Hinduism, Leibniz, and Origin Essentialism

Deshmukh and Janssen-Lauret (2024) show that origin essentialism, when combined with other metaphysical theses assumed by Kripke in Naming and Necessity, are together inconsistent with Hinduism. They also show that, given the way in which the seeming inconsistency arises, Hinduism, if there is an inconsistency, would be a counterexample to Kripke’s theory. I concur. But I argue that it is the auxiliary metaphysical theses, and not origin essentialism itself, that generates the inconsistency. I show that Leibniz’ philosophy shares with Hinduism the very feature that Deshmukh and Janssen-Lauret use to generate the apparent inconsistency. But Leibniz’ philosophy also entails origin essentialism. Even so it is jointly consistent with origin essentialism and the Hindu doctrines Deshmukh and Janssen-Lauret discuss. Furthermore, Hinduism and origin essentialism may be shown to be consistent even without auxiliary Leibnizian assumptions.