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Mogens Lrke (CNRS, ENS de Lyon)
Compossibility, Compatibility, Congruity
Summary: I argue in this paper that the two standard accounts of compossibilitythe so-called logical and
lawful accountsare in fact not incompatible, competing solutions to a same problem, but rather two
complementary solutions to two different problems. Only a version of so-called logical account grounded in
Leibnizs logic of relations will yield a satisfactory account of incompossibility as a notion capable generating
conceptually the divergence between worlds. The lawful account cannot provide such an account, although it
does provide important parts of the solution to another problem, namely that of the relative goodness of worlds.
He also rebukes the main objection made against the logical approach, namely that it violates Leibnizs
conception of the independence of monads, arguing that the objection rests on a misconception of what monadic
independence consists in. Next, he explores further Leibnizs notion of incompossibility, distinguishing this
strong kind of inter-worldly incompatibility from a weak kind of intra-worldly incompatibility which does
not generate differences between worlds, but only differences in time. In the final section of the paper, he argues
how, on the level of phenomena, we humans are capable of distinguishing weak from strongly incompatible, i.e.
incompossible, individuals by means of a soft criterion of congruity.

1. Introduction
Leibnizs notion of compossibility is most often,1 and not without reason, depicted as an
important component in the philosophical apparatus he mounts against Spinozist
necessitarianism, i.e. the notion that everything possible exists and what does not exist is
impossible. Hence, Leibniz holds that not all possible individuals can exist together in the
same world, i.e. are compossible. Possible individuals are separated into diverging possible
worlds that are mutually exclusive, i.e. incompossible. Given his goodness and wisdom, God
necessarily chooses the best possible world, thus excluding all the other possible worlds and
the individuals they include from existence. These nonetheless remain possible in their own
nature. The notion of compossibility has been the topic of a substantive amount of
commentary literature over the last century. This literature has established two main strands
of interpretation, traditionally referred to, with a distinction formulated by Margaret Wilson,
as the logical and the lawful approach to the problem of compossibility. 2 More recent
readings, however, in particular those proposed by Jeffrey McDonough and James Messina
and Donald Rutherford, propose alternatives to these standard approaches.3
The approach I take here is, in a sense, a conciliatory one, although I will clearly lean
towards a version of the logical approach. In sections 2 and 3, I argue that the logical and
lawful interpretations are, if correctly construed, not two competing solutions to a same
problem, but rather two complementary solutions to two different problems. In my view, only
the logical approach is strictu sensu an approach to compossibility. As for the lawful
approach, it is rather an approach to a different question. It cannot account for the divergence
or mutual incompatibility between possible worlds. But it constitutes a key component in
Leibnizs discussion of the maximization of essences and the determination of bestness of the
possible world God eventually chooses to create. Next, in section 4, I defend further a
relational-logical approach to compossibility, arguing in particular that the main objection
1

I use the following additional abbreviations for Leibnizs work. LDV = LeibnizDe Volder Correspondence,
trans. P. Lodge, New Haven: Yale University Press 2013. T = Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard, La Salle: Open
Court 1985. I am grateful to Ohad Nachtomy for his many comments and corrections. Unless otherwise
indicated, translations are my own.
2
The distinction was first explicitly made in M. Wilson, Compossibility and Law, in S. Nadler (ed.),
Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1993, 11933.
3
See J. K. McDonough, Leibniz and the Puzzle of Incompossibility: The Packing Strategy, in The
Philosophical Review 119:2 (2010), 135-163; and J. Messina and D. Rutherford, Leibniz on Compossibility, in
Philosophy Compass 4:6 (2009), 962977.

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made against it, namely that it violates Leibnizs central thesis of the mutual independence of
monads, relies on a mistaken, or in any case not Leibnizian, conception of independence. In
section 5 of the paper, I explore certain texts by Leibniz where he suggests that
incompossibility should be construed as a particular form of logical incompatibility, namely
as the particularly strong kind of logical incompatibility that cannot be resolved by means of a
specific difference in time, but that indicates a difference in temporality, or in the universal
order of time (and space) of a possible world. I argue that this double notion of
incompatibility, weak and strong, allows Leibniz to enrich each possible world, bringing more
essence into it by allowing for a certain kind of intra-worldly incompatibility among possible
individuals, while still maintaining a strong notion of inter-worldly incompatibility, or
incompossibility, excluding the Epicurean and Spinozist scenario of a world including all
possibles. In section 6, I consider some texts where Leibniz not only asserts the principle that
the existence of the actual world excludes the existence of other possible ones, but also
describes the content of some worldly scenarios that can never exist, even in the distant past
or future. These texts imply that not only God, but also we have some criteria for
distinguishing between weak incompatibility, or difference in time, and strong
incompatibility, that is, divergence between worlds. I argue that those criteria are non-logical
and rooted in experience, and include in particular a sense of congruity.
2. The logic of the connected and the unconnected
According to the logical approach, compossibility is a logical relation between the complete
concepts of substances belonging to a same world. Incompossibility, on the contrary, is a
logical relation between such complete concepts that eventually reduces to a logical
contradiction. Hence, two substances are compossible if and only if the supposition of their
joint existence is logically consistent.4
Let me begin with a couple of contextual and textual remarks in favor of that
interpretation. First, Leibniz did not invent the term compossible. As has been pointed out
by Fabrizio Mondadori, it is part and parcel of the terminological apparatus of scholastic
philosophy, in Aquinas and Scotus in particular.5 In these scholastic authors, compossibility is
a kind of logical possibility. It means, quite literally, to be possible together, i.e. the fact
that two states of affairs can be simultaneously possible, or that no contradiction is implied in
positing them together. Such conceptions are clearly mirrored in Leibniz when he writes for
example in the Nouveaux essays that the ingredients must be compossible, that is to say, they
must be able to exist together.6 There can be no doubt that Leibnizs notion of compossibility
originally grew out of this scholastic, logical context.7 The majority of straight definitions of
compossibility given by Leibnizas opposed to passages where he uses the notion as part of
an argumentare clearly of a logical kind. Hence, the first texts where we find
determinations that seem relevant for Leibnizs later conception of compossibility are some
Vorarbeiten zur characteristica universalis from 16711672, where he defines compossibility
as follows: Compossibles are those, one of which being given, it does not follow that the
other is negated; or, those of which one is possible, the other being assumed.8 And again,
4

