Sufficient Reason for the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Abstract

The principle of sufficient reason –so important for rationalist metaphysics such as those of Plotinus, Spinoza, Leibniz, or Hegel– has recently been interpreted in terms of the relation of ‘grounding’, which has been assumed to be a primitive relation of non-causal ontological determination of an explanatory character. The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) has been formulated, then, as the requirement that everything is grounded. The question that will be considered in this work is the question about what is the ground of the PSR. In effect, if everything really has a ground, then there must be a ground for the fact that everything has a ground. Four alternatives will be explored to address this question: (i) assigning it a ground such as that assigned to any universal fact; (ii) assigning it a ‘higher-order’ ground, which would generate an infinite sequence of grounds; (iii) assuming the PRS to be self-grounded; and (iv) to assume that it has no grounding, since it is an ‘autonomous’ fact about the essence of what it is to be. It will be concluded that none of these alternatives seems satisfactory.