Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Reasoning Of The Highest Leibniz And The Moral Quality Of Reason, Ryan Quandt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Loving God is our highest perfection for Leibniz. It secures our belief and trust in the Creator, which is integral to the sciences as well as faith. Those who love God have justification for reasoning, that is, they can rationally expect to arrive at truth. This is because love is a receptivity to the perfection all of things; loving God, then, is a disposition and tendency toward the most perfect being, the ens perfectissimum. Individuals who perceive the divine nature “do not merely fear the power of the supreme and all-seeing monarch,” Leibniz writes, “but are assured of his beneficence, …