I borrow this short and concise definition from Messina and Rutherford, Leibniz on Compossibility, 962.
F. Mondadori, Leibniz on Compossibility: Some Scholastic Sources, in R. L. Friedman and L. O. Nielsen
(eds.), The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 14001700, Dordrecht:
Springer 2003, 309338.
6
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lentendement humain, 17031705, II, xxx, 4, A VI.vi 265.
7
In a very early text, Leibniz explicitly refers to Scotuss notion of compossibility when discussing the Eucharist
(see Refutatio hypotheseis Thomae Angli, 1668 (?), A VI.i 506507, note 7.)
8
Leibniz, Vorarbeiten zur characteristica universalis, 16711672 (?), A VI.ii 498/DSR 138, note 4.
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according to a definition written at an unknown date between 1687 and 1696, the compossible
is that which, when considered with some other thing, does not imply contradiction.9
Incompossibility is the contrary: A is incompossible with B if, when the proposition A exists
has been posited, it follows that B does not exist.10
It is clear, however, that Leibnizs notion of compossibility does not reduce to this
simple and fairly straightforward logical conception. Hence, still following Mondadori,
Leibnizs notion of compossibility consists in part in the simple scholastic conception of
being possible together, but Leibniz also adds to it a metaphysical component whereby
for two complete concepts c and c to be mutually compossible is (at least) for either of them
to mirrorand to be mirrored bythe other.11 The challenge has then been to provide an
account of such metaphysical mirroring in terms of propositional logic. If we follow a
suggestion made by Nicolas Rescher12 and recently refined considerably by Ohad Nachtomy
in light of the work of Hide Ishiguro, Jaakko Hintikka, and Massimo Mugnai, we should turn
to Leibnizs logic of relations to find such an account.13 According to them, two substances
are compossible if their complete concepts include relational properties that correspond
logically to each other, such as Paris including the property of loving, and Helen including the
property of being loved. Opposing Benson Mates influential reading,14 both Rescher and
Nachtomy thus claim, in Nachtomys words, that only relational predicates can account for
the compatibility and incompatibility among concepts of individuals.15
For Rescher, however, each such relational property is internalized in their
corresponding subjects only sub specie generalitatis, that is to say, without specification of
the external object (in this case, Helen for Pariss love, and Paris for Helens being
loved.)16 It is however not quite clear why Rescher imposes this restriction and why the
relatum cannot be internalized along with the relation. Indeed, on the metaphysical level, it
seems odd to maintain that the substance Paris has the property of loving, or that he perceives
himself as a lover, while not perceiving himself as a lover of Helen, or having an internal
representation or perception of the object of his love, i.e. of Helen. Moreover, as Nachtomy
points out, Leibniz quite openly rejects that individual substances include properties in any
general way when rejecting the notion of the vague Adam in the correspondence with
Arnauld. For, as Leibniz writes, God made no decision about Adam without taking into
consideration everything which has any connection with him.17 Hence, any complete notion
of an individual is specified and determined precisely by its relations with the other
individuals and their particular events.18

Leibniz, Definitiones: ens, possibile, existens, 16871696 (?), A VI.iv 867.

Leibniz cit. in B. Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language, New York: Oxford
University Press 1986, 75, note 36.
11
Mondadori, Leibniz on Compossibility, 309310.
12
N. Rescher, On Leibniz, University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh 1986, 811.
13
See O. Nachtomy, Possibility, Agency, and Individuality in Leibnizs Metaphysics, Dordrecht: Springer 2006,
8593. See also H. Ishiguro, Leibnizs Philosophy of Logic and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 1972, 121; J. Hintikka, Leibniz on Plenitude, Relations, and the Reign of Law, in H. Frankfurt (ed.),
Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday 1972, 335364; and M. Mugnai,
Leibnizs Theory of Relations (= Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 28), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 1992.
14
According to Mates, still under the sway of Russells reading of Leibniz, relational predicates must be
eliminated from the account of compossibility under the pretext that Leibniz is logically committed to reducing
relational predicates to non-relational onesan assertion which, as we know now, is just wrong. For Mates, see
Leibniz on Possible Worlds, in Frankfurt (ed.), Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, 335364.
15
Nachtomy, Possibility, Agency and Individuality, 89.
16
See Rescher, On Leibniz, 9.
17
Leibniz to Arnauld, 14 July, 1686, A II.ii 69/L 331332.
18
Nachtomy, Possibility, Agency and Individuality, 88.
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A possible world is a set of possible individuals whose properties fit each other in
this fashion, as relational predicates that are coupled with each other in precise and
determined reciprocal relations. It is those relations that Leibniz speaks of in terms of
relations of compossibility. On this account, any attempt to combine the concepts of two
possible individual with non-reciprocal properties reduces to a kind of contradiction. Hence, a
Paris who loves and a Helen who is loathed are perfectly compatible if their respective loving
and being loathed are taken as properties sub specie generalitatis. But if we combine Paris,
who includes the predicate loving Helen with some Helen, who includes the predicate
being loathed by Paris, surely there is a kind of logical contradiction between their
concepts. In this way, the conceptualization of relations of compossibility is part and parcel of
Leibnizs logic of relations, the logic of the connected and the unconnected.19
3. Laws and compossibility
According to the second approach to compossibility, the so-called lawful approach, first
proposed by Bertrand Russell and subsequently defended in different versions by Ian
Hacking, Gregory Brown, J. A. Cover and John OLeary Hawthorne, compossibility is, as
Hacking puts it, consistency under general Laws of Nature.20 On this picture, a possible
world is constituted by a set of possible individuals the properties of which are distributed
spatiotemporally in orders that are governed by the same general laws. In monadological
terms, monads are compossible when the ways in which they, in their respective inner
perceptions, distribute the phenomena of the world obey the same general laws. The most
important motivation behind adopting the lawful approach is to safeguard the mutual
independence of individual substances which allegedly must be abandoned on the logical
interpretation. I will return to that problem below and show that it relies on a non Leibnizian
conception of substantial independence. In this section, I will consider the merits of the lawful
approach itself.
According to Leibniz, God makes the maximum of things he can,21 the most
essence or possibility is brought into existence,22 and God gives rise to a world in which the
greatest number of possibilities is produced.23 Choosing the best of all possible worlds is
choosing the world that contains the most things and events, the greatest amount of essence
and existence. Now, compossibility relations, for their part, play no active role in this
maximization of existing essences although, as we shall see, they do play a role in
establishing the condition under which such maximization is possible. In a much-quoted
passage regarding compossibility of a letter to Bourguet, Leibniz writes:
[N]ot all possibles are compossible. Thus, the universe is only a certain collection of
compossibles, and the actual universe is the collection of all existing possibles, that is
to say, those which form the richest composite. And since there are different

19

Leibniz, De arte inveniendi combinatoria, 1679, A VI.iv 332: Logica de compatibili et incompatibili sive de
connexo et inconnexo.
20
I. Hacking, A Leibnizian Theory of Truth, in M. Hooker (ed.), Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1982, 193. For the original formulation of the lawful approach,
see B. Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, London: George Allen & Unwin 1937, 67 and
135140. See also G. Brown, Compossibility, Harmony, and Perfection in Leibniz, in The Philosophical
Review 96 (1987), 172203; and J. A. Cover and J. OLeary-Hawthorne, Substance and Individuation in Leibniz,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999.
21
Leibniz to Malebranche, 22 June 1679, GP I 331/L 211.
22
Leibniz, De rerum originatione radicali, 23 November 1697, GP VII, 303/AG 150.
23
Ibid. GP VII 304/L 488.

