Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Acknowledgments PaSe *x
A Note on Citations and Translations xi
Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Part I: Theodicy
1. The Vindication of Divine Justice 7
2. The Maximization of Perfection and Harmony 22
3. Happiness and Virtue in the Best of All Possible Worlds 46
Conclusion 289
B ibliography 291
Index 297
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Introduction
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2 INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION 3
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4 INTRODUCTION
opher. The present work does not aspire to translate Leibniz's views
into the terms of twentieth-century philosophy, or to evaluate his
position by the light of modern standards of significance. As a matter
of fact, many of the issues Leibniz confronts (the justification of evil,
the ultimate origin of the universe, the nature of substance, the rela-
tion of physics to metaphysics) continue to be of interest to philoso-
phers today; they may, indeed, be of perennial interest. What he has
to say about these issues may therefore be helpfully compared with
our own views - not least because the attempt to define how we differ
from a seventeenth-century thinker can be of great value in helping
us identify the presuppositions and possible shortcomings of our own
approach to a problem.3 For the most part, however, I urge that we
take Leibniz on his own terms: as a thinker responsive to the contro-
versies of seventeenth-century philosophy and to most of the major
movements of its preceding history, but most of all as a philosopher of
the highest originality and clarity who struggles throughout his life to
articulate the details of his distinctive metaphysical system.
Notes
1. Important exceptions are the groundbreaking works of Grua 1953 and
1956 and Heinekamp 1969. Among several recent studies in English that
pay close attention to the project of theodicy are G. Brown 1988, C. Wilson
1983, 1989, and Blumenfeld 1995. A volume gathering papers from a
1990 conference on Leibniz's doctrine of the best of all possible worlds
(Heinekamp and Robinet 1992) reached me too late to be included in this
study.
2. See Barber 1955.
3. For a development of this point, see Garber 1988.
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1
The Vindication of Divine Justice
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8 THEODICY
Prima facie, we can conceive of any number of worlds better than our
own: worlds free of disease, starvation, and war; worlds in which each
gives according to his abilities and receives according to his needs. But
if it is possible to conceive of such worlds, then it cannot be claimed
that God has created the best of all possible worlds. Either we conclude
that God has some prior reason for creating a less than optimal world
or we cast into doubt the very idea that the world owes its existence to
a supremely perfect being.
Leibniz's definitive treatment of the question of God's justice is
contained in his Essays on Theodicy of 1710.6 At times in this work his
position seems defenseless against the challenge just noted. "It is true
that one can imagine possible worlds without sin and without unhap-
piness," he writes, "and one could even arrange them like novels,
Utopias, or Sevarambas; but these same worlds would still be very
inferior to ours in goodness." Of course, he continues, this cannot be
shown in detail, for a comparison of the goodness of possible worlds
involves considerations of infinity. Nevertheless, we can be certain of
this conclusion, "since God has chosen this world such as it is" (GP VI
108/H 129). As a reply to the objection that it is easy to imagine
worlds far better than our own, this seems simply to beg the question.
If the objection is seen as containing a charge that God cannot be the
supremely perfect creator he is supposed to be because he has allowed
the less perfect to prevail over the more perfect, then it can hardly be
answered by merely reasserting that this world has to be the best
because God has chosen it.
When we examine Leibniz's theodicy in more detail, we see that his
position in fact goes beyond this. Supporting the claim of divine jus-
tice are two complementary lines of argument, both aimed at estab-
lishing the closest possible connection between the created world and
God as its creator. The first of these approaches will occupy us
throughout this book. Confronted with the apparent lack of fit be-
tween the created world and God's supreme perfection, Leibniz at-
tempts to convince us that we have not adequately comprehended the
goods - metaphysical and moral - that God has realized in this world.
In its broad outlines Leibniz's philosophy is deeply indebted to Plato-
nism.7 If the perfection of the created world is not immediately ap-
parent to us, the problem lies not with the world but with us. The
mistake that critics of divine justice commonly make, Leibniz argues,
is to suppose that any part of a whole, taken in isolation, must be as
perfect as the whole itself. But this is not so: "[T]he part of the best
whole is not necessarily the best that could have been made of that
part" (Theodicy §213; GP VI 245/H 261). Wisdom demands that the
perfection of the part always be evaluated in relation to the perfec-
tion of the whole. Thus, although an isolated circumstance may ap-
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DIVINE JUSTICE 11
There is always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and
for the maintenance of freedom of the will it suffices that this reason should
incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of all the ancients, of
Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is never prompted to action save
by the representation of the good, which prevails over the opposite represen-
tations. This is admitted even in relation to God, the good angels and souls in
bliss: and it is acknowledged that they are none the less free in consequence of
that. God fails not to choose the best, but he is not constrained to do so: no
more is there necessity in the object of God's choice, for another sequence of
things is equally possible. For that very reason the choice is free and indepen-
dent of necessity, because it is made between several possibles, and the will is
determined only by the preponderating goodness of the object. This is there-
fore not a defect where God and the saints are concerned: on the contrary, it
would be a great defect, or rather a manifest absurdity, were it otherwise,
even in men here on earth, and if they were capable of19acting without any
inclining reason. {Theodicy §45; GP VI 227-8/H 148)
According to Leibniz, an act of will is free just in case it is spontaneous
or self-initiated, chosen from among a plurality of alternatives, and
determined by the greatest reason, in that it aims for the greatest
good. Because there is no question of God's being mistaken as to the
identity of the greatest good, Leibniz concedes that God is bound by a
"moral necessity" to choose it. He insists throughout the Theodicy,
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DIVINE JUSTICE 13
Leibniz's theodicy often assume that when he speaks of this as the best
of all possible worlds he is primarily referring to that possible world
which contains the greatest human happiness. Even a cursory review
of his writings shows that this is at best an oversimplification. While
the happiness of human beings is one of the goods that God is dis-
posed to create, God is not concerned with human happiness alone:
It follows from the supreme perfection of God that in producing the universe
he chose the best possible plan, containing the greatest variety together with
the greatest order; the best arranged situation, place and time; the greatest
effect produced by the simplest means; the most power, the most knowledge,
the most happiness and goodness in created things of which the universe
admitted. (PNG §10; GP VI 603/P 200)
Topping Leibniz's list of the characteristics that make this the best of
all possible worlds is its construction according to a plan that accom-
modates the greatest variety of things together with the greatest or-
der. Within this initial description of the world's perfection, there is
no mention of the happiness of human beings. To be sure, Leibniz
goes on to claim that God also produces the most happiness and
goodness in created things "of which the universe admitted." It is not,
however, obvious that this is part of God's primary conception of the
world's perfection. Instead, that perfection is associated with the
world's realizing certain degrees of variety and order.
Evidence of this account can be found in Leibniz's earliest writings,
in an equation he establishes between the metaphysical concept of
"harmony" - defined as "unity in variety" or "diversity compensated
by identity" - and the pleasure an intelligent being derives from the
apprehension of such harmony:
Delight or pleasure is the perception of harmony. . . . The beautiful is that
whose harmony is clearly and distinctly understood; such alone is that which
is perceived infigures,numbers and motions. . . . Harmony is diversity com-
pensated by identity. . . . Variety delights, but only when it is reduced to a
unity, symmetrical, connected. Agreement delights, but only when it is new,
surprising, unexpected, and consequently either ominous or artificial. (A VI
i, 4 8 4 -5) 2 7
According to Leibniz, there is "neither delight without harmony,
nor harmony without variety" (A VI 1, 466). Or, as he puts it in the
slightly later Confessio Philosophi, "[H]appiness is the state of mind
most agreeable to it, and nothing is agreeable to a mind outside of
harmony" (Bel 30). The crucial step he now takes is to extend this
account of the relationship between harmony and the pleasure of a
mind to an explanation of the world's ultimate origin. "Every wise
being," he contends, "will be delighted by beauty and harmony" (A VI
1, 434-5). Hence this must be true also of God, the being of supreme
wisdom, since "God is the most perfect mind . . . it is impossible for
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DIVINE JUSTICE 17
is directly owed to the goodness of a will, there is no evidence that
Leibniz systematically opts for such a position. Instead, he seems in-
tent on offering exactly parallel accounts of the origin of divine provi-
dence in general and of retributive justice in particular. In both cases,
we are to see divine wisdom as supplying essential guidance to the
underlying motive of goodness. God's goodness, he writes in Causa
Dei, is related
either to creatures in general or specifically to intelligent creatures. Joined to
greatness [i.e., wisdom and power], it constitutes, in the first case, providence
in the creation and government of the universe, and in the second case,
justice in ruling specifically over the substances endowed with reason. (§40;
GP VI445/S 122)
In addition to insisting on the pivotal role played by divine wisdom
in Leibniz's theodicy, I have stressed a further point concerning the
priorities of that wisdom in its assessment of the relative worth of
possible worlds. Whether the good in question concerns the abstract
construction of the universe or the well-being of rational minds, wis-
dom recognizes as optimal that arrangement of goods which best
evidences an order satisfying to reason. Just as wisdom is inclined to
favor that construction of an artifact in which there is realized a
certain proportion and harmony among its parts, so it is inclined to
favor that general order of things in which the distribution of plea-
sure and pain among minds is in strict proportion to their respective
degrees of virtue and vice:
[A]s to order and justice, I believe that there are universal rules which must
hold with respect to God and with respect to intelligent creatures. . . . It is
good to consider that order and harmony . . . have something mathematical
about them, which consists in certain proportions; and that since justice is
nothing but the order which is observed with regard to the evil and good of
intelligent substances, it follows that God who is the sovereign substance ob-
serves unchangingly the most perfect justice and order which could be ob-
served. (A I 13, 11)33
We may thus conclude that while Leibniz tailors his theodicy so as to
accommodate the existence of two distinct sources of goodness - on
the one hand, goods that pertain to creatures in general and to the
construction of the universe as a whole; on the other, goods that
belong exclusively to rational minds — the basic principles informing
his account of how God demonstrates justice in the creation of the
world are the same in both cases. Under the influence of his supreme
goodness, God is disposed to create the best of all possible worlds.
Under the instruction of his wisdom, which prizes evidence of order,
proportion, and harmony, God decides which of all possible worlds
satisfies this description. It is clearly critical to Leibniz's account that
without the capacity of divine wisdom to evaluate the relative worth —
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Notes
1. Although the problem is an ancient one, the term "theodicy" (theos —
God; dike = justice) was coined by Leibniz himself. See his letter to the
Jesuit theologian Bartholomew Des Bosses of 6 January 1712: "Bernard,
the editor of the French journal in Holland, has construed my Essais de
Theodicee as though I meant to say 'Essays of a Theodicean,' or had called
myself 'The Theodicean'; but it was my intention to call the doctrine
itself or the subject matter of the dissertation Theodicy,' insofar as the-
odicy is the doctrine of the right and justice [jure etjustitia] of God" (GP II
428).
2. The source for Epicurus's remark is Lactantius, De ira dei 13, 20—1.
3. Cf. Theodicy §§31, 200.
4. Leibniz reports having arrived at this insight by the early 1670s: "While in
France, I communicated to M. Arnauld a dialogue I had composed in
Latin [presumably the Confessio Philosophi] on the cause of evil and the
justice of God; this was not only before his disputes with the Reverend
Father Malebranche, but even before the book on The Search After Truth
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DIVINE JUSTICE ig
had appeared. The principle which I uphold here, namely that sin had
been permitted because it had been involved in the best plan of the
universe, was already employed there" (Theodicy §211; GP VI 244/H 260).
See also the preface to the Theodicy (GP VI 43/H 67).
5. Concerning Augustine's treatment of evil, see Evans 1982.
6. In the original French, the complete title reads: Essais de Theodicee sur la
bonte de Dieu, la liberte de Vhomme et Vorigine du mal. For the background to
this book and its origin as a response to Pierre Bayle, see Barber 1955.
7. Leibniz is the first to recognize the importance of Plato for him. In a 1714
letter to the French courtier Nicolas Remond, he writes: "I have always
been most satisfied, from my very youth, with the ethics of Plato and in
some way with his metaphysics as well; these two sciences demand each
other" (GP III 632/L 659). For discussions of Leibniz's self-understanding
as a Platonic philosopher, and of the many points at which his doctrines
resonate with Platonic themes, see Vieillard-Baron 1979; C. Wilson 1989.
In emphasizing this element in Leibniz's thought, I do not mean to mini-
mize the importance of other philosophical influences. I accept the pic-
ture that Leibniz paints of himself as a borrower from, and synthesizer of,
a variety of philosophical traditions. On this, see in particular the conclu-
sion to his first (1698) reply to Bayle (GP IV 523-4/L 496), and his letters
to Remond of 10 January and 26 August 1714 (GP III 605/L 654-5; GP
III 624-5).
8. In his Latin summary of the Theodicy, Causa Dei asserta per justitiam ejus,
Leibniz writes, "For all things in the universe are in mutual harmony, and
the supremely wise will never decide without having taken all points of
view into consideration, nor therefore will his judgment bear on anything
but the whole" (Causa Dei §41; GP VI 445/S 122). Cf. GP III 635-6/L
659; GP VII 306/P 142.
9. "Thus, when something in the series of things displeases us, that arises
from a defect in our understanding. For it is not possible that every mind
should understand everything distinctly; and to those who observe only
some parts rather than others, the harmony of the whole cannot appear"
(A Resume of Metaphysics §19; C 535/P 147). Cf. GP VI 75/H 98-9; GP VII
306/P 141. The contrast between a "hidden and visible order" is stressed
by Catherine Wilson (1983, 777; 1989, 281-9), who sees the influence of
Malebranche as decisive here.
10. Cf. Theodicy §147; A 13, 11-12; GP VI 507/L 552.
11. See also On the Ultimate Origination of Things (GP VII 302—3/P 136—7); A
Specimen of Discoveries (GP VII 310/P 76-7); PNG §8.
12. Leibniz allows that the present argument presupposes the soundness of
the ontological argument: "A necessary being, if it is possible, exists. This
is the pinnacle of modal theory, and makes the transition from essences to
existence, from hypothetical truths to absolute truths, from ideas to the
world" (GP VII 310/P 76).
13. Cf. A Specimen of Discoveries: "[Ejvery act of will presupposes a judgment
of the intellect about goodness - unless by a change of names one trans-
fers all judgment from the intellect to the will" (GP VII 311/P 77).
14. This is consistent with his view that all true religion is founded on natural
theology, which he identifies with metaphysics. See Theodicyy "Preliminary
Discourse on the Conformity of Faith with Reason," §44: "Now we have no
need of revealed faith to know that there is some such unique principle of
all things, perfectly good and wise. Reason teaches us this through infal-
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DIVINE JUSTICE 21
25. Thus, if there were no single best possible world, God would not have
created at all: "In my opinion, unless there were an optimal series, God
clearly would have created nothing, since he cannot act without a reason,
or prefer the less perfect to the more perfect alternative" (GP II 424—5).
26. For this definition of "justice," see GP II 136/M 171-2; D IV 295/R 171.
As we shall see in Chapter 3, Leibniz often reserves the term "charity" for
God's love of intelligent creatures, or those capable of happiness. At
times, however, he extends its scope to include God's positive inclination
toward goodness in general.
27. Elementa juris naturalis (1671). Cf. A II 1, 98; A VI 1, 475, 477, 479- The
definition of "harmony" that appears in this passage is repeated in sev-
eral texts. See his letter to Antoine Arnauld of November 1671 (A II 1,
174/GP I 73) and A VI 2, 283. In the Confessio Philosophic Leibniz defines
"harmony" as "similitude in variety, or diversity compensated by identity"
(Bel 30). In the later Elements of True Piety (ca. 1679), he restates this
condition as "unity in variety" (G 12).
28. In a note added to his copy of a 1671 letter to Magnus Wedderkopf,
Leibniz writes: "I later corrected this, for it is one thing for sins to happen
infallibly, another for them to happen necessarily" (A II 1, 118/L 147).
Another significant difference concerns the contribution made by ratio-
nal minds to the harmony of the universe. Contrary to the position he
takes in his mature writings, Leibniz claims in this period that minds
contribute to God's glory but not to the harmony of the world itself. See A
VI 1,438.
29. For statements of this division, see Causa Dei §§29—32; Theodicy §209; GP
III 32.
30. See Causa Dei §§40, 50. Although these passages appear to distinguish
providence from justice in the strict sense, the former also counts as a
species of divine justice because it results from the combination of God's
wisdom and goodness. Cf. Causa Dei §41: "From the fact that wisdom
directs the goodness of God in operating on created things in general, it
follows that divine providence is exhibited in the entire series of the uni-
verse; and it must be said that God, among the infinite possible series of
things, has chosen the best, and that consequently the best is the same as
that which in fact exists" (GP VI 445/S 122).
31. For Leibniz's fullest discussion of the objective status of this law, see
Meditation on the Common Concept ofJustice (Mo 41—70/R 45—64).
32. Cf. PNG §15.
33. Cf. Theodicy §§73-4, where Leibniz cites the balance of reward and pun-
ishment as an example of the "law of fitness" (principe de la convenance)
that God observes in creation (GP VI 142/H 162).
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The Maximization of
Perfection and Harmony
Leibniz describes the best of all possible worlds as the world of great-
est perfection and greatest harmony. We saw in the preceding chapter
that these designations are closely associated with a notion of the
world's "most fitting" construction. As such, they point to features of
the best of all possible worlds that can be characterized independently
of any reference to the happiness and virtue of rational creatures.
The maximization of perfection and harmony are thus marks of this
world's metaphysical superiority over other possible worlds, as op-
posed to its moral superiority. This chapter examines the nature of
this metaphysical superiority and the relationship for Leibniz between
the concepts of perfection and harmony.
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PERFECTION AND HARMONY 25
and produces it through his power. More fully, Leibniz sees in the
attributes of power, knowledge, and will precisely those qualities nec-
essary to explain the voluntary actions of any intelligent being. There
is required, first, power or a source of activity; second, knowledge,
which is capable of comprehending the possibilities of action and
assessing the relative merit of ends according to their degrees of
goodness; and, third, will or the capacity to choose, which "causes
changes or productions according to the principle of what is best"
(Mon §48; GP VI 615/P 186).
Although it has been less widely recognized, the divine perfections
of power, knowledge, and will are invoked a second time by Leibniz in
explaining the specific character of the world God chooses to create.
Here his basic intuition is that God gives rise to finite substances
through a "diffusion" or "emanation" of his perfection. The chief
significance of this metaphor for Leibniz is its suggestion that in
bringing any substance into existence, God produces it as a finite
instantiation of his own unlimited perfections of power, knowledge,
and will.12 At the level of finite beings, therefore, perfections are
present as "intensions," or qualities possessing degrees, and we may
define the relative perfection of any finite substance in terms of the
degree to which it is less limited in the absolute perfections of God.13
In a revealing passage, Leibniz goes so far as to suggest that the
natures of created beings could be defined mathematically in terms of
the degree of limitation of God's primary perfections:
There are in [God] three primacies [primautes], power, knowledge and will;
and from these there results the operation or creature, which is varied ac-
cording to the different combinations of unity and zero, or rather of the
positive with the privative, for the privative is nothing but the limit and there
are everywhere limits in creatures. . . . However, the creature is something
more than limits, for it has received some perfection or power from God. (G
126) 14
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PERFECTION AND HARMONY 29
greater order and intelligibility. Indeed, it may well be the latter idea
that serves as our truest indicator of what makes for the best natural
order. What simplicity or universality, on the one hand, and efficiency
or determinateness, on the other, have in common is that they repre-
sent types of order that are especially satisfying to reason: orders in
which a single principle suffices to account for the widest possible
range of cases, or in which an outcome is determined through a
unique optimizing solution.
In my view, this is the right way to proceed in conceiving of God's
choice of an optimal natural order. Nevertheless, even if we accept
this hypothesis, we still face the deeper question of how God's selec-
tion of certain "most fitting" laws of nature helps to promote the
fundamental goal of creation: the maximization of perfection. If
Leibniz's account of the relationship between God's wisdom and his
selection of certain natural laws as the best laws for a world is to make
sense, some explanation of this point must be forthcoming. When
Leibniz writes that God chooses for this world "metaphysico-
mathematical laws of nature" which determine "the order that best
conforms to intelligence and reason" (GP III 72), we should be able to
understand God as preferring such laws precisely because they help
to promote at some level a maximization of metaphysical goodness.
For we have assumed that it is ultimately this alone which motivates
God's will.
Although we are not yet in a position to resolve this issue in a fully
satisfying way, we can gain considerable insight into Leibniz's under-
standing of the relationship between order and variety by examining
the use he makes of the principle of continuity. Leibniz describes the
principle of continuity as a "principle of general order," which obtains
in the actual world as a consequence of God's wisdom. He thus explic-
itly connects it with God's choice of the best of all possible worlds.27 In
the New Essays, he renders this principle informally as the claim that
"nature leaves no gaps in the orderings which she follows" (RB 307).28
As a consequence of God's selection of the principle of continuity as a
principle of order for the world, Leibniz argues, it is determined that
all natural series have a certain remarkable property. In general, the
movement from any one element of such a series to another must
always occur through the smallest possible increment, with no abrupt
changes of value. Changes of time, place, or motion are always "con-
tinuous," in the sense of occurring through an infinite series of small-
er gradations. 29 It is a related consequence of this principle that natu-
ral series are also as "full" as possible. To no such series governed by
the principle of continuity can any further elements be added: Suc-
cessive elements in a natural ordering are always so "intimately con-
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PERFECTION AND HARMONY 31
one knows that motion does not occur in a leap. . . . Experience teaches us
that this does not happen, but the principle of order proves it too, according
to which, the more we analyze things, the more they satisfy our intellect. This is not
true of leaps, for here analysis leads to mysteries. Thus I believe that the same
thing applies not only in transitions from place to place, but also in transitions
from one form to another or from one state to another. (GP II 168/L 515—6)
Leibniz implies that in series not governed by the principle of conti-
nuity there are not only gaps that could be filled with further ele-
ments but also gaps of intelligibility that hinder reason's comprehen-
sion of the series' progression. Again, the suggestion is that certain
orderings are in themselves more pleasing to reason, and that this
constitutes at least part of why divine wisdom favors the principle of
continuity as a principle of general order for the world.32
The results of this section make an important contribution to the
conception of divine wisdom sketched in Chapter 1. There I sug-
gested that divine wisdom is disposed to recognize as the best of all
possible worlds that world whose internal order is most satisfying to
reason, in the sense that it optimizes such things as the arrangement
of the world's parts and the distribution of goods within it. We now
see, however, that such an order is valued by wisdom not only for its
own sake as an order pleasing to reason, but also - and most funda-
mentally - because it is a necessary condition for the maximization of
perfection, or for the production of "the greatest possible amount of
essence or possibility" (GP VII 303/P 138). Although there may seem
to be a tension between wisdom's favoring certain types of order as a
means to the maximization of perfection and its favoring order as
pleasing in itself, Leibniz evidently believes that these two ends in
general support one another.
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38 THEODICY
(1) Within the world, there is a primitive connection between the states
of any one substance and those of every other substance.
(2) This connection is grounded in a substance's capacity to perceive
everything that happens within the world.
(3) It is a necessary condition for the maintenance of the world's har-
mony that every substance be endowed with an intrinsic activity.
At many points in his works, Leibniz advances the thesis that "all is
connected [tout est lie]" in the universe, or, as he sometimes says quot-
ing Hippocrates, that "all things sympathize."48 On its weakest inter-
pretation, this thesis might be thought to imply nothing more than
this: In conceiving of any collection of things as a world, God neces-
sarily conceives of them as they would exist related to each other in
that world. That is, God conceives of them as constituting a unified
whole and not simply a set of unrelated parts. Leibniz, however, has
something stronger than this in mind. God's prevision of a set of
possible beings as a world not only involves conceiving of them as they
would be related in that world; his conception of each one of these
beings as an individual comprehends its relatedness to everything else
which would exist with it in that world. Consequently, the relatedness
of any being to all the other members of its world forms part of the
nature of that being as it is conceived by God.49 As Leibniz develops
this idea in his metaphysics, he draws from it the conclusion that the
state of every being is conditioned by the state of every other being,
such that whenever a change occurs anywhere in the universe it must
be accompanied by a change in the internal state of every being.50 Like
Bisterfeld, then, he assumes a very strong sense of the universal con-
nection of things in a world (what Bisterfeld describes as their "im-
meation"). In Leibniz's terms, "every created individual substance ex-
ercises physical action on, and is acted on by all others. For if a change
is made in one, some corresponding change follows in all the others
since the denomination is changed" (C 521/P 90). Although pre-
sented in a more rigorous fashion, this is clearly of a spirit with Bister-
feld's assertion of "the ineffable communication, and the infinite
union and communion of all things."
Leibniz goes on to characterize this universal connection in terms of
the capacity of every created substance to express the entire universe.
He explains this concept in general as follows: "[I]t is sufficient for the
expression of one thing in another that there should be a certain
constant relational law, by which particulars in the one can be re-
ferred to corresponding particulars in the other" (C 15/P 176—7).51
Leibniz typically elaborates such statements with examples drawn from
mathematics. The paradigm of expression is the relationship between
two curves (e.g., two conic sections, such as a circle and an ellipse),
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Notes
1. See Rescher 1979, 1981. Among those supporting his interpretation are
Gale 1974, 1976, and Brown 1987, 1988.
2. Rescher 1981, 4.
3. Rescher 1981, 10.
4. See also the heading to DM §5: "What the rules of the perfection of
divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the ways is in balance
with the richness of the effects" (Le 31/AG 38).
5. See Okruhlik 1985; Roncaglia 1990; Blumenfeld 1995. I find this criti-
cism of Rescher's position compelling. It is worth noting that in the texts
most often cited on behalf of his view - e.g. DM §§5-6 and Theodicy §208
- Leibniz is clearly echoing Malebranche; and Malebranche himself be-
lieves that the simplest laws are also the most "fecund," or those produc-
tive of the richest variety of phenomena. Cf. Traite de la Nature et de la
Grace, I, xxvii-xix with Theodicy §§204 and 211: "I am not of the opinion
'that a more ordered [plus compose] and less abundant [fecond] plan would
be more capable of preventing irregularities.* Rules are general volitions:
the more one observes rules, the more regularity there is; simplicity and
fecundity are the aim of rules" (GP VI 244/H 260). The extent of Leib-
niz's debt to Malebranche in the area of theodicy is documented by Cath-
erine Wilson (1983, 1989).
6. Cf. Theodicy §201.
7. Gale 1976, 76—9.
8. Rescher 1981, 11.
9. Among the few extended discussions of this topic in the literature are
Grua 1953, chaps. 6—7, and Heinekamp 1969. Views similar to the one I
shall defend are briefly discussed by Parkinson (1965, 110-11) and Ron-
caglia (1990).
10. Cf. GP VI 383; GP VII 261.
11. As perfections, these correspond, respectively, to God's omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnibenevolence (the perfection of will being equated
with its unlimited goodness). In this context, it is obviously important to
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quantity, such that they are for all intents and purposes successive ele-
ments, then the difference between those of their properties that depend
on their places in the series must also be less than any specifiable differ-
ence. In short, the closer two elements are in a series, the smaller the
difference that is detectable between them. Cf. BC II 558/W 187.
30. The principle is best known for the role it plays in Leibniz's critique of
Cartesian physics. There it serves as a justification for his rejection of
Descartes's laws of collision on the grounds that they assume an asymme-
try of outcomes depending on whether a moving body is greater or
smaller than the body with which it collides. For a discussion of this point,
see Garber 1995, sec. 4.3.
31. Cf. NE III, vi, 12 (RB 307).
32. Cf. BH 69. Leibniz relies on this same argument in rejecting
metempsychosis in favor of his own doctrine of continuous organic
change: "As for metempsychosis, I believe that the universal order does
not permit it; it demands that everything should be explicable distinctly
and that nothing should take place in a leap. But the passage of the soul
from one body to another would be a strange and inexplicable leap. What
happens in an animal at present happens in it always; that is, the body is
in continuous change like a river, and what we call generation or death is
only a greater or quicker change than ordinary, as would be a waterfall or
cataract in ariver"(GP III 635/L 658).
33. See A II 1, 117/L 145; Theodicy, Preface, §§62, 91; Causa Dei §46; PNG
§13; GLW 171/AG 233; BH 63.
