Abstract
This dissertation defends a new interpretation of Leibniz’s teleology, arguing that in his “middle period”—stretching from the early 1680s to 1704—Leibniz revives something like Aristotelian final causation in advancing his criticism of Cartesian physics. I argue that Leibniz endorses two theses about final causation in the context of natural philosophy. First, I argue that Leibniz endorses immanence, the claim that final causes are grounded in something intrinsic to a substance. Second, I argue that Leibniz endorses Goodness, the claim that final causal activity is a striving toward an actually good end, whether for the substance itself or for the ends of its creator.
The dissertation proceeds in four chapters. The first broadly traces the reception of final causation from Aristotle through Suárez, showing that the Scholastics uniformly affirm Goodness while mostly, though not universally, affirming Immanence. I also argue that Suárez’s reclassification of immanent final causation as a species of formal causation shaped how Descartes and Leibniz later inherited the concept. The second chapter defends my central interpretive claim, where I examine Leibniz’s doctrine of the striving possibles to show that Leibniz's natural philosophy primarily features immanent, not transeunt, final causes, and immanent final causes are goodness-directed even when a substance transitions from an apparently better state to an apparently worse one. The third chapter argues that Leibniz treats forces themselves as final causes, and that this explains his otherwise puzzling rejection of Cartesian occasionalism, particularly his criticism of Johann Sturm. The fourth chapter turns to the laws of nature, arguing that laws are generalizations over more fundamental powers, and that final and formal causation, not efficient causation, do the real metaphysical explanatory work in Leibniz’s system, thus providing a new interpretation to resolve a long-standing debate on Leibniz’s famous “two kingdoms” of causation.
I conclude by examining the reception of Leibniz’s teleology in Wolff and Kant, showing that each preserves only part of Leibniz’s view, and then draw out lessons for contemporary attempts to revive final causation and powers-based metaphysics.