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combinations of possibilities, some of them better than others, there are many possible
universes, each collection of compossibles making up one of them.24
Leibniz states that (i) The universe is a certain collection of compossibles; (ii) There are many
possible universes, and (iii) Not all possibles are compossible. He also states (iv) that there are
different combinations of possibles some of which are better than others. Only
compossibles can be combined.25 But he does not state that the bestness of a certain
combination is in any way determined by a level or degree of compossibility. Compossibility
does not come in degrees, nor do worlds come as sets of possible individuals that are only
partially compossible.26 Certainly, in De origine rerum radicali, Leibniz asserts that the
perfection of the degree of essence (through which the greatest number of things are
compossible) is the foundation of existence.27 Hence, there may be more compossibility
relations among individuals in one world than in another world, simply in virtue of the fact
that this world includes more possible individuals. But this does not make this world any
more compossible than the other one, nor does it make of compossibility as such a measure of
perfection. Every conceivable intra-worldly inter-substantial relation is a compossibility
relation, and equally so. Indeed, the role of compossibility is not to establish what is the best
or most perfect.28 It is to exclude the existence of more than one world, so that if the best
world exists, no other world exists too.29 It is incompossibility that makes possible worlds
diverge, that makes them mutually exclusive, but compossibility itself contributes nothing to
the degree or level of essence that makes some possible world better than another one.
Now, the question is this: does the lawful account allow us to grasp the notions of
compossibility and incompossibility in such a way that they can fulfill their assigned roles as,
respectively, integrator and separator of worlds? The lawful approach affirms this. Hence,
following one of the original formulations, Bertrand Russell suggests that possibles cease to
be compossible only when there is no general law whatever to which both conform. 30 But I
do not think that the consideration of lawfulness can really do the conceptual work required.
For that to be the case, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the collection of all possibles
is necessarily lawless, that is, impossible to subsume under a single general law, and that
subsuming different possibles under different sets of laws explains the divergence between
possible worlds. But Leibniz holds that for any configuration of possible individuals there can
be established a regular law according to which it could be generated:
Thus, let us assume, for example, that someone jots down a number of points at
random on a piece of paper, as do those who practice the ridiculous art of geomancy. I
maintain that it is possible to find a geometric line whose notion is constant and
uniform, following a certain rule, such that this line passes through all the points in the
same order in which the hand jotted them down. And if someone traced a continuous
line which is sometimes straight, sometimes circular, and sometimes of another nature,

24

Leibniz to Bourguet, December 1714, GP III 573/L 662.

On the combinatorial model of compossibility, see Leibniz, Dialogue entre Poliandre et Thophile, 1679, A
VI, iv 22312232; and De veritatibus primis, 1680, A VI.iv 1443. See also Wilson, Compossibility and
Plenitude, in The Leibniz Review 10 (2000), 48.
26
See C. Wilson, Compossibility, Expression, Accommodation, in D. Rutherford and J. A. Cover (eds.),
Leibniz. Nature and Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, 109.
27
Leibniz, De rerum originatione radicali, GP VII 304/AG 151.
28
See Wilson, Compossibility, Expression, Accommodation, 109.
29
Leibniz, De arcanis sublimium vel de summa rerum, 11 February 1676, A VI.iii 472/DSR 2021.
30
Russell, A Critical Exposition, 67.
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it is possible to find a notion, or rule, or equation common to all the points on this line,
in virtue of which these changes must occur.31
Any order, even a seemingly disorderly one, obeys some rule or law. There is always a general
law to which any given set of possibles conforms. Even a world including all possibles would
obey some rule or law, and under that law, all possibles would be compossible on the lawful
account. Consequently, the consideration of general laws as such cannot serve to establish the
required divergence of possible worlds, for it cannot produce incompossibility. Certainly, it is
still the case that different possible worlds obey different general laws. As Leibniz writes to
Arnauld in a letter from 14 July 1686:
I think there is an infinity of possible ways in which to create the world, according to
the different designs which God could form, and that each possible world depends on
certain principal designs or purposes of God which are distinctive of it, that is, certain
primary free decrees (conceived sub ratione possibilitatis) or certain laws of the
general order of this possible universe with which they are in accord and whose
concept they determine, as they do also the concepts of all the individual substances
which must enter into this same universe.32
Each possible world obeys its distinctive laws. But this does not imply that possible worlds
are different or that possible worlds diverge into many mutually incompossible worlds
because they have distinctive laws. It is rather the reverse. Different possible worlds differ
with regard to the general laws governing them because each such world is constituted by
sequences of possible individuals that are mutually incompossible. In order to generate the
difference of general laws between different possible worlds, the different possible world
sequences must first be constituted. Hence, incompossibility of worlds is the condition under
which different worlds have different laws, not the other way round as the lawful
interpretation suggests.
There is however another aspect of Leibnizs general story about Gods choice among
possible worlds where the consideration of general laws is helpful, namely when it comes to
comparing different worlds with each other, or when we need to find out what exactly Leibniz
has in mind he when speaks about the best possible world as the world in which essence and
existence are maximized. God, says Leibniz, will create the world which is at the same time
the simplest in hypotheses and richest in phenomena, as might be a geometric line whose
construction would be easy but whose properties and effects would be very remarkable and of
a wide reach.33 The general idea here is that God creates the world which, by means of few,
simple laws is capable of producing a maximum of different things, maximizing both essence
and existence. This world is the best.34 So, if considerations of laws cannot help separating
different possible worlds from each other, they apparently can help establishing which one
among them is the best. Now, it is not lawfulness as such that does the work of picking out
bestness. One possible world does not unfold in a more law-abiding fashion than some other
31

Leibniz, Discours de mtaphysique, 1686, art. 6, A VI.iv 1538/AG 39. On this passage, see also G. Brown,
Compossibility, Harmony, and Perfection in Leibniz, 179180.
32
Leibniz to Arnauld, 14 July 1686, A II,ii 73/L 333.
33
Leibniz, Discours de mtaphysique, art. 6, A VI.iv. 1538/L, 306.
34
I will not discuss here how much the consideration of the relation between richness in essence and simplicity
of laws contributes to the determination of bestness. A number of other factorsphysical, moral, aesthetic,
etc.enter into that complex determination. It is a topic that requires a treatment of its own (for one possible
account, see D. Blumenfeld, Perfection and Happiness in the Best Possible World, in N. Jolley (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995 382410). The point here is
simply that, strictu sensu, that discussion has little or nothing to do with the problem of compossibility as such.

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possible world. Neither do some possible worlds include renegade possible individuals that do
not obey the laws of that world or include possible individuals that only obey those laws in
certain respects while ignoring them in others. All possible individuals obey entirely the laws
of their particular possible world.35 Bestness or maximization is rather a question of the
quality of the law, and part of that quality involves its level of richness, that is to say, how
great a variety of things can follow from it while still itself being simple.
The upshot of this account is the following. The notion of compossibility and
incompossibility are instrumental in establishing possible worlds and in establishing the
mutual exclusion among possible worlds. It follows from this that, in order to create, God
must choose. The consideration of general laws and their quality, on the contrary, helps
determining the relative goodness of these possible worlds, thus determining which one God
must choose, given his wisdom and goodness. On this picture, the consideration of general
laws does not yield an approach to compossibility at all. In fact, the respective considerations
of the logical and lawful are not in competition with each other. Rather, together, they form a
conceptual alliance against a common Spinozist or Epicurean enemy by establishing, on the
one hand, that God must choose, and, on the other, what God must choose.
4. Causal independence and conceptual dependence
In section 2, I have presented a resolutely relational version of the logical approach to
compossibility. As for the lawful approach, I have argued in section 3 that it is rather an
approach to something else than compossibility, namely to the bestness of the world. In this
section, I want to consider further the merits of the relational logical approach to
compossibility, and in particular consider one major objection frequently made against it.
The logical approach is most often discarded on the grounds that it contradicts
Leibnizs thesis of the independence of substances. Recently, both Jeffrey McDonough and
Donald Rutherford and James Messina have objected that, on this of interpretation, the
relationship between compossible substances becomes so strong that monads no longer can be
seen as independent or worlds apart from each other. Possible substances become, as it
were, conceptually completely tied to the possible world they inhabit and thus also to all the
other possible substances that inhabit that world. Consequently, for Messina and Rutherford,
the logical interpretation is at odds with [] the ontological independence of substance.36
Similarly, McDonough argues that Leibnizian monads are independent per se, in the sense
that it cannot be written into the formal nature or essence or created substance that it can
exist only without some other created substance.37 Per se independence is a kind of formal or
conceptual independence, which goes beyond mere causal independence. However, if
compossibility is understood according to the logical interpretation, then it undermines
Leibnizs commitment to the thesis of independence since it [] implies that every creature
depends per se upon every other creaturely substance with which it is compossible.38
Similarly, for Messina and Rutherford, Leibniz seems to mean not merely that each
substance is immune to causal influence and stresses that the logical interpretation for that
reason is in tension with the most natural reading of Leibnizs world-apart doctrine.39
The objection, I believe, fails to appreciate the sense in which Leibniz upholds the
independence of substances. It is striking that no textual evidence for reading Leibnizs notion
of independence in this very strong sense is ever really provided. Both in McDonoughs and
35