34. In a 1715 letter to Antonio Conti, Leibniz writes, "Nature, by concealing
final causes from souls and by presenting them with confused percep-
tions, created the appearance of so many new beings or new qualities,
which as Democritus said subsist by convention in the soul and not in
reality, but which are a marvelous ornament to the world. . . . Through
souls without number and their different points of view, nature has
found a way of infinitely multiplying the qualities or results of simple
reasons, i.e., the ornaments" (GB 267). For the moment, it is enough to
note that Leibniz sees God as committed to the production of additional
variety in the form of "ornament" over and above the variety of beings
that is the immediate product of creation. See also C 535/P 146.
35. Part III explores the nature of these levels and the relations of order that
unite them.
36. Cf. BH 70; and A Resume of Metaphysics: "Distinct cogitability gives order
to a thing. . . . For order is simply the distinctive relation of several
things. And confusion is when several things are indeed present but there
is no ground [ratio] for distinguishing one from another" (C 535/P 146).
37. Cf. Theodicy §337; GLW 163/AG 231; GM VI 133.
38. This concurs with the account of Blumenfeld 1995.
39. Cf. PNG §10; Mon §55; and GLW 171/AG 233: "Nothing is more regular
than the divine intellect, which is the source of all rules, and produces the
most regular, that is, the most perfect system of the world, the world that
is as harmonious as possible and thus contains the greatest number of
general observations."
40. We may also see this as the possible world in which the principle of
sufficient reason is most fully observed. This may serve to explain the
following comment, which appears in Leibniz's unpublished notes: "I
begin as a philosopher but end as a theologian. One of my great princi-
ples is that nothing happens without a reason. This is a principle of
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44 THEODICY
philosophy; however at base it is nothing but the admission of divine
wisdom, although I do not speak of that at the outset" (BH 58).
41. I suggest in the next chapter how this can be done.
42. For a contrasting view of the importance of these texts, see Brown 1988,
88
43. Leibniz read Bisterfeld's work during his student days in Leipzig, i.e.,
between 1663 anc * 1666. The following account of Bisterfeld's views is
based on the texts supplied in A VI 1 and on the discussions of Kabitz
1909, Loemker 1961, and Mugnai 1973.
44. Bisterfeld, Philosophiae Primae Seminarium, Cap. Ill, Reg. V, pp. 35—6;
quoted at A VI 1, 153.
45. Bisterfeld, Logicae libri, III, pp. 17-8, in vol. I of the posthumous collec-
tion of his writings entitled Bisterfeldius Redivivus (The Hague, 1661).
Translation quoted from Loemker 1961, 328. Leibniz cites Bisterfeld's
doctrine of immeation as the inspiration for his own "art of combina-
tions." See De arte combinatoria, §85 (A VI 1, 199/GP IV 70), and Loemker
1
9^i, 334- In this regard, it is important to note the correspondence
Bisterfeld assumes between the immeation of real things and the immea-
tion of thoughts. In his view (and in Leibniz's), the immeation of things
provides the "basis and norm" for the immeation of thoughts and words,
i.e., for the establishment of significant and informative relations among
thoughts and words. Hence it makes possible the knowing of things via
thoughts and words. In the Philosophiae Primae Seminarium, Bisterfeld
writes that the "universal harmony of things to be known, of knowing
minds, and of human knowledge demonstrates that there can and must
be first philosophy" (p. 1; original quoted in Kabitz 1909, 7-8). On this
point, see Mugnai 1973, 55. For more on Leibniz's exploitation of this
idea, see Chapter 5.
46. Bisterfeld, Artificium Definiendi Catholicum, pp. 58-9, in Bisterfeldius Red-
ivivus, vol. I. Original passage quoted in Mugnai 1973, 56. There is a
partial translation in Loemker 1961, 329.
47. Bisterfeld, Philosophiae Primae Seminarium, Cap. V, Reg. VII, p. 65; quoted
at A VI 1, 155.
48. RB 227; C 8/P 133; GP VII 31 i/P 78; GP VI 627/AG 228.
49. To Michel Angelo Fardella he remarks: "[EJach thing is so connected to
the whole universe, and one mode of each thing contains such order and
consideration with respect to the individual modes of other things, that in
any given thing, indeed in each and every mode of any given thing, God
clearly and distinctly sees the universe as implied and inscribed" (FN
319/AG 103).
50. Here I am adumbrating a line of argument that can be put more precisely
in terms of Leibniz's assertion that there are "no purely extrinsic denomi-
nations." See C 8/P 133, C 521/P 90, and GP VII 311/P 78, where he
appeals to Hippocrates in support of the view that "all things conspire
and are sympathetic, i.e., that nothing happens in one creature of which
some corresponding effect does not reach all others"; and then adds:
"Nor are there any absolutely extrinsic denominations in things." I exam-
ine this argument in Chapter 6.
51. Cf. GP I 383; GP II 112/M 144; GP VII 263-4/L 207. For a detailed
discussion of the concept of expression, see Kulstad 1977.
52. Leibniz defines "perception" generally as the expression or representa-
tion of many things in one, or of a multitude in a unity. See Mon §14;
PNG §2.
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Happiness and Virtue in
the Best of All Possible Worlds
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 47
A Conflict of Goods
According to Leibniz, the happiness and virtue of rational creatures
are to be regarded as species of goodness - what he designates as
"physical" and "moral" goodness, respectively.4 As such, he claims,
the divine will is as much motivated to realize these values as it is
metaphysical goodness: "God wills what is good per se, at least anteced-
ently. He wills in general the perfection of all things and particularly
the happiness and virtue of all intelligent substances; and he wills each
good according to its degree of goodness" (Causa Dei §33; GP VI
443/S 120). As forms of goodness proper to intelligent creatures,
happiness and virtue must be among the factors that God weighs in
deciding which possible world to create. Furthermore, it is clear that
these are not considerations which compete with the metaphysical
goodness of those same intelligent creatures. Instead, we should see it
as Leibniz's position that the physical and moral goodness of intel-
ligent creatures are exactly proportional to their respective degrees of
metaphysical goodness.
It is not difficult to locate the ground for the relationship between
these different forms of goodness as they pertain to intelligent crea-
tures. Metaphysical goodness is involved in the natures of all finite
things insofar as they express the perfections of power, knowledge,
and goodness. To the extent that a creature is conceived by God as
having more perfection, it will possess each of these qualities to a
greater degree. 5 Now, as we shall see shortly, Leibniz grounds the
virtue and happiness of intelligent creatures in their possession of
rational knowledge. (This is why these goods pertain only to intel-
ligent creatures.) To demonstrate moral goodness, or virtue, is to act
in accordance with the dictates of reason.6 And true happiness derives
solely from a mind's contemplation of perfection and order.7 Given
these commitments, it is evident that for creatures endowed with in-
telligence there can be no real conflict between moral and metaphysi-
cal perfection. Such creatures possess greater moral perfection only
to the extent that they possess greater metaphysical perfection - in
particular, a more developed intellect, which serves as the foundation
for both virtue and happiness. In the case of minds at least, we may
affirm with Leibniz that "God, possessing supreme and infinite wis-
dom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but
also morally speaking" (Le 26/AG 35).8
The situation is more complicated when we consider the position of
intelligent beings vis-a-vis the rest of creation. In the Theodicy, Leibniz
makes it clear that he does not regard the happiness of intelligent
beings as God's sole aim in choosing a world for existence, or even his
highest aim. Instead, Leibniz claims only that God makes human
beings as happy as they could be "in this system," leaving open the
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48 THEODICY
Virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it is not the only good
quality of creatures. There are innumerable others which attract the inclina-
tion of God: from all these inclinations there results the most possible good,
and it turns out that if there were only virtue, if there were only rational
creatures, there would be less good. (GP VI 178-9/H 198)11
The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the harmony between the
metaphysical and moral ends of God is not quite so simple or so
obvious as might be imagined. Leibniz maintains that the primary
value maximized in creation is metaphysical goodness, and that this
value can at least in principle come into conflict with the maximiza-
tion of the physical and moral goodness of intelligent creatures.
While God seeks to make human beings as happy as possible relative
to the perfection of the whole, he is not responsible for maximizing
happiness or virtue unconditionally. The crucial question at this point
is whether Leibniz thinks that God is in fact successful in avoiding the
potential for conflict between the maximization of perfection and
harmony, on the one hand, and the maximization of the happiness
and virtue of intelligent beings, on the other. That is, does Leibniz
regard the actual world as being one in which these objectives are
successfully reconciled, or does he think that in realizing one of them
(we may assume the former) God is forced to sacrifice the others, with
the result that there are possible worlds in which, absolutely speaking,
intelligent beings would enjoy more happiness and virtue than in the
present world?12
As I read Leibniz, he holds that God's metaphysical and moral ends
are indeed reconciled in the best of all possible worlds, and that this
world is consequently one that contains both the greatest perfection
and the greatest happiness and virtue. The case he makes for this
position, however, is by no means straightforward. In general, Leibniz
appears to attribute the following strategy to God in creation. Assum-
ing that rational creatures represent as a group the most perfect of all
created beings, then it is plausible to think that a necessary condition
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 49
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5° THEODICY
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 51
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 53
that there exist within it minds with the potential to realize individu-
ally the highest degrees of perfection accessible to finite beings.21
The exposure of this complex interplay between the perfection of
minds and that of the universe as a whole points us toward the resolu-
tion of a problem left outstanding in the last chapter. This was the
question of the relationship between, on the one hand, God's concern
to create that world which is in itself most satisfying to reason insofar
as it contains the greatest order and harmony, and on the other, God's
primary goal of maximizing perfection. We are now in a position to
suggest the following answer: Given that knowledge is conceived by
Leibniz as a perfection, and that as a rational mind comes to under-
stand better the order and harmony of the universe it grows in perfec-
tion, it is plausible to think that God's realization of the greatest pos-
sible order and harmony is in fact a precondition for his creation of
the greatest perfection. In brief, we can expect the maximum perfec-
tion to be realized only if the world as a whole is such that certain of
the beings God creates, rational minds, can anticipate indefinite in-
creases in their degrees of perfection through the acquisition of ever
more knowledge. For this to be possible, however, the world itself
must be as orderly and as harmonious as any world could be. In this, I
believe, we find the deepest explanation of the relationship between
harmony and perfection. In Leibniz's view, only under the condition
of maximum harmony can as much perfection as possible be realized
among the most enlightened minds. Assuming that such minds deter-
mine the upper limit of perfection among created beings, and that
God can only realize the maximum perfection in a world if this upper
limit is set as high as possible, we may surmise that a maximization of
harmony will be required for the realization of this end. 22
We are in a position to conclude that the maximization of perfec-
tion and harmony is a necessary and sufficient condition for the maxi-
mization of happiness. The maximization of perfection and harmony
is necessary for the maximization of happiness, since only in a world
in which there exists as much perfection and harmony as possible can
rational minds attain their greatest possible happiness - a happiness
that is derived from their perception of these qualities. However, the
world of greatest perfection can itself only be realized if God creates
as many rational minds as possible, each with the potential for the
highest possible degree of perfection. Because the happiness of
minds is strictly correlated with their degree of perfection, these crea-
tures will enjoy, collectively, the greatest happiness that can be real-
ized in a world. In sum, any world in which perfection is maximized
must also be one in which the happiness of rational creatures is maxi-
mized, and vice versa.23 What is revealed most clearly in this result is
the primacy of the metaphysical standpoint in Leibniz's theodicy.
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 55
at the center of his moral philosophy, Leibniz takes for granted the
univocacy of the notion of moral goodness at the divine and created
levels. Whether we are speaking of the actions of God or the actions
of human beings, the paradigm of virtue is justice, understood as the
"charity of the wise." The difference between the two cases lies solely
in the fact that for God justice is a moral necessity: It would imply an
imperfection in God were he not to act justly, whereas in created
beings justice entails only an obligation that may not be met.27
While this conception of justice as "charity conforming to wisdom"
serves as the foundation for Leibniz's moral philosophy, in his politi-
cal writings he often offers a broader interpretation of justice based
on the Roman tradition of natural law or "natural right" (jus naturae).
In this context, he depicts justice as having three grades or degrees,
corresponding to the principles neminem laedere ("harm no one"), suum
cuique tribuere ("render to each his due"), and honeste vivere ("live hon-
orably").28 The lowest grade of justice, which Leibniz associates with
the notion of "strict right" (jus strictum), does not involve the idea of
charity or love. It requires merely that one forbear from harming
others, since in this way one avoids giving others any claim (legal or
otherwise) against one in return. The motive for this type of justice is
thus purely prudential: One acts justly, in this minimal sense, so as to
avoid harm to oneself.
In contrast to this, the middle degree of justice, "equity" or "distrib-
utive justice," does suggest a kind of charity. As Leibniz interprets it,
obviously with some liberty, the principle "render to each his due" is to
be understood as meaning "do good to everybody; but only so far as
befits each one or as much as each deserves" (GP III 387-8/R 172). To
act with equity requires that one's actions demonstrate universal be-
nevolence or a concern for the welfare of all human beings. One does
not act equitably, however, simply by being as generous as possible; in
addition, it is necessary to ensure that the good one renders others is
in strict proportion to their merits. From a formal point of view,
equity incorporates what we earlier found to be the two main compo-
nents of divine justice: an impartial concern for the perfection of all
creatures, modulated by a notion of desert. Yet despite this similarity,
Leibniz regards equity as falling short of justice in the fullest sense.
While the equitable person mimics the just person in his concern for
the common good, it does not follow that his actions are motivated by
the charity that is definitive of justice. They may instead again merely
be the product of prudence: in responding to the needs and desires
of others, one may reasonably hope that one's own needs and desires
will be more likely to be met in the future. For this reason, Leibniz
regards equity as a distinctly human form of justice (Mo 56-8, 64/R
56—7, 60). Insofar as it may not be motivated by pure charity, it is to be
contrasted with the perfect justice that God exercises. Equity also falls
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 6l
est perfection and harmony, he must also have created that world
which offers the greatest opportunity for rational knowledge and that
collection of minds with the greatest potential for the attainment of
happiness through the acquisition of knowledge. But God has also
created beings who are capable of justice, or the charity of the wise,
and who, as part of the expression of their virtue, attempt to inculcate
this same virtue in others. Virtue thus grows through the practice of
virtue, and with it grows happiness, which the pious person experi-
ences as a natural consequence of his exercise of virtue.
This last consideration strongly suggests that although the pious
person necessarily orients himself with respect to God, loving God as
the supreme source of his happiness, his life will not be a purely
contemplative one. The pious person instead demonstrates his knowl-
edge and love of God by executing to his fullest ability what he under-
stands to be God's plan for the best of all possible worlds: a plan in
which the greatest possible perfection is achieved through the pro-
gressive enlightenment of minds, and their continued growth in
knowledge, happiness, and virtue. To this end, the pious person will
seek to understand the order and harmony of nature, for this activity
is pleasing in itself and confirms us in our belief in God's wisdom; and
he will seek to improve the common welfare of human beings through
their intellectual and moral development, for this too is pleasing in
itself and serves as the engine which drives the increased perfection
of the universe as a whole:
[E]very enlightened person must judge that the true means of guaranteeing
forever his own individual happiness is to seek his satisfaction in occupations
which tend toward the general good; for the love of God, above all, and the
necessary enlightenment, will not be denied to a mind that is animated in this
way. . . . Now this general good, insofar as we can contribute to it, is the
advancement toward perfection of men, as much by enlightening them so
that they can know the marvels of the sovereign substance, as by helping them
to remove the obstacles which stop the progress of our enlightenment. (K X
10-11/R 105)37
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62 THEODICY
Our perfection consisting in the knowledge and love of God, it follows that
one is advanced in perfection to the extent that one penetrates into the
eternal truths and is zealous for the general good. Thus, those who are truly
enlightened and well-intentioned work with all their power on behalf of their
own instruction and the good of others; and if they have the means to do so,
they strive to further the growth of the enlightenment of mankind, of Chris-
tian virtue, and of public happiness. This is the mark of true piety. (A I 13,
232)
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 63
Notes
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 65
recognition of the connection between the world's harmony and the op-
eration of divine wisdom, Leibniz contends that the pleasure of such a
mind is augmented by its perception of the supreme perfections of God.
See Brown 1988, 579—81.
20. I add this caution, because in one set of texts in which Leibniz addresses
the question of whether the world's total perfection should be viewed as
increasing over time, he refuses to endorse this position categorically. See
the series of late letters to Bourguet at GP III 582-3/L 664-5; G p ^
589; GP III 591-2. Other texts explicitly affirm the thesis of continual
progress: GP VII 88/L 426; GP VII 308/L 490-1.
21. Cf. DM §36: "Indeed, minds are the most perfectible substances. . . .
Whence it obviously follows that God, who always aims for the greatest
perfection in general, will pay the greatest attention to minds and will
give them the greatest perfection that universal harmony can allow, not
only in general, but to each of them in particular" (Le 91/AG 67).
22. This argument further suggests why neither the greatest perfection nor
the greatest happiness could have been achieved had God chosen to
create a world composed only of rational minds (even more minds than
exist in the actual world), sacrificing for them all lower orders of exis-
tence. In Leibniz's view, a world composed solely of minds would not
contain more happiness than the present world, for without the manifold
dimensions of order that define this world and the infinite variety of
beings that populate that order, the potential for happiness, attained
through the exercise of reason, would be far less than in the present
world. See Theodicy §118, and §124: "Nature has need of animals, plants,
inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels
which serve for the exercise of reason. What would an intelligent creature
think of, if there were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense?" (GP VI
179/H 198).
23. In a number of texts, Leibniz asserts that the actual world involves a
maximization of both perfection and happiness: PNG §§10, 15; Observa-
tions on the Book Concerning the Origin of Evil §22 (GP VI 426/H 431); On
the Ultimate Origination of Things (GP VII 306/P 141). In his study of this
topic, Gregory Brown concurs that "on Leibniz's account of pleasure,
happiness and knowledge, it is a condition both necessary and sufficient
for the maximization of pleasure, knowledge, and happiness of a given
set of creatures that their world be maximally harmonious" (1988, 589-
90). He reaches this conclusion, however, by a different route than I have,
primarily because of the different reading he gives to the notion of per-
fection. See also Blumenfeld (1994), who briefly sketches a strategy closer
to my own.
24. Cf. GLW 43.
25. "Since nature brings everything in order, he who stands closest to that
order already can most easily arrive at an orderly contemplation or or-
derly conception, that is, at a felt satisfaction, precisely because there can
be no higher satisfaction than to consider and see how good everything is
and that nothing possibly better is to be wished" (BC II 133/W 574). Cf.
GP VI 508/L 552-3.
26. In many of his ethical and political writings, Leibniz defines "wisdom"
more narrowly as "the science [i.e., the systematic knowledge] of happi-
ness." Cf. G 579/R 83; GP VII 86/L 425.
27. See Meditation on the Common Concept ofJustice (Mo 45—6/R 48—9).
28. See Riley's introduction to his edition of Leibniz's political writings (R19-
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HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE 67
one ought without loving him above all things, and one cannot love him
thus without willing what he wills. His perfections are infinite and cannot
end, and this is why the pleasure which consists in the feeling of his
perfections is the greatest and most durable which can exist. That is, the
greatest happiness, which causes one to love him, causes one to be happy
and virtuous at the same time" (Mo 62—3/R 59). See also D IV 295/R 171;
E 790/W 565.
36. Cf. his 1702 letter to Queen Sophie Charlotte, often titled "On What Is
Independent of Sense and Matter": "But a consideration of the perfec-
tion of things, or what amounts to the same thing, of the sovereign
power, wisdom, and goodness of God, who does everything for the best,
that is, for the greatest order, is enough to make all reasonable people
content and to convince us that our contentment should be the greater in
the measure in which we are inclined to follow order and reason" (GP VI
508/L 553).
37. Memoir for Enlightened Persons of Good Intention, §11. As its title suggests,
this piece is designed as an encomium of the life of public virtue. Cf. Mon
§90.
38. Leibniz's hostility to this sort of position comes out clearly in a 1697 letter
to Nicaise: "[T]o wish to sever one's self from one's self and from its good
is to play with words; or if one wishes to go into the effects, it is to fall into
an extravagant quietism, it is to desire a stupid, or rather affected and
simulated inaction in which under the pretext of resignation and the
annihilation of the soul swallowed up in God, one may go to libertinism in
practice, or at least to a hidden speculative atheism, such as that of Aver-
roes and of others more ancient, who held that our soul finally lost itself
in the universal spirit, and that this is perfect union with God" (E 790/W
566). See also his letter to Hansch of 25 July 1707 (D II 1, 225/L 594-5).
39. See PNG §15; Mon §§83-4.
40. See Meditation on the Common Concept of Justice: God makes "himself
known to the human race . . . through the eternal light of reason which
he has given us, and through the wonderful effects of his power, of his
wisdom and of his infinite goodness, which he has placed before our
eyes. . . . This knowledge should make us envisage God as the sovereign
monarch of the universe whose government is the most perfect State that
one can conceive" (Mo 61/R 58).
41. As noted in Chapter 1, of all his perfections, it is God's wisdom which has
the closest relation to this world's status as the best of all possible worlds.
While God's power is required for his creation of any world, and his
goodness determines him to create whichever world involves the greatest
possible goodness, it is his wisdom that leads him to select this world, with
its specific marks of perfection, order, and harmony, as the best world for
creation. Consequently, a metaphysical account of the order and harmo-
ny of created beings is most appropriately described as a "science of
divine wisdom." Cf. GP II 562: "the consideration of divine wisdom in
the order of things, which in my view must be the highest aim of philoso-
phy." See also A I 13, 524; BH 63; GP IV 339; GP VI 236/H 252.
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4
Metaphysics and Its Method
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72 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
with real being in all its forms: the infinite and the finite, the imma-
terial and the material, the substantial and the accidental (I, i, 26). In
both his understanding of the concept of being, and in his account of
the range of beings that constitute the subject matter of metaphysical
inquiry, Leibniz closely follows Suarez's lead. In its most basic sense,
metaphysics is that science which embraces the totality of real or intel-
ligible being.
Although Suarez defines the broad outlines of Leibniz's conception
of metaphysics, there remain significant differences in how they see
these outlines as being filled in. Leibniz does not himself, in philo-
sophical style or temperament, incline toward scholasticism. Even if
some of his disparagement of the "vague notions and verbal distinc-
tions" (RB 431) of the schools can be dismissed as conventional pos-
ing, there is an impatience to his thinking, an eagerness for new
discoveries and results, that leaves him fundamentally opposed to the
mode of scholastic philosophy. Furthermore, while Leibniz praises
Suarez as one of the "deeper scholastics," and claims to have read his
writings already as a youth "as easily as the Milesian fables or ro-
mances,"4 it is likely that he experienced the influence of the Spanish
philosopher largely indirectly, by way of the tradition of Protestant
scholastic philosophy in which he was educated.5 As such what he
received was anything but pure Suarez. Although the Protestant tra-
dition was itself significantly shaped in the seventeenth century
through the reception of the Disputationes Metaphysicae, Suarez
formed only one part of a rich philosophical ferment that included
elements of Lutheran and Calvinist theology, Ramism, Lullism, Neo-
platonism, the secular Aristotelianism of the Italian universities and,
eventually, mechanism. In one way or another, all of these philosophi-
cal movements left their stamp on Leibniz's understanding of meta-
physics.6
Because we are not engaged primarily in a study of the sources of
Leibniz's thought, I shall not attempt to tease out these influences in
any detail. I suggest, however, that as a result of these other forces
Leibniz was led to formulate a conception of metaphysics that ex-
tended Suarez's science of real being in two crucial ways. First, under
the influence of his Jena teacher Erhard Weigel, he embraces the idea
that metaphysics can be given the form of a demonstrative science,
whose propositions can in principle be proved with a certainty rivaling
that of geometry.7 Within this framework, the provision of adequate
definitions for metaphysical concepts becomes all-important.8 Not
only do such definitions serve as marks of consistency, and hence of
real being, but because Leibniz conceives of demonstration itself as
founded on the substitution of definitions, the technique of defini-
tion also holds the key to the construction of demonstrations in meta-
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74 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
I find that most people who take pleasure in the mathematical sciences shrink
away from metaphysics, because they find light in the former but darkness in
the latter. The most important reason for this, I believe, is that the general
concepts which are thought to be very well known to everyone have become
ambiguous and obscure through the carelessness and changeableness of hu-
man thinking and that the definitions commonly given to these concepts are
not even nominal definitions and in fact explain nothing. . . . Yet by a sort of
necessity men continue to use metaphysical terms and, flattering themselves,
believe that they understand the words they have learned to say. It is obvious
that the true and fruitful concepts, not only of substance, but of cause, action,
relation, similarity, and many other general terms as well, are hidden from
popular understanding. (GP IV 468/L 432)
Leibniz's definitive response to this problem, which he elsewhere con-
demns as "the abuse of the way of ideas," is found in his short essay
Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas of 1684. 10 In the Meditations
and later works, he repeatedly stresses the importance of subjecting
our ideas or concepts to analysis, with the aim of resolving them into
their simpler components.11 When carried to completion, such an
analysis would reveal whether a concept involves any internal contra-
diction. If it is shown to be consistent, the analysis provides what
Leibniz calls a "real definition," or a proof of the possibility of what-
ever the concept expresses. He contrasts this sort of definition with a
merely "nominal" definition, which analyzes a concept into other con-
cepts through which it can be conceived, but does not give a proof of
its possibility.12 Real definitions are crucial for metaphysics, he ar-
gues, because only they demonstrate a genuine possibility or, what is
equivalent, the essence of a type of being:
Essence is fundamentally nothing but the possibility of a thing under consid-
eration. Something which is thought possible is expressed by a definition; but
if this definition does not at the same time express this possibility then it is
merely nominal, since in this case we can wonder whether the definition
expresses anything real - that is, possible - until experience comes to our aid
by acquainting us a posteriori with the reality (when the thing actually occurs in
the world). (NE III, iii, 15; RB 293-4)
Leibniz's insistence on the need for real definitions in metaphysics
can only be fully appreciated against the background of a prior as-
sumption he makes about the objects of metaphysical knowledge.
With Suarez, he holds that the primary theoretical notion of meta-
physics is that of "being" [ens], defined as that "whose concept involves
something positive or that which can be conceived by us provided that
what we conceive is possible or involves no contradiction" (GP VII
319/L 363). As this definition suggests, when we characterize some-
thing as a being, we say nothing about its actual existence. To desig-
nate something as a being is to say only that it has a distinctly conceiv-
able (or noncontradictory) concept, and that consequently when we
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76 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
term be "contained in" the concept expressed by its subject term. This
notion of concept containment is best explained in terms of the no-
tion of conceptual analysis. If, as Leibniz believes, the subject and
predicate terms of a proposition always express concepts that are in
principle analyzable into simpler elements, then a proposition will be
true, according to the PSP, just in case the simpler concepts obtained
by analyzing its predicate term are among those obtained by analyzing
its subject term. 18
Leibniz's account of truth raises a number of interesting points. It is
important, first, to recognize the connection he establishes between
this theory and what he describes in the Monadology as the "two great
principles" of his reasoning: the principle of contradiction and the
principle of sufficient reason (GP VI 612/P 184). The principle of
contradiction (or principle of identity) asserts the fundamental axiom
of the logic of truth: Every identical proposition is true and its contra-
dictory false (GP VII 309/P 75).19 The principle of sufficient reason,
on the other hand, is associated with an explanation of the ground or
basis (ratio) of truth. 20 In its informal expression, the principle of
sufficient reason states that "no fact can be real or existing and no
proposition can be true unless there is a sufficient reason why it
should be thus and not otherwise, even though in most cases these
reasons cannot be known to us" (GP VI 612/P 184). In Leibniz's opin-
ion, one of his principal contributions to philosophy is his transforma-
tion of this general demand for reason into the PSP, a condition that
guarantees a reason for the truth of any proposition in the connec-
tion between its subject and predicate terms:
The fundamental principle of reasoning is that there is nothing without a reason;
or, to explain the matter more distinctly, there is no truth for which a reason
does not subsist. The reason for a truth consists in the connection of the
predicate with the subject; that is, the predicate is in the subject. (C 1 I / P 172)
Instead of claiming simply that there is a reason why everything is as it
is and not otherwise, Leibniz's PSP explains each proposition's being
either true or false in terms of the containment or noncontainment of
its predicate term in its subject term. In two ways, this represents a
significant advance. First, the PSP crystallizes an assumption common
to Leibniz and many other metaphysicians about the logical form of
reality: In seeking a reason for a given fact or state of affairs, one is, in
effect, asking for an account of why a particular predicate is truly
asserted of a particular subject. This explanation is provided by the
PSP. The second advantage of the PSP is that, in conjunction with the
doctrine of real definition, it suggests the means for offering both a
complete enumeration and a priori demonstration of every truth as-
sertable of a given subject. This is so because the properties truly
predicable of a subject will be just those contained in its concept,
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78 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
This belief has two main sources. First, given his theory of truth,
metaphysics has access to a well-defined notion of valid inference. In
general, one metaphysical proposition will follow from another if,
and only if, the former can be obtained from the latter via a finite
number of substitutions of definitionally equivalent terms.24 There
can thus be no objection to the claim that metaphysics can in principle
assume the form of a demonstrative science. Second, Leibniz is
among the first to recognize that the unparalleled success of sciences
like geometry is largely due to their development of suitable forms of
symbolic representation, such that valid inferences can be reduced to
mechanical procedures in which there is no latitude for errors of
reasoning. In his view, there is no reason why the same symbolic
method cannot be extended to metaphysics, in which case this science
could acquire a certainty equal to that of geometry.25
It has recently been argued that this picture of Leibniz as an advo-
cate of a deductivist conception of metaphysics is at odds with the
evidence of his best-known writings. In works such as the New System
and the Monadology, it is claimed, we see a Leibniz who is unconcerned
with the demonstrative certainty of his doctrines and instead ad-
vances his views as hypotheses whose test of adequacy is limited to
their capacity to resolve outstanding metaphysical problems.26
Though consistent with the evidence of most of his published writ-
ings, this revisionist reading goes too far in suggesting that Leibniz
eventually abandons the view that metaphysics can, and should, take
the form of a demonstrative science. Such a reading fails to tally with
his own explicit description of such works as the New System, as well as
unpublished essays including the Monadology and the Principles of Na-
ture and of Grace, as popular presentations of his doctrines, designed
to suit the needs of general audiences.27 Whether he in fact remained
unable to offer convincing demonstrations of his most important
metaphysical doctrines, or whether he merely felt it prudent to pre-
sent them as hypotheses that could easily be withdrawn in the face of
hostile criticism, the fact remains that until the end of his life Leibniz
continued to express the belief that his central doctrines could be
advanced in the form of demonstrations.28
Throughout Leibniz's career, his underlying conception of meta-
physics is that of a scientia, or a system of demonstrative knowledge.
