ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes and discusses the occasionalism of Erhard Weigel (1625–1699), Leibniz’ teacher at the University of Jena. What motivates Weigel’s occasionalism is the idea that time consists of independent, discrete, and discontinuous moments and that only the present is ontologically real (presentism). According to Weigel, time is fleeting and so is the existence of finite beings, and the world overall. Every moment, beings fall into nothingness only to be immediately re-created by God as the infinitely powerful being, or so Weigel argues. The fleetingness of finite beings therefore leads Weigel to a reading of conservation as continuous re-creation and, subsequently, to occasionalism. By ruling out diachronous or horizontal causation among finite beings, Weigel believes to have shown that only God as eternal and infinitely powerful can (vertically) bring about body-body and mind-body interactions. Weigel’s occasionalism, however, stops short of being wholesale. Fearing to do away with human freedom, he holds that our mind’s thinking and willing are free. According to Weigel, this means that we are fully responsible for the moral evil (sin) we cause.
