Elucidation and Comparison of the Viewpoints of Leibnitz and ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī Concerning Free Will

The discourse on determinism and free will is one of the important philosophical issues and dilemmas about which philosophers of the East and the West have pondered a lot throughout history. ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī, as an Islamic thinker, both in his philosophical works and in the interpretation of Al-Mīzān, has studied different dimensions of determinism and free will. Leibniz, as one of the great thinkers of the pre-Kant era, has done a great deal of research on determinism and free will. The main question of the present research is whether the belief in the principle of pre-established harmony is not a kind of negating free will and sovereignty of necessity? How is the eternal Divine will compatible with human free will? Leibniz sought to establish human free will by distinguishing between absolute necessity and conditional necessity and the theory of possible worlds. ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī also considers free will to be an innate entity and maintains that the principle of prior necessity, “a thing comes into being only after it is necessitated”, does not contradict human free will. In this research, after explaining the principles of Leibniz and ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī, we would examine, analyze and compare the viewpoints of these two thinkers.