Principle of sufficient reason:
Principle that there must be a sufficient reason – causal or otherwise – for why whatever exists or occurs does so, and does so in the place, time and manner that it does.
The principle goes back to at least the early 5th century BC – being used by Parmenides (see Eleaticism) in his Fragment 8, lines 9-10 – but it is most famously associated with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who used it to exclude all arbitrariness, and to account for ‘truths of fact’ (while the law of contradiction accounted for ‘truths of reason’).
He also derived the identity of indiscernibles from it.
Also see: principle of perfection, causal principle
Source:
H G Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clark Correspondence (1956)
Table of Contents
- perfection principle
- Leibniz’s law
- continuity law or principle
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- indiscernibility of identicals
Last update 2020-06-17. Price and product availability may change.