ABSTRACT
Rene Descartes himself allowed one small exception: a human soul could, by volition, alter the direction though not the quantity of the motion of the animal spirits. By formulating the ideals of mechanism and scientific system, Descartes prepared the way for modern materialistic determinism. By embracing the rationalist view of knowledge even more thoroughly than had Descartes, Spinoza is led to the view that all truth is necessary truth, and contingency is merely apparent and epistemological. There is little doubt that Leibniz took pains to distance himself from Spinozism. There are three main principles in Leibniz' system that seem to drive him towards determinism: the principle of the analyticity of all true statements, the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of isolated monads. Leibniz' two main foundation stones are utter orthodoxy: God's omnipotence and God's benevolence. Leibniz makes the stock argument that God wanted to have a world populated by metaphysically free spirits.
