A Comparative Study of the Compulsion and Volition Discussion from the Viewpoint of Leibniz and Allamah Tabataba’i

The discussion on compulsion and volition is one of the most important issues in the history of human thinking. It has always been a point of dispute for a wide range of scholarly opinions. The main question here is that if the belief in the a priori coordination principle does not in a way reject volition and primacy of necessity. How is the eternal Divine volition congruent with the human volition? As one of the greatest philosophers of the pre-Kantian era, Leibniz tried to establish the human volition by distinguishing the absolute and conditional necessity as well as adopting the “Best of all possible worlds” theory. On the other hand, Allamah Tabataba’i considers volition as an innate matter and maintains that the principle of “any possible being is in need of another being for its existence” does not contradict the human volition. In this study, in addition to expressing the principles adopted by Leibniz and Allamah Tabataba’i, the viewpoint of the former is criticized. The important considerations here are the presentation, comparison, analysis, and examination of the viewpoints of these two thinkers.