Contingent Propositions and Leibniz?s Analysis of Juridical Dispositions

VARGAS, EVELYN

Leibniz. What Kind of Rationalist?

Springer

Lugar: Dordrecht; Año: 2008; p. 267 - 278

In our search for certainty, contingent propositions may be regarded as attesting the limits of human reason. It is a generally accepted view that Leibniz?s attempt to account for our knowledge of contingent propositions is a philosophical failure. Early in his philosophical career, Leibniz was engaged with the project of reforming traditional logic. His attempts to develop a juridical logic, that is, a logic of normative inference, may be seen as part of this ambitious project. As Leibniz himself pointed out later, he regarded the reasoning of jurists in contingent matters as representative of logic or the art of reasoning, akin to mathematical reasoning in necessary matters. In his dissertation on difficult cases in law, he also compared the decision of juridical cases to the resolution of geometrical problems. In addition, he claimed that both geometers and jurists apply analytical procedures. These miscellaneous references might suggest that Leibniz proposed the mathematical method for jurisprudence: but then juridical reasoning can stand side by side with mathematical reasoning only because it is a particular instance of the latter. My purpose in this paper is to examine to what extent the geometrical analogy can be applied to the understanding of the juridical procedure of deciding on conditional rights.