Principle Of Sufficient Reason

''"Thus the sufficient reason, which needs no other reason, must be outside this series of contingent things, and must be found in a substance which is its cause, and which is a necessary being, carrying the reason of its existence with itself. Otherwise, we would not yet have a sufficient reason where one could end the series."''

In fact Leibniz had a more nuanced and characteristic version of the principle, in which the contingent was admitted on the basis of Infinitary reasons, to which God had access but humans did not. Without this qualification, the principle can be seen as a description of a certain notion of Closed System , in which there is no 'outside' to provide unexplained events with causes. It is also in tension with the paradox of Buridan's Ass .

The principle was one of the four recognised Laws Of Thought , that held a place in European Pedagogy of Logic and Reasoning (and, to some extent, Philosophy in general) in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century . It was influential in the thinking of Leo Tolstoy , amongst others, in the elevated form that History could not be accepted as Random .

See also: Deterministic System (philosophy) .

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Principle Of Sufficient Reason