See Wilson, Compossibiliy, Expression, Accommodation, 112.

Messina and Rutherford, Leibniz on Compossibility, 965.
37
McDonough, The Puzzle of Compossibility, 138.
38
Ibid. 141.
39
Rutherford and Messina Leibniz on Compossibility, 965 (my italics).
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Messina and Rutherfords account we are pretty much left with the worlds-apart image, which
is too vague to determine exactly what Leibniz had in mind.40 The per se independence thesis
is attributed to Leibniz by McDonough mainly on the grounds that that this was widely held
by Leibnizs predecessors and contemporaries.41 Moreover, when it comes to spelling out
more precisely what such independence per se consists in, this happens, not by reference to
Leibniz, but to an account of the scholastic conceptions by Jorge Garcia, according to which a
substance was in se and per se to the extent that it did not receive its being except through its
own essence or form.42 As for the reading proposed by Messina and Rutherford, the cautious
formula they employ (Leibniz seems to mean; theirs is the most natural reading) can
hardly pass for the kind of hard evidence required for discarding an otherwise strong logical
interpretation. In reality, there are several problems with these two similar accounts of
monadic independence.
First, Leibniz never says that substances are per se independent in the sense evoked by
McDonough. Indeed, he seems to be employing the scholastic vocabulary in a different way.
Created substances are, for Leibniz, in se but not per se.43 Only God is per se, that is to say,
exists in virtue of his essence alone.44 Certainly, this does not contradict the claim that
substances are per se independent in the scholastic sense envisaged by McDonough. But it
does make it clear that having recourse to the notion of per se independence creates more
confusion than it does clarity, because it implies using for interpretative purposes a
terminology that Leibniz himself used in another way. This is however far from being the
most pressing concern. Second, and more importantly, rejecting the logical interpretation
under the pretext that it violates the independence of monad implicitly relies on a current but I
think erroneous contention that Leibniz conflates conceptual and causal relations. But this
contention has been effectively refuted in the work of Stefano Di Bella and Vincent Carraud.
Quite to the contrary, as both commentators have clearly shown, Leibnizs mature
metaphysics relies essentially on separating conceptual relations from causal ones.45
Let me go a little deeper into this second rejoinder. Let us first recapitulate how
Leibniz himself states the independence thesis. For Leibniz, a monad, like a soul, is, as it
were, a certain world of its own, having no relationship of dependence except with God.46
Monads have no windows.47 From this, it follows [] that the monads natural changes
come from an internal principle, since no eternal cause can influence it internally. 48 Monads
are self-governing (each as far as itself is concerned) since the influence of one on another
40

Ibid. 138.
Ibid. 138.
42
Ibid. 138.
43
See for example the Conversatio cum Domino Episcopo Stenonio de libertate, November 1677, A VI.iv
1380/CP, 123: Whatever is, either is per se, i.e., exists through itself, or per aliud, i.e. exists through another. If
it is per se, then the reason for its existence is derived from its own nature, i.e., its essence contains existence.
On this definition, of course, no created substanceexactly because it is createdis per se independent.
44
Leibniz, De iis per se concipitur, September 1677, A VI. iv 2526.
45
See S. Di Bella, Nihil esse sine ratione, sed non ideo nihil esse sine causa. Conceptual involvement and
causal dependence in Leibniz, in H. Poser (ed.), Nihil sine Ratione. VII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress.
Berlin: Technische Universitt, 2001, 297-304; S. Di Bella, The Science of the Individual: Leibnizs Ontology of
Individual Substance, Dordrecht: Springer 2005; and S. Di Bella, Leibniz on Causation: Efficiency, Explanation
and Conceptual Dependence, in Quaestio 2 (2002), 2359. For Carraud, see Causa sive ratio. La raison de la
cause, de Suarez Leibniz, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2001, 391496. See moreover M. Lrke,
Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza. La gense dune opposition complexe, Paris: Champion 2008, 744-748, and M.
Lrke, Leibnizs Encounter with Spinozas Monism, October 1675 to February 1678, in M. Della Rocca (ed.),
Oxford Handbook to Spinoza, New York: Oxford University Press, [forthcoming], sect. 4.1.
46
Leibniz to Des Bosses, 15 February 1712, LR 226227.
47
Leibniz, Monadologie, 7, GP VI 607/AG 214; see also ibid. 51, GP VI 615/AG 219.
48
Ibid. 11, GP VI 608/AG 214.
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cannot be understood.49 A great many other texts suggest that, for Leibniz, monadic
independence consists in spontaneity and absence of external causal influence.50 That a
monad does not influence another monad thus means that no property of a monad is
efficiently caused by some other monad. A monad is the efficient cause of all its own
properties. A monad is thus self-sufficient with regard to the efficient causing of its own
properties. But it is efficiently caused by something else with regard to its being, namely by
God. It produces all its own properties, i.e. it acts in se, but it does not produce itself, i.e. it
exists per alio.
As it appears, the independence Leibniz bestows upon monads is causal independence
with regard to action. Among phenomena, i.e. the physical phenomena expressed in monadic
perception, there is on the contrary strong causal dependence: Since each thing influences
every other in such a way that, if it were imagined that that thing were removed or different,
everything in the world would be different from what it is not.51 This strong causal
dependence among phenomena is grounded in an equally strong conceptual dependence
among monads on the metaphysical level. Monads belonging to a same world are causally
independent from each other. They act only spontaneously from an internal principle. But
Leibniz never claims that monads are formally, or conceptually independent from each other
in the way that per se independence implies. In fact, Leibniz is quite clear about the fact that
monads are, in some sense, strongly dependent upon each other regardless of them being
worlds apart. Thus, according to the Monadology 51, while explaining that God
regulates monads ideally to each other from the beginning of times, Leibniz concludes that
since a created monad cannot have an internal physical influence upon another, this is the
only way in which one can depend on another.52 Indeed, there is nothing in the universe of
created things that does not need the concept of any other thing in the universe for its perfect
concept.53 There is ideal dependence of monad on one another.54 In short, the causal
dependence among phenomena belonging to a same physical world is matched by conceptual
dependence among the monads that make up that world metaphysically, but without the
causal independence among the monads being violated. Rather than a tension, we should see
a very close connection between Leibnizs conception of logical-relational compossibility,
and the kind of conceptual inter-substantial dependence it involves, and the notion of
windowless monads that form worlds apart, including the kind of causal inter-substantial
independence that that involves.
5. Weak and strong incompatibility
I believe that the fairly straightforward interpretation I have presented above represents one
way, and I think attractive way, of settling the debate between the lawful and the logical
49

Leibniz to De Volder, January 1705, LDV 318319.