Metaphysics is a science that potentially yields results possessing the
certainty of geometrical theorems. Its truths are demonstrable in ex-
actly the same way, provided that the formal method which has served
so well in mathematics can be extended to this higher science. Fur-
thermore, Leibniz clearly takes himself to have had some success in
this regard. Writings from the decade leading up to the composition
of the Discourse on Metaphysics reveal the extent to which he was ab-
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METAPHYSICS AND ITS METHOD 79
sorbed with the work of analyzing and defining the concepts required
for the demonstration of metaphysical truths. 29 By the time of the
New Essays, twenty years later, he could confidently report that he
hardly needed to think about such matters anymore. With the funda-
mental notions of metaphysics satisfactorily defined, that science
could be rendered as solidly demonstrative as geometry.30
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METAPHYSICS AND ITS METHOD 8l
standing, it does not follow that every thought is also an act of under-
standing:
We are aware of many things, within ourselves, which we do not under-
stand. . . . "[Understanding" in my sense is what in Latin is called intellectus,
and the exercise of this faculty is called "intellection," which is a distinct
perception combined with a faculty of reflection, which the beasts do not
have. Any perception which is combined with this faculty is a thought, and I
do not allow thought to beasts any more than I do understanding. So one can
say that intellection occurs when the thought is distinct. (NE II, xxi, 5; RB
173)
For human beings endowed with a faculty of reflection (but not for
animals, which lack this faculty) there can be both confused thoughts
and distinct thoughts, depending on the type of perception reflected
upon. Intellection presupposes the combination of reflection and dis-
tinct perception.
Here, if anywhere, we might seem to find support for the charge
that Leibniz confounds the sensory and the intellectual. If intellection
is equated with the having of distinct perceptions (of which we are
reflectively aware), and sensation with the having of confused percep-
tions, then is he not clearly guilty of turning the distinction between
the two into a purely formal or logical one? That is, does he not
support the position that sensations are just "confused thoughts," and
that distinct thoughts differ from confused thoughts in degree rather
than in kind? The evidence in favor of this conclusion seems strong.
Leibniz himself writes: "It has been believed that confused thoughts
differ toto genere from distinct ones; in fact, however, they are merely
less distinct and less developed, by virtue of their multiplicity" (GP IV
563)-40
Despite what Leibniz says here, there is reason to believe that sensa-
tions and thoughts - both confused and distinct - must differ for him
in both origin and kind. Confused perceptions arise as a result of a
finite creature's representation of the infinite.41 As we have seen,
what is confused about these perceptions is that they are composed of
an infinity of minute perceptions, the totality of which we are unable
to discern individually. Some of these perceptions, to be sure, are
more distinct than others. A sensation, he says, is a perception that is
"distinguished and heightened," and "accompanied by memory — a
perception, to wit, of which a certain echo long remains to make itself
heard on occasion" (GP VI 599/P 196—7). Within the domain of the
sensory, then, we can establish a continuous scale of distinctness,
based on the degree to which sensations faithfully convey the infinite
detail of the universe. Yet even the most distinct sensory perceptions
are still inherently confused, since like all representations of the uni-
verse they involve infinity.
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of the nature of our mind and of these innate ideas, and there is no reason to
look for them outside oneself. (NE, Preface; RB 84)52
If we were "little Gods," we might be blessed with a life that con-
sisted of nothing but pure thought, a life spent contemplating the
essences of things and the eternal truths of reason. Leibniz insists,
however, that intellection wholly divorced from sensation is impossi-
ble for human beings:
The situation is that our [specifically human] needs have forced us to aban-
don the natural order of ideas, for that order would be common to angels and
men and to intelligences in general, and would be the one for us to follow if
we had no concern for our own interests. However, we have had to hold fast to
the order which was provided by the incidents and accidents to which our
species is subject; this order represents the history of our discoveries, as it
were, rather than the origin of notions. (NE II, i, 5; RB 276)33
As finite minds, our reflections necessarily begin with thoughts in
which the sensory and intellectual are intermingled. We arrive at pure
intellectual ideas by abstracting from thought those constants which
reflect the mind's own underlying nature and properties. At this
point, metaphysics reenters the picture. Distinct ideas of the under-
standing, expressing the primary types of being, are the subject mat-
ter of metaphysics. It is thus the task of this science to extract ideas of
substance, unity, cause, and the like from thought, and to subject
them to analysis, with the aim of providing adequate definitions of
them. 54
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86 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
confused, and that insofar as they are distinct they express the es-
sence or reality of existing things: "Before everything in the mind
there seems to occur the matter of some positive concept or reality or
essence, in which agrees everything at all which is perceived by us.
And in this way we call something a being [ens], thing [res], or subject"
(LH IV 7C Bi. 105 [V 1300]). Perceived or apparent things qualify as
instances of being, Leibniz maintains, provided we can understand
them as having an intelligible essence. When we experience the move-
ments and actions of bodies, for example, we identify them as in-
stances of matter and ascribe to them certain essential properties. In
this case, the mind does not simply isolate the distinct ideas of the
intellect from the confused ideas of sense; instead, it applies the for-
mer in the interpretation of sense experience in order to identify the
intelligible content expressed within it.55
We can best illustrate this approach by looking more closely at Leib-
niz's analysis of corporeal properties. He suggests that the sensible
properties of bodies can be divided into two types: the confused and
the prima facie distinct or intelligible.56 "Confused attributes," he
writes, "are those which are indeed composite in themselves . . . but
are simple to the senses and whose definition therefore cannot be
explained" (V 636/L 285). Examples of such attributes are so-called
secondary qualities, such as heat, color, and taste. The distinct attri-
butes of body, on the other hand, are those subject to definition, or
resolvable into simpler properties, through which they can be under-
stood.57 These again can be divided into those (like fusability) resolv-
able only into confused attributes (heat), and those (like rectilinear
motion) resolvable into other distinct attributes (distance and time) (V
636/L 285—6).58 To the last kind of attribute — exemplified by the
mechanical properties of size, shape, and motion — Leibniz assigns a
special importance. What is unique about mechanical properties is
that of all the sensible properties of bodies, they alone are conceivable
entirely in terms of distinct ideas: notably, mathematical notions of
order and quantity, which are innate to the mind. For this reason,
mechanical descriptions offer both a more adequate understanding
of material things (an understanding in terms of essence) and one
that lends itself more readily to definition and demonstration.59
Leibniz is thus in agreement with the main current of seventeenth-
century natural philosophy in holding that the phenomena of material
things can only be satisfactorily explained in terms of the mechanical
properties of size, shape, and motion.60 Given this commitment, he
also confronts the central methodological question for seventeenth-
century mechanists: how to give mechanical explanations of phenome-
na (e.g., evaporation or gravitation) that are initially known to us only
in a confused way through sense perception. As we have seen, he
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METAPHYSICS AND ITS METHOD 87
denies that we can move directly from confused ideas to distinct ideas
via conceptual analysis; in characterizing an idea as "confused" this is
precisely what is ruled out. How, then, is an investigation of such
phenomena to proceed? Leibniz's answer is the conventional one: by
doing experiments that help to suggest distinct ideas that are closely
correlated with our confused ideas of a phenomenon and explain its
salient features. The success of natural science in understanding the
spectrum of colors, for example, depends on our establishing a cor-
relation between our ideas of sensory qualities and ideas graspable by
the intellect - those of different wavelengths of light. "This method,"
he comments, "provides a starting point for analysis" (NE IV, ii, 16; RB
382-3). 61
Despite this broad ground of agreement with mechanists, Leibniz
parts company with their position at a crucial point. Although he
accepts their assumption that material phenomena can be adequately
explained only in terms of the mechanical properties of size, shape,
and motion, he rejects their further conclusion that these notions
provide us with an accurate knowledge of reality. His insistence on this
point stems from a combination of claims concerning, on the one
hand, the infinite complexity of matter and, on the other, the limited
cognitive capacity of human minds. Although Leibniz's doctrine of
matter falls outside our present concerns, its intimate relation to his
account of the possibilities of human knowledge requires that we
touch on it briefly. For a variety of reasons connected with his under-
standing of divine wisdom, Leibniz maintains that all existing matter
is divided into parts in infinitum.62 As a consequence, he argues, it is
impossible for any finite mind to comprehend fully the character of a
particular material thing.63 In conceiving of a body as a being with a
determinate size, shape and motion, we necessarily overlook its infi-
nite complexity and assume precise limits or bounds where none in
fact exist: "our senses do not recognize and our understanding con-
ceals an infinity of little inequalities" (GP VII 563). The mechanical
properties we assign to material things are thus only prima facie dis-
tinct; in common with all properties apprehended through sense,
they have something confused about them: "[EJxtension, figure and
motion include something imaginary and apparent; and although
one conceives of them more distinctly than color or heat, nevertheless
when one pushes the analysis as far as I have done, one finds that
these notions are still somewhat confused" (GP I 391-2). 64
Although Leibniz himself does not always highlight it, an important
distinction should be noted between the mechanical properties of bod-
ies and the distinct ideas we employ in conceiving of these properties.
We have seen that Leibniz grants rational minds access to a variety of
distinct intellectual ideas, among which are the mathematical notions
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In the preceding few pages we jumped far ahead in our presen-
tation of Leibniz's philosophy in order to give a full account of his
conception of metaphysics. This chapter has uncovered grounds for
attributing to Leibniz a twofold understanding of the method of
metaphysics. On the one hand, metaphysics is driven by the demand
to provide adequate definitions of the intelligible concepts of the
understanding: concepts such as substance and cause, which express
the primary categories of being. On the other hand, it is also charged
with interpreting sensory phenomena or rendering them intelligible
as the appearances of reality. In this context, it is the method of meta-
physics to apply distinct concepts of the understanding in an analysis
of the content of sensory experience. Part III looks in detail at the
results Leibniz achieves using this latter method. In the next two
chapters, we survey his treatment of the concepts of the understanding.
Notes
1. Cf. C 348.
2. Ad Christophori Stegmanni Metaphysicam Unitariorum, ca. 1708 (LH IV I 9,
Bl. 1-7). The original text is found in Jolley 1975, 179; the translation is
quoted from Jolley 1984, 196.
3. Concerning Suarez's accomplishment, see Lohr 1988. For a discussion of
some of the subtleties of his doctrine of being, see Doyle 1967. On the
relationship of Leibniz to Suarez, see Robinet, 1981.
4. RB431; P G I 4, 168.
5. For an example of this indirect influence, see his marginalia to Daniel
Stahl's 1655 Compendium Metaphysicae (A VI 1, 21-41). On Stahl, see Pe-
tersen 1921, 292-3. The impact of Suarez's Disputationes Metaphysicae on
the development of Protestant scholastic philosophy has been well docu-
mented. See Beck (1969, 123, 516-7) and Lohr (1988, 620-38), both of
whom give extensive references to the earlier literature.
6. On the complexity of the Protestant intellectual background, see Beck
1969, chaps. 6—9; concerning its impact on Leibniz, see Kabitz 1909.
7. On the influence of Weigel, see Kabitz 1909, 10-12; Moll 1978; Aiton
1985, 15—16. Cf. Projet etEssais . . . pour avancer Vart d'inventer: "There is a
very clever professor at Jena named Weigel who has published a fine
work entitled Analysis Euclidea [Analysis Aristotelica ex Euclide restituta,
1658], in which there are many beautiful ideas for perfecting logic and
for giving demonstrations in philosophy" (C 179).
8. As we shall see in Chapter 5, Leibniz's theory of definition is also impor-
tantly influenced by the currents of Ramist and Lullist thinking, which
pervade early-seventeenth-century German philosophy.
9. See his letter to Bourguet of 22 March 1714: "It is true, Sir, that the
excellent modern authors of the Art of Thinking, of The Search After Truth,
and of the Essay Concerning [Human] Understanding are not inclined to fix
their ideas through definitions; in this they have followed too closely the
example of M. Descartes, who scorned the definition of familiar terms
which everyone, in his view, understands, and which are indeed ordi-
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24. Cf. Hacking 1973. According to the PSP, a proposition asserting the
dependence of two types of being will be true just in case the concept of
one is contained in the concept of the other. If so, then any proposition
obtained from a true proposition by replacing every instance of a given
concept with a definitionally equivalent concept will also be true.
25. This theme begins to appear prominently in Leibniz's correspondence
during his Paris period (1672—76), although there are already signs of it
in On the Art of Combinations. In 1677, he writes to Galloys: "If we had [the
characteristic] such as I imagine it, we could reason in metaphysics and in
ethics more or less as in geometry and analysis, since the characters would
fix our vague and ephemeral thoughts in these matters, in which the
imagination offers us no help except by means of characters" (A II 1,
380—1). See also his letters to Tschirnhaus (May 1678; GM IV 461),
Foucher (1687; GP I 390-1), and Arnauld (4/14 January 1688; GP II
134/M 168). This idea continued to occupy Leibniz until the end of his
life, as is testified by a letter to Biber from March 1716: "My great histori-
cal work prevents me from carrying out the idea I have of displaying
philosophy in the form of demonstrations . . . for I see that it is possible
to invent a general characteristic, which could do in all inquiries capable
of certainty what algebra does in mathematics" (BB 15-16). For more on
this topic, see Couturat 1901, Chap. 4; Rutherford 1995a.
26. S. Brown 1984, 63. For a reply to this reading, which follows somewhat
different lines from my own, see Parkinson 1990.
27. In 1704, he writes to Fontenelle: "The true metaphysics or philosophy, if
you will, appears to me no less important than geometry, especially if
there is a way of also introducing into it demonstrations, which until now
have been unduly banished from it, along with the calculus that will be
necessary in order to give them all the entry they need. However, it is
necessary to prepare readers for this through exoteric writings. The
journals have served me until now" (F 234). Following the publication of
the New System in 1695, Leibniz wrote a number of letters in which he
stresses this point. Cf. A I 12, 625—6, 751; A I 13, 554-5, 657; NE'II,
xxix, 12 (RB 260—1); and his letter to Thomas Burnett of 14 December
1705, quoted in note 30.
28. Leibniz's hesitation on this point never goes deeper than the cautious
remark that "what is not yet ready to be defended by rigorous demonstra-
tion will meanwhile commend itself as a hypothesis which is clear and
beautifully consistent with itself and with the phenomena" (1699; GP II
168/L 515). During the latter part of his life, his letters are full of com-
plaints about his lack of time due to other burdensome duties — in partic-
ular, his work on the history of the House of Brunswick-Luneberg. Less
than two years after the publication of the New System, he writes to Gilles
Des Billettes: "I still hope to explain demonstratively the nature and
properties of substance in general, and in particular of souls. I have
already begun to propose something in journals in the form of a hypothe-
sis, but I believe that I have said nothing about it that might not be
demonstrated" (A I 13, 657). See also his letters to Bossuet (1694; A I 10,
143), De Voider (1706; GP II 282/L 539), Bourguet (1714; GP III 569),
and Remond (1714; GP III 605/L 654). On Leibniz's many time-
consuming "distractions," see Couturat 1901, 574-6.
29. These works are discussed in Chapter 5.
30. During the composition of the New Essays, he remarked to Jacquelot:
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"You will perhaps be surprised, Sir, to see me write that I have been
working on it as if on a work which demands no attention. But this is
because I ruled decisively on these general philosophical matters a long
time ago, in a way that I believe is demonstrative or not far from it, with
the result that I have hardly any need of new meditations on them" (GP
III 474). Cf. his letters to Thomas Burnett of 8/18 May 1697 (GP II 205),
and 14 December 1705: "I never write anything in philosophy that I do
not treat by definitions and axioms, although I do not always give it that
mathematical air which repels people, for it is necessary to speak famil-
iarly in order to be read by ordinary persons. . . . I would even dare to
say that I have established sufficiently in all matters of thought what is
most fundamental to them, and that I no longer have any need to reason
about them. Thus what you wish that I should do was already done a long
time ago. I have quite satisfied myself on nearly all general matters of
reasoning" (GP III 302-3).
31. Bennett 1974, 12.
32. See McRae 1976, 126-9; M. Wilson 1977; Parkinson 1982; C. Wilson
1989, 315—18. I take the main target of Kant's criticism of Leibniz to be
the thesis that appearances are confused representations of things in
themselves, and that conceptual analysis is sufficient to reveal the
grounding of the former in the latter (see Critique of Pure Reason, A 264/B
320; A 270—I/B 326—7). As discussed later in this chapter, and at greater
length in Chapters 8 and 9, a version of this thesis can be found in
Leibniz's writings. This is not to say, however, that he is guilty of every
charge brought against him. According to Kant, "The philosophy of
Leibniz and Wolff, in . . . treating the difference between the sensible and
the intelligible as merely logical, has given a completely wrong direction
to all investigations into the nature and origin of our knowledge. . . .
[This difference] does not merely concern their form, as being either
clear or confused. It concerns their origin and content" (A 44/B 61-2).
Although there is, I think, a way of reading this as an accurate diagnosis
of Leibniz's "error," some commentators have exaggerated the sense in
which there is a merely "logical" or "formal" difference between the
sensible and the intelligible, taking this to imply that Leibniz identifies
sensations with confused thoughts or concepts (see note 44).
33. As we saw in Chapter 2, this claim is integral to the doctrine of universal
harmony. Given their capacity for perception and activity, Leibniz re-
gards all substances as essentially soullike, although they need not possess
either consciousness or rationality.
34. Cf. NE II, ix, 1 (RB 134); II, xix, 4 (RB 161-2).
35. Cf. NE II, i, 15 (RB 115-16).
36. Conversely, "confusion is when several things are present, but there is no
way of distinguishing one from another" (C 535/P 146).
37. "In each created monad only a part [of the universe] is expressed dis-
tinctly which is greater or smaller according to whether the soul is more
or less excellent, and all the rest which is infinite is only expressed con-
fusedly" (GP IV 553). Cf. GP IV 546, 548-9; PNG §13.
38. The latter term raises difficulties, which are discussed at length in
Kulstad 1991. Many have assumed that Leibniz employs the term "apper-
ception" to designate that feature of mentality (consciousness, reflection,
reason) which distinguishes human and higher minds from animal souls.
Kulstad, however, plausibly suggests that Leibniz may, in fact, distinguish
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96 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
the object of thought it can exist before and after the thoughts" (NE II, i,
1; RB 109). Cf. DM §26; NE II, xxi, 35 (RB 186).
46. See NE Preface (RB 52); I, i, 26 (RB 86). We might wonder about the
relationship between the claim that ideas are the "inner objects of
thought" and the claim that ideas are dispositions to have certain types of
thoughts. If Leibniz intended us to see a strict identity here, we would
presumably have to say that to entertain an idea of x is to be aware of one's
disposition to think of x. But this cannot be right. In entertaining an idea
of x, I actualize my disposition to think of x. The object of the resulting
thought is not the disposition but x itself. I conclude that Leibniz is
speaking loosely when he refers to ideas as "inner objects of thought,"
and that what he really means is that certain properties of the soul serve
as the objects of lasting dispositions to think of (or reflect on) those
properties. Thus, given an innate capacity for reflection, or for the for-
mation of thoughts, it is the soul that serves as "its own immediate inner
object" (NE II, i; RB 109). We find this position expressed most fully in
the preface to the New Essays, in a passage quoted below (RB 51-2). The
account I sketch here is in broad agreement with the more careful treat-
ment of Kulstad (1991, chap. 4). For a contrasting view, see Jolley (1990),
who argues that Leibniz's descriptions of ideas as both dispositions for
thought and the products of reflection "are in tension - even in contra-
diction - with each other" (185).
47. Cf. NE II, xxix, 4 (RB 255-6).
48. In general, a distinct idea can be defined through an equation relating it
to a set of simpler component ideas, which are jointly sufficient condi-
tions for it. Cf. GP III 248: "Whether one says ideas or notions, whether
one says distinct ideas or definitions (at least when the idea is not abso-
lutely primitive), it is all the same thing."
49. See NE I, i, 11 (RB 81); II, i, 23 (RB 119); IV, ii, 16 (RB 382); IV, iv, 5 (RB
382) IV, iv, 5 (RB 392).
50. Cf. NE II, i, 2 (RB 110-11).
51. As suggested in note 46, I assume that Leibniz does not defend a "store-
house" model of ideas, whereby the notions of substance, action, etc., are
separate objects in the mind, but that instead he regards intellectual ideas
as arising from a mind's capacity to reflect on its own properties and
actions. We find this position expressed succinctly in a 1706 letter to
Burnett: "I have noticed that M. Locke has not investigated deeply
enough the origin of necessary truths, which do not depend on the
senses, or experience, or facts, but on the consideration of the nature of
our soul, which is a being, a substance, having unity, identity, action,
passion, duration, etc. One need not be surprised if these ideas and the
truths which depend on them are found in us, although reflections may
be needed in order to apperceive them and it may sometimes be neces-
sary that experiences excite our reflection or attention, for us to take note
of what our nature furnishes us with" (GP III 307-8). Cf. NE, Preface
(RB 51-2); I, i, 11 (RB 81); I, i, 23 (RB 85); I, iii, 18 (RB 105).
52. This is obviously an important claim: Leibniz believes that the nature of
our soul is such that we can extract from it knowledge that pertains to all
other possibilities of existence, including that of God (cf. Mon §30). Rele-
vant to understanding this is his view, discussed in Chapter 2, that variety
is only realized at a fundamental level through the varying of degrees of
perfection, and that the perfections of created things are derived as
limitations of the supreme perfections of God. Cf. Jolley 1990, 178.
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METAPHYSICS AND ITS METHOD 97
53. Cf. NE II, xxi, 73, where Leibniz says that the "analytic order" is not the
"usual order in which events prompt us to think of these ideas. The
senses provide us with materials for reflections: we could not think even
about thought if we did not think about something else, i.e. about the
particular facts which the senses provide" (RB 212). See also GP IV 563.
54. Cf. NE III, v, 3: "What we are concerned with when we separate off the
ideal world from the existent world [is the very form or possibility of
thoughts]. The real existence of beings which are not necessary is a mat-
ter of fact or of history, while the knowledge of possibilities and necessi-
ties (the necessary being that whose opposite is not possible) is what makes
up the demonstrative sciences" (RB 301).
55. In a 1696 letter to Chauvin, Leibniz writes: "I hold that there is thus
always something in us that corresponds to the ideas which are in God,
and to the phenomena which occur in bodies" (A I 13, 232).
56. I add the proviso "prima facie" distinct, since it will turn out that these
attributes are themselves ultimately the products of confused perception.
In an early survey of physical theory, we read: "We shall therefore deal
with body and its qualities — both the intelligible, which we conceive
distinctly, and the sensible, which we perceive confusedly" (Ge 110).
57. The same notion of distinctness is at work here as in Leibniz's account of
ideas. The mark of a distinct idea or property is the possibility of its
definition, or resolution into simpler components.
58. Thus, as Leibniz notes in DM §24, "distinct knowledge has degrees, for
ordinarily the notions that enter into the definition are themselves in
need of definition and are known only confusedly" (Le 69/AG 56).
59. Cf. NE II, v: "These ideas which are said to come from more than one
sense — such as those of space, figure, motion, rest - come rather from
the common sense, that is, from the mind itself; for they are ideas of the
pure understanding (though ones which relate to the external world and
which the senses make us perceive), and so they admit of definitions and
of demonstrations" (RB 128).
60. Cf. V 640/L 288; GP VII 337/AG 312.
61. Cf. NE II, ii, 1 (RB 120).
62. Leibniz makes the strong claim that matter is actually infinitely divided
and not simply infinitely divisible: "I hold that matter is actually frag-
mented into parts smaller than any given, or that there is no part of
matter that is not actually subdivided into others, exercising different
motions" (GP II 305). He offers several arguments on behalf of this
thesis. Most basically, he appeals directly to divine wisdom, which seeks to
maximize both order and variety: "In order to conceive better the actual
division of matter to infinity and the exclusion from it of all exact and
undetermined continuity, it is necessary to consider that God has already
produced as much order and variety as it was possible to introduce so far"
(GP VII 562—3). Relatedly, he refers the infinite division of matter to the
principle of continuity, which is in turn ascribed to divine wisdom (NE,
Preface; RB 59-60). Finally, Leibniz cites the want of a sufficient reason
for actual matter not to be divided to infinity (GP III 500, 519-20).
63. Leibniz contrasts this situation with what would be the case were the
world composed of perfectly hard and indivisible Democritean atoms: "If
the world were in fact an aggregate of atoms, it could be accurately known
through and through by a finite mind that was sufficiently elevated" (GP
II 409). In this case, any body could be analyzed into a finite number of
atomic parts, each with a determinate position in space and time, and the
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5
The Categories of Thought and Being
In a series of writings from the late 1670s and the 1680s, we encoun-
ter a neglected aspect of Leibniz's views concerning ontology and
method. The principal theme of these works is the definition and
classification of the fundamental categories of thought and being. In
both form and content, these writings suggest a throwback to an ear-
lier philosophical generation. In them Leibniz's model is less the em-
pirically and mathematically inspired method of Descartes, Hobbes,
or Spinoza than the "tables of division" and classificatory "systems" of
a group of almost forgotten late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-
century German thinkers, whose outlook is characterized by an eclec-
tic blend of Aristotelian, Ramist, and Semi-Ramist thinking.1 The
history of this movement and its influence on Leibniz lies outside the
scope of the present study. My concern in what follows will be solely
with articulating what may be interpreted as its residue in a specific
collection of Leibnizian texts. Using this approach, I hope to give
further content to the conception of metaphysics outlined in Chapter
4, and at the same time to illuminate several of Leibniz's most distinc-
tive ontological commitments: his much discussed nominalism, his
distinction between substantial and nonsubstantial being, and his
complete concept theory of substance.
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1OO FIRST P H I L O S O P H Y
makes all the more pressing the question of the route by which Leib-
niz arrived at the novel features of these works. Do his activities dur-
ing the decade 1676—86 help to explain their appearance, or are they
to be interpreted simply as the inspiration of a snowy week in the
Harz?2
Since the pioneering study of Couturat (1901) the evidence has
been available to show that the first answer is surely the right one. The
voluminous writings composed by Leibniz during his first years in
Hanover — most of them unedited until this century, some until this
decade - offer considerable insight into the development of his later
doctrines. The relationship between these writings and Leibniz's ma-
ture philosophy is by no means simple. The projects pursued with
greatest intensity in these writings — the "encyclopedia," the "general
science," the "universal characteristic" — receive relatively little atten-
tion in his later corpus.3 Moreover, there is little obvious continuity
between the themes of these writings and those of his more familiar
metaphysical works. Be this as it may, I believe that Leibniz's ambi-
tious intellectual projects of the decade 1676-86 merit close atten-
tion, both for their own sake and for the light they shed on his later
philosophy.
