Concept
Principle of sufficient reason
Overview
principle that everything must have a reason or a cause
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Principle of sufficient reason is discussed.
My essay on the principle of sufficient reason accomplishes just this: it explains the content of that principle as the essential form of every object—that is to say, as the universal nature of all objective existence, as something which pertains to the object as such; but the object as such always presupposes the subject as its necessary correlative; and therefore the subject remains always outside the province in…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
INSUFFICIENCY OF THE OLD AND OUTLINES OF A NEW DEMONSTRATION. § 15. _Cases which are not comprised among the old established meanings of the Principle._ From the summary given in the preceding chapter we gather, that two distinct applications of the principle of sufficient reason have been recognized, although very gradually, very tardily, and not without frequent relapses into error and confusion: the one being its…
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature
the book is about it; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
This great principle holds good in all events.' Cf. p. 707. 'The principle of "sufficient reason" is that in virtue of which we consider that no fact could be found true or consistent, no enunciation truthful, without there being a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise.... When a truth is necessary, we can find the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come to…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
Reply Obj. 1: The Greeks use the words "cause" and "principle" indifferently, when speaking of God; whereas the Latin Doctors do not use the word "cause," but only "principle." The reason is because "principle" is a wider term than "cause"; as "cause" is more common than "element." For the first term of a thing, as also the first part, is called the principle, but not the cause. Now the wider a term is, the more…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
states what it is; author linked in the graph
The principle of sufficient reason may indeed be used as purely formal and external,--as equivalent to the notion that everything, no matter what, has _some_ explanation. Thus employed, it simply declares that everything has _a_ reason, without in the least determining the _what_ of that reason,--its content. This is what we mean by calling it formal. But this is not the way in which Leibniz conceives of it…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Principle of sufficient reason
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Karl Popper
- Leucippus
- Christian Wolff (philosopher)
- Parmenides
- Baruch Spinoza
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Lewis White Beck
- Quentin Meillassoux
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- Alexander Pruss
- Branislav Petronijević
Related ideas
- History
- Avicenna
- Anaximander
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Law of identity
- Peter van Inwagen
- Necessity and sufficiency
- Law of noncontradiction
- Contingency (philosophy)
- Archimedes
- Leo Tolstoy
- Modus ponens
- Modus tollens
- Monadology
- Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
- Thomas Aquinas
- Anselm of Canterbury
- German idealism
- Plato
- Parmenides
- Ontological argument
- Infinite regress
- Age of Enlightenment
- Aristotle
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.
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