Principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason (Latin principium rationis sufficientis ) is in the history of logic and philosophy, the general principle formulated differently and used in different functions: Every being or recognition could and / or should back out in an appropriate manner to another be.
Helmut Spinner returns the principle of sufficient reason except Parmenides. This had the right thinking introduced in the theory of knowledge and this principle does not, rather than a negative recital prevention principle used as a requirement of positive reasoning, similar to the legal principle of burden distribution.
In the explicit form of the principle of Aristotle was erected. At least since Plato and Aristotle categories of logic in philosophy were raised to provisions of an ontology. By the rationalist metaphysics assumes that thinking and order of existence had a common ground, agree ways of thinking and forms of existence for them. While they like Spinoza traced the relation of cause and effect on the ground-consequence relationship, Kant distinguished between early ground of being and knowledge base. Following Christian August Crusius Immanuel Kant has preferred the term set of the determining reason.
"For the word ' adequately ', as the same make fully clear, ambiguous, because it is not immediately apparent how far he zureicht; but determine means to set so that each opposite is excluded, and therefore means that which is sufficient with certainty, one thing to understand way and not another. "
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz raised the principle of sufficient reason (French raison suffisante ) in the Monadology, or raison determinant in the theodicy to a supporting principle of his philosophy. The set is based next to the principle of contradiction, according to Leibniz one of the two principles to which human reasonings.
"For the purposes of sufficient reason, we find that not a fact [ fait ] can be regarded as true or existent and no statement [ énonciation ] to be correct, without there being a sufficient reason [ raison suffisante ] that it is so and not otherwise although most of us do not like to be aware of these reasons. "
In his Theodicy Leibniz characterized the principle as " determining ground" as a law with validity prior to all experience, according to
" [ ... ] Nothing happens without there being a cause [ cause ] or at least a decisive reason [ raison determinant ], that is something that can serve a priori to explain why something exists rather than not exists and why something just as if in a different way there. "
In short: Nothing happens without a reason (Latin nihil fit sine causa, as Cicero to the 17th century).
Schopenhauer
The " principle of sufficient reason " is representative as a generic term, as a common root of all kinds of relation, as they appear in the presented world. These relational relationships Schopenhauer assigns to four different classes in which each act certain objects in different ways to each other, so there is a distinct shape of the principle of sufficient reason. As the first class Schopenhauer sums up the class of " ideological, complete, empirical conceptions " in which the " principle of sufficient reason of becoming" prevails. In simple terms, this class represents the physical level of natural science, in which the principle of cause and effect occurs: This is something, it must be a cause which acts on it. The second class, however, includes the terms with which Schopenhauer the products of reason says, so the language. In this class, there is the " principle of sufficient reason of knowing ". Because abstract thinking, which takes place in terms that always operates with judgments, which if true, would express a realization. Thus, the second class of objects that the linguistically - formal level of the performances, in which the principle of sufficient reason essentially the relationship between premises and conclusion describes knowledge or between cause and effect. The third class of representations is equal to Schopenhauer time and space. These are to be considered here in its purely formal shape while they actually occur even in the first class, but there in their union as a material product ( combined with space -time is for Schopenhauer the same matter and thus causality). Between the parts in space or in time, the ratio of location ( in space) and subsequent finds ( in time). This proportionality, which is the basis of all existence, Schopenhauer writes the " principle of sufficient reason of Being " too. Finally, Schopenhauer calls a final class whose ideas relate to a single object, namely the "subject of the will ": The man looks at the inner process of the will in him as something objective, he regards himself as a willing subject. Within this object now again there is causality, but not an "external" as in the first class, but an "inner ": The cause here corresponds to the motive and the effect the action. The associated set is the " principle of sufficient reason of acting ." Each class maps Schopenhauer a " subjective correlate to" through which the respective principle of sufficient reason presents itself to us: The first class consists of the mind, the second by reason, the third by the pure sensuality and the fourth through the inner sense or self-confidence.