One idea that continues to inspire Leibniz from his student days
through his years in Hanover is that of pansophia, or universal knowl-
edge. The term pansophia derives from Jan Amos Comenius, a Czech
philosopher and reformer who was a student of J. H. Alsted at Her-
born and exerted a powerful influence on the young Leibniz.4 The
idea of universal knowledge itself, however, has a much longer history,
extending back through the hermetic movement of the Renaissance
and late Middle Ages to the Ars Magna of the fourteenth-century
Catalan philosopher Ramon Lull, and ultimately to the Kabbalah of
the Jewish mystical tradition. From these predecessors, Leibniz ex-
tracted a fundamental conviction: All knowledge, in any domain, can
be regarded as the result of combinations of certain primitive con-
cepts or ideas. Hence, if we could arrive at a complete enumeration of
these primitives, we would be able to derive in a systematic manner all
possible truths knowable by the human mind. We would, in short,
possess universal knowledge.5
To the modern reader, pansophia can only seem a vague and Uto-
pian notion. It is, since the rise of modern empirical science, simply
not the way we conceive of the acquisition of knowledge.6 Working on
the cusp of the modern period, Leibniz stands in a complicated rela-
tionship to this idea. On the one hand, he is far more open to its
possibility than near contemporaries such as Descartes or Locke. At
the same time, he refines the idea to such a degree, trying to make it
precise and productive in a way earlier thinkers had not, that he, too,
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1O2 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
done, and instead of turning in a small field like those animals that are
attached by the feet, we will go forward and push back our frontiers. (GP VII
158)
The only hesitation Leibniz expresses concerning the possibility of
this "general inventory" of our knowledge rests on a practical prob-
lem. Because it would be difficult for any one person to execute the
complete plan, "we must believe that it will only be little by little, in
various stages or by the labor of many, that we will arrive at the
demonstrative elements of all human knowledge" (GP VII 168). In
the interim, he suggests, it will be necessary to employ a substitute for
this "great method." Rather than wait until a complete inventory of
human knowledge is achieved, we must examine each science to dis-
cover its "principles of invention, which when combined with some
higher science, or rather the general science or art of invention, can
suffice to deduce all the rest from them, or at least the most useful
truths, without needing to burden the mind with too many rules" (GP
VII 168). What Leibniz here describes as a "substitute" for the ency-
clopedia can also be seen as the true basis for its realization, for it is an
essential part of his plan for the encyclopedia that a rigorous order be
observed throughout, such that we should be led infallibly from the
first principles of any science to its most complex theorems. The
logical order that is integral to the encyclopedia indicates the critical
role of the general science, which supplies the basic rules of reasoning
for any subject matter. This is another point that Leibniz stresses in
the Precepts:
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THOUGHT AND BEING IO3
being, the thing and its mode, and substance and accident. It does not make
much difference how you divide the sciences, for they are one continuous
body, like the ocean. (C 511-12/P 5-6)
In one way or another, Leibniz sees all of these disciplines, each of
which has a complex history in his own thought and in the Renais-
sance literature on method, as contributing to the general science.
Foremost among them is the "art of invention," which, along with the
"art of demonstration," he often simply identifies with the general
science.12 No less significant, however, is the "art of characters or
symbols," for in Leibniz's view it is only possible to establish rigorous
logical relations among the propositions of our knowledge when
these have been formalized in a mechanical calculus. Thus, again, he
seems prepared almost to identify his universal characteristic, or spe-
cieuse generate, with the general science itself: "This characteristic art,
whose idea I have conceived, would contain the true organon of a
general science of everything that is subject to human reasoning,
clothed in the uninterrupted demonstrations of an evident calculus"
(GP VII 205).13
The promise of the encyclopedia to offer a source of universal
knowledge rests, in Leibniz's view, on our ability to arrive at the dem-
onstrative elements of human knowledge: a set of basic concepts and
principles from which all other knowledge can be derived. In the
Introduction to a Secret Encyclopedia, he indicates two methods for estab-
lishing these elements. The first rests on the possibility, already en-
countered, of a reduction of all concepts to primitive notions. As we
have seen, the general science has for its object whatever is "univer-
sally thinkable," excluding only names which lack associated notions,
such as the scholastic nonsense word "Blitiri" (C 512/P 6). That which
is "universally thinkable," however, can be divided into the simple and
the complex. What is simple is called a "notion" or "concept"; what is
complex involves a combination of concepts related in a proposition,
that is, an affirmation or negation. Simple concepts can further be
divided into the clear and the obscure, the distinct and the confused,
the adequate and the inadequate, and the primitive and the deriva-
tive. For our present purposes, the last of these distinctions is the
most important. According to Leibniz, "a concept is primitive when it
cannot be analyzed into others; that is, when the thing has no marks,
but is its own sign" (C 513/P 7). Such a concept, he goes on to argue,
"can only be of that thing which is conceived through itself, namely,
the supreme substance or God." Hence, it follows that all concepts are
ultimately derived from primitive concepts that define the absolute
nature of God:
We can have no derivative concepts except by the aid of a primitive concept,
so that in reality nothing exists in things except through the influence of God,
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and nothing is thought in the mind except through the idea of God, even
though we do not understand distinctly enough the way in which the natures
of thingsflowfrom God, nor the ideas of things from the idea of God. This
would constitute ultimate analysis, i.e. the adequate knowledge of all things
through their cause. (C 513/P 7)
Just as all perfection or reality is ultimately derived from God, whence
through limitation it determines the natures of created things, so all
ideas are ultimately derived from the "idea of God," which is to say
God's understanding of his own perfections.14
Although the divine nature is thus characterized by Leibniz as the
source of all thinkables, he is generally pessimistic that anything like
"ultimate analysis" is available to human beings: "An analysis of con-
cepts by which we are enabled to arrive at primitive notions, i.e. at
those which are conceived through themselves, does not seem to be in
the power of man" (C 514/P 8).15 It is against the background of this
constraint on the cognitive power of finite minds that we can best
appreciate the second method Leibniz pursues for arriving at the
elements of human knowledge. If it does not lie within our power to
effect an analysis of concepts all the way back to their primitive com-
ponents, we can nevertheless attempt an exhaustive survey of the
possibilities of human thought by determining the basic categories
under which all concepts must fall. Our method will begin with a
catalogue of the most general concepts or categories, each of which
will in turn be divided into subcategories, with the process of division
being repeated until we arrive at the most specific concepts. In this
way, we should eventually be able to establish the totality of all think-
ables starting from a catalogue of summa genera, which would form "a
kind of alphabet of human thoughts" (GP VII 292/P 10).16 Two
points are worth noting about this method. First, in its essentials it is
closely related to the method pursued by the Ramist and Semi-Ramist
thinkers whom Leibniz acknowledges as having exerted an important
influence on him.17 Second, within Leibniz's own thought, we can see
the method of categorical analysis as an attempt to preserve some
semblance of the idea of universal knowledge given the failure of
ultimate analysis. If, as Leibniz allows, it is impossible for human
beings to carry out an analysis of all concepts into their simplest com-
ponents — the primary attributes of God — we can nevertheless at-
tempt to survey the entire range of human cognition through the
successive division of the fundamental categories of thought.
In one piece from the period, Leibniz suggests the following cata-
logue of basic categories:
Everything which we think is for the most part contained in the following.
Generally: Reality, Variety, Consequence, Order, Change. In a middle position,
the modes of discriminating things: Quality, Quantity and Position. Specifi-
cally, the discriminations themselves: Extension, Sensible Quality, Thought.
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THOUGHT AND BEING 107
23
7B, 2 Bl. 34-5 [V 1208]). This allows him to escape the conclusion
that nonbeing can be classified as a positive term. "The positive" he
writes in this study, "is that which does not imply non-A" This is
crucial, for he goes on to say that the positive "coincides with that
which Aristotle called entelechy or act, and others perfection or real-
ity. Such notions are being, thinking, acting. Such are all the attributes
of God, none of which involves any limitation, and thus they are
capable of infinite degrees" (V 1208). By excluding nonbeing from the
category of positive terms, Leibniz avoids the unacceptable conclusion
that nonbeing is a property of God.
In his most careful development of the categories, Leibniz seems
committed to preserving the identification of possible and being; and
he relates both of these, as we have seen, to a ground in the divine
nature. Given this identification, we can from this point on regard
Leibniz's schema as having a twofold purpose. Subsequent stages in
the analysis can be understood to express both a division of concepts
and a division of types of being, that is, those real possibilities of
existence whose essences are expressed by distinctly conceivable con-
cepts.24
Being [ens] is either concrete or abstract. A concretum is that which at the same
time involves a subject; an abstractum is that which is otherwise. Thus, God,
man, body, circle, hour, hot, acting are concreta, which are not understood to be in
something else as though in a subject. For although the shape of a circle is in a
bronze circle as though in a subject, nevertheless a circle is not in a subject;
and acting already involves a subject, for it is a thing [res] to which action is
attributed. Divinity, magnitude, heat, state, action are abstracta.
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THOUGHT AND BEING log
cance of substantival and adjectival concreta: for any adjectivum, he
says, there will be some "explicit or suppressed" substantival term
signifying an ens. In a "rational language," furthermore, there would
be no need to mark the distinction, since every concretum would be
represented by a combination of an adjectivum and the term ens or res
(C 289, 433; SF 479).
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114 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
conditions, the dry ness of the wood makes the production of the heat
"easier."
The biggest puzzle about this sequence of definitions is [D7] and
[D8]. In another study, Leibniz substitutes for these two definitions,
the following:
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THOUGHT AND BEING 115
a producens which does not absolutely bring about an effect, but does so only
under some hypothesis, especially if this hypothesis is only negative, i.e., if
nothing impedes it. Thus, whoever impels is the cause of impelled motion, if
nothing resists. For he acts in such a way that from this an effect follows,
if nothing prevents it. But if, in this case, the outcome is in fact the effect, it is
necessary also that nothing should have prevented it, and thus that the out-
come would have been the effect. . . . From this it is clear that every producens
is a cause, but that not every cause merits being called a producens, as for
example, an instrument, an aid, an occasion, and similar things. If we observe
common usage, a cause is that which contributes [confert] much. (V 327)37
According to Leibniz, a cause is a factor that contributes significantly
to an actual effect by being a sufficient condition for something that
is, under a certain hypothesis, a necessary condition for the occur-
rence of the effect.38 Implicit in this definition is a recognition of the
counterfactual character of causal relations. Thus, he suggests in the
above passage, if X is a cause of some Y that in fact occurs, it must also
be true that given X and any other requisites, Y would occur provided
that nothing prevented it. That is, Y succeeds X not merely acciden-
tally but through some contribution that X makes to its existence.
The evidence presented in the last two sections lends considerable
weight to the conception of metaphysics ascribed to Leibniz in Chap-
ter 4. As he himself notes, his theorizing is to a large extent driven by
the search for definitions, which in turn provide the means for ren-
dering metaphysics as rigorously demonstrative as Euclidean geome-
try. In his pursuit of these definitions, Leibniz adheres to a consistent
method. Starting from definitions of the most general terms (e.g., ens,
conditio), he proceeds step by step, via the principle of division, to
definitions of more specific terms (e.g., completion, causa). The studies
we have been examining are no more than Leibniz's working notes. As
a result, we find in them many loose ends, many hesitations, even
many inconsistencies. For all of this, I would argue that they offer
unrivaled entry into one of the deepest currents of his thought.
Leibniz's Nominalism
The topic of Leibniz's nominalism has received considerable attention
in the philosophical literature. While all parties seem to accept that
Leibniz was some sort of nominalist, there remains substantial dis-
agreement about the precise set of ontological commitments that war-
rant ascribing this label to him. At the focus of much recent discussion
has been the status of the divine ideas in which Leibniz claims to
ground the reality of essences and eternal truths. Mates (1980, 1986),
and following him Jolley (1990), have made the case that Leibniz
should be understood as a strict nominalist who denies the reality of
all abstract entities, including those resident in the divine understand-
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THOUGHT AND BEING 1 1O,
ideas have missed a critical aspect of his position. As Leibniz sees it,
the assertion of the reality of divine ideas is in fact the only way to
uphold a nominalist ontology, while at the same time preserving an
objective ground for possibility and truth. 51
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122 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
cause it invokes no more than the bare notion of a subject of which all
other things are predicated.
Leibniz clearly sees an important connection between the insuffi-
ciency of this definition and an explanation of true predication, for
he immediately goes on in DM §8 to give his own interpretation of the
praedicatum inest subjecto principle:
[I]t is evident that all true predication has some basis in the nature of things
and that, when a proposition is not an identity, that is, when the predicate is
not explicitly contained in the subject, it must be contained in it virtually. That
is what philosophers call in-esse, when they say that the predicate is in the
subject. Thus the subject term must always contain the predicate term, so that
one who understands perfectly the notion of the subject would also know that
the predicate belongs to it. (GP IV 433/AG 41)
In order to appreciate the link Leibniz establishes between this ac-
count of true predication and his complete concept theory, we must
return to our earlier discussion of his nominalism. We shall recall that
Leibniz's nominalism is chiefly defined by its exclusion of all terms
save those that are concrete or that involve a subjectum cum praedicato.
In conceiving of a concretum, we necessarily conceive of a subject of
which something else is predicated. Thus, the concrete term equus
expresses the idea of a subjectum equinum: a subject, or particular, of
which the concept horse is understood. 59 Now, granting Leibniz's lim-
itation of significant terms to concrete terms, we may assume that any
predicative proposition of the form "A is B" has a complex sense. If
our grasp of any concrete term involves the supposition of a subject of
which it, qua predicate, is true, then the predicative relation of any
two concrete terms can be expressed as a conditional: "If X is A, then
X is B," where the expression X designates the common subjectum of
the two terms and plays a role not unlike that of a free variable in
modern logic. In general, a predicative proposition involving con-
crete terms asserts that whatever we understand of a thing through
the proposition's subject term entails, or includes, whatever we under-
stand of the same thing through the predicate term. Thus, equus est
animal asserts that whatever is understood as a horse must also be
understood as an animal.60
According to this interpretation, the significance of true predica-
tion is that it provides an explanation of a subject's having some
quality in terms of its having some larger set of qualities that includes
the first. Thus X is a living thing, because X is an animal; X is an
animal, because X is a human being; X is a human being, because X is
a king; and so on. That there should simply be an indefinite extension
of such a series of reasons is perhaps not inconceivable; nevertheless,
it fails to accord with Leibniz's view that in every such series a limit will
be reached at which point nothing further can be consistently added
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If the same thing is B and also C and D, etc., because it is A; or if a term A
involves all the terms B, C, D, etc., which can be said of the same thing, the
term A expresses a singular substance itself, or the concept of a singular sub-
stance is a complete term containing everything which can be said of it.
(SF 475)
Finally, having affirmed that a complete term affords us the concept
of a singular substance, Leibniz illustrates this with an example much
like one that appears in DM §8:
Thus if anyone is strong, and quick-tempered, and learned, and a king, and
leader of an army, and victor at the Battle of Arbela, and all the other things
which are said of Alexander the Great — God, at any rate, considering the
singular essence of Alexander the Great, will see it as a complete concept in
which all these things are contained virtually, or from which they all follow.
King cannot be inferred from strong, nor victor from leader, but from the
concept of Alexander are inferred strong, king, leader and victor. And that
there is such a concept is obvious from the definition of a true proposition
explained a little earlier. For when we say that Alexander is strong, we mean
nothing else than that strong is contained within the notion of Alexander, and
likewise for the rest of Alexander's predicates. (SF 475—6)
In the Notationes Generates, a piece that may predate the Discourse on
Metaphysics by several years, we find the outlines of Leibniz's analysis
of individual substance in an essentially finished form. The connec-
tion between his concept containment theory of truth and the com-
plete concept of an individual substance is explicitly developed. As we
saw earlier, it is a necessary consequence of the former that for any
substance there is a concept (known to God) that contains everything
predicable of it. Something more, however, is required to support the
claim that possession of a complete concept is a sufficient condition
for something's being an individual substance. This, I have suggested,
is Leibniz's nominalism. Acknowledging this background, we can
specify an individual substance as that type of concrete being which is
by nature capable of serving as an ultimate subject of predication. For
Leibniz, this is just to say that substance is a being whose essence is
expressed by a complete concept.
Notes
The philosophers in question include Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588—
1638), Johann Bisterfeld (1605—55), Clemens Timpler (1563/4—1624),
and Bartholomew Keckermann (1572/3—1609). For accounts of their
views, see Petersen 1921, Ong 1958a, Gilbert i960. Ong characterizes
Alsted and Keckermann as semi-Ramists or "Mixts," who "were followers
in part of Ramus and in part of Aristotle or (in dialectic and rhetoric) of
Philip Melanchthon" (299), and describes Bisterfeld as "in many ways . . .
the Ramist to end all Ramists" (265). Timpler he identifies as having
"some Ramist affinities" (1958b, 512, 531). A crucial point distinguishing
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THOUGHT AND BEING 125
Ramists and Aristotelians concerns the role of first principles in scientific
knowledge. According to Ramists, the proper method for the organiza-
tion of any body of knowledge is a table of divisions (i.e., a division of the
subject matter from the most general to the most specific) rather than
demonstration from first principles. As Ong comments, Ramists believed
that a "convincing 'methodical' framework was at hand which made first
principles in the strict Aristotelian sense superfluous. Insofar as it can be
defined, divided, and at least in the visual imagination spitted on a set of
dichotomies, any 'matter' at all can be given a 'scientific' treatment by
having its terms 'clearly' (that is, diagrammatically) related to one anoth-
er" (1958a, 300). For Leibniz's reaction to this method, see note 17.
2. "A snowy week in the Harz" refers to the circumstances of the composi-
tion of the Discourse on Metaphysics (see Sleigh 1990, 1). Something like the
latter view is suggested by Rescher, who writes that "for the long interval
1675—1685 Leibniz devoted himself mainly to his official duties and to
mathematics, logic, and physics. His ideas in metaphysics lay fallow, apart
from his continued intensive assimilation of ideas. . . . During the winter
of 1685—1686 he returned to philosophy and, in a concentrated period of
thought, worked out the details of his philosophical system" (1979, 7).
Sleigh, on the other hand, opts for the former approach, and, although
he does not himself pursue it, he endorses the need for a study of one of
the main themes of this chapter: "[T]here are motivations for Leibniz's
metaphysical doctrines operating in our period [1686—7] tnat a r e broadly
logical in character and that have not received the attention they deserve,
here or elsewhere. What I have in mind is Leibniz's effort to distinguish
abstract entities from concrete individuals, and, within the class of con-
crete individuals, substances from nonsubstances" (1990, 186).
3. This is not to say that Leibniz gives up on any of them; new correspon-
dents, in particular, are often treated to expositions of them. See, e.g., his
late letters to Remond (GP III 605/L 654) and Biber (BB 15-16). What it
does imply is that after his first decade in Hanover, Leibniz came to
realize that for both theoretical and practical reasons the execution of
these projects would be far more difficult than he had originally imag-
ined.
4. On the relation of Leibniz to Comenius, see Meyer (1952, 65), who cites
the importance for him of Comenius's Prodromus pansophiae (1639). In a
1671 letter, Leibniz praises Comenius's Janua linguarum (1628); an accom-
panying poem mourns Comenius's recent death (A VI 1, 199—201).
5. Leibniz acknowledges the debt his combinatorial scheme owes to the Lull-
ist movement; however, he criticizes Lull and Lullists for their arbitrary
choice of primitive terms and their inattention to the topic of definition.
Cf. GP VII 293/L 229—30; GP III 619—20/L 657. For discussions of the
Lullist background to Leibniz's thought, see Couturat 1901, chap. 2;
C. Wilson 1989, chap. 1.
6. Nevertheless, traces of its main theme persist in chemical theory and even
in elementary particle physics, the important idea being that if we arrive
at the absolutely primitive terms of a theory, everything else can be de-
rived through combinations of them.
7. The best survey of these projects remains Couturat 1901, chaps. 3-5. For
an account of the development of the universal characteristic, see Ruther-
ford 1995a. During the 1670s and 1680s, Leibniz pursued these topics in
a large and varied array of writings. In form, they range from polished
essays and memoranda to fragmentary working notes. In content, they
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THOUGHT AND BEING 127
however, those who worked on it would not know the design, believing
themselves to be working only on an encyclopedia" (GP VII 40).
14. Cf. C 429—30/P 2; and A Specimen of Discoveries: "[T]he necessary being
. . . is in all things potentially, since it is the ultimate reason of things,
insofar as they contain realities or perfections. And since the full reason
for a thing is the aggregate of all primitive requisites (which do not need
other requisites) it is evident that the causes of all things can be reduced
to the attributes of God" (GP VII 310/P 77). Concerning the derivation of
the perfection of finite things from God, see Chapter 2.
15. Cf. C431/P3.
16. Cf. C 220-1: "Of the alphabet of human thoughts, or those concepts
primitive with respect to us (although perhaps they are not absolutely
primitive), from which all the others are composed."
17. This influence is evident both from the internal evidence of his writings
and from his own statements: "But as soon as I began to learn logic, I was
greatly stirred by the classification and order which I perceived in its
principles. . . . My greatest pleasure lay in the categories, which seemed
to me to be a standard roll of everything in the world, and I examined
many logics to see where the best and most exhaustive lists could be
found. I often asked myself and my companions into which category and
subdivision of it this or that concept might belong, although I was not at
all pleased to find that so many things were entirely excluded. . . . I soon
made the amusing discovery of a method of guessing or of recalling to
mind, by means of the categories, something forgotten when one has a
picture of it but cannot get at it in his brain. One needs only to ask one's
self or others about certain categories and their subdivisions (of which I
had compiled an extensive table out of various logics) and examine the
answer, and one can readily exclude all irrelevant matters and narrow the
problem down until the missing thing can be discovered. . . . In such
tabulations of knowledge I attained practice in division and subdivision as
a basis of order and a bond of thoughts. Here the Ramists and Semi-
Ramists were heavily drawn upon." Letter to Gabriel Wagner, 1696 (GP
VII 516— 17/L 463—4). In later writings, Leibniz expresses reservations
about what he calls the "recitatorial" method of the Ramists, which he
opposes to the demonstrative or "scientific" method employed by geome-
ters: "Here I observe that there are two ways of classifying subjects, one
according to concepts, the other according to the principles by which they
are proved. I call the former method recitatorial, the latter scientific. The
schools commonly follow the former in their divisions, employed exten-
sively by the Ramists; the author [Stegmann] uses this method too, and
indeed it has its use. But this is a way of acquiring not so much science, as
a catalogue of truths known from other sources. This method is thus used
for reducing things already known into a synopsis, and it also serves the
purpose of teaching those who are looking for a historical acquaintance
with doctrines rather than reasons for them. But it does not preserve the
order in which some truths are born from others; it is this order which
produces science." Ad Christophori Stegmanni Metaphysicam Unitariorum, ca.
1708; translation quoted from Jolley 1984, 195—6. We are justified in
concluding, I believe, that Leibniz is ultimately much more interested in
providing demonstrations of philosophical truths than in Ramist tables of
division. Nevertheless, his writings contain many more examples of the
latter than the former.
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THOUGHT AND BEING 129
divide further into simple substances (such as God, angel, soul) and sub-
stantiated beings. Substantiated beings are divided into unities per se or
composite substances, and unities per accidens or aggregates." This is from
a marginal note in a draft of a letter to Des Bosses of 20 September 1712
(GP II 459/L 616, n. 19). Cf. NE II, xxii, 1 (RB 213). These texts confirm
the enduring importance of the method of division in Leibniz's philosophy.
27. Cf. C 535/P 146: "Distinct cogitability gives order to a thing. . . . For
order is simply the distinctive relation of several things. And confusion is
when several things are indeed present but there is no ground [ratio] for
distinguishing one from another."
28. As Loemker (L 84, n. 12) points out, although he miscites the source, this
account derives from Aristotle: "'Disposition' means arrangement of that
which has parts, either in space or in potentiality or in form. It must be a
kind of position, as indeed is clear from the word 'disposition.'" Meta-
physics V, 19 (Aristotle 1935, 271).
29. Woznicki (1990, 14), claims as the three essential components of Aquinas's
conception of order ratio prioris et posterioris, distinctio and ratio ordinis. Cf.
Aristotle, Metaphysics V. 11.
30. In a survey of concepts cited earlier Leibniz divides the category of order
as follows: "To order. . . there belongs that which is prior and posterior by
nature. Cause and effect. Now, from order and consequence there results
cause; for from a cause, as from a prior nature, there follows an effect"
(LH IV 7 B, 3 Bl. 17 [V 323]).
31. LH IV 7B, 2 Bl. 73-4 (V 1229). Where a natural English equivalent is not
available, I have left Leibniz's technical terms untranslated. This is the
case, for example, with the contrast between an inferens (that which infers
or brings forward something else) and an illatum (that which is inferred).
32. [Di] could also be interpreted as making the stronger claim that A as a
being is sufficient for B, or that the possibility of A is sufficient for the
possibility of B. For this reason, the proposition "A is" (A est) should not be
equated with "A exists," but should be understood as shorthand for "A is a
being" (A est ens), where the latter may include A's actual or possible
existence. The same point holds for the definition of conditio. For a dis-
cussion of this form of proposition, see Mates 1986, 54-6.
33. A brief study begins: "Difficultas aliqua est in explicando quid sit natura
prius" (LH IV 7B, 2 Bl. 37 [V 128]).
34. Leibniz's grasp of the idea of "prior by nature" remains imperfect. In
another study, he writes: "A is prior, B posterior (namely, by order of na-
ture), if A is simpler to the intellect than B, or if the possibility of A is
demonstrated more easily than that of B. Since that which is understood
per se is primary in all things, we may assume from the outset that a
number of things are understood per se, such as L, M, N, 0 and that from
these follow LM, LN, LO, MN, MO; LMN, LMO, LNO, MNO; LMNO. Thus
we may say that singletons are prior to pairs, triplets, quaternions, etc.;
pairs are prior to triplets, quaternions, etc.; triplets are prior to quater-
nions, etc. And so on" (LH IV 7B, 3 Bl. 17-18 [V 325-6]). According to
this account, it is not the number of steps required to effect a decomposi-
tion of a concept but the variety of its simple components that determines
its order of priority. This is at odds with Leibniz's remarks elsewhere,
since he conceives of the possibility that two concepts may be reciprocal,
insofar as they contain exactly the same primary elements, and yet one
may be prior by nature to the other (LH IV 7B, 2 Bl. 37 [V 128]). This
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13O FIRST PHILOSOPHY
would be the case, for example, with the concepts LM and LA, where A is
definitionally equivalent to LM. Although these two concepts are recipro-
cal, the latter requires a further step in order to be reduced to its primary
elements. In either case, it is worth noting that the notion of "prior by
nature" does not presuppose an ultimate analysis of concepts, but only
their decomposition into some set of common elements. Cf. C 241.
35. "That is said to be in some way a cause, or to contribute [conferre], which is
a requisition with respect to some mode of producing. Alternatively, a cause
is said to be that which is a conferens with an effect, or that which is a
requisite according to the mode of producing by which a thing is assumed
to be produced" (LH IV 7C Bl. 105-6 [V 1302]).
36. LH IV 7B, 3 Bl. 17—18 [V 324-8]. This manuscript gives no indication of
a date. On the basis of its contents, however, we can confidently locate it
within the same period. This is the only other study I have been able to
find (in addition to LH IV 7B, 2 Bl. 73—4) that includes Leibniz's more
elaborate definition of "cause." Given that the latter work dates from a
slightly later period (December 1687) than most of the studies, this may
suggest a later date for this piece as well. But this is only speculation, since
the piece also shows similarities in wording to LH IV 7C Bl. 105-6, which
has been dated between 1680 and 1685.
37. The paragraph concludes with the following: "The definition should be
constructed in such a way that God cannot be said to be the cause of sin
except perhaps per accidens, [i.e.,] only in the sense that God could be said
to be the cause of anything per accidens."
