On the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Participation of Intellect
Quaeritur
Utrum principium sufficientis rationis sit lex logica universalis tantum, an etiam signum participationis intellectus creati in ratione divina; et utrum negatio huius principii, ut apud van Inwagen et metaphysicos analyticos recentiores, tollat ipsam intelligibilitatem creationis.
Whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason is merely a universal logical law, or also a sign of the created intellect’s participation in divine reason; and whether the denial of this principle, as in Van Inwagen and other contemporary analytic metaphysicians, abolishes the intelligibility of creation itself.
Thesis
The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is not a mere regulative maxim of thought but a metaphysical expression of the intellect’s participation in divine intelligibility. In its strong sense, it is the formal imprint of the divine Logos within reason itself for it claims that nothing exists without a reason in God’s wisdom. To deny the PSR is not to defend freedom, but to sunder the bond between intellect and being. The Spirit of Understanding (Spiritus Intelligentiae) is the living mediation through which the created mind, in seeking reasons, reflects the inexhaustible rational plenitude of its Creator.
Locus Classicus
G. W. Leibniz, Monadologie, §§31–32 (1714):
“Aucun fait ne saurait être vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu’il y ait une raison suffisante pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement.”
(“No fact can be real or existing, no statement true, unless there is a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise.”)
Spinoza, Ethica, I, prop. 11, schol.:
“Deus sive Natura ex sola necessitate suae naturae existit et agit.”
(“God, or Nature, exists and acts solely from the necessity of His own nature.”)
Peter van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God” (1988):
“Not every truth has an explanation. Some things just are, and that is the end of the matter.”
Explicatio
The principium sufficientis rationis has traversed the entire history of metaphysics as both a law of thought and an ontological postulate. In its strong form (Leibnizian–Spinozist), it affirms that for every fact or existent, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise, a reason ultimately grounded in divine necessity. In its weak form (empiricist–Kantian), it is restricted to the domain of possible experience and accordingly becomes a principle of explanation, not of being. In its moderate form (Aquinas, Wolff, contemporary metaphysical realism), it expresses the participation of created reason in the divine Logos, without collapsing contingency into necessity.
The denial of the PSR, exemplified by van Inwagen’s defense of “brute facts,” aims to preserve freedom and divine sovereignty by positing the inexplicable as metaphysically possible. Yet such denial undermines the very conditions of intelligibility, for if something is without reason, thought itself loses its foundation. A world containing “brute facts” is one in which the Logos is silent.
Theologically, the PSR expresses the Spirit’s inner witness to divine intelligibility in the act of understanding. The finite mind, in seeking sufficient reasons, manifests its participatio in ratione divina. To reason at all is already to echo the divine act of creation, in which being and meaning coincide.
Thus, the PSR is not merely a formal rule of inference but a metaphysical participation in God’s own self-understanding. Its strength is not coercive but luminous because the created intellect cannot but seek the reason of things, being formed as it is in the image of divine understanding.
Objectiones
Ob. I. The modern empiricism of David Hume and the contemporary naturalists argue that the PSR exceeds empirical warrant. Regularities can be observed, but “reason why” is an anthropomorphic projection; causality is habit, not necessity.
Ob. II. Kant held that the PSR is a principle of the Verstand, valid only within the realm of possible experience. Applied beyond phenomena, it yields antinomies. Hence, it is regulative, not constitutive.
Ob. III. Van Inwagen and other analytic metaphysicians contend that not every truth has an explanation. Some facts are “brute,” including free choices and the existence of God. Requiring a reason for everything annihilates freedom and reduces reality to mechanism.
Ob. IV. Sartre and Camus view the absence of sufficient reason as the condition of human freedom. The world is absurd, and meaning is not discovered but created by the self.
Ob. V. Certain theological voluntarists hold that God’s will is ultimate reason. To require a reason for the divine will is to subordinate God to rational necessity. Divine freedom transcends reason.
Responsiones
Ad I. Empiricism confuses the order of discovery with the order of being. That some reasons are hidden does not imply that none exist. The PSR concerns the intelligible ground of reality, not the limits of observation. Hume’s skepticism dissolves not causality but confidence in reason itself.
Ad II. Kant rightly confines the PSR within the phenomenal for critical purposes, but his very act of limitation presupposes its universality. To deny constitutive status to the PSR is already to presuppose that reality conforms to rational form, and this is an implicit metaphysical affirmation.
Ad III. The appeal to “brute facts” is a confession of explanatory despair, not a defense of freedom. Freedom is intelligible only as participation in the divine act of rational self-determination. A choice without reason is not free but arbitrary, and arbitrariness is impotence, not liberty.
Ad IV. Existentialist revolt against reason mistakes alienation for authenticity. The absurd arises not from being but from the will’s refusal to inhabit intelligibility. To assert meaning against the void is still to affirm the PSR implicitly; it is to claim the will to reason in spite of chaos.
Ad V. Divine will is not irrational but supremely rational, identical with divine wisdom. To require no reason beyond God is not to deny the PSR but to fulfill it: Deus est ratio sui. The PSR terminates not in logical deduction but in the subsistent Reason that is God Himself.
Nota
The principium sufficientis rationis stands at the heart of metaphysical realism. In its deepest sense, it is not a law imposed upon being but the trace of divine rationality within it. As the mind seeks sufficient reasons, it participates in the infinite coherence of the Logos. The PSR thus binds ontology and epistemology within the act of the Spirit: it is the metaphysical form of the intellect’s communion with God.
Modern denials of the PSR -- whether they be empiricist, analytic, or existentialist, -- arise from the fragmentation of reason’s participation in the divine. The task of theology is therefore not to reconstruct the PSR as an abstract axiom, but to recognize it as a participation in the eternal Reason by which all things are and are known.
Determinatio
The PSR may be distinguished in three senses:
Strong (Leibnizian–Spinozist): Every fact has a sufficient reason, grounded in divine necessity.
Moderate (Thomistic–Classical Realist): Every contingent being has a reason for its existence in God, but not all reasons are necessitating.
Weak (Kantian–Empiricist): The PSR is only a principle of empirical order, regulative for experience.
Theology adopts the moderate form: participation without collapse.
Contingency is preserved, but reason remains grounded in divine wisdom.
The PSR is therefore not merely a rule of logic (ratio cognoscendi), but an ontological participation (ratio essendi) in the divine act of understanding.
To deny the PSR is to deny that being is intelligible; and to deny intelligibility is to deny the Logos.
Transitus ad Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae
The preceding disputation has established that the Principium Sufficientis Rationis is not a mere law of inference but a participation of finite reason in the divine Logos. It thus binds the act of thinking to the act of being and reveals in the search for “why” the trace of eternal Wisdom itself.
Yet the moment the PSR is affirmed ontologically, a tension arises:
If every being has a sufficient reason, is there room for contingency? Must all that is be necessary, as Spinoza contended, or can the contingent subsist within the sphere of intelligibility without dissolving into determinism?
The theological task is to interpret contingency not as absence of reason but as mode of reason, as a form of divine intelligibility expressed as finite freedom. For in creation, necessity does not abolish contingency but gives it foundation; and the contingent, rightly understood, is not the irrational remainder of the divine but the radiant overflow of divine plenitude.
We therefore advance to Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae, in which it will be asked whether contingency is grounded not in the negation of necessity but in its participation, so that the freedom of creatures is the temporal and finite reflection of divine rational love.
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