Abstract
In this paper I intend to show both the legal and logical relevance of Leibniz’s legal theory of conditions. In a first section I sketch the two main questions that any legal theory of conditions aims at answering. Then I show how Leibniz’s legal theory of conditions, by putting forward the notion of conditional, achieves to provide new answers to those very questions. Based upon the logical notion of conditional, Leibniz presents his legal theory of conditions as the theory of a specific kind of conditionals that he calls “moral conditionals”. From such a point of view, the connection established by Leibniz between the legal theory of conditions and the logical theory of conditionals is clearly advantageous to the former. But it is also advantageous to the latter. Indeed, as I show it in Sections 3 and 4, Leibniz’s legal theory of conditions gives logical results, too. To provide a complete analysis of moral conditionals, more than a purely propositional approach is needed. As Leibniz makes it explicit, moral conditionals meet both epistemic and practical conditions. One of the latter can be modeled as an agenda relevance condition for a specific class of moral conditionals.
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Notes
- 1.
See for instance Terré, Simler, Lequette (2002, pp. 1131–1148).
- 2.
Ibid., p. 1132.
- 3.
The legal theory, but also the law and the jurisprudence, is used to make a distinction between two kinds of modality-conditions: an individual action provided with a legal content can be made depend either on a “suspensive” condition or on a “resolutory” condition. Both their respective nature and effect are different. I will focus here on the suspensive conditions because they are the main targets of Leibniz’s legal theory of conditions.
- 4.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) presented his legal theory of conditions in two texts. He presented it first in 1665 in two academic dissertations, the Disputatio Juridica de Conditionibus and the Disputatio Juridica Posterior de Conditionibus. A strongly modified presentation is given in the Specimen Certitudinis seu Demonstrationum in Jure, Exhibitum in Doctrina Conditionum, which is part of the Specimina Juris of the period 1667–1669. Both texts can be found in the first volume of the sixth series of the academic edition. I will quote in the usual abbreviation system: “A VI i 147” is to be read as “first volume of the sixth series of the academic edition, p. 147”.
- 5.
A VI i 371.
- 6.
As H. Schepers stresses it in Schepers (1975, p. 1).
- 7.
See again Terré, Simler, Lequette (2002, p. 1132).
- 8.
A VI i 371.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
A VI 1 375.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
A VI i 370.
- 13.
A VI i 375.
- 14.
A VI i 370.
- 15.
A VI i 372–375.
- 16.
A VI i 375.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
A VI i 112.
- 19.
- 20.
A VI i 399.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
A VI i 398. To speak the truth, necessary propositions are true and « determined » propositions. Nevertheless, it is clear from the context that what Leibniz calls a « determined » proposition is just a proposition whose truth value is certain.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
A VI i 400.
- 25.
A VI i 111.
- 26.
See for instance A VI 1 423.
- 27.
A VI i 111.
- 28.
For instance, that angels have a subtle body, or that there is void in nature, or that the world will collapse at the end of the sixth millenium, can never be the if-part of a moral conditional. As Leibniz puts it explicit, only a proposition whose content is empirical can be the if-part of a moral proposition. See A VI i 398–399.
- 29.
See A VI i 421 ; 426.
- 30.
“A conditional right puts something into the being” (A VI I 424). Leibniz’s theory is here strongly based upon the answers given by the Roman jurisconsults. Is it directly connected with Leibniz’s modeling of an action such as δ[αβχ] as a conditional δ ⇒ αβχ? It is difficult to say.
- 31.
A VI i 398.
- 32.
A VI 1 381–382; A VI i 422–423.
- 33.
A VI i 409.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
I do not consider here the differences that can be made between the notions of agenda, goal, plan. For such differences see Gabbay and Woods (2003, pp. 195–197).
- 37.
A VI i 409. « The testator (that is α) must make it that for the conditionarius (that is β) the advantages of the conditionatum (that is αβχ) are superior to the disadvantages of the fulfillment of the condition (that is δ) ».
- 38.
See for instance Armgardt (2001), pp. 322–323.
- 39.
A VI i 409 ; 422.
- 40.
A VI i 405.
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Thiercelin, A. (2010). Epistemic and Practical Aspects of Conditionals in Leibniz’s Legal Theory of Conditions. In: Gabbay, D., Canivez, P., Rahman, S., Thiercelin, A. (eds) Approaches to Legal Rationality. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9588-6_10
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