Necessity or chance
On the axis: Freedom of the will · a choice
If our choices are not determined, are they any freer for it, or merely left to chance? Does freedom come down to the absence of a cause?
Justification
Descartes makes the will the infinite faculty of the soul, that in which we most resemble God: it is the will, not the limited understanding, that can affirm or deny anything. This freedom of is the most immediate experience we have of ourselves.
Meditations on First Philosophy, IV · The Passions of the Soul, arts. 41 and 152
Justification
If nothing happens without a , how can the act remain free? Leibniz unties the difficulty by distinguishing two necessities: absolutely necessary is that whose contrary is contradictory (truths of reason); only hypothetically necessary is what presupposes God's free choice of the best. The human act belongs to the second case: it is certain, because inscribed in the person's complete notion, yet not necessary, for its contrary remains logically possible. Motives therefore incline without compelling, and this is precisely what separates Leibniz from the necessitarianism of , where everything follows from God with geometrical necessity. This refined reconciles determination by reasons with contingency, hence a value barely on the determinist side.
Reasons incline without necessitating.Theodicy
Theodicy, §43-53 and §288 (inclining without necessitating) · Discourse on Metaphysics, §13 (the individual notion includes everything, without absolute necessity)