38. The adequacy of this definition would seem to hinge on whether Leibniz
is prepared to allow, as in his simpler definition, that a necessary condi-
tion (according to the mode by which an effect in fact exists) itself counts
as a cause. This he could do by stipulating that every relevans is also a
conferens, or that every necessary condition for the production of an
effect is also sufficient for a necessary condition for the production of an
effect — that necessary condition being itself. In the piece in question he
actually asserts the contrary: "But in truth every cause or condition of a
relevans is a relevans; yet it is not the case that every relevans is the cause of
a relevans, therefore not every relevans is a conferens" (V 1229).
39. Mates 1986, 177.
40. See Mondadori 1990a, 1990b; Mugnai 1990a, 1990b.
41. See Chapter 4, note 16. Leibniz aligns his position with that of Augustine
at NE IV, xi, 14 (RB 447) and in his letter to Hansch of 25 June 1707 (D II
1, 224-5/L 592-3).
42. Cf. Leibniz's long letter to Arnauld of 14 July 1686: "In order to call
something possible, it is enough for me that one can form a concept of it
even though it should only exist in the divine understanding, which is, so
to speak, the domain of possible realities" (GP II 55). See also NE II, xxv,
1 (RB 227) and A Specimen of Discoveries (GP VII 31 I / P 77).
43. That the rationale for his position should be found here is significant, for
it means that Leibniz's nominalism is not limited to the claim of his later
philosophy that reality consists solely of monads and their singular mod-
ifications. (For this reading of his position, see Mates 1986, 209; Jolley
1990, 135-6.) As we have already seen (note 26), and shall see in more
detail in Part III, Leibniz is prepared to admit other concrete beings into
his ontology (so-called substantiata or "beings through aggregation"), pro-
vided it is recognized that the existence of these is wholly dependent
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THOUGHT AND BEING 131
upon the prior existence of substances. We must not confuse his reduc-
tionism with his nominalism. The basis of the former lies in the primacy
of the existence of substances an entia per se, the basis of the latter in the
division between concrete, and abstracta.
44. Cf. C 243, 435, 512-13; LH IV 7C Bl. 101 [V 182]; LH IV 7C Bl. 109-10
[V 191].
45. In a note to the Introduction to a Secret Encyclopedia, he writes: "Here we
should remove abstract concepts as unnecessary, especially as there may
be abstractions of abstractions. In place of heat [calore], we shall consider
what is hot [calidum], since one could again suppose some 'caloreity' [calo-
reitas], and so on in infinitum" (C 512-13/P 6—7). Cf. De lingua philosophica
(LH IV 7B, 3 Bl. 40-9 [V 357]).
46. See GP II 458/L 605; NE II, xxiii, 1 (RB 217). Falling within the class of
abstracta to which Leibniz denies a created existence are, notoriously, all
relations. They are in general entia rationis, whose "reality, like that of
eternal truths and possibilities, comes from the Supreme Reason" (NE II,
xxiv, 1; RB 226). Cf. NE II, xxx, 4 (RB 265), and the texts gathered in
Mates 1986, chap. 10. For a comprehensive treatment of Leibniz's views
on this topic, see Mugnai 1992.
47. LH IV 7C Bl. 102 (V 1607—9). The editors of the Vorausedition gives this
study the title De realitate accidentium. On the basis of watermark evidence,
they place it between October and December 1688.
48. My translation of this passage follows that of Mates (1986, 171).
49. "But you ask whether there are not certain accidents which are more than
modifications. Such accidents seem, however, to be entirely superfluous,
and whatever is in such a substance other than a modification seems to
pertain to the substantial thing itself. I do not see how we can distinguish
an abstraction from the concrete, or from the subject in which it is; or
how we can explain intelligibly what it is to be in or to inhere in a subject,
except by considering inherence as a mode or state of a subject - a mode
which may be either essential, so that it cannot change unless the nature
of the substance changes, and differs from the substance only relatively,
or which may be accidental, in which case it is called a modification and
can come into being and perish while the subject remains." Leibniz to Des
Bosses, 20 September 1712 (GP II 458/L 606). Cf. NE II, xii, 3 (RB 145);
LH IV 7B Bl. 107-8 (V 412); LH IV 7C Bl. 99-100 (V 1601-6).
50. See the preface to his 1670 Nizolius edition (A VI 2, 428/L 128).
51. At the end of his book, Mates (1986, 246) seems to recognize this point,
although he continues to insist that talk about divine ideas is to be given a
dispositional analysis.
52. In his edition of Leibniz's writings 1675-6, Parkinson comments that "if
one is looking for the ancestry of the thesis that a substance has a com-
plete concept, one cannot trace it back as far as [this period]" (1992, liii).
He goes on to suggest that the crucial innovation comes with Leibniz's
introduction of the theory of truth as concept containment in a series of
logical papers written in April 1679. We shall see that this provides only
part of the answer.
53. "A complete concrete term is one which already includes everything that
can be predicated of the same subject; it is also called a singular sub-
stance" (LH IV 7C Bl. 109-10 [V 191]). "A term expressing a singular
substance involves all the predicates of its subject, or is a complete term"
(LH IV 7C Bl. 101 [V 182]). "A complete term is that from which all the
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132 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
predicates of the same subject can be demonstrated, or that which ex-
presses the entire nature of a subject" (LH IV 7B, 4 Bl. 13 [SF 478]).
"Every concept from which a reason can be given for all the predicates of
the same subject is the concept of a substance itself; a complete term
expresses a substance" (LH IV 7B, 3 Bl. 19-20 [V 329]). The preceding
are all from pieces which predate the Discourse on Metaphysics. See also C
403/P 95; GP VII 316/P 84; LH IV 7B Bl. 103-4 [V 186]; LH IV 7C Bl.
73-4 [V 406]; LH IV 7C Bl. 107-8 [V 411]; LH IV 7C Bl. 111-14
(V 417); LH IV 7C Bl. 105 (V 1299).
54. Leibniz can be read as suggesting this in DM §8, in the Notationes Generates
(SF 474-5), in his correspondence with Arnauld (GP II 43/M 47; GP II
56—7/M 63-4), and in the brief essay Parkinson has entitled The Nature of
Truth (C 401—3/P 93—5)- For affirmations of this view, see Couturat 1902;
Parkinson 1965, 131; Broad 1972, 2; McRae 1976, 78.
55. It might be argued that Leibniz signals this in using the expression notion
accomplie rather than notion complete. He thus claims only that for every
being there is a "perfect" concept, i.e., the concept of a thing as it is
known by God. This reading would have to be squared, however, with the
fact that he also employs the former expression in DM §8 when defining
un estre complet. Sleigh (1990, 49, n. 2) also expresses skepticism concern-
ing this move.
56. "If a notion is complete, i.e., is such that from it a reason can be given for
all the predicates of the subject to which this notion can be attributed, this
will be the notion of an individual substance; and conversely" (C 403/P
95). "If A is B, and B is a complete term, then A will be a singular substance,
or a determinate [certum] subject which is commonly called an individual.
For a singular substance alone has a complete concept" (LH IV 7B, 4 Bl.
13 [SF 479]). Cf. LH IV 7C Bl. 111-14 (V 417).
57. Sleigh (1990, 54) offers a related analysis of the problem, framing his
solution in terms of Leibniz's plan for a "rational language" from which
all abstract expressions would be barred.
58. Significantly, in combining the Categories definition with his own theory of
predication, Leibniz collapses Aristotle's distinction between "being said
(or asserted) of" and "being present (or found) in" a subject. Categories
2 a n - i 4 reads: "Substance in the truest and strictest, the primary sense
of that term, is that which is neither asserted of nor can be found in a
subject" (Aristotle 1973, 19).
59. The important point is that equus designates a concrete thing, i.e., any
particular horse, and not the universal horse or the property of being a
horse. Both of the latter are abstractions to which Leibniz denies a cre-
ated existence.
60. "A proposition is that which says, as regards two terms or two attributes
of things, that one, called the predicate, is contained in the other, called the
subject, in such a way that the predicate must apply to everything to which
the subject applies" (GP VII 43-4).
61. Cf. his 1685 notes to Joachim Jungius's Logica Hamburgensis (the first part
of the text is Jungius, the parenthetical remark, Leibniz): "If various
accidents of various powers are understood together, it follows from this
that some common subject is understood in which the former may be
understood and contained, and this is called a substance. . . . (I respond
that it is demonstrated elsewhere in what consists the true nature of a
substance, namely, in a complete concept . . .)" (V 845).
62. For related texts, see note 53 and Rutherford 1988.
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Substance
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134 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
(a) Independence
We saw in the preceding chapter that Leibniz ascribes to substance the
traditional role of being an ultimate subject of predication: Substance
is that of which other things are predicated but that is not itself predi-
cated of anything else. It is this characteristic that supports substance's
claim to possess an independent or per se existence. Insofar as predi-
cation indicates a relation of dependence between two beings, the
identification of substance as what is predicated of no other being
marks it as a thing that exists per se, depending for its existence on no
other being except God. In this respect, substances are to be distin-
guished from modes and relations, as well as from those singular
things which Leibniz describes as "beings through aggregation." As
much as modes and relations, the existence of the latter is essentially
dependent upon the prior existence of substances.4
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SUBSTANCE 135
(b) Activity
There is a close connection between substance's claim to be an ulti-
mate subject of predication and its status as an entelechy or principle
of action. For Leibniz, whatever is prior in order of existence must
also be prior in order of understanding. Thus, if substance is an
ultimate subject of predication, it must also be capable of serving as
an ultimate explanatory principle, or that in terms of which the rea-
son for everything else can be given.5 Now, among the most important
facts to be accounted for in the world is that of change: the fact that
something first has some quality and then lacks that quality. To ac-
count for the fact of change is to posit a reason why change occurs. As
commonly understood, this requires the designation of an action that
has brought it about that what was the case is no longer the case. It
follows that if substance is to play the role of an ultimate explanatory
principle, it must also be regarded as the ultimate ground of the
actions that account for change in the world, which is to say that
substance must be a source or principle of action.6 Leibniz acknowl-
edges this feature of substance early in his career. In a set of notes
from 1676, he contrasts his view of substance with the Cartesian ac-
count of the soul as a res cogitans:
The author is right to say that thought is not the essence of the soul. For a
thought is an action, and since one thought succeeds another it is necessary
that what persists during this change is rather the essence of the soul, since it
remains always the same. The essence of substance consists in the primitive
force of acting, or in the law of the series of its changes. (A VI 3, 326)
(c) Persistence
Traditionally, substance has been regarded as that which endures or
persists through change. This feature is central to Leibniz's concep-
tion of substance and is closely related to the previous two character-
istics. Insofar as substance qualifies as an ultimate subject of predi-
cation, it must serve as the enduring subject of which transient
modifications are predicated. Leibniz takes this property of substance
to be guaranteed by its nature as a "primitive force of acting," which
persists through change and "remains always the same" (A VI 3, 326).
In defending the thesis that it is an essential characteristic of sub-
stance to persist through change, Leibniz goes beyond the standard
Aristotelian position. In his view, substance is subject to neither gener-
ation nor corruption. The principle of action that is a substance can
never itself come into existence or pass out of existence as a result of
natural change, but only as a consequence of a divine act of creation
or extinction.
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136 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
(d) Unity
According to Leibniz, every substance must be a true or per se unity.
He ascribes this requirement to the principle, which he says he owes to
Aristotle, that the notions of being and one are convertible, or neces-
sarily equivalent, from which it follows that whatever is an ens per se or
substance must also be an unum per se, and conversely (GP II 97, 304,
446). In defense of this equivalence, we may see him reasoning as
follows. Whatever is composite or many can only come to be through
that which is truly one.7 As the only per se created being, substance is
that through which all other things come to be. Thus, whatever is
substance must be an unum perse. Conversely, what is only an unum per
accidens, an accidental unity determined by the relations among a
plurality of things (e.g., an army, a herd, a mill), cannot be a substance
but is only an ens per accidens.8 We shall find later that some of the most
important commitments of Leibniz's ontology hinge on this basic dis-
tinction between per se and accidental unity.
(e) Individuation
Leibniz is committed to the nominalist thesis that all actual or existing
things are concrete particulars. This characteristic must thus also be-
long to substance: Every substance is a singular or individual thing,
not an abstract form or universal.9 Saying just this, however, does not
explain what it is that makes a substance a distinct individual, in other
words, this or that substance rather than any other (actual or possible)
substance. To require that there be such an explanation is to demand
a principle of individuation for substances. Without yet going into the
details of his position, Leibniz holds that substances are individuated
neither through their particular matter nor through a "haecceity" or
primitive property of "thisness," but rather through the sum of their
predicates.10 Thus, as he sometimes remarks, individual substances
are infimae species (lowest species), whose distinctness as individuals is
determined by the completeness of their specification.
The conception of substance that emerges from this account is strong-
ly indebted to the Peripatetic tradition: To be a substance is to be an
individual principle of action, which persists through change, and
through which all other change in the world can be explained. This
conception does not, however, exhaust Leibniz's understanding of
substantial being. To the list given above, we must add two further
characteristics of substance that play important roles for him:
(f) Every substance is at all times "pregnant with its future."
(g) Every substance "expresses" the entire universe.
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SUBSTANCE 139
is, all of its predicates, past, present, and future. By linking the idea of
a complete concept to the identity of substance as a principle of
change, Leibniz seeks to emphasize that for something to be a sub-
stance it is not enough simply for it to be some principle of action: It
must be a principle sufficient to determine all and only those states
which are predicable of that substance. The device of a complete
concept is thus intended to convey the nature of a being that satisfies
the condition of being spontaneous or causally self-sufficient, or which
is dependent for the production of its states on no other being except
God.16
This reading is borne out by DM §§ 13—14, in which Leibniz draws
a distinction between the concept or notion of a substance, as it is
defined in §8, and its nature or form, which is the immediate source
of its actions.17 The relevance of the definition of a complete concept,
he suggests, is that it articulates the content of God's perfect under-
standing of an individual substance, which is in turn the basis for his
creation of its form or nature. Thus, insofar as a complete concept
contains everything that is truly predicable of a given subject, and
insofar as God utilizes his understanding of this concept to create a
particular substantial form (or principle of action), it follows that any
substance must be the source of all its natural states or modifica-
tions.18 This same line of reasoning is found summarized in the con-
temporary essay A Specimen of Discoveries: "[I]n the perfect notion of
an individual substance," Leibniz writes, "considered in a pure state of
possibility by God before every actual decree of existence, there is
already whatever will happen to it if it exists" (GP VII 31 I / P 78). He
concludes:
[F]rom the notion of an individual substance it also follows in metaphysical
rigor that all the operations of substances, both actions and passions, are
spontaneous, and that with the exception of the dependence of creatures on
God, no real influx from one to the other is intelligible. For whatever happens
to each one of them would flow from its nature and its notion even if the rest
were supposed to be absent. (GP VII 312/P 79)
It would be a mistake to read these passages as defending a derivation
of the spontaneity of substance from the complete concept theory.
Leibniz's point is, rather, that a complete concept is an appropriate
way to conceive of God's knowledge of a being, which is, by its nature,
a spontaneous source of change. We can conclude, I believe, that
Leibniz's complete concept theory is designed to complement the tra-
ditional conception of substance as a principle of action, and that it
does not aspire to replace that conception. The device of a complete
concept is intended to articulate the idea that a substance's form is a
principle sufficient to produce all the modifications (actions or pas-
sions) predicable of that substance.
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14O FIRST PHILOSOPHY
On the basis of this theory, Leibniz aims to account for the other
essential characteristics of substance. In the first place, he sees the
idea of a complete concept as offering an explanation of the per-
sistence, or numerical identity, of substance through change, includ-
ing the special case of personal identity. In his remarks on Arnauld's
letter criticizing DM §13, he claims there can be no other a priori
reason for his identity as the same person at different times and
under different circumstances
except that my attributes of the preceding time and state as well as those of
the following time and state are predicates of one and the same subject, they
are present in the same subject. Now what does it mean to say that the
predicate is in the subject except that the concept of the predicate is in some
sense contained in the concept of the subject? And seeing that since the
beginning of my existence it could truly be said of me that this or that would
happen to me, one must admit that these predicates were laws contained
in the subject or in the complete concept of me which makes what is
called myself, which is the basis of the connection between all my different
states and of which God had perfect knowledge from all eternity. (GP II
43/M 47)
Sleigh has remarked that we find Leibniz in this passage riding his
"metaphysical high horse" (1990, 126). In fact, however, his point
seems quite clear: It is reasonable to think of the predicates "x is F at
txn and "x is G at t2" as being true of the same person (who has
persisted between tx and t2), if and only if those predicates (or con-
cepts of them) are contained within one and the same complete con-
cept. Taking such a concept to be expressive of God's knowledge of
the nature of a being that is the spontaneous source of all its own
modifications, Leibniz in effect claims that any two properties are
properties of the same subject at different times just in case they are
products of the same nature or form.19 The intuition behind his
position is expressed succinctly in the pre-Discourse study Notationes
Generates: "A thing can remain the same, even if it changes, if it
follows from its own nature that the same thing must have different
successive states; certainly I am said to be the same who existed be-
fore, since my substance involves all my states, past, present and fu-
ture" (G 323). Leibniz's point is that a necessary condition for a thing's
being said to persist through change is that it possess a nature from
which it follows that that same thing exists in a succession of different
states. In his view, this is not a property that can be assigned to a
merely extended thing, for there is nothing in the nature of such a
being which entails that the same thing first possesses one shape and
then another. This is, however, precisely the character he assigns to a
substantial form: By its nature it is the spontaneous source of a suc-
cession of different modifications.
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SUBSTANCE 141
We noted in Chapter 5, but did not pursue, Leibniz's belief that all
and only those things which possess a complete concept also satisfy
the condition of being an unum per se. We posed there the question of
whether these are for him merely coextensive properties of substance,
or whether they can be seen to imply one another. We can now affirm
that having a complete concept is indeed a necessary condition for
possessing the true unity definitive of a substantial being:
Substantial unity requires a complete, indivisible and naturally indestructible
entity, since its concept embraces everything that is to happen to it, which
cannot be found in shape or in motion . . . but in a soul or substantial form
after the example of what one calls self. (GP II 76/M 94)
In his discussions of substantial unity, Leibniz again employs the no-
tion of a complete concept as a proxy for the complete or self-
sufficient nature of a substance. To qualify as a true or per se unity, he
argues, it is necessary that a being possess a nature or form that is the
spontaneous source of all its modifications. Obviously, the conditions
of substantial persistence, completeness, and per se unity are closely
linked for Leibniz. A being qualifies as an unum per se, he believes,
only if it is necessary that it persist as the same thing through any
actual change, short of annihilation.20 And this is only guaranteed if
everything that is ever true of that being can be understood as the
product of a single unchanging nature — the sort of nature expressed
by a complete concept.21
Finally, perhaps the most controversial claim that Leibniz makes on
behalf of a complete concept is that it serves as a principle of individu-
ation for substances. From the fact that every substance possesses an
"individual notion" in which God "sees at the same time the basis and
reason for all the predicates which can be truly predicated of [it]," he
argues, it follows that no "two substances can resemble each other
completely and differ only in number" (Le 36-7/AG 41-2). The prin-
ciple of individuation for substances is thus their possession of a com-
plete concept: Insofar as two substances share all the same predicates,
and hence a complete concept, they must be numerically identical.22
In DM §9, Leibniz refers to this conclusion as a "paradox." On the
face of it, this is an apt description, for it is by no means obvious how
he means to proceed from the premise that for every individual sub-
stance there is a complete concept containing all and only those things
predicable of it to the conclusion that there cannot exist two sub-
stances that are qualitatively indistinguishable (insofar as they possess
the same complete concept) and that hence differ only in number.
This "paradox" is prominent in Leibniz's early formulations of the
complete concept theory. From the definition of a complete concept,
he writes in the Notationes Generates,
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142 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
it follows that singular things are in fact lowest species and there can never
exist two singular things similar in all respects; and consequently the principle
of individuation is always some specific difference, which St. Thomas said of
intelligences, but which is also true of any individual at all. When I say that
men differ in the lowest species, I do not mean by the word "species" (as is
commonly understood) some group of things procreating with things similar
to themselves, like the species of human beings, of dogs, of roses . . . , nor
even a universal, or a term produced from a finite number of terms, but a
term whose particular concept is different from that of all others. . . . It is
enough that it cannot be said that there exist two singular things similar in all
respects, e.g., two eggs, for it is necessary that something can be said of one
which cannot be said of the other, otherwise they could be substituted for
each other and there would be no reason then why they should not instead be
said to be one and the same. (SF 476)
Although it is uncontroversial that a species term such as human being
is insufficient to distinguish two individuals who share this charac-
teristic, it is not clear how Leibniz sees it as following that a complete
concept is sufficient to distinguish one individual substance from an-
other. What we find in this passage is not so much an argument
defending this claim as simply an assertion that this must be so be-
cause otherwise "there will be no reason . . . why they should not
instead be said to be one and the same."23
Upon examination, it is evident that the proposition that there are
no two substances differing only in number does not follow from the
complete concept theory alone but depends on an independent com-
mitment to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII): the
principle that for any two numerically nonidentical things, there must
be some discernible difference between them. The relevance of a
complete concept in this context is simply that by definition it includes
everything that is predicable of a given substance. Thus, assuming
PII, it follows that no two substances can possess the same complete
concept, for such substances would indeed be qualitatively indis-
tinguishable.
Having settled that Leibniz's doctrine of individuation rests square-
ly on the assumption of PII, the question remains as to why he finds
this view persuasive. Why is he convinced that no two substances
could possibly share all their qualitative features? In his long letter to
Arnauld of 4/14 July 1686, Leibniz insists on a fundamental distinc-
tion between a complete concept sufficient to individuate a singular
thing and a concept representing that thing only "in general terms
[sub ratione generalitatis], i.e., in terms of essence, or of a specific or
incomplete concept" (GP II 52/M 58). He goes on to explain that
when we speak of "many Adams" who may be instantiated in differ-
ent possible worlds, we consider Adam not as
a determinate individual, but as a certain person conceived of sub ratione
generalitatis in circumstances which seem to us to determine Adam as an
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SUBSTANCE 143
individual, but which in truth do not determine him sufficiently, as when one
understands by Adam the first man that God places in a garden of pleasure
which he leaves because of sin, and from whose rib God draws forth a woman.
But all that is not sufficiently determining, and in this way there would be
many disjunctively possible Adams or many individuals whom all that would
fit. That is true, whatever finite number of predicates incapable of determin-
ing all the rest one may take, but what determines a certain Adam must
absolutely contain all his predicates, and it is this complete concept that deter-
mines generality in such a way that the individual is reached. (GP II 54/M
60-1)
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148 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
distance and the degree of distance involve also a degree of expressing in the
thing itself a remote thing, either of affecting it or of receiving an affection
from it. So, in fact, position [situs] really involves a degree of expression.
(C 9/P 133)
The position sketched in this text raises a number of questions that
will have to be left until the next chapter. What it does for us now is to
establish a link between three central Leibnizian tenets: the doctrine
of universal connection, the no purely extrinsic denominations thesis,
and the doctrine of universal expression (or perception). A corollary
of the thesis that "all is connected" in the world is that there are no
purely extrinsic denominations: no designations of the relatedness of
things that are not grounded in states or accidents internal to those
things. As we have seen, this entails that for any change in the extrin-
sic denominations of an individual there must be some associated
change in its intrinsic denominations. Leibniz suggests that in the case
of those extrinsic denominations which designate the spatiotemporal
relatedness of individuals, the accidents grounding these denomina-
tions are states of a substance that express its spatiotemporal position
vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Consequently, any change in what is
conceived as the spatiotemporal location of a substance must be ac-
companied by a change in that substance's expression of its location.36
We thus appear to have a well-defined link between the no purely
extrinsic denominations thesis and the doctrine of universal expres-
sion. We may conclude, at least tentatively, that the truth of the for-
mer thesis depends in an essential way on the capacity of substances to
express within their perceptual states the universe as a whole, and
their unique situation within it.
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SUBSTANCE 149
an external excitation or stimulus, as it were, to be transferred into action.
Active force, by contrast, contains a certain act or entelechy and is thus
midway between the faculty of acting and the act itself and involves conatus. It
is thus carried into action by itself and needs no help but only the removal of
an impediment. . . . I say that this power of acting inheres in all substance and
that some action always arises from it. (GP IV 469-70/L 433)
The theory of substance that appears most prominently in Leibniz's
post-1690 writings stresses the nature of substance as an entelechy or
spontaneous principle of action - not simply a capacity or faculty to
act, but that which does act provided that nothing impedes it. In the
preface to the New Essays, Leibniz asserts that "in the natural course of
things no substance can lack activity" (RB 53), for "activity is the
essence of substance in general" (RB 65). To De Voider in 1699, he
claims that the activity of substance is metaphysically necessary and
would be a feature of any systema rerum, even one which was not
created ex lege ordinis supremi (GP II 169).38 On the surface, the view of
substance presented in these later writings is quite different from that
of the Discourse and the correspondence with Arnauld. There remains
little evidence of the complete concept theory, or of Leibniz's preoc-
cupation with problems of predication and individuation. His atten-
tion is now focused almost exclusively on the nature of substance as a
principle of force or action. Our question is whether all of this adds
up to a decisive development in Leibniz's account of substance or
merely a shift in emphasis.
There is no doubt that from around the time of his Italian journey
a change can be discerned in the things Leibniz says about sub-
stance.39 Furthermore, we can be fairly confident as to the source of
this change, namely, his increasing preoccupation with the formula-
tion of the science of dynamics, a theory devoted to explaining the
forces and actions of material things.40 From the start, Leibniz sees an
important connection between this science and his general under-
standing of substance. Pronouncements to this effect appear in many
writings, including the passage already quoted from On the Correction
of First Philosophy. We have seen, however, that from his earliest writ-
ings Leibniz associates the notion of substance with an entelechy or
principle of action. Thus, it is hardly surprising that as he begins to
investigate the character of the forces exerted by bodies, and along
with this the substance of material things, he is naturally inclined to
relate these issues to that of the nature of substance in general. The
persistence of the idea of substance as a principle of action from
Leibniz's early writings to his later works suggests that the dynamical
theory does not represent a radical overhauling of his view, but mere-
ly a refinement of it via a more sophisticated account of the nature of
corporeal forces.
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152 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
The notion of a substance's law of the series plays much the same
theoretical role as is played by a complete concept in Leibniz's 1680s
theory. In it, he locates the basis for a substance's persistence or identi-
ty through change:
The succeeding substance will be considered the same as the preceding as
long as the same law of the series or of simple continuous transition persists,
which makes us believe in the same subject of change. . . . The fact that a
certain law persists which involves all of the future states of that which we
conceive to be the same — this is the very fact, I say, which constitutes the
enduring substance. (GP II 264/L 535)45
That a substance persists as a law or principle of action is further seen
by Leibniz as the basis for its claim to be a true unity. Without en-
telechies, he writes to De Voider, there would be "no principle of true
unity. . . . I regard substance itself, being endowed with primitive
active and passive power, as an indivisible or perfect monad - like the
ego, or something similar to it" (GP II 250-l/L 529-30). Finally,
insofar as a substance involves a primitive active force that generates a
unique series of changes, Leibniz regards the law of this series as
supplying a principle of individuation for substances:
[I]n my opinion it is the nature of created substance to change continually
following a certain order which leads it spontaneously . . . through all the
states which it encounters, in such a way that he who sees all things sees all its
past and future states in its present. And this law of order . . . constitutes the
individuality of each particular substance. (GP IV 518/L 493)46
While accounting for the same basic characteristics of substance
(persistence, unity, individuality) as the complete concept theory, the
notion of a substance's "law of the series" offers in addition one cru-
cial advantage over Leibniz's 1680s position. It is a significant weak-
ness of the complete concept theory that it attempts to model the
nature of substance, an inherently active being, in a manner that is
essentially static. A complete concept is defined as "containing" all
that can be predicated of the same subject; yet it offers no suggestion
of the order and causal dependence of the successive states of a sub-
stance. We know that from at least the 1670s such an order was an
important part of Leibniz's understanding of what it is to be a sub-
stance. For this reason, some commentators have assumed he must
have meant us to understand complete concepts as having an internal
structure that represents the temporal succession of the correspond-
ing substantial states. This, however, is surely asking too much. Leib-
niz was the first to recognize that concepts have a combinatorial struc-
ture: They are defined as simple products of their components
without regard for the order among those components.47 The proper
inference to draw from this, I believe, is that during his stay in Paris,
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SUBSTANCE 153
Leibniz was already aware at some level that a static concept was the
wrong device for expressing the nature of an active substance. Much
more appropriate was the idea of a series or progression, whose prop-
erties he was at that time engaged in investigating in the area of
mathematics.48 Given this, it is perhaps surprising that on his return
to Germany in 1676, Leibniz did not immediately turn to the notion
of a law of the series in his attempts to articulate the individual es-
sence of a substance. That he did not can best be explained by his
preoccupation during the 1680s with the classification and definition
of the primary categories of being. While he was working under the
latter paradigm, the complete concept theory is exactly what one
would have expected from Leibniz. We can surmise, however, that as
the focus of his interests began to shift around the time of his Italian
journey from the traditional logical and metaphysical concerns of the
1680s to the project of dynamics, an opportunity arose for Leibniz to
rethink his conception of substance. All of the essential features of
substance remained in place. What emerged, however, was his explicit
recognition that if the nature of substance in general is to be an
entelechy or primitive active force, the most appropriate device for
representing the individual nature of a substance is not a complete
concept but, rather, the law of the series of its operations.
