At a recent conference I gave a paper on Leibniz’s correspondence with Thomas Burnett of Kemnay. Among my questions was how Locke appeared to Leibniz. Did he look like a Socinian, or similar sort of religiously dubious character? In answering that, it would be good to have some idea of how Leibniz thought about Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity. But Leibniz said relatively little explicitly about that text. There is, however, an argument in Leibniz’s correspondence with Burnett that seems to bear on the issue.
It seems to me that too many books aiming to prove the truth of religion are written in your country. That’s a bad sign, and is something that doesn’t always have a good effect … I have often thought, and others have come to agree with me, that preachers should usually avoid this issue, because instead of relieving doubts, they give rise to them. Books in vernacular languages have this effect most often … I’d prefer that we concentrated on making the wisdom of God known through physics and mathematics, by revealing more and more of the wonders of nature. That’s the real way to convince the profane, and should be the goal of philosophy (Leibniz to Burnett, 18 July 1701, A 1.20.185, pp.286-7).
Who is Leibniz talking about here? Burnett’s previous letter mentions George Stanhope’s Boyle lectures (A 1.20.155, p.233). Before that, a useful source is a letter from late 1700 (A 1.19.132). The works below are just some of those mentioned by Burnett there.
- Robert Jenkin, The Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion, second edition
- John Richardson, The Canon of the New Testament Vindicated in answer to the objections of J.T. in his Amyntor
- Stephen Nye, An historical account, and defence [sic], of the canon of the New Testament In answer to Amyntor
- Thomas Staynoe, Salvation by Jesus Christ alone … agreeable to the rules of reason and the laws of justice …
- Richard Kidder, A demonstration of the Messias. in which the truth of the Christian religion is defended, especially against the Jews
- John Sharp, The reasonableness of believing without seeing a sermon preach’d before the King in St. James’s Chappel, on Palm-Sunday, March 24, 1699/700
- William Talbot, A sermon preach’d … at St. Bridget’s Church, Easter Monday
- John Edwards, The eternal and intrinsick reasons of good and evil a sermon preach’d at the commencement at Cambridge on Sunday the second day of July, 1699
- Nathaneal Taylor, A preservative against Deism shewing the great advantage of revelation above reason, in the two great points, pardon of sin, and a future state of happiness
- Nathaneal Taylor, A discourse of the nature and necessity of faith in Jesus Christ with an answer to the pleas of our modern Unitarians for the sufficiency of bare morality or meer charity to salvation
These are, it seems, the sorts of book to which Leibniz was objecting. But there’s another book, not named above, that appears to me to be equally part of this context, equally the sort of thing to which Leibniz was objecting. This was a book that Burnett had mentioned to Leibniz back in 1697: namely, Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (Burnett to Leibniz, 4 May 1697, A 1.14.105, p.182). It’s part of the same debate, trying to do just the sort of thing that Leibniz criticized. Leibniz did not offer any explicit criticism of Locke’s Reasonableness at this point. But the above passage offers an implicit one — one that has little to do with the details of the views argued for, and more to do with the kind of book it was.
Burnett made some attempt to defend these books against Leibniz’s criticism (Burnett to Leibniz, 2 September 1701, A 1.20.247, pp.404-5), and Leibniz continued the discussion (Leibniz to Burnett, 24 February 1702, A 1.20.467, p.811), adding the point that “I have often remarked that these books have served as guides for the enemies of religion. Those who cannot find their own [anti-religious] books have sought their arguments in the books that refute them, without going to the bother of reading the refutations”. One ought, Leibniz thought, to be highly skeptical about the publication of such books. Publishing them is the wrong way for preachers or philosophers to be proceeding — and thus, presumably, the wrong way for Locke to be proceeding.
P.S. Thanks again to the conference organizers, in particular to Sam Levey and everyone else at Dartmouth and to Ruth Mattern.
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So, does Leibniz object also to those books of natural religion in which arguments are explicitly raised on the results of physics, such as of Bentley, Derham, and Whiston and the like? There were to many of them too at the time. Is his meaning that no such arguments accomplish what they are intended to do? (Ignoring now that these books were specifically ‘Newtonian’.)
Robert,
Just what the scope of the criticism is, is a little vague. Leibniz didn’t assert ‘don’t write any books trying to prove the truth of religion’. (And even when he objected, it seems to be more on the grounds that they have unintended consequences, than that they’re actually wrong.)
In his follow up letter (A 1.20.467) after discussing Burnett’s response to his argument, Leibniz notes two books Burnett has mentioned that seemed to him to take the right approach: “Je voudrois que tous les livres pour la Religion ressemblassent à ceux de M. Grew et de Mons. Ray, qui monstrent la sagesse de Dieu dans la nature”. That would be Nehemiah Grew, Cosmologia Sacra (described at length by Burnett in A 1.20.247, pp.405-6), and John Ray, The Wisdom of God (described briefly on p.406).
I think that Bentley features most often in the correspondence because of his dispute with Charles Boyle about the epistles of Phallaris. There is some relevant comment on him just after main quote above though. And Leibniz notes there that “il ne faut point negliger aussi la Theologie revelée dont la preuve se sert de l’histoire et des langues”.
