Le mal métaphysique comme mesure ontologique de l´inertie naturelle des créatures chez Leibniz

MARÍA GRISELDA GAIADA

Lille

Workshop; Atelier Leibniz/Workshop Leibniz.; 2013

This work deals with the issue of metaphysical evil as cause of other evils (sins and moral pains), from the inertial model proposed by Leibniz in order to explain how the sinner rejects divine perfection in the concourse. We will work on three thesis : firstly, it is possible to think that the explanation of sin has moved forward from the « lack of reception » of  creatures in the concourse, such as it derives from the feather example in the second half of the 1680s, to the concept of « metaphysical inertia » that we find in the Theodicy. In other words, the concourse has assumed a dynamical model, which adds to the idea of lack from the 1680s a «force or passive power that decreases the effect of the active force », and in this way the resistance of the sinner in opposition to God?s causality is highlighted. Secondly, we argue that the metaphysical evil could be considered as a kind of « ontological measure » of the creatures? natural inertia, because the degree of resistance to the divine action in the concourse depends on their degree of original limitation. Finally, we will try to show that there is a moral sense of the inertia, located in the human will, which is compatible with the «intrinsic voluntariness» of the «mechanism of volitional forces» from the late model, if we are allowed to use these expressions. These thesis should be framed in the increasing dynamism of Leibniz?s thought in the period of Theodicy. In the same way that the Creation will be explained from a dynamical model of the divine will (similar to a geometrical sum of vectors or « volitional forces »), the concourse will also take a dynamical model from which sin will be conceived as the product of the relationship between force and inertia.