Nothing happens without a reason. This is Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason (PSR). According to this principle, every event in the universe is metaphysically bound to every other by some rational tie, generally understood as a cause. Causality acts as the unifying force of the universe. Now, “cause” means, in its broadest sense, reason and ground. The German word Grund captures this double signification. The expression could therefore be translated as: “everything is grounded” or “everything has a rational ground.”
But what is reason? Logic. The universe is, ultimately, logical. Causes can be understood logically as necessary nexuses. Of course, there are both logical and empirical connections among facts. To affirm the unrestricted validity of the PSR implies that logic (reason) and being must coincide. Following Leibniz, the distinction between reason and being derives from our finite point of view. Seen from God’s perspective, facts are as necessary as logical judgments.
According to Leibniz, the world is logically determined. This metaphysical thesis rests on our capacity to express all phenomena within a single logical system. That is, the world should be wholly expressible in a set of homogeneous logical terms. In this lies the unity and coherence of being. Logic is a symbolic system in which facts are expressed through propositions connected by defined elements (connectives), where various transformations are possible provided that the value called “truth” is preserved. This last element is called logical entailment. Entailment is the logical form of causality or, in a broader sense, of ground.
But what would become of entailment, truth, and the principle of sufficient reason if there were distinct logical systems? This is not merely a theoretical question; in fact, we already possess diverse logical systems. We must assume a certain logical pluralism. This is the first feature of our contemporary logical horizon. The second is logical limitation, that is, the fact that every logical system—and indeed every axiomatic system—is either incomplete or inconsistent.
What happens when we consider these two conditions: the incompleteness (or inconsistency) and the plurality of logic? On the one hand, there is something that lies beyond the reach of pure formalization; on the other, there is the fact that formalization can be carried out in different ways. This situation exceeds the classical pretensions of the traditional logica universalis, that is, of a single, complete, and consistent system capable of representing all facts (beings and their reciprocal connections) in the world.
Yet this does not issue in an unbridled pluralism, nor does it dissolve logic as such or the concept of logical entailment. On the contrary, logic is redefined more broadly, though without falling into arbitrariness. The result is what we call the principle of insufficient reason, where logic is recognized as both limited and plural.
This is the logical path toward the principle of insufficient reason. But there is also a natural-metaphysical path. This must express how the concrete world is neither determined nor indeterminate, but underdetermined in its very actuality. Or, put differently, it is determined, but not to the point of exhausting its potentialities. An actual entity is at once determined and open, concrete and possible. In other words, it is overdetermined, that is, subject to different levels of determinations, and underdetermined, that is, open to new determinations, both quantitative and qualitative.
We can take this a step further. Things in the world are subject to change: from atoms to societies, galaxies, and living organisms. There is a history associated with everything concrete. This history shows patterns and regularities, invariances and symmetries, but never ultimate laws.
From this it follows that there is no necessary being. And yet being is not arbitrary. Once something exists, it becomes bound to other beings, as well as to its own past. It is tied to its environment and to the bonds it has established with other entities. Leaps are relative. In our universe there exist various forms of conservation: at least, that of matter and that of energy. This simply means that nothing arises from nothing. There is a tie between being and being. Even if the meaning of “to exist” changes throughout evolution (for example, an atom, numbers, and memories do not exist in the same way), there is always a mixture of continuity and discontinuity.
The existence of tangible and definite entities does not exclude the possibility of transformation, even of drastic metamorphoses, in individuals as in collectives. There is no primitive void from which everything emerges, as from the entrails of some god. Things come from other things. Yet if things possess the capacity to evolve and innovate, it is because they are never complete or finished, that is, they are not purely present things, but ongoing processes. Through information, they can conserve the past (memory) and project possible futures (projection), as well as participate in processes of morphogenesis and transformation. Things go beyond themselves; they are more than themselves.
The concept of ontological difference was introduced to save entities from an absolutely closed immanence, from the fate of being always the same owing to the power of some essence. Being then came to mean temporal existence, becoming, and transcendence. But this concept deprived entities of the power to become other by themselves. The principle of insufficient reason returns this power to things. The powers of being belong to entities. They are not modes of appearance, but being itself, distributed among entities and connections, states and processes, individuals and domains, scales and modes. Being, therefore, is not before entities (ontologically, as in Heidegger and his disciple Badiou), but among them. It is their bond and the possibilities of radical novelty that inhabit them.
Insufficient reason does not mean an indeterminate reason, but an underdetermining one: a determination that does not exhaust future possibilities. These are not prefigured, as in the throw of a die, where we know a priori that there are six and only six possibilities. Things are fully determined in the sense of being fully concrete, but underdetermined insofar as they can always be otherwise: play another role, show another perspective, evolve, separate, mix, undergo a metamorphosis, or generate new beings and relations.
But what is to be done with so many logics and so many worlds, so many beings and connections, facts and interpretations? Diverse descriptions and frameworks for interpreting the world may be equally valid, supported by evidence or experience. Several may likewise be consistent. How, then, to decide? By their ethical consequences. The principle of insufficient reason demands doing justice to both logic and facts, to determination and openness, but also to ethics. Ultimate descriptions of the world remain undecided, being only possible, and therefore require the intervention of ethics.
Referencias
Badiou, A. (2017). Being and event. Bloomsbury Academic.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time (J. Stambaugh, Trans.). State University of New York Press.
Rescher, N. (1992). G. W. Leibniz’s Monadology. Routledge
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