See for example Essais de thodice, 61, GP VI 136/T 156:
[] the physical influence of one of these substances on the other is inexplicable []; ibid. 290, GP VI
289/T 303304: As for spontaneity, it belongs to us insofar as we have within us the source of our actions, as
Aristotle rightly conceived []. I maintain that our spontaneity suffers no exception and that external things
have no physical influence upon us []; ibid. 300, 295296/T 309 : [] in the course of nature each
substance is the sole cause of all its actions, and [] it is free of all physical influence from every other
substance, save the customary co-operation of God.
51
Leibniz to De Volder, 6 July 1701, LDV 208209. See also Essais de thodice, 7, GP VII 107/T 128: For
it must be known that all things are connected in each one of the possible worlds: the universe, whatever it may
be, is all of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect there to any distance whatsoever, even
though this effect becomes less perceptible in proportion to the distance.
52
Leibniz, Monadologie, 51, GP VI 615/AG 219.
53
Leibniz to De Volder, 6 July 1701, LDV 208209.
54
Leibniz to Des Bosses, 15 February 1712, LR 232233.
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approach. So what is left of the puzzle? In this section, I consider one of the most important
issues that arise from the logico-relational account of compossibility outlined above. It
regards the difference between incompatibility and incompossibility, and the metaphysical
upshot of such a distinction, which regards, on the one hand, Leibnizs conception of how
possible individuals within a given possible world differ in time and, on the other, how
possible worlds diverge from each other.
In most Leibniz texts, incompossibility is presented as a kind of incompatibility. For
example, in a 1703 letter to Fontenelle, while arguing against the Spinozist and Epicurean
notion that all possibles exist, Leibniz replies that this cannot be done because of the
incompatibility of possibles and the connection of all creatures, here clearly using the term
incompatible as synonymous to incompossible.55 Similarly, according to the Essais de
thodice, 201, all the possibles are not compatible together in one and the same worldsequence.56 Leibniz scholars have even occasionally opted for translating the Latin
compossibile by the English compatible. For example, in his translation of the Confessio
philosophi, Robert Sleigh, when considering the only occurrence of the term compossibile in
this text, in one of Leibnizs 1678 replies to comments made by Nicolas Steno, Sleigh
translates the Latin phrase Possibiles sunt aliarum rerum series in se, sed non sunt
compossibiles sapientiae divinae as Series of other things are possible in themselves, but
they are not compatible with divine wisdom.57 While I see no good philological reason for
this translation, it is not philosophically unwarranted. From very early on, Leibniz frequently
uses the notion of compatibility to describe the kind of relation that he also speaks of in terms
of compossibility, and which regards the way in which possible worlds are mutually
exclusive. In the 16711672 Vorarbeiten, Leibniz even suggestssomewhat
counterintuitively for a present-day reader who would expect it to be the contrary58that
compatibility is to things what compossibility is to propositions.59 In the Principium meum
from 1676, he writes: But my principle is: whatever can exist and is compatible with others,
exists. For the sole reason for limiting existence, for all possibles, must be that not all are
compatible.60 Similarly, early 1678, when writing an elaborate commentary on Spinozas
Ethics, Leibniz objected to Spinozas necessitarianism and rejection of the notion of
possibility that not everything that is conceivable by us can [] be produced, because of
more important things with which it may be incompatible.61 In yet other texts, he gives the
same definition of incompatibility as the straightforward scholastic definition of
incompossibility. Hence, in the 1679 De affectibus, Leibniz asserts that what is incompatible
is that whose opposite can be inferred from the existence of something else.62 In a text from
the early 1680es, he writes that if it follows from the proposition A is that B is not, then it

55

Leibniz to Fontenelle, 7 April 1703, in Leibniz, Lettres et opuscules indits, ed. L. A. Foucher de Careil, Paris:
Ladrange 1854, 227-228, trans. in Leibniz, The Shorter Leibniz Texts, trans. L. Strickland, London: Continuum
2006, 137 (modified: Strickland translates, somewhat tendentiously, the expression cela ne se peut by the more
technical modal expression it is impossible.)
56
Leibniz, Essais de thodice, 201, GP VI 236/T 253.
57
Leibniz, Confessio philosophi, 1673 [comment added in January 1678], A VI.iii 121/CP 41.
58
Compare with DAgostinis critical discussion of Mates, in Leibniz on Compossibility and Relational
Predicates, in The Philosophical Quarterly 26:103 (1976), 129: [Mates] seems to reject the quite plausible
suggestion that incompossibility of substances be identified with logical incompatibility of concepts or, as he
puts it, with logical inconsistency.
59
Leibniz, Vorarbeiten, A VI.ii 498: Est ergo compatibilitas rerum, compossibilitas propositionum.
60
Leibniz, Principium meum est, quicquid existere potest, et aliis incompatibile est, id existere, 12 December
1676, A VI.iii 582/DSR 103.
61
Leibniz, Ad Ethicam Benedicti de Spinoza, 1678 (?), A VI.iv 1769.
62
Leibniz, De affectibus, 1679, A VI, iv, 1437.

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follows in turn from the proposition B is that A is not, and A and B are said to be
incompatibles that cannot exist together.63
The question is, however, whether, in Leibnizs considered view, incompossibility just
is incompatibility, or whether it is a particular kind of incompatibility. I think the latter is the
case. In his famous 24 metaphysical theses from 1697, Leibniz suggests a distinction between
two types of incompatibility, one weak and one strong, where only the strong kind of
incompatibility is identified with incompossibility. Hence, after having established that all
possibles strive to exist, he cautions:
7. But it does not follow from this that all possibles exist; though this would follow if
all possibles were compossible. 8. But since some things are incompatible with others,
it follows that some possibles do not arrive at existence; again, some things are
incompatible with others, not only with respect to the same time [respectu ejusdem
temporis], but also universally [in universum], since future events are involved in the
present ones. 64
This text distinguishes between incompatibility and incompossibility by reference to different
relations to time. Similarly, Leibniz writes elsewhere, if two incompatibles exist, then they
differ temporally, and the one which is prior (resp. posterior) in nature, will also be prior
(posterior) in time.65 I will not address here the exceedingly complicated question what
determines, among two such weakly incompatible and thus temporally differing possible
individuals, that one is prior and the other posterior, rather than the other way round. 66 Let us
here simply consider what kind of conceptual work this appeal to weak incompatibility and
time can do in the economy of possible worlds.
As is well-known, there is for Leibniz nothing metaphysically fundamental about time.
Time, like space, is for Leibniz two steps removed from the metaphysical reality of
substances. It is nothing but an abstract order derived from the consideration of the relations
between phenomena. As Leibniz puts is quite nicely in a letter to De Volder, [] time []
disappears into the phenomena [].67 Time indicates a particular order between things,
namely an order of succession. Hence, according to the Reponse aux reflexions contenues
dans la seconde Edition du Dictionnaire Critique de M. Bayle, Time is the order of
inconsistent possibilities which nonetheless are connected and regard[s] those [possibilities]
that are incompatible but that are nonetheless all conceived as existing, and that is what does

