ABSTRACT
G. W. Leibniz’s accounts of spontaneity and rationality are certainly adequate and consistent with his metaphysics in general. He is indeed quite right in laying emphasis on rationality as what in the final analysis distinguishes free from unfree substances, the less free from the more free. Leibniz has been criticized for laying too much emphasis on rationality as condition necessary for freedom. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that Leibniz tended to overemphasize the role of rationality in freedom because it was the very requisite for freedom on which his predecessors, for instance L. Molina and T. Hobbes, had been confused. Leibniz’s clear indebtedness to Thomas Aquinas and Molina lies in his attempt to define human choice in such a way that it accommodates predetermination without ceasing to be a choice. Leibniz manages to do so by pointing out that that is so in the realm of the possibles.