An exception of a different sort comes with mention of Grotious’s work (De veritate religionis Christianae) largely as a thing to compare others to — people who try to write such books usually don’t write such good ones as Grotius did.
Another text Leibniz might have been referring to is Cudworth’s ‘True Intellectual System of the Universe. In John Sellars’ (2011:125) article on Cudworth ‘Is God a Mindless Vegetable’, he writes: “In the work we know as the True Intellectual System, the task is to refute atheism. In order to deal with atheism, Cudworth’s method is to gather together the various arguments for atheism that have been advanced throughout the history of philosophy and to refute them one by one. However, as a consummate scholar, this method demands that Cudworth supply all of the existing arguments for atheism, properly documented, before turning to refute them. Ironically, what we find in the True Intellectual System is arguably the finest history of philosophical atheism ever written, a veritable textbook of atheism. In fact, some of his contemporaries came to a similar assessment, attacking him for stating the reasons in favour of atheism a little too clearly, as Shaftesbury noted in his attempt to defend Cudworth. [fn. See A. A. Cooper, Third Earl of Shatfesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by L. E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 264–5: ‘You know the common fate of those who dare to appear fair authors. What was that pious and learned man’s case who wrote The Intellectual System of the Universe? I confess it was pleasant enough to consider that, though the whole world were no less satisfied with his capacity and learning than with his sincerity in the cause of deity, yet was he accused of giving the upper hand to the atheists for having only stated their reasons and those of their adversaries fairly together’.]”
Thanks Jeremy: that Shaftesbury quote is great. I sort of doubt that Cudworth was someone whom Leibniz had immediately in mind, just given the dates when he read Cudworth’s book: once earlier, in 1689 (see ‘Excerpta ex Cudworthii systemate intellectuali’, A 6.4.351, pp.1943-55) and once later, in 1704 (when Masham sent him a copy). On the other hand, the worry about people who read the anti-religious arguments and not the refutations can apply to all sorts of books: Leibniz’s own example is “I know someone who used the book of St. Cyril against the Emperor Julian in this way”.
I suspect Leibniz is right that apologias for religion often have the unintended effect of raising doubts about religion. I doubt there is anything peculiar about religion here. Take any widely held belief for which you can’t provide knockdown arguments, write an apologia for that belief in which you attempt to refute arguments against it, and the effect is likely to be the raising of doubts in people who hadn’t thought to doubt yet. If my goal were to get as many people as possible to believe p by whatever means are most effective, I wouldn’t write a book arguing for p. Rather, I would write a book that assumes p as if it were entirely obvious and then proceeds to build a complex edifice on the basis that p so that rejecting p will seem epistemically costly.
But as a philosopher I tend to think that the goal isn’t merely to get people to believe the truth but to get people to believe the truth for the right reasons. Does Leibniz not care whether one believes for the right reasons? Or is believing for the right reasons only of concern for those with the leisure for scholarly pursuits, i.e., not for ‘the profane’?
Three disjointed thoughts:
– I wasn’t thinking of the ‘profane’ as Hume’s ‘vulgar’, but as the atheistic and irreligious.
– Part of Leibniz’s point, I take it, is that there are so many of these books. You get an extra sort of doubt from the existence of many apologies, that you wouldn’t get from just one. (I think this, like the stuff you point to, isn’t special to religion.)
– About ‘right ‘reasons’: believing the right thing for the wrong reasons may well be better than believing the wrong thing; and in this case, presumably there are a variety of different things that Leibniz could count as right, or at least good, reasons (e.g., the glories of nature and the ontological argument).
Re your first point: you’re obviously right. It seemed to me that a plausible position would be that the masses aren’t capable of properly evaluating the reasons for and against anyway and so one should keep certain arguments from them lest they get confused. As someone in the 21st century might think, since most people are in no position to evaluate the arguments for and against anthropogenic climate change, it’s best to keep certain discussions out of public view. Anyway, when I wanted to mention this view, I glanced at the Leibniz quotations to see if there was any hint of this view in them … and then I made my silly mistake.
Re your third point: I think you’re making two points here. One is that believing the right thing for the wrong reasons may well be better than believing the wrong thing. I think that’s true in at least some cases. But suppose while writing a book to defend a true thesis I have reason to think that I can pull the wool over my readers’ eyes such that most of them will come to believe the truth though not for any good reason, whereas if I honestly discuss the reasons for and against the thesis most of my readers will fail to be convinced of the truth. Despite it being better to believe the right thing for the wrong reason than to believe the wrong thing, I think I ought to discuss honestly the reasons for and against. Why? On some sort of respect-for-persons grounds and the thought that my responsibility is to do my part in giving people the opportunity to attain the best state, namely, believing the right thing for the right reasons.
I think you’re also suggesting that a distinction needs to be made between failing to provide good reasons to believe something and failing to provide responses to potential defeaters for the belief. So perhaps contemporary scientists ought to provide the public with some of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, but need not risk confusing them with discussions of putatively conflicting evidence. That seems a useful distinction.
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