63

Leibniz, Enumeratio terminorum simpliciorum, 1680-1684/85 (?), A VI iv, 389: Si ex propositione A est,
sequitur B non est, tunc vicissim ex propositione B est, sequitur A non est, et A, B, dicentur incompatibilia ,
quae non possunt esse ambo.
64
C 534, trans. in Leibniz, Philosophical Writings, ed. G. H. R. Parkinson, Rowmann and Littlefield: Totowa,
NJ, 1973, 145-146.
65
Leibniz, Enumeratio, A VI.iv 390, trans. in Di Bella, The Science of the Individual, 241.
66
A number of texts suggest that Leibniz attempted to formulate that distinction in terms of differences in
natural priority, simplicity, and perfection. See Quid sit natura prius, 1679, A VI.iv 181: When two posited
things contradict one contradicts the other, the one that is prior in nature is prior in time []. In nature, that
which is prior in terms of time is simpler, what is posterior is more perfect; Definitiones notionum
metaphysicarum atque logicarum, 1685 (?) , A VI.iv 629: what is prior in time is that which is incompatible
with something posited, and which is simpler; Genera terminorum. Substantiae, 16831685 (?), A VI.iv 569:
If then there are two [terms] of which one is prior in nature and the other posterior, and which are incompatible,
one of them will be prior in time and the other posterior. For a lucid study of those texts, see J.-B. Rauzy, Quid
sit natura prius ? La conception leibnizienne de lordre, in Revue de mtaphysique et de morale 1(1995), 31
46.
67
Leibniz to De Volder, 19 January 1706, DVC (supplement 2), 339.

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that they are successive.68 Temporal difference is, as it were, generated by the mutual
incompatibility (or impossibility of co-existence) of terms that nonetheless belong to the same
world. Conversely, in the economy of possible worlds, allowing temporality into their
construction is a means to maximize essence and existence, since a temporal framework can
accommodate, within its logical space, a great many essences or possibles that are otherwise
incompatible.69 Clearly, Cesar cannot cross the Rubicon and be slain by Brutus in Rome at the
same time, but they evidently are compatible within a temporal framework in which those two
events take place several years apart. God can pack infinitely more essence and existence into
a world that exists in both space and time than into a world that only exists in space, since a
temporal world is a world that includes innumerable weakly incompatible individuals.
Incompatibility in the weak sense thus enters the economy of possible worlds in a nonrestrictive way. It does not limit the expansion of possible worlds or separate possible worlds
from each other. Quite to the contrary, including such weakly incompatible individuals, and
thus a temporal dimension, is a way in which a possible world can be conceived with a much
richer essence.
Contrary to this, there is the strong kind of incompatibility, or incompossibility. This
kind of incompatibility does serve to put limits on possible worlds and restrict their
expansion. Incompossibility indicates a universal incompatibility, that is to say an
incompatibility that is not just instantaneous, but that applies at all times, past, present and
future. In the Nouveaux essais, Leibniz writes:
I have reasons to think that all possible species are not compossible in the universe,
regardless of how big it is, and that this is the case not only in relation to things that
exist together at the same time, but even in relation to the entire sequence of things. In
other words, I think there are necessarily species that never have been and that never
will be, since they are not compatible with this sequence of creatures that God has
chosen.70
Such a full temporal sequence of everything that has been, that is, and that will be forms the
order of a world: [B]y the term world, I understand the entire series of things proceeding to
eternity, that is, with respect to what is later or in the future [totam seriem rerum in aeternum
procedentem nempe a parte posteriore seu in futurum], which is not a creature, but something
infinite and like an aggregate.71 Hence, while weak incompatibility generates a difference in
intra-worldly time, strong incompatibility, or incompossibility, generates a difference in
temporality, a divergence between worlds.
6. Congruenter sentire
From Gods perspective, the distinction between weak and strong incompatibility allows
steering clear of the Spinozist or Epicurean threat while still allowing God to maximize the
68

Leibniz, Reponse aux reflexions contenues dans la seconde Edition du Dictionnaire Critique de M. Bayle, GP
IV 568. See also Leibniz De Volder, 20 June 1703, LDV 266-267.
69
Di Bella, The Science of the Individual, 241.
70
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais, III, vi, 12, A VI.vi 307 (my italics).
71
Leibniz to Des Bosses, mid-October 1708, DBC 112113. See also Leibniz to Des Bosses, 16 October 1706,
DBC 7879: [.] the universal connection and order of the world, which relations with respect to time and
place produce [universali connexione et ordine mundi, quem faciunt relationes ad tempus et locum]. See finally
Reponse aux reflexions contenues dans la seconde Edition du Dictionnaire Critique de M. Bayle, GP IV, 568:
Space and Time taken together make up the possibilities of an entire universe, in such a way that these orders
(that is to say, Space and Time) encloses [quadrent] not only that which is actually exists but also that which
could fall into place [].

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quantity of realized essence in the best possible world by endowing it with a temporal
dimension. God has an infinite intellect. He can, in a glance, determine with absolute certainty
whether two possible individuals are universally or merely temporally incompatible, whether
they can belong to a same world or not. He will experience no difficulty in separating weak
from strong incompatibility, intra-worldly temporal differences from inter-worldly
divergences.
We are however left with an epistemological problem regarding how exactly we can
distinguish intra-worldly, that is to say time-generating, incompatibility from inter-worldly,
that is to say world-distinguishing incompossibility. The problem arises because Leibniz often
appears to affirm that not only God but also we can exclude the existence of certain scenarios
from the actual world. For example, he is keen on excluding the option of some world in
which all good people are punished with eternal penalties, and all evil people would be
rewarded, and would expiate crime with happiness.72 Or again, we should not believe with
Lucretius that there are worlds in which, instead of animals, the collision of atoms forms
detached arms and legs.73 Of less moral consequence, Leibniz also seems confident that he
can exclude from existence, both past, present and future, the fictional characters of John
Barclays Argenis, Honor dUrfs LAstre and the novels of Madame de Scudry.74 But
how can Leibniz declare that the eternal penalty of all the just, detached arms and legs, or
Artamne, the protagonist of Madame de Scudrys 10-volume novel, are all states or
individuals incompossible with the actual world, thus relegating such fictions to the regio
possibilitatis? Admittedly, there is contradiction in affirming the fictionality and reality of
Artamne at the same time. Nothing, however, allows us to affirm with absolute confidence
that Artamne and the world of the eponymous novel will not come to life in some distant
future, so that the perceived incompatibility between Artamne and actuality simply turned
out to be an intra-worldly, temporal one.
Let us return for a moment to our general analysis developed above and restate the
problem in terms of Leibnizs logic of relations. The problem is the following. Given two
propositions, A and B, possible in their own nature but seemingly incompatible with each
other, how do I know whether A and B are incompossible, and thus can be true only in
different worlds, or merely incompatible, and thus can be true in the same world but at
different times? Take for example the following two relational propositions: Cesar crosses the
Rubicon and Brutus slays Cesar in Rome. These two propositions are clearly incompatible in
the relevant sense: Cesar cannot cross a river in Northern Italy while being slain in Rome. But
how can I know that this incompatibility is in fact merely a weak incompatibility between two
possible individuals that can be adequately resolved by means of different temporal
qualifications (respectively 10 January, 49 BC, and 15 March, 44 BC)? A text from the early
1680s, the Enumeratio terminorum simpliciorum, provides the following, enigmatic reply:
If two propositions are true, and they appear as mutually contradictory, except for a
distinction which can be acknowledged by means of something external, then they
differ in time [Si duae propositiones sint verae, quae contradictoriae apparent,
excepto uno discrimine, quod ex solis externis agnoscitur, tempore different].75

72

Leibniz, Principium meum, A I.iii 581/DSR 105.

