♠ King of Spades
the cosmological family
The Argument from Contingency
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
La Monadologie (The Monadology)
DemonstrativeConcludes that something exists.
- Argument form
- Disjunctive syllogism (sufficient reason in itself or in another; not in itself)
- Concludes to
- Necessary being (the sufficient reason of the universe, lying outside it)
- Premise ground
- Metaphysical (principle of sufficient reason)
- Modal strength
- Necessary
- What it licenses
- Period
- Eighteenth Century (1714)
- Tradition
- Rationalist (Leibnizian)
Further reading
- Source text, public domain
La MonadologieLa Monadologie (1714) - Leibniz.pdf - A scholarly account
Read an exposition of the argument - A principal objection
Read the objection in full - Further reading
Leibniz, 'On the Ultimate Origination of Things' (1697) — a parallel primary statement of the same argument, not the card's cited locus.
This formulation is ours, composed from the primary source and compressed to fit the card; the argument admits of other statements. Objections have been made to every argument in the deck; where one is linked above, it is chosen by us, not written by us.
ergocards.com/contingency
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