The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) says that all contingent facts must have explanation. In this 2006 volume, which was the first on the topic in the English language in nearly half a century, Alexander Pruss examines the substantive philosophical issues raised by the Principle Reason. Discussing various forms of the PSR and selected historical episodes, from Parmenides, Leibnez, and Hume, Pruss defends the claim that every true contingent proposition must have an explanation against major objections, including Hume's imaginability argument and Peter van Inwagen's argument that the PSR entails modal fatalism. Pruss also provides a number of positive arguments for the PSR, based on considerations as different as the metaphysics of existence, counterfactuals and modality, negative explanations, and the everyday applicability of the PSR. Moreover, Pruss shows how the PSR would advance the discussion in a number of disparate fields, including meta-ethics and the philosophy of mathematics.

Excerpt from The History of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Its Metaphysical and Logical Formulations The following essay may be looked upon as an attempt to Show, by means of a historical study of the development of the principle of Sufficient Reason, the standpoint occupied by the modern German logicians, as contrasted with the Epistemologists of the metaphysical schools. As the title indicates, the nature of the principle has completely changed in the development of post-leibnitzian thought. In its origin, conceived of as extra-logical, as metaphysical and as identified with the causal axiom, it has finally been accorded the place of basal law of the logical consciousness and only secondarily connected with the real relations of causality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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