This development in Leibniz's thought is witnessed most clearly in
his correspondence with Burcher De Voider. "Since every action con-
tains change," Leibniz writes,
we must have in it precisely what you would seem to deny it, namely, a
tendency toward internal change and a temporal succession following from
the nature of the thing. You of course deny that "from the nature of the thing
there follows that which belongs to it merely temporarily." You prove this by
the example of a triangle, but you do not distinguish between universal and
singular natures. From universal natures there follow eternal consequences;
from singular ones also temporal ones, unless you think that temporal things
have no cause. . . . All individual things are successions or are subject to
successions. . . . For me nothing is permanent in things except the law itself
which involves a continuous succession and corresponds, in individual things,
to that law which determines the whole world. (GP II 263/L 534)
In Leibniz's view, there is a fundamental difference between universal
natures and singular ones. Whereas the former are adequately con-
ceived according to the combinatorial model, whereby a property is
said to follow from a nature just in case its presence can be revealed
through a finite analysis of that nature, the latter are not. Individual
things are, without exception, "successions or are subject to succes-
sions." Hence, the proper model for representing their nature is not a
static concept but the law that determines a series or progression. In
conceiving of this law, Leibniz's first point of reference is the mathe-
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SUBSTANCE 155
ture of substance? Or was he at this time already committed to a
position essentially akin to his later doctrine of monads: a view ac-
cording to which all substances are soullike principles of action and
passion, which in some way give rise to the appearances of extended
material things?52 We shall look in detail at the issues surrounding
corporeal substance in Chapter 10. At this point I aim simply to
remove some of the urgency from the topic by showing that there is a
plausible way to understand Leibniz's position in the 1680s, which
finds him already embracing the view that what is real or substantial
in body is limited to soullike forms.
At the time of the composition of the Discourse on Metaphysics, Leib-
niz's attitude toward the idea of corporeal substance was determined
by two main factors. First, he had by this time secured his own positive
conception of substance as a per se unity, whose nature as an en-
telechy or spontaneous source of action is expressed in a complete
concept. Second, he had decided in no uncertain terms that the Carte-
sian conception of matter as res extensa did not satisfy the necessary
conditions for something's being a substance. A thing whose essence is
extension cannot be a true unity. Moreover, because it lacks an intrin-
sic source of action, there is nothing in its nature to provide for the
spontaneity of substance, or the property of being "pregnant with its
future." In 1686, Leibniz's primary metaphysical commitments clearly
pointed in the direction of denying that bodies as conceived by Des-
cartes are anything real at all.53 Yet if for no other reason than that he
was bound to answer to orthodoxy, this conclusion did not fully satisfy
him. Religious doctrine and common sense both dictated that human
beings are embodied substances. Consequently, for his position to
become acceptable, Leibniz had to find a way of at least seeming to
accommodate the substantiality of the complete human being: soul
and body.54
It may not have been clear to Leibniz himself in 1686 whether his
philosophy contained the elements necessary for a theory that would
validate the claim of human beings to be corporeal substances. Nev-
ertheless, he persisted in this quest in one form or another until the
very end of his life. In attempting to develop a theory of corporeal
substance, Leibniz took for his model the Aristotelian account of sub-
stance as a form-matter composite. In the early 1680s, several years
before the composition of the Discourse, he had already reached the
conclusion that an extended body could acquire the status of a per se
unity only if it were in some way united with an immaterial substantial
form:
Unless a body is animated, or contains in itself some one substance, corre-
sponding to a soul, which is called a substantial form or primary entelechy, it
is no more one substance than a heap of stones; and if, on the contrary, there
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156 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
is no part of it which can be taken for an unum per se . . . it follows that every
body will be only a real phenomenon, like a rainbow. (LH IV 7C Bi. 105-6
[V 1299])55
Leibniz regards a substantial form as supplying two essential charac-
teristics that are missing from the notion of res extensa. First, a substan-
tial form is intended to provide its body with a principle of unity. Even
if a body is always changing in its composition as a result of the
division and decay of its parts, its association with an unchanging
form provides a basis for its persistence as a unitary thing. Second, a
substantial form is intended to render its associated body part of a
complete being, since the form is identified with a principle of action
sufficient for the production of all its own states.
From the start, however, it is unclear how we are to understand
such form—matter composites. Leibniz consistently maintains that in
themselves extension and its modes (shape, size, motion) are merely
"imaginary" or phenomenal properties. 56 Thus, corporeal substance
cannot be understood as a union of active form and passive extended
matter. But how, then, are we to conceive of the matter that is united
with a form to produce a corporeal substance? The Discourse on Meta-
physics provides us with little help in resolving this question. When
Leibniz introduces the issue of the nature of body in §12, he has only
this to say:
I believe that anyone who will but meditate about the nature of substance, as I
have explained it above, will find that the nature of body does not consist
merely in extension, that is, in size, shape and motion, but that we must
necessarily recognize in body something related to souls, something we com-
monly call substantial form, even though it makes no change in the phenome-
na, any more than do the souls of animals, if they have any. It is even possible
to demonstrate that the notions of size, shape and motion are not as distinct
as we imagine and that they contain something imaginary and relative to our
perceptions. (Le 41—2/AG 44)
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are subject to passions (excepting the primitive one [God]), they are
not pure forces; they are the foundation not only of actions, but also
of resistances or passivities [passibilites], and their passions are in con-
fused perceptions" (GP III 636). But how, we must ask, are the con-
fused perceptions of a monad specifically linked with its resistance to
change and with its tendency to pass from more perfect to less perfect
states? The resolution of this problem requires that we distinguish
two different senses in which a monad can be said to "act." As an
entelechy or spontaneous source of change, a monad acts continu-
ously to produce whatever changes occur in its own states:
[A]nything which occurs in what is strictly speaking a substance must be a case
of "action" in the metaphysically rigorous sense of something which occurs in
the substance spontaneously, arising out of its own depths; for no created
substance can have an influence upon any other, so that everything comes to a
substance from itself 'though ultimately from God). (NE II, xxi, 72; RB 210)
According to Leib^z, any changes that occur in the states of a monad
are entirely th * product of its own appetitions, or the momentary
tendencies of its states to pass to new states; and every such appetition
can be regarded as a modification of the intrinsic force or primitive
active power of that monad. Although any change within the state of a
given monad thus results from the same source - the exercise of
monadic appetition - we can distinguish between those changes
which terminate in states of increased perfection (a monad's actions)
and those which terminate in states of decreased perfection (its pas-
sions). Whether the total appetition of a monad at a given moment
results in an action or a passion will be determined by its correspond-
ing resistance to change at that moment, that is, by its primary matter
or confused perceptions.
We can best understand how this resistance arises by returning to
Leibniz's basic model of action (both human and divine) as the joint
product of wisdom and volition.83 For Leibniz, will or appetite is
naturally good: It tends toward any end in proportion to its apparent
degree of goodness. What impedes the attainment of the good is thus
not the character of an agent's will but its associated degree of wis-
dom: its capacity to assess the relative goodness of competing ends.
With this, we are able to clarify the respective roles played by primi-
tive active force and primary matter in the operations of a monad. A
monad is conceived by Leibniz as a combination of volitional and
cognitive elements - of a faculty of appetite and a faculty of percep-
tion. By nature a monad is a spontaneous principle of action that
tends toward change unless it is in some way impeded, and it tends
toward change in accordance with the law of final causes; that is, it
aims to attain the greatest possible good. To the extent that a monad is
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Notes
See GP II 68/M 84; GP II 74-5/M 92. The details of this system, which
represents the best of all possible worlds as an aggregate of harmoniously
related substances, are the subject of Part III. At present, we are con-
cerned only with the essential properties of substance itself, or those
properties which substances would possess in any possible world.
To Foucher, 1686: "When we dispute whether something is a substance or
a mode of being [facon d'estre], it is necessary to define what it is to be a
substance. I find this definition nowhere, and I have been obliged to work
on it myself" (GP II 384). To Bourguet, 22 March 1714: "[W]e do not
commonly apply ourselves to giving definitions of terms, and we speak in
a confused way of substance, whose knowledge is nevertheless the key to
the inner philosophy [la Philosophie interieure]. This is the difficulty in
which we find ourselves, which has so confounded Spinoza and M.
Locke" (GP III 567).
This is not to say that Leibniz's views are orthodox Aristotelian ones but
only that they are largely framed in response to a set of concerns made
prominent by Aristotle and the scholastics. For a detailed defense of this
claim, see Mercer, in press. Hacking (1972) argues that the concept of
substance can be seen as providing the answer to a variety of metaphysical
problems: What remains numerically the same through change? What
are the ultimate simples from which complexes are formed? etc. The list
that follows summarizes what are for Leibniz the most significant of these
problems. My approach parallels that of S. Brown (1984, 99-101), who
sees Leibniz as committed to a similar set of assumptions.
Thus, Leibniz writes to Arnauld: "It seems too that what constitutes the
essence of a being through aggregation is only a state of being [maniere
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d'estre] of its constituent beings; for example, what constitutes the essence
of an army is only a state of being of the constituent men. This state of
being therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a state of
being of another substance" (GP II 96—7/M 121).
5. For a careful tracing of this idea through Leibniz's writings of the 1660s
and 1670s, see Mercer, in press.
6. This is not the only route by which Leibniz reaches the conclusion that
substance is a principle of action. In the 1668 essay On Transubstantiation,
he claims this as a necessary condition for substance to qualify as "being
which subsists in itself": "1. Substance is being which subsists in itself [ens
per se subsistens]. 2. Being which subsists in itself is that which has a principle
of action within itself. Taken as an individual, being which subsists in
itself, or substance (either one), is a suppositum. In fact, the Scholastics
customarily define a suppositum as a substantial individual. Now actions
pertain to supposita [actiones sunt suppositorum]. Thus a suppositum has with-
in itself a principle of action, or it acts. Therefore, a being which subsists
in itself has a principle of action within itself. Q.E.D." (A VI 1, 508/
L 115). In later writings Leibniz often claims that the price of denying the
activity of substance is Spinozism. See Theodicy §393.
7. To Arnauld, he writes: "I deduce that many things do not exist where there
is not one that is genuinely one being, and that every multitude presup-
poses unity" (GP II 118/M 151). We return to this claim in Chapter 8.
8. See his letter to Arnauld of 30 April 1687 (GP II 96-102/M 120-8).
9. See Theodicy §390: "I hold that when God produces something he pro-
duces it as an individual, and not as a universal of logic" (GP VI 346/
H 358).
10. In DM §8, Leibniz identifies the "individual notion" of a substance with
its "haecceity," but he is not using this term in its original Scotist sense.
11. As we saw in Chapter 2, condition (g) can be traced to Leibniz's appro-
priation of Bisterfeld's doctrine of immeatio or universal "communion."
Leibniz recognizes Hippocrates as the source for the related idea that "all
things sympathize" (GP VI 627/AG 228; C 14-15/P 176). This thesis,
applied in the Hippocratic work On Nourishment to the human body, was
developed by Stoics like Chrysippus into a general cosmological principle
(see Lapidge 1978). Leibniz acknowledges this Stoic influence in his 1698
reply to Bayle (GP IV 523/L 496).
12. Cf. his letter to the Electress Sophie of March 1706: "And since the
mutation of things is not an annihilation, but a new modification of
substances which receive different states, we may judge that the nature of
created substance rightly consists in this connection, which brings it about
that these different states belong to one subject; and that this subject is
disposed by its nature to pass from one state to another. And this is what I
call active force, which is essential to substance, together with what is
passive in it and produces the limitations of this force" (K IX 173).
13. Cf. DM §§15, 16, 29, 32.
14. For a recent restatement of this view, see Catherine Wilson 1989. In
fairness to Wilson, one may read her as claiming simply that during the
Discourse period Leibniz is inclined to formulate his understanding of
substance in logical terms, a view with which I am in agreement. In some
passages, however, she seems to go beyond this, suggesting that Leibniz
has two incompatible conceptions of substance: one according to which
substance is not active or dynamic, the other according to which it is. She
writes, for example, that "Couturat was right to stress that force plays no
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terial, soullike substances. See Broad 1975; Garber 1985; C. Wilson 1989.
Doubts about this reading have been raised by Sleigh 1990, whose treat-
ment of the topic I have found helpful.
53. Thus, he writes to Simon Foucher in 1686: "If bodies were only simple
machines and there was only extension or matter in bodies, it is demon-
strable that all bodies would be only phenomena" (GP I 391). Cf. GP II
119/M 152-3. For a full discussion of the claim that merely extended
things cannot be substances, see Sleigh 1990, chap. 6.
54. In a 1686 letter to Arnauld, Leibniz refers to the declaration of the Fifth
Lateran Council (1512—17) that "the soul is truly the substantial form of
our body" (GP II 75/M 78).
55. Watermark dating of this piece places it between 1680 and 1685. State-
ments like it appear in many texts from the period: "But in fact no being
composed from many parts is truly one, and every substance is indivisible
and those things which have parts are not beings, but only phenomena.
For this reason, ancient philosophers rightly attribute substantial forms,
like minds, souls or primary entelechies to those things which they have
said make an unum per se, and they deny that matter in itself is some one
being" (1685; LH IV 7B, 4 Bl. 13-14 [SF 481]). "In an ens per se there is
required some real union [unio] consisting not in the location and move-
ment of parts, as in a chain, house or ship, but in some individual princi-
ple and subject of operations which is called by us the soul and in every
body a substantial form, provided that it is an unum per se" (1683-6; LH
IV 7, C Bl. 111-4 [V 416]). "I will show some time that every body in
which there is no soul or substantial form is only an appearance, like a
dream, and has no certain or determinate nature; and all the attributes of
bodies of this type are only phenomena which lack a subject. From this it
follows either that bodies are not real beings or that every body is some-
how animated" (1683-6; LH IV 7C BL 103-4 [SF 478]). See also A
Specimen of Discoveries (GP VII 314/P 81).
56. On the unreality of these properties, see GP II 119/M 152; GP VII 314/P
81; GP I 391—2; and the discussion of the final section of Chapter 4.
57. See also DM §18: "[T]he general principles of corporeal nature and of
mechanics itself are more metaphysical than geometrical, and belong to
some indivisible forms or natures as the causes of appearances, rather
than to corporeal mass or extension" (Le 58/AG 51-2). In DM §34,
Leibniz does assume that when united with a soul, the human body
constitutes an unum per se. However, it is difficult to know how much
weight to give this passage. An earlier draft of §34 had begun: "I do not
attempt to determine if bodies are substances in metaphysical rigor or if
they are only true phenomena like the rainbow and, consequently, if
there are true substances, souls, or substantial forms which are not intel-
ligent" (Le 87/AG 65). The safest thing to say is that Leibniz's views
concerning the reality of body and corporeal substance do not seem to be
fully settled in the Discourse. On this point, see the discussions of C.
Wilson 1989, chap. 3, and Sleigh 1990, chap. 5.
58. As Garber notes (1985, n. 54), much of this passage is missing from the
version of the letter received by Arnauld. Nevertheless, a passage that was
sent makes much the same point: "[A]ssuming there is a soul or entelechy
in animals or other corporeal substances, one must argue from it on this
point as we all argue from man who is an entity endowed with a genuine
unity conferred on him by his soul, notwithstanding the fact that the mass
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of his body is divided into organs, vessels, humors, spirits, and that the
parts are undoubtedly full of an infinite number of corporeal substances
endowed with their own entelechies" (GP II 120/M 154).
59. How close, of course, depends on what one takes Leibniz's later position
to be. On the reading offered in Part III, the relationship turns out to be
very close. For a concise statement of Leibniz's view, see Metaphysical Con-
sequences of the Principle of Reason §7: "But an organic body, like every
other body, is merely an aggregate of animals or other things which are
living and therefore organic, or finally of small objects or masses; but
these also are finally resolved into living things, from which it is evident
that all bodies are finally resolved into living things, and that what, in the
analysis of substances, exist ultimately are simple substances — namely,
souls, or, if you prefer a more general term, monads, which are without
parts" (C 13-14/P 175).
60. One qualification must be added. The conclusion that there is nothing
real or substantial in animated creatures except soullike forms might still
be consistent with the claim that these creatures are corporeal substances
if it could be established that the soul itself or some other principle of
union were capable of conferring a per se unity on the plurality of sub-
stances that make up the creature's body. We examine this possibility in
Chapter 10.
61. Cf. Sleigh (1990, 100), who labels it the "monadological theory."
62. Cf. the following texts: "[T]he reality of a corporeal substance consists in
a certain individual nature; that is, not in mass [mole], but in a power of
acting and being acted on. . . . Motive force, or the power of acting, is
something real and can be discerned in bodies. And so the essence of a
body is not to be located in extension and its modifications. . . . All sub-
stance is contained in the power of acting and being acted on" (GP VII
314-15/P 81-2); "Extension does not belong to the substance of a body,
nor motion, but only matter, or a principle of passion or limited nature,
and form, or a principle of action or unlimited nature. . . . If mass [moles]
belongs to the essence of human substance, it could not be explained how
a man may remain the same" (LH IV 1, 14c Bl. 11 [V 294]).
63. This is not to say that either principle is capable of existing by itself.
Strictly speaking, entelechy and primary matter are both abstractions
from the complete corporeal substance. See Garber 1985, 46-55.
64. Garber (1985, 47) recognizes this passage as supportive of the reduction-
ist theory but believes it comes from a period later than the Discourse.
Watermark dating places it between 1683 and 1686 (V 476).
65. See Sleigh 1990, 115; and Garber's response to this claim (1992, 164-5).
Another objection that can be raised against the reductionist theory is
that it is incompatible with the connection Leibniz establishes between the
active and passive powers of substance and the physical properties of
bodies. To the extent that these powers are envisioned as grounding
properties of material things, it might be argued, they could hardly be
the powers of a soullike form but must instead be the powers of a corpo-
real substance. As it stands, this objection is hardly decisive. The fact that
bodies and forms appear to be quite different sorts of things is insuffi-
cient reason to think that Leibniz would balk at grounding the former in
the latter. We shall see in Chapter 9 that this is exactly what he does in his
later philosophy when he cites the active and passive powers of monads as
foundations for the force and resistance of bodies. Such a view is not
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172 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
explicit in his writings of the 1680s, but there is sufficient overlap be-
tween the things he says in the two periods to make it plausible that the
same analysis is at work. Suggestive here is his comment in the Specimen of
Discoveries that the reality of bodies is "to be located in the power of acting
and resisting alone, which we perceive with the intellect and not with the
imagination" (GP VII 315/P 82). This is reminiscent of his later view that
we can comprehend intellectually that material things are really unex-
tended monads, although we cannot imagine in sensory terms how this
could be so.
66. Concerning Leibniz's exchange with Fardella, it is worth considering the
following passage, dated March 1690: "And so, since every body is a mass
or aggregate of bodies, no body is a substance; and consequently, sub-
stance must be sought outside corporeal nature. But substance is some-
thing which is truly one, indivisible, and thus neither generable nor cor-
ruptible, [and] which is the subject of actions and passions; in short, it is
that very thing which I understand when I say T (me), which subsists,
albeit with my body having undergone changes [sublato] through its parts
- as my body is certainly in perpetual flux - and with me surviving. No
part of my body can be specified as necessary for my subsistence; nev-
ertheless, I am never without some united part of matter. I have need of
an organic body, although there is nothing in it which is necessary for my
subsistence" (FN 324/V 2157-8).
67. There has been much debate concerning when the term "monad" makes
its first appearance in Leibniz's writings, the sources from which he de-
rives it, and its original designation. It has often been claimed that Leib-
niz first uses the term to refer to his own conception of substance in a
letter to Fardella of 3/13 September 1696 (FN 326). Consistent with this,
Merchant (1979) maintains that he appropriated the term from F. M. van
Helmont during the latter's visit to Hanover in March 1696, and that the
immediate sources for Leibniz's usage are van Helmont's A Cabbalistical
Dialogue (1682) and Anne Con way's The Principles of the Most Ancient and
Modern Philosophy (1690). Parkinson (P 255) has noted, however, that
there is at least one earlier text, an unfinished letter to the Marquis de
l'Hopital dated 22 July 1695, in which Leibniz uses the term monas to
designate whatever is a "real unity" (GM II 295). Finally, Garber (1985,
69) points out that in a September 1698 letter to Johann Bernoulli, Leib-
niz appears to use the term to refer to corporeal substances rather than
the soullike substances of the Monadology: "What I call a complete monad
or individual substance [substantiam singularem] is not so much the soul
[anima], as it is the animal itself, or something analogous to it, endowed
with a soul or form and an organic body" (GM III 542/AG 168; cf. GM
III 552/L 512).
68. This position is explored in Chapters 8-10.
69. The title is not Leibniz's own but that of an early editor. Unless otherwise
indicated, the parenthetical references that follow are to sections of this
essay (GP VI 607-23). I follow the translation of Ariew and Garber (AG
213-25)-
70. Cf. PNG §1: "A simple substance is that which has no parts. . . . Monas is a
Greek word signifying unity, or what is one. Composites or bodies are
multitudes; and simple substances - lives, souls, and minds - are unities.
There must be simple substances everywhere, because, without simples,
there would be no composites" (GP VI 598/AG 207).
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71. "When I say that every substance is simple, I understand by this that it
lacks parts" (GP II 239/L 526).
72. The claim that monads cannot affect one another involves more than
their supposed simplicity or lack of parts. Also relevant is Leibniz's dis-
missal of the possibility of the migration of accidents from one substance
to another, a point summarized in his assertion that "monads have no
windows through which something can enter or leave" (§7).
73. Cf. GP VI 598/AG 207; GP VI 628/AG 228.
74. Cf. his letter to Rudolf Wagner of 4 June 1710: "Broadly understood, the
soul is the same as that which is alive or a vital principle, namely, a
principle of internal action existing in a simple thing or monad, to which
external action corresponds. And this correspondence of internal and
external, or the representation of the external in the internal, of the
composite in the simple, of a multitude in a unity, in fact constitutes
perception" (GP VII 528).
75. Cf. Mon §§56, 59; PNG §2; and GP III 574-5, quoted in note 76. Mugnai
(1990b, 78) refers to these states as "intramonadic relations." They are
not to be confused with what others have called "relational properties,"
i.e. properties such as fatherhood which are predicable of an individual
only insofar as there exists some other individual to which it stands in
relation (see Ishiguro 1992, 132). "Intramonadic relations" are monadic
accidents that have a relational content. They do not entail the existence
of irreducible relational facts about monads.
76. See his letter to Bourguet of December 1714: "In the way in which I
define perception and appetite, it is necessary that all monads be en-
dowed with them. For perception is for me the representation of the multi-
tude in the simple, and appetite is the tendency from one perception to
another; but these two things are in all monads, for otherwise a monad
would have no relation to the rest of the world" (GP III 574—5). Cf. PNG
§2; GP II 481; E 746; C 14/P 175.
77. Cf. GP VII 330; GP IV 562/L 579.
78. Cf. C 9 / P i 3 4 ; G 3 2 3 .
79. "The soul tends to change by the appetite, which leads it to distinct or
confused perceptions, according to which it is more or less perfect" (GP
III 347). Cf. PNG §13.
80. "God alone is a substance truly separated from matter, since he is pure
act, endowed with no power of being acted on, which, wherever it is,
constitutes matter" (GP VII 530). Cf. GP III 457.
81. "By 'monads' I understand simple substances, and therefore incorporeal
ones which have nothing pertaining to extension" (D II 2, 161). Cf. D II 2,
158; Mon §19.
82. We return to this point in Part III.
83. See Chapter 1.
84. See Chapter 4.
85. See NE III, vi, 12 (RB 307); IV, xvi, 12 (RB 473-4). This is a consequence
of the claim that all variety arises through a varying of degrees of perfec-
tion (GP II 340, 343), and Leibniz's commitment to a continuous order-
ing of degrees of perfection. (See Chapter 2.)
86. Leibniz struggles throughout his career with the question of the meta-
physical distance between rational and nonrational creatures. For treat-
ments of various aspects of the problem, see Fouke 1991; Kulstad 1991;
Blumenfeld 1995. The gap between rational and nonrational creatures is
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174 FIRST PHILOSOPHY
stressed in DM §35: "Since God is the greatest and wisest of all minds, it is
easy to judge that the beings with whom he can, so to speak, enter into
conversation, and even into a society — by communicating to them his
views and will in a particular manner and in such a way that they can
know and love their benefactor — must be infinitely nearer to him than all
other things" (Le 90/AG 66). Cf. New System (GP IV 479/AG 140).
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Modeling the Best of All Possible Worlds
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS l8l
6
greatest sum of perfection. Instead, God conceives of single monads
as they would be found related in a world; and under this circum-
stance, it is necessary to think of the perceptions of individual monads
as being conditioned by those of the other monads in their world.
Thus, while Leibniz believes that the perfection of individual monads
is rooted in the distinctness of their perceptions, he also maintains
that "each monad . . . must have its perceptions and appetites regu-
lated [regies] in the best way which is compatible with all the rest"
(PNG §12; GP VI 603-4/P 201).7 This follows directly from his thesis
that in any possible world "all is connected," such that a change any-
where is reflected in a change everywhere:
For it must be known that all things are connected [tout est lie] 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 dis-
tance. {Theodicy §9; GP VI 107/H 128)
Because of the connection among the things making up a world, God
is obliged to reckon the perfection of monads on a world-by-world
basis, rather than on an individual basis. The perfection of any single
monad cannot be conceived in isolation from the perfection of the
other monads in its world.
If this point is not immediately compelling, we may frame it in
slightly different terms. Although all those substances conceivable by
God are possible in themselves, they are not all compossible; that is, they
are not all capable of coexisting within a single world. According to
Leibniz, the existence of certain individuals necessarily precludes the
existence of others. Consequently, it is not open to God simply to
proceed on the basis of gathering the collection of substances that
individually represent the highest degrees of perfection; for certain
of these individuals may be incompossible with others. This proposi-
tion is accepted by all students of Leibniz's thought: in evaluating the
relative perfection of possible worlds, God conceives of worlds as
collections of compossible substances. By itself, however, it is not very
informative regarding the constraints on the coexistence of individual
substances within a world. The next section suggests how the doctrine
of universal connection can help illuminate the notion of compos-
sibility. I then offer a more rigorous account of universal connection
itself as it functions in Leibniz's theory of monads.
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l82 NATURE
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 183
Because (1) entails the truth of Rab and (2) the truth of not-Rab, the
supposition of the joint existence of a and b will be logically inconsis-
tent; hence a and b are incompossible. By contrast, Rescher argues,
two individuals will be compossible only if "their complete individual
notions are such that in each case where one of them has the relation-
al property of R-ing the other, this other has the relational property
of being-R'ed by the former."10 He illustrates this account with the
following sort of example. The individuals we call "Adam" and "Cain"
are compossible because being the father of (an individual with all the
properties of) Cain is a relational property of Adam's and being fa-
thered by (an individual with all the properties of) Adam is a relation-
al property of Cain's.11 But our Adam would not be compossible with
an individual Cain*, who possessed the most notable properties of
our Cain, save that in place of the property of being fathered by
Adam he possessed the property of being fathered by Noah. In the
latter case, the complete concept of Adam would entail that Adam was
the father of a person with all the properties of Cain, while the com-
plete concept of Cain* would entail that Adam was not the father of
such a person but, rather, Noah was. Therefore, these two complete
concepts could not be instantiated in the same world.
