Leibniz’s Criticism of Occasionalism as Spinozism

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초록

Leibniz, in On Nature Itself, famously charges that occasionalismmakes “God the very nature of things, while created things disappear intomere modifications of the one divine substance” (G IV 508-9/AG 165).
Leibniz pivots this ‘Spinozism’ charge on the key claim that Malebrancheand like-minded occasionalists fail to appreciate that substantiality itself istightly connected to there being genuine causal forces internal to the entitiesin question. What is not clear is why Malebranche would be subject to such acriticism, if the central issue is how to understand what it is to be substance.
While occasionalists do deny genuine causal activity on the part of creatures,they do not take this denial of causality to entail the absence of creaturelysubstances. This response raises questions about the overall persuasiveness ofLeibniz’s argument, along with concerns about whether it is begging thequestion against Malebranche. In this paper, I hope to address these issues bytaking a closer look at Leibniz’s Spinozism criticism. A key will be tounderstand how Leibniz argues for his conception of substance as activity. Iwill argue that Leibniz’s case for his conception of substance ultimatelyrelies on his views about persistence. I will propose that Leibniz appears tothink that if creatures are to be regarded as substances, they must persist, and, moreover, that the persistence of creatures must be accounted a particularmanner—persistence has to be grounded in forces intrinsic to the creature.
Based on this analysis, I will go on to pursue the question of how convincingthis claim is. In the end, I will cautiously suggest that Leibniz can go aconsiderable way in motivating this claim, if we take Leibniz to beemphasizing a particular type of dependence that modes have on substances.
On my reading, Leibniz is suggesting that the lack of intrinsic forces withinthe Malebranchean scheme opens occasionalism up to the charge that createdindividuals are not much more than bundles of modifications. That is,creatures on the Malebranchean scheme lack substantial unity, a consequencethat indeed seems dangerously close to Spinozism.

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