodicy looms large in Malebranche's thought. His distinctive views on the subject form the basis of one of his most famous books, the Treatise on Nature and Grace (1680), and occupy a prominent place in important later works such as the Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688). Embracing issues of the relation of the divine will to creation and our knowledge of that will, Malebranche's theodicy is inextricably linked to his signature doctrines of occasionalism and vision in God. Together, they form a single comprehensive theory that attempts to explicate the existence and nature of the world, and the special place of human beings within it, in relation to God as creator.

What has come to be called the problem of theodicy signifies a cluster of issues, some of which any theological explanation of the world's existence must confront, others of which are specifically associated with the tenets of Christian theology. Of the first sort are basic questions about the world's imperfection and what this implies about God's apparent lack of concern for the welfare of human beings. If God is all powerful, all wise, and all good, why does he permit natural circumstances (floods, earthquakes, and drought) that are unworthy of his perfection and that bring harm to human beings, particularly the innocent who have done nothing to earn God's punishment? Why does God allow wicked people to exercise their wickedness in harming the innocent, and then, apparently, fail to punish the wicked, who profit from their evil deeds? Questions such as these strike at the fundamental justice of God's action: How could God allow such things to happen, unless he is in some way limited by less than supreme goodness, knowledge, or power?

Leibniz describes the best of all possible worlds as the world of greatest perfection and greatest harmony. We saw in the preceding chapter that these designations are closely associated with a notion of the world's “most fitting” construction. As such, they point to features of the best of all possible worlds that can be characterized independently of any reference to the happiness and virtue of rational creatures. The maximization of perfection and harmony are thus marks of this world's metaphysical superiority over other possible worlds, as opposed to its moral superiority. This chapter examines the nature of this metaphysical superiority and the relationship for Leibniz between the concepts of perfection and harmony.

Optimization versus Maximization

According to Nicholas Rescher, when Leibniz speaks of this as the possible world of greatest perfection, we should understand him as claiming that it optimizes the combination of two crucial metaphysical values: richness or variety of phenomena, and simplicity of laws. In Rescher's view, neither factor is sufficient by itself. Stressing one at the expense of the other would lead to a world that contained less overall perfection. A world composed of a single element, for example, would have much simpler laws than our own, but its lack of variety would lower its degree of perfection. Similarly, a world might be much richer in phenomena than our own is, yet the increased complexity of the laws required to give order to its phenomena would again decrease its total perfection.

In a series of writings from the late 1670s and the 1680s, we encounter a neglected aspect of Leibniz's views concerning ontology and method. The principal theme of these works is the definition and classification of the fundamental categories of thought and being. In both form and content, these writings suggest a throwback to an earlier philosophical generation. In them Leibniz's model is less the empirically and mathematically inspired method of Descartes, Hobbes, or Spinoza than the “tables of division” and classificatory “systems” of a group of almost forgotten late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenthcentury German thinkers, whose outlook is characterized by an eclectic blend of Aristotelian, Ramist, and Semi-Ramist thinking. The history of this movement and its influence on Leibniz lies outside the scope of the present study. My concern in what follows will be solely with articulating what may be interpreted as its residue in a specific collection of Leibnizian texts. Using this approach, I hope to give further content to the conception of metaphysics outlined in Chapter 4, and at the same time to illuminate several of Leibniz's most distinctive ontological commitments: his much discussed nominalism, his distinction between substantial and nonsubstantial being, and his complete concept theory of substance.

The Encyclopedia and the General Science

Leibniz's arrival in Hanover in December 1676 signaled a crucial turning point in his career. On the one hand, it marked the beginning of his long employment with the House of Brunswick-Lüneberg, an association that would last until his death forty years later.