There is, I think, much that is right about this analysis. To get at it,
however, we must introduce some of the machinery of Leibniz's meta-
physics. First, we have to clarify the main commitments of his doctrine
of relations. We saw in the last chapter that Leibniz embraces the view
that there are no purely extrinsic denominations, on account of the
"real connection" of things. We have interpreted this to mean that any
relation imposed on some individual by something else must be ac-
companied by some change in the internal state of that individual:
whenever a new extrinsic denomination becomes true of it, some new
intrinsic denomination must also become true of it. Leibniz evidently
understands this thesis as extending to garden-variety relations like
fatherhood, for he remarks that because of the intercourse of all
things, "no one becomes a widower in India by the death of his wife in
Europe unless a real change occurs in him" (GP VII 321-2/L 365).
To read Leibniz's no purely extrinsic denominations thesis in this
way is to see it as making a positive claim about what must be true of
the intrinsic properties of any two individuals for a relation to be
predicated of them. It is to see Leibniz as holding that there are no
"bare" relations of individuals: relations that come to be true of them
without some real change occurring in the individuals themselves. Yet
Leibniz's thesis also implies a negative claim, which is that, ontologi-
cally speaking, there is nothing more to two things' being related than
that each possesses certain intrinsic properties. Relations, we have
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184 NATURE
already noted, are entia rationis. They are ways of thinking of the
similarity or connectedness of things; they are not things in them-
selves. To assert the relation of two things is, in effect, to recognize
each as possessing certain intrinsic characteristics and to state some-
thing that is true of the way these characteristics stand with respect to
each other. What we recognize in this way may well be objectively true
of the things in question — it may be something God would know of
them - but for all that, recognizing their relatedness does not amount
to recognizing a third thing in the world over and above the individu-
als and their intrinsic properties. Thus, it is not only the case that the
relations of things are necessarily grounded in intrinsic properties of
the things related; but, in terms of ontological commitment, those
relations imply nothing more about the created world than that cer-
tain individuals possess intrinsic properties between which some sim-
ilarity or connection can be apprehended. 12 In light of this, it is un-
doubtedly right to attribute to Leibniz a thesis about the reducibility of
intersubstantial relations. Such relations, he writes, are "mere results,
which do not constitute any intrinsic denomination per se" but instead
"demand a foundation derived from the category of quality, that is,
from an intrinsic accidental denomination" (C 9/P 134). In general,
we may assume that for any relation R truly predicable of substances a
and b, there are intrinsic denominations designating nonrelational
accidents of a and b, which ground the truth of Rab. Simply put, given
the intrinsic properties of any two substances, it is fully determined
how they are related: There is no further fact about the created world
relevant to this point.13
The import of this thesis obviously hinges on what we make of the
intrinsic or nonrelational properties of substances. Consider the ear-
lier example of the properties of fatherhood and filiation predicated
of Adam and Cain, respectively. These clearly are not designated by
intrinsic denominations, for they are predicated of Adam and Cain
only in virtue of how they each stand with respect to the other. Strictly
speaking, then, these are not the sorts of properties Leibniz has in
mind when he claims that relations are grounded in intrinsic denomi-
nations. We have already seen that in his theory of monads Leibniz
limits the intrinsic denominations of substances to those designating
their perceptions and appetitions. It is thus reasonable to suppose
that the properties that ground the relatedness of Adam and Cain are
properties internal to their respective souls: properties such as "ex-
pressing oneself to be the father of (an individual with all the proper-
ties of) Cain" and "expressing oneself to be the son (of an individual
with all the properties) of Adam." This supposition is consistent with
the main lines of Leibniz's philosophy going back to the Discourse on
Metaphysics. He leaves no doubt that the intrinsic properties of sub-
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l86 NATURE
itself could not exist unless those individuals compossible with it were
also to exist. Thus, Adam could not exist unless Eve, Cain, and all of
Adam's other progeny were to exist, since (given the doctrine of uni-
versal expression) Adam's relationships to all these other individuals
form part of what it is to be Adam.
There is, however, another way to read the relation between univer-
sal expression and compossibility, which does not commit us to so
strong a conclusion. We may note first that Leibniz rarely speaks of
the concept of an individual substance as expressing the concepts of
the other substances in its world. He much more frequently describes
the individual substance itself as expressing the universe within its
"operations" or perceptions.16 Thus, Adam expresses himself as be-
ing related as a father to an individual with all the properties of Cain,
and in some indistinct way, as being so related to all of humanity.17
Leibniz further believes that for substances belonging to the same
world there is necessarily an "agreement" or "correspondence" among
their expressions of the universe. These expressions, he writes, are
like so many perspectives on the same city, which is "variously rep-
resented depending upon the different positions from which it is
viewed" (DM §9; Le 37/AG 42). Consequently, just as Adam expresses
himself as standing in a relation of fatherhood with respect to Cain, so
Cain expresses himself as standing in a relation of filiation with re-
spect to Adam:
[T]he perceptions or expressions of all substances mutually correspond [s'en-
trerepondent] in such a way that each, following with care certain reasons or
laws it has observed, coincides with others doing the same - in the same way
that several people who have agreed to meet in some place at some specified
time can really do this if they so desire. But although they all express the same
phenomena, it does not follow that their expressions are perfectly similar; it is
sufficient that they are proportional. In just the same way, several spectators
believe that they are seeing the same thing and agree among themselves about
it, even though each sees and speaks in accordance with his view. (DM § 14; Le
48/AG 47)
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 187
erties of Adam; and for that reason we are entitled to assert that Adam
is the father of Cain and Cain the son of Adam. There is no further
fact of the matter concerning this relation, beyond the correlation in
their perceptions or their expressions of their relatedness to the
world.
Given this reading of Leibniz's doctrine of universal expression, it is
by no means obvious that it is impossible for Adam to exist without
Cain (or his other progeny). Adam's complete concept entails only
that it is part of being Adam that he should express himself as the
father of a Cainlike individual. It does not follow that such an individ-
ual must also exist.18 There is thus no contradiction in supposing the
existence of Adam without the existence of Cain. What Leibniz does
appear to claim, however, is that a group of substances could not be
conceived (and would not be conceived by God) as existing together in
a world unless there were the appropriate sort of agreement among
their expressions of the universe as a whole. Thus, although no logical
contradiction would be engendered in creating an Adam who ex-
pressed himself as the father of Cain (with all that that entails) and a
Cain* who expressed himself as the son of Noah (with all that that
entails), it would be impossible to think of these two substances as
inhabiting the same world. Their mutual isolation would go beyond
the metaphysical isolation that is, in Leibniz's philosophy, the condi-
tion of all created substances. It would extend to there literally being
no conceivable relation between the two: The universe Adam ex-
pressed would have no coherent connection with the one expressed
by Cain*. Although it is weaker than the notion that Mates and Re-
scher describe, a credible notion of compossibility is identified here:
A group of substances is compossible only if such substances can be
conceived as coexisting within the same world, which is to say, only if
they agree in their respective expressions of the universe.19
An objection to this reading is that while weakening the require-
ments on compossibility it demands a too rich notion of the universal
connection Leibniz claims is a necessary feature of any possible world.
According to this account, universal connection implies not merely
some correlation or other among the substances in a world, such that
whenever a change occurs anywhere it is reflected in a change every-
where; it requires also a systematic agreement or correspondence
among the states of all the substances in a world, such that what
appears to be the case for one substance, appears similarly for all the
others, allowing for differences in point of view and relative distinct-
ness of perception. Now, some may argue that this is assuming too
much: It is to ascribe to all possible worlds a feature specifically associ-
ated by Leibniz with only the best of all possible worlds. The texts,
however, do not support this objection with any definiteness. On
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NATURE
Leibniz's talk of God deciding how best to "fill" the orders of space
and time is more than a metaphor. We should instead take seriously
the idea that within Leibniz's metaphysics space and time define the
fundamental order according to which singular things are connect-
ed. 24 "Simultaneous" or "coexistent" beings are conceived as "spa-
tially" connected to one another, or as nearer and farther relative to
some reference point; "nonsimultaneous" beings are conceived as
"temporally" connected, or as prior and posterior to one another.25
These orders of arrangement and succession represent the dimen-
sions according to which a variety of beings can be related to one
another within a world. As Leibniz sees it, we pass from these possi-
bilities of connection to the actual ways in which things are connected
via the particular causal order of a world. When the causal laws of a
world are taken into account, we no longer conceive of things as
merely potentially connected in some way or another according to
space and time; instead, there is a specific way in which they are
connected, as determined by the laws of that world. Thus, to use an
example from the more familiar framework of Newtonian physics,
relative to the orders of space and time we can conceive of material
things as being arranged and as changing in an infinity of different
ways. However, in this world, there is only one way in which bodies are
in fact arranged in space and time, and one set of physical laws which
determine how bodies undergo change with respect to one another.
If we accept a space—time order as integral to the structure of
possible worlds, we obviously must be very careful in how we interpret
it. We know, first, that, in Leibniz's view, space and time are not con-
stituents of the created world. They are, rather, ideal orders that a
mind imposes on existing things (or possibly existing things) in con-
ceiving of their relatedness.26 This point should cause us no prob-
lems. We have not claimed that space and time would be real elements
in any world created by God, but only that a space-time order serves
for conceiving of the connection of beings within any possible world.
A second point, however, is liable to cause us more difficulty. For
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 191
Leibniz, space and time are orders directly indicative of the related-
ness of phenomenal material things, not unextended monads. It is the
key to his solution of the problem of the "labyrinth of the continuum"
that truly real beings — monads — are neither parts of space nor
located in space. As he describes his position to Des Bosses, it would
be easy to conclude that monads have nothing to do with space at all:
Space is the order of coexisting phenomena, as time is the order of successive
phenomena, and there is no spatial or absolute nearness or distance between
monads. And to say that they are crowded together in a point or disseminated
in space is to use certain fictions of our mind when we seek to visualize freely
what can only be understood. In this conception, also, there is involved no
extension or composition of the continuum, and all difficulties about points
dissolve. (GP II 450-i/L 604)27
The case of time is less easily interpreted. Here too, however, it is
Leibniz's view that monads are not located in time, and that they do
not stand in any immediate temporal relations to one another.28 The
difficulty of determining temporal relations among the states of dif-
ferent monads becomes all the more obvious when we consider that,
for Leibniz, temporal order is grounded in causal order. 29 Yet he also
goes out of his way to deny that created substances engage in real
causal interactions with one another. So again, it is unclear what basis
there might be for a temporal order among monads. In general, he
tells Des Bosses, a monad is "like a world of its own, having no inter-
course of a dependent nature except with God" (GP II 436/L 600).
Given this degree of metaphysical isolation, we must wonder whether
it is even possible to conceive of such substances as connected within a
world.
Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly Leibniz's position that monads are
so connected. In notes responding to Des Bosses, he explicitly claims
that monads are united in the world by means of three types of
relations: (1) duration (duratio), or the "order of successives"; (2) posi-
tion (situs), or the "order of coexistence"; (3) intercourse {commercium),
or reciprocal action (GP II 438/AG 199). It is essential, therefore, to
try to understand how he sees such relations as arising. We have
already laid the foundations for his position. For a plurality of sub-
stances to be united in a world it is in the first place necessary that they
each express within their perceptual states their relation to the uni-
verse as a whole. Now, prima facie, one of the most puzzling features
of Leibniz's doctrine of universal expression is that soullike monads
perceive the universe of other monads as a world of spatiotemporally
related bodies. In an obvious sense, there is no way for him to get
around this point. Leibniz assumes that a paradigm case of the mo-
nads which populate the universe is the human mind or soul. We know
through immediate experience, however, that the phenomena we per-
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192 NATURE
ceive are bodies related in space and time. Consequently, if the doc-
trine of universal expression is true, at least some of the monads in
this world perceive the universe as a spatiotemporal world of bodies.30
Although this fact is at first glance puzzling, it is exploited by Leibniz
to deliver precisely what it seemed his theory could not deliver:
an analogue of spatiotemporal ordering among monads. This he
achieves by drawing on correlations among the spatiotemporal phe-
nomena that form the content of the perceptions of different mo-
nads. As he explains to De Voider in 1705:
The essential orderly arrangement of singular things, or their relation with
respect to time and place, must be understood of their relation with respect to
the things contained in time and place [intelligenda est de relatione ad contenta in
tempore et loco], both near and remote, which is necessarily expressed by any
singular thing, such that the universe31could be read in it, if the reader were
infinitely penetrating. (GP II 277-8)
The proposal Leibniz makes is an intriguing one: We can define the
basic order that unites a plurality of soullike monads in a world in a
way that is parasitic on the spatiotemporal order of the phenomena
perceived by those monads. To put this differently, we can exploit the
spatiotemporal order inherent in the perceptions of monads to define
an order of coexistence and succession among those monads them-
selves. It remains to be established exactly how Leibniz sees this as
being accomplished. For the moment, we need only note that involved
in a monad's expression of the universe is its expression of itself as
having a spatiotemporal position relative to that of the other things in
its world. In virtue of this property, which is common to all monads,
Leibniz assumes that it is possible to define an analogue of spatiotem-
poral order among monads themselves. Thus, we can begin to talk of
monads (or states of monads) as "coexisting" with respect to one
another and as "succeeding" one another.
In much the same way, Leibniz believes it is possible to define an
analogue of causal order among monads. Given his insistence on the
absence of any real interaction among monads, it is again puzzling
that he should claim a type of "intercourse" (commercio) among them.
When we examine what he means by this, the puzzle quickly dissolves.
While there is a clear sense in which every monad is "the true immedi-
ate cause of all its internal actions and passions" (GP VI 354), Leibniz
also maintains that there is a sense in which monads can be thought of
as active or passive with respect to each other. As he describes his
position in the Monadology (§§49—52), one monad can be regarded as
"acting" on another insofar as it is more perfect than the latter, or,
what is assumed to be equivalent, it contains distinct perceptions that
explain a priori what happens in the latter. Conversely, one monad is
"acted on" by another insofar as the latter's distinct perceptions pro-
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 193
vide an a priori explanation for the change that occurs in it. Putting
these two ideas together, we find that within any world there is a
complex reciprocity between the perceptual states of every monad
and those of every other:
[A]ctions and passions among creatures are mutual. For God, comparing two
simple substances, finds in each reasons that require him to adjust the other
to it; and consequently, what is active in some respects is passive from another
point of view: active insofar as what is known distinctly in one serves to
explain what happens in another; and passive insofar as the reason for what
happens in one is found in what is known distinctly in another. (Mon §52; GP
VI 615/AG 219-20)
Leibniz's explanation of the intercourse of monads is of a piece with
his account of monads' spatiotemporal relations. In both cases, we are
to see these intermonadic relations as supervening on the intrinsic
properties of individual monads: whether one monad "acts" on an-
other is determined entirely by correlations among their respective
perceptions. Thus, the dependence of monads on one another is
merely ideal: something conceivable by the mind. The point therefore
stands that the only real dependence of monads is on God, their
creator.32
We can in this way construct a prima facie case for the connection of
monads within a framework of spatiotemporal and causal relations.
We must now try to make this framework more precise. For this, we
need one further Leibnizian thesis. It is a fundamental tenet of Leib-
niz's mature philosophy, defended until the end of his life, that no
created monad ever exists completely detached from an organic
body.33 As we shall see, the ontological status of these bodies remains
problematic. According to one interpretation, they are nothing more
than phenomenal entities, or what a soullike monad perceives as its
body. Nevertheless, Leibniz makes it clear that for monads to be con-
ceived as connected in a world, each must be endowed with its own
organic body:
I do not acknowledge entirely separated souls in the natural order or created
spirits entirely detached from every body. . . . God alone is above all matter,
since he is its author; however, creatures free or freed from matter would at
the same time be divorced from the universal connection [la liaison univer-
selle], like deserters from the general order. (GP VI 545-6/L 590)34
The thesis of embodiment is critical to Leibniz's account of the con-
nection of monads: Only as a result of representing itself as a creature
with a body does a soullike monad acquire a "point of view," from
which it is able to express its relatedness to the universe as a whole.35
This is immediately apparent as regards a monad's analogue of spatial
position or situs. Without a body to relate it to the other bodies it
perceives, a monad would be literally nowhere with respect to the ob-
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194 ~NATURE
jects of its perceptions. Given the thesis of embodiment, we can say
that a monad expresses the universe as a whole insofar as it represents
itself as located in a body that is (according to its perceptions) situated
vis-a-vis every other body in the universe:
[SJince every organic body is affected by the entire universe through relations
which are determinate with respect to each part of the universe, it is not
surprising that the soul, which represents to itself the rest in accordance with
the relations of its body, is a kind of mirror of the universe, which represents
the rest in accordance with (so to speak) its point of view —just as the same city
presents, to a person who looks at it from various sides, projections which are
quite different. (C 15/P 176)36
Under the condition that all monads are thus embodied, and that
each expresses its relatedness to the rest via the relations of their
respective bodies, a spacelike order of coexistence is determined
among monads. Although monads are not themselves extended,
Leibniz writes,
they nevertheless have a certain kind of position [situs] in extension, that is,
they have a certain ordered relation of coexistence with others, through the
machine which they control. I do not think that any finite substances exist
apart from every body, or, therefore, that they lack a position or an order
relative to the other things coexisting in the universe. (GP II 253/L 531)
To understand how an order of coexistence is determined among
monads, we must appeal to the principles outlined in the preceding
section. It follows from Leibniz's no purely extrinsic denominations
thesis that, though genuine, the connection of soullike monads is not
an irreducible fact about them, but is instead a "result" of their intrin-
sic denominations. These intrinsic denominations designate percep-
tual states of the monad that express its relatedness vis-a-vis the rest of
the universe. In the case of the monadic order of coexistence, we are
interested in these states insofar as they express the situs or position of
a monad with respect to other things. The import of the thesis of
monadic embodiment is that we can only conceive of such relations
of situs insofar as a monad represents itself as an embodied creature
standing in spatial relations to other bodies. Given this, we can define
monadic relations of coexistence in much the same way as we did the
relation between Adam and Cain. To say that Adam is the father of
Cain, we saw, is simply to say that Adam expresses himself as the
father of someone with all the properties of Cain and that Cain ex-
presses himself as the son of someone with all the properties of
Adam. For Leibniz, the relation between Adam and Cain is fully
determined by these facts about the two individuals. Similarly, then, to
say that monad a stands in a certain relation of coexistence with
respect to monad b is just to say that a expresses its body as standing in
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 195
a certain spatial relation to the body of b, and that b expresses its body
as standing in the inverse spatial relation to the body of a. As we saw
in the preceding section, these kinds of resultant relations are deter-
mined only if there is an agreement between the expressions of the
related substances. If Adam expresses himself as the father of a Cain-
like individual and Cain expresses himself as the son of a Noahjike
individual, there will be no ground for regarding these two individu-
als as father and son. For there to exist a well-defined monadic order
of coexistence, therefore, an agreement must exist among what dif-
ferent monads perceive to be the relationship of their bodies with
respect to other bodies. This means, for example, that when monad a
expresses its body as being related in such and such a manner to the
body of monad b, the arrangement appears similarly to b (and to all
the other monads of that world), allowing for relevant differences of
perspective.37
Proceeding along these lines, we can also attempt to define a
timelike order of succession among the states of different monads.
Here we must start from the premise that temporal order is grounded
in causal order. 38 The original source of the causal order of the uni-
verse is the spontaneous action of substances. We have noted that each
monad is by nature an entelechy or principle of action, which deter-
mines a unique series of perceptual states. For any monad a, each state
of a is associated with an appetitive force, or the tendency of that state
to give way spontaneously to some new state. As a result, there is
determined a quasi-temporal order internal to every monad. Each
state of a monad supplies a reason or ground for each successive state;
hence, according to Leibniz, it is determined as prior to it.39
What we are seeking, however, is not simply an intramonadic order
of succession, but an order that will be applicable across monads — one
that will allow us to make judgments of priority and posteriority with
respect to the perceptual states of different monads. Here, again, we
may see it as Leibniz's position that such relations can only be defined
on the condition of monadic embodiment. As a result of the universal
connection of things, each state of any monad a expresses <z's organic
body as acting on, or being acted on by, every other body in the
universe.40 Consequently, each state of a expresses a's body as being
active or passive with respect to every other organic body, or every
other body of a monad. Given this, and the principles outlined earlier,
we can define quasi-causal relations among the states of different
monads. In general, state 5a of monad a and state sh of monad b will
stand in a relation of "intercourse," if and only if a and b concur in
their expressions of the causal relation of their bodies. Thus, if 5a
expresses a's body as acting on b's body in a certain manner and sh
expresses b's body as being acted on by a's body in a like manner, we
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196 NATURE
can assert that monad a is active with respect to monad b and that b is
passive with respect to a. This account develops in an interesting way
Leibniz's explanation of the mutual action of monads in Monadology
§§49—52. We noted that in these passages he describes one monad as
being active with respect to another, just in case the former is more
perfect than the latter (as judged by the relative distinctness of their
perceptions), and there is found within it "that which provides an a
priori reason for what happens in the other" (GP VI 615/AG 219). As
it stands, this explanation is regrettably vague. We acquire a better
sense of what Leibniz has in mind if we interpret it along the lines just
suggested. Insofar as monad a expresses its organic body as acting on
the body of monad b, and b simultaneously expresses its body as being
acted on by the body of a, there is found within a an a priori reason
for what happens in b. As a means of preserving the orderly connec-
tion among monads, God has seen fit to regulate their perceptions in
such a way that what is expressed by a (the action of its body on the
body of b) provides a reason for what is expressed by b (its body being
affected by the action of a's body). It is clear that for a complete
account of the intercourse of monads we must go beyond the summa-
ry description of the Monadology so as to include the critical role
played by monadic embodiment. Leibniz himself affirms this in an-
other late essay: "[EJvery simple substance has an organic body which
corresponds to it - otherwise it would not have any kind of orderly
relation to other things in the universe, nor would it act or be acted
upon in an orderly way" (C 14/P 175).41
Given the supposition of this type of causal connection among the
monads of a world, we can, finally, specify a timelike order of succes-
sion among the states of different monads. We may assume first that
within any world there is a well-defined relation of intercourse or
mutual action that holds between the simultaneous states of any two
monads. That is, for any two such states there is a determinate answer
to the question of their action or passion with respect to one anoth-
er.42 If this is so, then we can define a state s al of monad a as tempo-
rally prior to state sh2 of monad b, if and only if there is some state sa2
of a, such that s al is prior to sa2 (according to a's internal order of
succession) and sa2 stands in a relation of mutual action with respect
tO Sh2*3
All of this is undeniably complicated. The basic commitments of
Leibniz's metaphysics, however, have set us a difficult problem: how to
establish the relatedness of a collection of beings that, by their nature,
are free of any real dependence on one another. I have argued that as
a condition of their belonging to a common world, certain relations of
connection must be predicable of monads. In general, two monads
can be regarded as belonging to the same world, if and only if there
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198 NATURE
world must be connected in the minimal sense that each expresses all
the others, we can nonetheless imagine a world in which there is a
radical disparity among different substances' modes of expression,
with the result that there would be no grounds for claiming that they
perceive the same phenomena. We could imagine this happening, for
example, if their spatiotemporal expressions of the universe were
governed by radically different physical laws. Thus, one substance
might express its world as a universe in which the collisions of bodies
conformed to Cartesian laws of motion, whereas another might ex-
press the same world as a universe in which Leibnizian laws held.44
While it is difficult to rule out definitively the possibility of such a
world, there are, so far as I know, no texts in which Leibniz positively
asserts that God could have created such a world. Furthermore, there
are texts in which he says things that make a disharmonious world
seem extremely improbable. In his first reply to Bayle, for example,
he writes, "God could give to each substance its own phenomena
independently of those of others, but in this way he would have made,
so to speak, as many worlds without connection as there are sub-
stances" (GP IV 519/L 493). Recalling his assertion in the Theodicy that
in every possible world "all is connected," this is surely to be read as
implying that such a circumstance would undermine the claim of
these substances to form a single world. In a letter to Arnauld, Leibniz
similarly suggests that in the absence of a common cause, that is, God,
"the phenomena of different minds would not harmonize with each
other, and there would be as many systems as substances" (GP II
115/M 148). Commenting on this passage, Robert Sleigh maintains
that Leibniz did not intend this "argument as yet another version of
the first way, that is, as an argument based on the requirement of an
uncaused cause, outside the series of finite substances constituting the
world. It is based on special features of the actual world — a version of
the argument from design."45 I am not convinced, however, that this
does full justice to the text, for in the next sentence of his letter to
Arnauld, Leibniz adds: "The whole concept we have of time and
space is based upon this harmony." Now, Leibniz may simply be con-
fused here; he may even himself have failed to think through clearly
the distinction between features common to all possible worlds and
those definitive of the best of all possible worlds. On the other hand,
he may be gesturing toward exactly the position I have defended in
this chapter: that space and time determine the order of connection
common to all possible worlds, and that without a harmony among
the perceptions of substances it would be impossible to locate them
within a common spatiotemporal framework; consequently, universal
harmony is a necessary feature of any possible world.46 In the absence
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2OO NATURE
times as there are souls, or had created as many abridged universes, agreeing
in essence and diversified through appearances. There is nothing so rich as
their uniform simplicity accompanied by perfect order. (GP III 347~8)47
In seeking to maximize perfection, God aims to create as many differ-
ent monads as can coexist under the condition of universal harmony.
In order to achieve this goal, God will naturally create monads with
the highest possible degrees of perfection: rational minds with the
capacity to understand the order of the universe and God's providen-
tial plan for creation. However, God will not limit himself to realizing
such creatures: He will produce as many as can coexist consistent with
universal harmony, but he will also create as many lesser creatures as
can coexist with them in the world of greatest total perfection. Inte-
gral to God's conception of this world, we have seen, will be a continu-
ous ordering of degrees of perfection, from the lowest "brute" mo-
nads to the most elevated rational minds. 48
The strategy Leibniz ascribes to God has the further advantage of
maximizing the variety of phenomena perceived by monads. In creat-
ing the greatest possible collection of monads, God produces as many
different phenomenal representations of the universe as can be real-
ized simultaneously. As Leibniz explains in notes written in response
to the second edition of Bayle's Dictionary:
The marvellous thing is that the supreme wisdom has found the means,
through representative substances, of varying the same world in infinite ways
at the same time; for the world - already having within it an infinite variety
and being varied such that it is expressed in diverse ways by an infinity of
different representations — receives an infinity of infinities, and it could not
better correspond to the nature and the intentions of its inexpressible author,
who surpasses in perfection everything that can be thought about him. (GP
IV 554)49
Assuming an agreement among these infinite expressions of the uni-
verse, we may conclude, finally, that in creating the most perfection
that can be realized in a world, God also necessarily produces as much
harmony as can be achieved through the agreement among the per-
ceptions of monads. Consistent with the conclusions of Chapter 2,
then, God maximizes at once perfection or reality, variety of phenom-
ena, and monadic harmony.50
What remains to be addressed are the conditions under which God
achieves this result. What limits are there on how many times God can
multiply these "abridged universes"? Under what circumstances does
God realize the greatest possible variety of monads which can coexist
together in a world? We have noted that Leibniz would have us con-
ceive of God's deliberation in creation on analogy with a tiling prob-
lem. The solution of such a problem determines the optimal method
of paving a given surface. That is, it produces the arrangement of tiles
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that covers the area in the most efficient manner, leaving the fewest
uncovered spaces. Accepting this analogy, we may see Leibniz's rea-
soning as proceeding along the following lines: God's object in cre-
ation is to realize the collection of monads that together represent the
greatest sum of perfection. Just as in a tiling problem, meeting this
goal requires that God choose a world whose order permits the coex-
istence of the greatest variety of monads containing the greatest total
perfection. Given the nature of the monadic substances that consti-
tute the world, however, this order cannot be defined directly. In-
stead, intermonadic order can be defined only indirectly via the order
of the phenomena perceived by those monads. In general, different
intermonadic orders will be determined by the choice of different
spatiotemporal phenomenal orders, that is, different arrangements
of phenomena and different laws governing those phenomena. And
these different orders will in turn permit the realization of different
collections of monads. Leibniz's crucial assumption is now this: To
realize the optimal order for a world, or that order by which there is
realized the greatest sum of perfection, it is necessary and sufficient
to select what is recognizably the optimal spatiotemporal phenomenal
order. That is, the optimal order among the phenomena perceived by
monads will also be the order permitting the realization of the great-
est variety of monads, representing the greatest sum of perfection.
Given the assumed agreement among the phenomena perceived by
these substances, this will also be, perforce, the world of greatest
monadic harmony.