Leibniz to Fontenelle, 7 April 1703, in Leibniz, Lettres et opuscules indits, ed. L. A. Foucher de Careil, Paris:
Ladrange 1854, 227228, transl. in Leibniz, The Shorter Leibniz Texts, 137.
74
See Leibniz, Confessio philosophi, 1673, A VI.iii 128129/CP 5659; Leibniz to Bourguet, December 1714,
GP II 572/L 661; Essais de thodice, 173, GP VI 217/T 234235.
75
Leibniz, Enumeratio, A VI.iv 390. On this text, see also Di Bella, The Science of the Individual, 241.
73

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The scenario Leibniz outlines here is, I think, the following. Propositions A and B are given as
true. A appears to contradict proposition B, except for some distinction q that resolves that
contradiction. If q is an external factor, A and B are qualified as true at different times.
Hence, in virtue of the external factor q, A and B are not true at the same time as opposed to
not being true in the same worlds. Now, it is in virtue of being external that the distinction q
is qualified as a temporal distinction. I take external here to mean external with regard to the
content of the propositions A and B. In other words, qua temporally qualifying distinction, q
can only be recognized by virtue of something that is not included in the propositions A or B.
Hence, it is by definition a factor that cannot be grasped within the propositional logic or
through the mere analysis of A and B. Hence, returning to our example, Cesar crossing the
Rubicon and Brutus slaying Cesar, it is by means of a factor external to propositional logic
that I realize that their incompatibility is weak and not strong, i.e. that the apparent
contradiction between the two relational predicatescrossing the Rubicon in Northern Italy
and being slain in Romeis not universal, but merely in tempore.
What could such an external factor be? Leibniz writes in 68 of the famous Generales
inquisitiones from 1686:
But it must still be examined how I can know that I proceed correctly when defining.
For if I say A=EFG, I must know not only that E, F and G, are possible when taken
one by one, but also that they are compatible with each other. But it seems that this
cannot be achieved except through experiencing either that fact, or some other fact
similar to it with respect to the question at hand.76
In this text, Leibniz argues that when defining some possible individual, we must not only
enumerate its constituents, but also ascertain that those constituents are compatible with each
other. Leibniz argues that this compatibility can only be known through experience. I think
that the exact same kind of reasoning applies when it comes to determining the compatibility,
incompatibility, or incompossibility between possible individuals. This can be knownor
rather recognized or acknowledged, agnoscere in the Latin of the Enumeratio terminorum
simpliciorumonly through the experience of the fact, or by analogy to the experience of
some similar fact. Hence, experiencemore precisely: the whole range of experience-based
knowledge, including knowledge from testimony, from history etc.is the extrinsic factor
Leibniz hints at in the Enumeratio terminorum simpliciorum. It is by having recourse to
experience, reliable testimony or history, that I recognize that two apparently contradictory
propositions, A and B, are true in the same world, and that their apparent incompatibility
refers only to a difference in time. For example, I know only from experience (or experiencebased knowledge: testimony and history) that Cesars crossing of the Rubicon pertains to the
same world as Brutuss slaying of Cesar, and hence that their apparent incompatibility is a
weak one, a mere difference in time. But this immediately prompts the following question:
What is it about my experience-based knowledge of Cesar and Brutus that allows me to make
such affirmations? How does experience-based knowledge help me distinguish weak
incompatibility from strong incompossibility?
I believe the key term for understanding this lies in Leibnizs notion of congruity. Let
me first note that associating Leibnizs notion of congruity to the discussion of compossibility
is not textually unwarranted. In the Vorarbeiten of 16711672, Leibniz even defines
congruity as that which is easily compossible.77 Next, according to a text from the mid-

76
77

Leibniz, Generales inquisitiones, 68, C 374.

Leibniz, Vorarbeiten, 1671-1672, A VI.ii 492: Congruum est quod facile compossibile est.

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80es, there are incongruities incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God.78 What he
here terms incongruities are exactly the kind of scenarios he wants to exclude from actual
existence (detached arms and legs; all the just eternally punished, etc.). Incongruity thus
seems to play the same role as incompossibility in excluding certain possibilities from
actuality. Finally, in the Essais de theodice, Leibniz affirms that with God, it is plain that
his understanding contains the ideas of all possible things, and that is how everything is in
him in a transcendent manner. These ideas represent to him the good and evil, the perfection
and imperfection, the order and disorder, the congruity and incongruity of possibles; and his
superabundant goodness makes him choose the most advantageous.79 The way Leibniz
speaks here of the congruity and incongruity of possibles also suggests a deep connection
between the notions of congruity and compossibility.
But how can the notion of congruity help us distinguishing between intra-worldly
incompatibility and inter-worldly incompossibility? According to the De modo distinguendi
phaenomena reali ab imaginariis, the congruity of a phenomenon can be established in two
ways: A phenomenon is congruous, when it consists of several phenomena that can be
explained by means of each other [ratio reddi potest ex se invicem] or by means of some
sufficiently simple common hypothesis.80 However, congruity can also be deduced from the
fact that a phenomenon preserves the same habits as those of other phenomena that have
occurred to us frequently, so that the parts of the phenomenon has the same situation, order
and result as those of these similar phenomena.81 These two criteria, I think, correspond to
the two experiential criteria listed in the Generales inquisitiones: experiencing the
compatibility among terms, or experiencing the compatibility among terms similar to them
with respect to the question at hand.
On this picture, what allows us to distinguish mere incompatibility from outright
incompossibility between two individuals is the fact that, on the phenomenal level, merely
incompatible individuals can still be construed together in such a way that, under some simple
hypothesis, they somehow explain or provide reasons for each other in a temporal sequence.
By a hypothesis we should here understand some kind of coherent narrative where events
unfold according to a discernible plan, one leading to the other. As Leibniz writes in an April
1676 text: For something to be sensed as congruous [congruenter sentiri] is for it to be
sensed in such a way that a reason can be given [ratio reddi posit] for everything and
everything can be predicted.82 For example, if we consider a world where Adam sins, and
Christ is crucified, these two events can easily be brought together under the common
hypothesis that Christ expiated Adams original sin on the cross. In this way, Adams sin
provides a reason for the subsequent crucifixion of Christ. Or again, Cesar the Rubiconcrosser and Brutus the Cesar-Slayer can relatively easily be brought together under the
common hypothesis, namely the well-known history of Rome where Cesar, after crossing the
Rubicon engaged in a war from which he emerged victoriously as the leader Rome but who
78

Leibniz, Remarques sur le Livre sur lorigine du mal, publi depuis peu en Angleterre, 21, in Essais de
thodice, GP VI 432/T 428.
79
Leibniz, Remarques sur le Livre sur lorigine du mal, publi depuis peu en Angleterre, 21, in Essais de
thodice, GP VI 423/T 421. Note that Leibniz uses the Latin adjective congrua in two different ways. It is
sometimes used in the mathematical transitive sense to describe a geometrical relation between two figures.
Thus, according to Initia mathematica, De quantitate, those [things] are congruent which, if they differ, only
can be distinguished by means of something external [congrua sunt, quae si diversa sunt, non nise respecta ad
externa discerni potest] (GM VII, 29). However, in this context, Leibniz uses the term in a logical intransitive
sense to express the internal coherence or consistency of a single set of possibles or possible world. Here, I
reserve the terms congruence/congruent for the first meaning, and congruity/congruous for the second.
80
Leibniz, De modo distinguendi phaenomena reali ab imaginariis, 16831685/86 (?), A VI.iv 1501.
81
Ibid. 1501.
82
Leibniz, De veritatibus, de mente, de Deo, de universo, April 1676, A VI.iii 511/DSR, 63 (trans. modified).

