Abstract
This chapter explores the reception of Leibniz’s views on possible worlds and compossibility in the cosmologies of Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, and the pre-Critical Kant, with an eye towards determining continuities and discontinuities in their treatments of these notions. As I argue, Leibniz and these post-Leibnizians agree that compossibility should be understood in terms of the characteristic relations (namely, spatio-temporal and causal) that the members of a world stand in – that is, they understand compossibility along the lines of (what has been dubbed) the cosmological interpretation. They also agree that compossibiliy is ultimately grounded in properties of God. They disagree, however, about (1) the nature of space and time and their role in determining what things are compossible, (2) the number of possible and actual worlds, and (3) the legitimacy of using cosmological considerations to argue for a theodicy along Leibnizian lines. On these points, Kant radicalizes trends set in place by Crusius, leading to a rather drastic departure from Leibniz’s own account of possible worlds and compossibility.
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- 1.
This number in brackets given along with citation information for Wolff, Baumgarten, and Crusius refers to the numbered section headings in the text.
- 2.
Though there has not been much work done on this topic, there are two works that, even though they emphasize slightly different issues from those covered here, have proven invaluable for the writing of this paper: Chang Won Kim’s Der Begriff der Welt bei Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, und Kant and Eric Watkins’ Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (particularly the first and second chapters).
- 3.
Of course, we enjoy some epistemic advantages with regard to Leibniz that his immediate successors lacked: namely, access to a much wider range of texts.
- 4.
I am excluding, for example, figures like Georg Bernhard Bilfinger, Johann Christoph Gottsched, and Moses Mendelssohn.
- 5.
This contrasts sharply with Alvin Plantinga’s notion of a possible world as a consistent, maximally complete set of propositions (Plantinga 1978). It is closer to Lewis’s (1986)notion of a possible world (except for the fact that Lewis affirms, while Leibniz seems to deny, that non-actual possible worlds really exist).
- 6.
The solution to the puzzle given here was inspired by Rutherford (1995). However, I am not sure whether Rutherford would agree with all that I say.
- 7.
My thinking about this aspect of Leibniz’s position has been strongly influenced by Chignell (2009).
- 8.
I have taken the idea that Leibniz locates the ground of possibility in intentional properties/predicates of God, along with this helpful language, from Chignell (2009).
- 9.
I first encountered several of the passages from Wolff, Baumgarten, and Crusius quoted here in Kim (2002).
- 10.
For a comparison of this definition with the (subtly different) definitions Wolff gives in other texts, see Kim (2002, 46ff).
- 11.
I have not come across any official definition of this term by Wolff. Indeed, to my knowledge Wolff generally avoids the term. This of course does not mean, though, that Wolff is not implicitly giving an account of the concept along the above lines.
- 12.
I have found no evidence that Wolff would understand compossibility in terms of relations among complete concepts, as those who adopt the so-called “logical interpretation” of Leibniz’s notion of compossibility do (Messina and Rutherford 2009).
- 13.
Like Wolff, Baumgarten does not seem to offer an official definition of compossibility. However, he uses the term more frequently than Wolff, and in a variety of ways: e.g. to refer to (1) the agreement of predicates in a possible thing (e.g. Baumgarten 2013, 110 [§54]), (2) the agreement of perfections in God (e.g. Baumgarten 2013, 281 [§804]), and (3) the agreement of possibles in a world (e.g. Baumgarten 2013, 182 [§436]). I am here focusing on the latter usage of the term. As far as I can tell, Baumgarten’s remarks about this sort of compossibility fit nicely with the cosmological interpretation.
- 14.
If this is correct, then Crusius is paving the way for Kant’s version of this position in the Only Possible Argument.
- 15.
These numbers in brackets refer to the volume and page number in the Akademie Ausgabe of Kant’s works.
- 16.
As was the case with Wolff, this isn’t a term that Kant himself uses often. But as with Wolff that doesn’t mean that Kant is not giving an account of compossibility.
- 17.
Kant does speak of other worlds in the Universal Natural History, but here ‘world’ is being used in the loose way Fontenelle uses it rather than the technical one.
- 18.
For further discussion, see Messina (2014).
- 19.
Thanks to Kim Brewer for calling my attention to this passage.
- 20.
For an alternative reconstruction of Kant’s thinking, see Stang (2010).
- 21.
Numbers preceded by ‘A’ or ‘B’ refer to page numbers in the first and second editions, respectively, of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, as is the custom.
- 22.
I take the following remark (from the mid 1780s) to accurately reflect Kant’s position at this earlier stage in career: “For in cognizing himself, God cognizes everything possible which is contained in him as its ground” (Kant 1996, 397 [28:1061]).
- 23.
See my Messina (2015) for further discussion of the similarities and differences in Kant and Crusius’s views of space.
- 24.
For further discussion, see Laywine (2006, 112).
- 25.
Kant explicitly rules out the possibility of a multiplicity of actually existing worlds – the sort of possibility he had affirmed in Living Forces – in the Inaugural Dissertation (Kant 1992, 403 [2:408]).
- 26.
For a helpful discussion of the evolution of Kant’s views in the silent decade and, in particular, of the ways in which Kant retains while transforming his earlier cosmological views, see Laywine (2010).
- 27.
For further discussion, see Messina (2014).
- 28.
For a clear discussion of the issues here and a different reading of what is going on in the Postulates, see Uygar Abaci “The Coextensiveness Thesis and Kant’s Modal Agnosticism in the ‘Postulates’” (2016).
- 29.
I am grateful to Kim Brewer for reading an earlier draft of this paper and providing very helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining mistakes are of course my own.
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Messina, J. (2016). The Fate of the World (and Compossibility) After Leibniz: The Development of Cosmology in German Philosophy from Leibniz to Kant. In: Brown, G., Chiek, Y. (eds) Leibniz on Compossibility and Possible Worlds. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 75. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42695-2_10
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