On the Board of Freedom

The Game between Contingency and Determination. Leibniz and Lady Conway versus Molina and Suárez

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to deal with the freedom of indifference, as it was formulated by Molina and Suárez, which is opposed to what Leibniz and Lady Conway have argued on this point. The Jesuits believed that freedom is a perfection, to the extent that it preserves the contingency of our actions, i.e. in so far as the will can choose indifferently between the good and the evil. On the contrary, Leibniz and Conway saw there an imperfection, because the true meaning of freedom would be to recognise the good in order to follow it (“moral necessity”). On the surface of a disputation between intellectualism and voluntarism, we may perceive the theological background about the interpretation of the Fall.