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did not manage to resolve all political conflicts leading to his murder by a group of senators
lead by Brutus. Perceiving such coherent narratives, realizing that they concur with other
narratives, and that testimonies regarding the events confirmed by historians converge and
multiply, all this contributes to the congruity of the world including both Cesars crossing and
Brutuss slaying. Hence, the most valid indicative evidence is the agreement of the entire
sequence of life, and even more so if many others affirm that it is also congruous with their
phenomena.83
In the De modo distinguendi phaenomena reali ab imaginariis such investigations are
undertaken, as the title of the paper indicates, to distinguish imaginary phenomena from real
ones. Congruity is, however, not an indication of reality as such, but rather an indicator of
which possible phenomena will fit with which other possible phenomena. In the De
veritatibus, de mente, de Deo, de universo, after arguing that we sense the congruity
(congruenter sentire) of our actual world, Leibniz thus adds: But it does not follow from this
that there is not another world, or other minds which are congruous among themselves [aliter
inter se congruentes] in a way that is different from that which holds in our case.84 So, just as
compossibility among possible substances (or, more precisely, between the complete concepts
of possible individuals) on the metaphysical level is not in itself a criterion of the bestness on
the world they constitute, congruity among the corresponding phenomena is not in itself a
criterion of their reality. It is only an indication of the fact that they are constituents of one of
the same possible phenomenal world. For example, one way very well sense the internal
congruity of the fictional universe conjured up by Madame de Scudry in Artamne. But this
universe of the Artamne is incongruous with the world we perceive as real, thus indicating a
divergence between the possible world of Artamne and our, actual world. But Artamne in
itself is as congruous as the actual world.
Congruity is a very soft criterion of compossibility. Leibniz himself stresses that
congruity does not yield demonstrations but only indicia, that is to say, merely indicative
evidence of the reality of the phenomenon: It must be admitted that the indicative evidence
[indicia] thus far brought forth for establishing the reality of phenomena [] are not
demonstrative, although do indeed have the greatest probability or that which is commonly
said to procure moral certainty.85 Correspondingly, to speak in the terms of the Enumeratio
terminorum simpliciorum, the difference between inter-worldly incompossibility and intraworldly incompatibility is not known (cognoscere) but only acknowledged or
recognized (agnoscere). Indeed, this is the exact place where the logic of compossibility
reaches the limits of what it can explain, leaving the rest to be determined by experience and a
softer kind of reasoning, i.e. the logic of probability and of moral certainty.86
7. Conclusion
I have defended a relational-logical approach to the notion of compossibility similar to the
one also put forward by Ohad Nachtomy.87 My argument relies on three basic interpretative
moves:

83

Leibniz, De modo distinguendi, A VI.iv 1501.

Leibniz, De veritatibus, de mente, de Deo, de universo, April 1676, A VI. iii 512/DSR 67
85
Leibniz, De modo distinguendi, A VI.v 1502.
86
I borrow this notion of a softer kid of reasoning (blandior ratio) from M. Dascal, Nihil sine Ratione?
Blandior ratio, in VII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress. Nihil sine Ratione, Gottfried-Wilhelm-LeibnizGesellschaft: Berlin 2001, 276-280. Leibniz himself employs the expression in a somewhat different sense in the
Consilium de encyclopaedia de nova conscribenda methodo inventoria, 15 (25) June 1679, A VI.iv 342.
87
See Nachtomy, Possibility, Agency, and Individuality, 8593, and infra, sect. 2.
84

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(i) Arguing that many of the traditional problems involved in the logical approach to
compossibility stem from a misguided distinction between non-relational predicates,
relational predicates sub specie generalis, and relational predicates with a determined relatum.
(ii) Demonstrating how the lawful approach eventually does not provide Leibniz with
the means to explain the incompossibility between possible worlds.
(iii) Showing that the main objection commentators have made against the logical
approach, namely that it eventually forces Leibniz to abandon the notion that monads are
independent or worlds apart, relies on a faulty notion of the kind of independence Leibniz had
in mind.
While I do not pretend that this solves all the puzzles surrounding the compossibility
notion, it does provide, I think, a clear and coherent picture of the basic set-up of Leibnizs
doctrine. However, there remains something fundamentally mysterious about compossibility.
In the Essais de thodice, Leibniz is very clear that every possible thing falling within a
single spatiotemporal framework belongs to a same possible world, while stressing that there
is more than one possible world:
I call a world the entire series and entire collection of all existing things, lest it be said
that several worlds could have existed at different times and different places. For they
must be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one universe. And even
though one should fill all times and all places, it still remains true that one could have
filled them in infinite ways, and that there is an infinity of possible worlds, from
among which God must have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in
accordance with supreme reason.88
Each world has its distinctive spatiotemporal framework: Space and time taken together
constitute the order of possibilities of one entire universe, so that these ordersspace and
time, that isrelate not only to what actually is but also to anything that could be put in its
place.89 But how are we to distinguish intra-worldly incompatibility, that is resolved as a
mere temporal difference, from inter-worldly incompossibility, universal and insurmountable?
As we have seen, for Leibniz, we can only perceive that difference by means of something
external. Propositional logic will not help us establishing whether two incompatible possible
individuals belong to two different times of the same world or to two different worlds. Even if
I could convince myself that the actual existence of spontaneously formed detached arms and
legs are not compossible with the present state of affairs, I cannot know with certainty that
such arms and never will exist at some other time, since I do not possess the conceptual
resources necessary for establishing their universal incompatibility with the universal
world. Maybe it was something like this Leibniz was hinting at when, in the De veritatibus
primis, he declared that it is as yet unknown to men, whence arises the incompossibility of
diverse terms, or how it can happen that diverse essences are opposed to each other. 90 We
only have experience, testimony, history and a sense of congruence to reassure ourselves
that this Epicurean scenario will never come about, since it presents incongruities
incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God.91

88

Leibniz, Essais de thodice, 8, GP VI 107/T 128.

Leibniz, Reponse aux reflexions continues dans la seconde Edition du Dictionnaire Critique de M. Bayle,
article Rorarius, sur le systme de lHarmonie pretablie, GP IV 568 L 583. On this, see alsp Messina and
Rutherford, Leibniz on Compossibility, 970971.
90
Leibniz, De veritatibus primis, 1680, A VI.iv 1442, trans. in Leibniz, The Shorter Leibniz Texts, 30.
91
Leibniz, Remarques sur le Livre sur lorigine du mal, publi depuis peu en Angleterre, 21, in Essais de
thodice, GP VI 432/T 428.
89

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