We are thus to assume that the realization of a certain spatiotem-
poral and causal order among the bodies that monads represent as
their bodies (and as bodies related to their bodies) is a sufficient
condition for the realization of the optimal order among monads
themselves, and that this in turn is sufficient for the realization of the
maximum perfection and harmony. Among the principles Leibniz
sees as contributing to the optimal phenomenal order are those
"metaphysico-mathematical laws of nature" that are "most in confor-
mity with intelligence and reason" (GP III 72).51 These would include
the principle of continuity, and those laws of nature (including laws of
motion) that conform to the principle of determination.52 At present,
however, I leave these principles aside to concentrate on one idea that
more than any other serves to explain how Leibniz envisions an opti-
mization of phenomenal order as translating into a maximization of
perfection and harmony. This is his conception of the panorganic
structure of the universe: the idea that matter is everywhere com-
posed of organisms enveloped within organisms ad infinitum.53
Critical to Leibniz's doctrine of panorganicism is the notion of the
preformation of organisms. By an "organism" or "organic creature,"
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Notes
1. See Chapter 2. Cf. Theodicy §78; Causa Dei §§9, 12.
2. "God has power, which is the source of everything, knowledge, which con-
tains the diversity of ideas, and finally will, which brings about changes or
products in accordance with the principle of the best. And these corre-
spond to what, in created monads, is the subject or the basis, the percep-
tive faculty and the appetitive faculty" (Mon §48; GP VI 615/AG 219). Cf.
Mon §§42, 47; PNG §9.
3. "[A monad] has perfection to the extent that it has distinct perceptions"
(PNG §13; GP VI 604/AG 211). Cf. GP IV 553.
4. It might be thought that a more perfect appetite would actually be one
that represents a stronger tendency toward the good. This, however, can
be seen to reduce to the idea described in the text. For Leibniz, a stronger
appetite toward the good is simply one in which a greater proportion of a
monad's petites appetitions are directed toward the good. But again, wheth-
er or not each is so directed will depend on the distinctness of a monad's
perceptions.
5. Cf. Kulstad 1990.
6. Independently of the point that follows in the text, Leibniz denies that the
best of all possible worlds would contain the greatest collection of mini-
mal subdeities, i.e., monads that just escaped being gods. He rather holds
that the best of all possible worlds must be a world of creatures having
infinite degrees of perfection, from that of the lowest "bare" monads to
that of the highest angels or genii. Cf. Theodicy §§120, 200.
7. Cf. Mon §52.
8. Cf. On Freedom (FN 178-9/L 263); Theodicy §201; GP II 55-6/M 62-3;
GP II 181. The urgency of this point for Leibniz is underscored by a note
written the day after his December 1676 meeting with Spinoza: "If all
possibles existed, no reason for existing would be needed, and possibility
alone would suffice. Therefore there would be no God except insofar as
he is possible. But such a God as the pious hold to would not be possible if
the opinion of those is true who hold that all possibles exist" (C 530/L
169). For further discussion of Leibniz's defense of divine freedom, see
Chapter 1 and Blumenfeld 1988.
9. See Mates (1986, 75-6), who supplies texts in support of this reading. In
what follows, I sometimes talk of "compossible individuals (substances,
monads)," whereas, strictly speaking, I should limit myself to something
like "compossible complete individual concepts." Here I register the point
that for Leibniz the only concrete individuals are those which actually
exist. Possibilia of all sorts are merely entia rationis: ideas in the divine
intellect.
10. Rescher 1979, 58.
11. I use this rather awkward locution to indicate that the reference to Cain
contained in Adam's complete concept is not direct but is expressed in
terms of the sum of the properties that would be possessed by Cain. I
shall not always make this explicit in what follows; however, it should be
understood.
12. As Leibniz writes in a well-known passage: "I do not believe that you will
admit an accident that is in two subjects at the same time. My judgment
about relations is that paternity in David is one thing, and filiation in
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ward reading of this claim: In saying that every monad expresses every-
thing in the universe, he means only that there is a lawful relation be-
tween the contents of the perceptions of each monad and those of every
other. Pursuing this course, we shall be inclined to attribute to Leibniz a
version of phenomenalism. The alternative is to give sense to the idea
that there is a relation between the content of the perceptions of monads
(spatiotemporally related bodies) and their ground in the reality of other
monads. I develop this alternative in the next two chapters.
31. It is clear that the "singular things" [singularia] referred to here are the
"simple substances" discussed throughout the same letter. Three sen-
tences before the quoted passage, Leibniz writes that "only in the case of a
singular thing is there a complete notion [notio completa]." A similar view
is propounded in the late essay Metaphysical Consequences of the Principle of
Reason: "But there would be no order among these simple substances,
which do not communicate through mutual influx, unless they at least
corresponded to each other mutually. Hence it is necessary that there is
between them a certain relation of perceptions or phenomena, through
which it can be discerned how much their modifications differ from each
other; for in these two - time and place - there consists the order of
things which exist either successively or simultaneously" (§9; C 14/P 175-6).
32. Cf. GP II 475: "The modifications of one monad are the ideal causes of
the modifications of another monad . . . insofar as there appear in one
monad reasons which occasion God from the outset to determine the
modifications in another monad." See also Theodicy §66; Mon §51; GP II
57/M 64-5; GP II 195/L 523; GP II 516/AG 202-3.
33. In §10 of the "Preliminary Discourse" of the Theodicy, Leibniz claims that
three propositions follow from his system of preestablished harmony:
"that there are necessarily substances that are simple and without exten-
sion distributed throughout nature; that these substances must always
subsist independently of everything else except God; and that they are
never separated from some organized body" (GP VI 56/H 80). See also
Theodicy §124; New Essays, Preface (RB 58); GP VI 545/L 590.
34. Cf. Metaphysical Consequences of the Principle of Reason §7 (C 14/P 175);
Theodicy §§120, 200; and GP II 324: "[T]o remove [intelligences] from
bodies and place [loco] is to remove them from the universal connection
and order of the world, which relations with respect to time and place
produce."
35. See Leibniz's letter to Lady Masham of 30 June 1704: "The question
whether the soul is somewhere or nowhere is nominal, for its nature does
not consist in extension, but it corresponds to the extension that it repre-
sents. Thus one must place the soul in the body, wherein there is located
the point of view from which it at present represents the universe to
itself" (GP III 357). See also Theodicy §130; C. Wilson 1989, 198.
36. Cf. NE II, xv, 11: "Every finite spirit is always joined to an organic body,
and represents other bodies to itself by their relation to its own body.
Thus it is obviously related to space as bodies are" (RB 155).
37. In a manuscript fragment, Leibniz writes: "Monads do not have a place
except through harmony, that is, through agreement with the phenome-
na of place, which arises from no influx, but from the spontaneity of
things" (LH IV I, 1a Bl. 9 [BH 51]).
38. See note 29.
39. In a late letter to Bourguet, Leibniz writes that a preceding instant of the
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THE BEST OF ALL P O S S I B L E WORLDS 2OO,
universe "always has the advantage of priority, not merely in time but in
nature, over following instants" (GP III 582/L 664). This priority is
grounded in the causal relations among the successive states of monads.
See GP II 263/L 534.
40. See Mon §§61-2; C 15/P 176.
41. In Theodicy §66, Leibniz suggests how this account might be extended to
include the reference in Mon §49 to distinct and confused perceptions.
Concerning the relationship between a soullike monad and its body, he
writes that insofar as "the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God
has accommodated the body to the soul, and has arranged in advance that
the body is impelled to execute its orders. And insofar as the soul is
imperfect and its perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the
soul to the body, in such a way that the soul is swayed by the passions
arising out of corporeal representations" (GP VI 138-9/H 159). We can
infer that a monad's perceptions are more distinct to the extent that it
expresses itself as commanding its body to act on other bodies, and that
its perceptions are confused to the extent that it experiences its body as
being acted on by external things (i.e., the bodies of other monads).
42. Cf. Mon §52. To avoid any suggestion of circularity, we may claim that all
and only those states are simultaneous (or coexistent) for which such a
relation of intercourse is well defined. Leibniz makes a similar move in
the passage quoted in note 25.
43. This is supportive of Leibniz's own account of temporal order in the
Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics: "If one of two states which are not
simultaneous involves a reason for the other, the former is held to be
prior, the latter posterior. My earlier state involves a reason for the exis-
tence of my later state. And since my prior state, by reason of the connec-
tion between all things, involves the prior state of other things as well, it
also involves a reason for the later state of these other things and is thus
prior to them. Therefore whatever exists is either simultaneous with other exis-
tences or prior or posterior" (GM VII 18/L 666).
44. Cf. Sleigh 1990, 176-9. I agree with Sleigh that such a disharmonious
world is not ruled out by passages such as DM §6: "[I]n whatever manner
God might have created the world it would always have been regular and
in accordance with a certain general order" (Le 33/AG 39; cf. GP VII
312/P 78-9). Leibniz is most naturally read here as claiming only the
necessity of developmental laws governing the progression of the percep-
tual states of substances. This is consistent with the lack of any harmony
among the perceptions of different substances.
45. Sleigh 1990, 172.
46. In an earlier letter to Arnauld, Leibniz remarks that the independence of
substances does not prevent an intercourse [commerce] between them, "for
as all created substances are a continual production of the same sovereign
being in accordance with the same plans, and are an expression of the
same universe or the same phenomena, they harmonize exactly among
themselves, and that causes us to say that one acts upon the other, because
one is a more distinct expression than the other of the cause or reason for
the changes" (GP II 57/M 64). Assuming that every world God could
create would be "a continual production of the same sovereign being in
accordance with the same plans," and that in any such world there would
be a well-defined notion of the "intercourse" of substances, we are again
led to the conclusion that universal harmony must be a feature of any
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21O NATURE
possible world. See also GP II 115/M 147; and GP II 70/M 85: "[I]n the
last analysis, the accord of all the phenomena of the different substances
comes only from their all being productions of one and the same cause,
namely God, who makes each individual substance an expression of the
decision he has taken regarding the whole universe."
47. Cf. the 1702 essay Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit,
where Leibniz declares that "each soul is a mirror of the universe in its
own manner, without any interruption, and contains in its depths an
order corresponding to that of the universe itself; that souls vary and
represent in an infinity of ways, all different and all true, and multiply
the universe, so to speak, as many times as possible, such that in this way
they approach the divinity so far as they can according to their different
degrees and give to the universe all the perfection of which it is capable"
(GP VI 538/L 559-60). See also Mon §§57-8; GP II 98/M 123.
48. Thus Leibniz writes in the New Essays: "I believe that the universe con-
tains everything that its perfect harmony could admit. It is agreeable to
this harmony that between creatures which are far removed from one
another there should be intermediate creatures. . . . The law of continu-
ity states that nature leaves no gaps in the orderings she follows" (III, vi,
12; RB 307).
49. See also his letter to De Voider, ca. 1705: "[S]imple substances can be
nothing more than sources or principles of as many series of perceptions,
evolving in order with respect to one another, expressing the same uni-
verse of phenomena in the greatest and most orderly variety, in which,
with as much justice as possible, the supreme substance poured out its
perfection into many dependent substances, which should be conceived
as individual concentrations of the universe and (some more than others)
as imitations of the divinity" (GP II 278).
50. Here I agree with Blumenfeld (1995), who argues that for Leibniz, God is
disposed to create both the greatest number of monads and the greatest
variety of phenomena, and that the latter supervenes on the former.
51. Cf. Theodicy §403; GP VI 562/L 579.
52. These principles relate to the mode of causal action in a world. It is
undoubtedly Leibniz's view that there are better and worse ways for
change to occur — more and less efficient ways of conveying a given effect
- and that the selection of the optimal mode of change is a necessary
condition for the maximization of perfection and harmony. I do not take
up these considerations here, but they are certainly relevant to the topic.
53. I borrow the term "panorganic" from Broad (1975, 87).
54. The precise nature of this union is a point of contention in Leibniz's
philosophy. We return to it in Chapter 10.
55. In his 1705 essay Considerations on Vital Principles and Plastic Natures, Leib-
niz writes that "the laws of mechanism by themselves could not form an
animal where there is nothing already organized" (GP VI 544/L 589).
Although he denies that organisms can originally arise through mechani-
cal means, he nonetheless holds that all their actions conform to mechani-
cal laws: "The organism of animals is a mechanism which presupposes a
divine preformation: that which follows from it is purely natural and
entirely mechanical." Fifth Paper to Clarke, §115 (GP VII 417-8/L 715).
56. Cf. GP III 340, 565; GP VI 539/L 586; GP VI 545/L 590. Leibniz regards
this panorganic structure as exemplary of the artifice God exercises in
the creation of the world: "I define an organism, or natural machine, as a
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Monads, Matter, and Organisms
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 213
substance. For that, we shall have to wait until Chapter 10. What I
hope to provide before then is a way of understanding the monadic,
physical, and panorganic models as three complementary accounts of
the created world, each formulated according to a different level of
analysis. In doing so, I shall also suggest how Leibniz's three models
of nature intersect with his celebrated doctrine of the preestablished
harmony of soul and body, and how the interrelation of these three
models underwrites the "most perfect of harmonies" that character-
izes the best of all possible worlds.
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214 NATURE
for the good. To speak of the soul and the body as "communicating"
with each other is simply to refer to the special relation of correspon-
dence that exists between their states, a relation whereby the two give
the appearance of influencing one another.
Whatever its merits vis-a-vis the Cartesian and occasionalist posi-
tions, it is fair to say that Leibniz's defense of the doctrine of pre-
established harmony rests chiefly on its claim to depict the order of a
world that owes its existence to divine wisdom. Characteristic of the
harmony that marks this as the best of all possible worlds is the re-
markable agreement whereby the soul and the body exactly mirror
each other's operations while each follows its own natural laws. Recit-
ing the grounds for his commitment to this theory, Leibniz writes in
the Theodicy:
Being already convinced from another source of the principle of harmony in
general, and consequently of preformation and of the preestablished harmony
of all things among themselves, of that between nature and grace, between
the decrees of God and our foreseen actions, between all parts of matter, and
even between the future and the past, the whole in conformity with the
sovereign wisdom of God, whose works are the most harmonious it is possible
to conceive — I could not fail to arrive at the system which maintains that God
created the soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must produce and
represent to itself successively that which takes place within the body, and the
body also in such a fashion that it must do of itself what the soul ordains. (§62;
GP VI 136-7/H 157)
In order of justification, Leibniz's reasoning takes him from the cer-
tainty of divine wisdom to a general demand for the maximization of
harmony, and from there to the system of preestablished harmony. As
already suggested, the requirements of divine wisdom are seen as
leading to a complex array of harmonies, of which the harmony of
soul and body is but one special example.2
This reading of Leibniz's advocacy of the preestablished harmony
of soul and body supports my general thesis of the relationship be-
tween his metaphysics and theodicy. Nevertheless, it remains unclear
exactly what role this doctrine plays within his later thought. It is
tempting to see the preestablished harmony of soul and body as a
piece of surface metaphysics: a theory that serves Leibniz in his public
engagements with Cartesians but does not express his deepest philo-
sophical views. We could hardly be more mistaken about Leibniz's
position, for example, than if we were to read him - as he presents
himself in the New System — as advancing a theory of the communica-
tion of two different types of substances, for we know that he denies
that any material thing by itself qualifies as a substance. What, then, is
the significance of the preestablished harmony of soul and body in
Leibniz's later philosophy? With his embrace of the doctrine of mo-
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2l6 NATURE
place morally, so to speak, and can be explained by final causes. These two
kingdoms, the moral one of minds and souls and the mechanical one of
bodies, penetrate one another and agree perfectly on account of the Author
of things, who is at the same time the first efficient cause and the final end. I
hold therefore that just as there is no void in bodies, so there is no more one
among souls; that is, that there are souls everywhere and that souls which
once exist cannot perish. (GP VII 451/L 472—3)4
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 217
Given Leibniz's explicit identification of the organic body of a monad
with "a mass composed of an infinity of other monads," we have little
choice but to regard the preestablished harmony of soul and body as
indicating a correspondence between the internal actions of a monad
and those of something external to it. This something is, according to
Leibniz, a "mass" of other monads: a mass the soul perceives as an
extended thing operating in accordance with the laws of efficient
causation. In this, we find the key we need to understand how the
kingdom of bodies and the kingdom of souls are conceived by him as
two autonomous realms, which nonetheless penetrate each other
completely. Unlike Descartes, Leibniz does not regard bodies and
souls as belonging to mutually exclusive ontological realms; they are
instead the products of two distinct epistemological perspectives. Ex-
planation in terms of the activities of monads operating in accordance
with the laws of appetite is explanation of the world as it is in itself and
as it is conceived by the intellect. Explanation in terms of the motions
of bodies operating in accordance with the laws of mechanics is expla-
nation of the world as it appears to a monad's limited mode of percep-
tion. Given that intellection and sensation represent two different
ways of knowing one and the same world, there is no contradiction in
claiming that everything at once occurs mechanically and vitally:
Everything is exhibited mechanically in the sensible world, as in an always
flowing theater of phenomena; and yet everything at the same time thus
happens vitally in the intelligible world, as if bodies were only dreams. Plato
already knew that this world alone is subsistent; the imagination creates the5
first for itself from the senses, the mind recognizes the truth of the latter.
If the kingdom of souls and the kingdom of bodies can be under-
stood as the products of two different levels of analysis — one of the
phenomena as they are perceived by finite monads, the other of mon-
ads as they are conceived in themselves - then we avoid the most
obvious objection to the claim that these two realms "penetrate one
another and agree completely" (GP VII 451). This result does, how-
ever, entail a revision in our original understanding of Leibniz's doc-
trine of the preestablished harmony of soul and body. To talk of
"bodies" at all in his scheme must be regarded as a type of shorthand.
What exist ultimately for Leibniz are soullike monads and their in-
trinsic accidents. Nevertheless, God has seen fit to arrange things in
the world such that finite monads express the actions and passions of
other monads as the actions and passions of bodies operating in accor-
dance with the laws of mechanics. Furthermore, God has deemed that
each monad should express the actions of a limited subset of these
monads as those of its own organic body — a relation that underwrites
the appearance of communication between them. On the basis of this
last point, we may conclude that the preestablished harmony of soul
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2l8 NATURE
and body does play a critical role in Leibniz's later metaphysics, but
that at bottom it is actually a harmony preestablished between a soul
or "dominant monad" and the plurality of lesser monads which that
soul represents as its corporeal mass. As Leibniz writes in his 1702
reply to Bayle, "[T]here is no soul or entelechy which is not dominant
with respect to an infinity of others which enter into its organs, and
the soul is never without an organic body suitable to its present state"
(GP IV 564/L 580).
Reading Leibniz in this way, it might seem that there is something
rather confused about his panorganic model. To talk of an organism
as the combination of a soullike monad and an organic body suggests
the confounding of two distinct epistemological perspectives. If bod-
ies exist only as phenomena - things perceived by monads - then we
might wonder whether the organism or soul-body composite is even
a coherent ontological type or whether it is, instead, a sort of category
mistake: an entity formed by illicitly combining what is mere appear-
ance (the body) with what is truly real (the soul). To answer this doubt,
we must modify somewhat our account of the relationship between
bodies and souls. Although the soul—body distinction is properly
characterized as a distinction between two epistemological perspec-
tives, it is not only that. Along with this distinction comes a crucial
ontological claim: that bodies are themselves pluralities of monads.
For Leibniz, the term "body" does not refer merely to an appearance
or phenomenal object. Instead, a body is a plurality of monads, which
happens to give the appearance of being an extended object when
apprehended by other finite monads. This extension of our account
raises no new problems concerning the mutual penetration of the
kingdom of souls and the kingdom of bodies. The two continue to
converge on one reality that is apprehended in two different ways.
What we can now add to our account is a coherent interpretation of
Leibniz's doctrine of panorganicism. By an "organism" or "living
thing," Leibniz most basically understands a dominant monad to
which there is subordinated "a mass composed of an infinity of other
monads, which constitute the body belonging to this central monad"
(PNG §3; GP VI 599/AG 207).6 Because he regards every monad as
being so endowed, some notion of organism, or organic structure,
must extend to the entire universe. We return in a later section to
work this out in detail. First, however, we must examine more care-
fully his general treatment of matter.
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22O NATURE
Everyone agrees that matter has parts, and consequently that it is a multitude
of many substances, as would be a herd of sheep. But since every multitude
presupposes true unities, it is obvious that these unities cannot be material,
otherwise they would still be multitudes and not at all true and pure unities,
such as are necessary finally in order to make a multitude. Thus, the unities
are in fact substances in their own right, which are neither divisible nor
consequently perishable. . . . And it is this simple substance, this unity of
substance or monad, which is called soul. . . . These unities truly constitute
substances and each unity uniquely makes a single substance; the rest are only
beings through aggregation, and collections or multitudes. (GP VII 552-3)15
As multitudes, Leibniz argues, material things can only come to be
as a result of true unities or monads. In notes prepared during his
1690 exchange with Fardella, we find one of his fullest expressions of
this claim. "[A] plurality of being can neither be understood nor can
subsist," Leibniz writes, "unless one being [ens unum] is first under-
stood, to which the multitude is necessarily traced back" (FN 320/AG
103). As a consequence, he concludes,
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222 NATURE
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 223
saw in the preceding chapter that monads are connected in a world by
means of analogues of spatiotemporal and causal relations. Such rela-
tions are not irreducible facts about monads, but are instead results of
their intrinsic modifications: perceptual states that express the rela-
tion of their organic bodies to the rest of the universe. On the basis of
correlations among the perceptions of monads, we can conceive of
relations of connection as being determined among the monads
themselves. Thus, one monad may express its body as nearer to, or
farther from, that of another monad, or as active or passive with
respect to it. Assuming that this second monad agrees in its expres-
sion of the relation of its body to that of the first (a condition guaran-
teed by the thesis of universal harmony), there is thereby determined
a second-order (or resultant) relation between these monads. With
this, we have all we need to make sense of monadic aggregates. It is
the nature of such resultant beings that they are immediately de-
termined on the condition that certain relations are apprehended
among individuals. To the extent, therefore, that relations of connec-
tion are apprehended among monads, we can envision certain aggre-
gates of monads as thereby being determined.
Implicit in this explanation is also an answer to our second ques-
tion. If we assume that aggregates depend for their existence on
relations grounded in the harmonious perceptions of monads, these
relations will be known in detail only to God. This, however, is suffi-
cient for the aggregation of monads. Consistent with Leibniz's defini-
tion of the term, we can say that aggregates result from individual
monads insofar as the divine mind apprehends certain objective cor-
relations among those monads' phenomenal representations of the
world. The role played by God in this scheme is critical. A result is a
type of being whose existence can immediately be understood on the
supposition that certain prior individuals exist. This means that, as-
suming the existence of certain monads, and assuming the presence
of a mind capable of apprehending those monads in relation to each
other, there will be determined, as a result, some aggregative being. If
we accept, as Leibniz does, that the divine mind knows the states of all
monads at every instant, then aggregates must result, given the exis-
tence of individual monads.24
This leaves us with one final question, arguably the most difficult of
all. Assuming that aggregates are originally determined by what God
knows of the relations of monads, under what conditions are we justi-
fied in identifying these aggregates with the bodies we perceive? It
will be helpful at the start to limit ourselves to the central case of the
organic body that is the property of any soullike monad. On the basis
of what we have already established, we may see Leibniz as conceiving
of such a body in two complementary ways: on the one hand, as a
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 225
erty of expressing themselves as the organic constituents of the soul's
body. Hence, to the extent that a mind is able to comprehend these
monads in relation to each other — a relatedness that can only be
conceived in terms of their expressions of their embodiment — it
would be led from a conception of the mutual relationship of their
bodies to a conception of the organic body they ground: the body of
their dominant monad or soul. It is just this idea of the conception of
one thing being immediately determined by the conception of certain
prior things which is conveyed in Leibniz's definition of "result."
Thus, for a plurality of monads to result in an aggregate that is
identifiable with the organic body of a dominant monad is for there to
be a specific correlation among their perceptions, such that a mind
with access to each monad's expression of the relation of its body to
the universe would judge that the organic bodies of the lesser monads
indeed exhausted the organic components of the body of the domi-
nant monad.
The claim that these correlations among monadic perceptions
could be apprehended only by God needs no defense. However, it
might be wondered whether monads contain the information that
would allow even God to establish such correlations among their per-
ceptions. Human souls are not in general aware of the functional
components of their bodies, nor is it plausible to think that monads
that perceive themselves (however obscurely) as commanding the
body's cells are aware of their containment in the human body. Thus,
how could God possibly apprehend the relatedness of monads accord-
ing to the scheme just described? Here we must pay careful attention
to the limits Leibniz places on monadic perception. In his view, these
limits come not in the completeness of a monad's expression of the
universe, but in its capacity to extract meaningful information - in
the form of distinct perceptions - from that expression.28 He thus
leaves it open that an unlimited intelligence could "read" in the per-
ceptions of any created monad a complete account of the relation of
its body to the rest of the universe, and would thereby have the infor-
mation needed to establish the correlations that determine the aggre-
gation of monads. 29
Though complicated, the preceding account strongly supports
Leibniz's own understanding of his philosophy as involving a reduc-
tion of matter to monads: "In truth, I do not do away with body but
reduce [revoco] it to that which is, for I show that corporeal mass . . . is
not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances,
which alone have a unity and absolute reality" (GP II 275).30 The
reduction Leibniz propounds contains elements of phenomenalism.
Because the relations that determine the aggregation of monads are
limited to correlations among those monads' phenomenal representa-
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 227
nies" (GP VI 44/H 68). Accepting that no possible world contains
more monads, or at least more monads with as rich a variety of dis-
tinct perceptions, we may conclude that in creating the greatest col-
lection of monads, God thereby realizes the greatest possible harmo-
ny among their perceptions. Yet Leibniz sees God as going beyond
this. The more levels at which there can be conceived an order or
agreement among a variety of things, the more harmony God pro-
duces. Consequently, Leibniz envisions God as embedding harmonies
within harmonies, so as to realize a world as harmonious as any world
could be.
Perhaps the most intriguing example of how he sees this as being
achieved involves the relationship between the universal harmony of
monads and the preestablished harmony of soul and body. Every
possible world, I have suggested, must incorporate the first type of
harmony. However, it is not the case that every world must exhibit the
latter sort of harmony. For universal harmony to obtain, every monad
must express itself as an embodied creature that is spatiotemporally
and causally related to other bodies. There is, however, no necessity
that these monads be endowed with actual mass. What they express as
their bodies may, instead, be merely phenomenal objects. Leibniz's
doctrine of the preestablished harmony of soul and body demands
something more than this. It assumes that every monad is associated
with some specific plurality of monads, which is identifiable with its
body, and that there is an agreement between the actions of this body
and the perceptions of the monad. In his second reply to Bayle,
Leibniz remarks that a soul is never without an organic body which is
convenable - suitable or fitting - to its present state (GP IV 564/L 580).
His employment of this term, one closely connected with his concep-
tion of divine wisdom, is telling. For a soul to have an organic body
fitting to it, there must be such a body; that is, there must be monads
that determine the reality represented in the soul's expression of its
body. As we have seen, these will be monads that express their own
bodies as subordinated to the body of their dominant monad or soul.
Under this condition, there results an aggregate of monads that is
identifiable with the organic body of the soul.
As I have interpreted Leibniz's position, this conclusion presup-
poses his analysis of the nature of matter. According to this analysis,
any material thing is essentially a plurality of monads. Only in this
way, he believes, can we account for the properties that matter is
understood to possess. This analysis, however, supports only a condi-
tional claim about the well-foundedness of corporeal phenomena. It
asserts that if there are any bodies in the world (things grounding the
appearances of material things), then they must be pluralities of mo-
nads. The question thus remains open, as regards any particular world,
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228 NATURE
whether God has seen fit to create monads that ground other monads'
perceptions of bodies, or whether he has chosen instead that these
perceptions should express merely phenomenal objects. The crux of
the doctrine of the preestablished harmony of soul and body is that in
this best of all possible worlds God has decreed there should be mo-
nads that ground each monad's perception of itself as an embodied
creature. That is, each monad must actually have a body that is fitting
to it: a plurality of subordinate monads that ground the reality repre-
sented in its perceptions of itself as embodied. The preestablished
harmony of soul and body is, consequently, a contingent feature of
the best of all possible worlds, a feature indicative of the wisdom God
has exercised in choosing this world for creation. As part of his design
of the world of greatest harmony, God has found a way of embedding
a harmony between the soul and the body within the general world
plan of a universal harmony of monads.33
We should not be surprised to find that Leibniz regards the doc-
trine of panorganicism as playing a central role in this scheme. In-
deed, within the terms of his philosophy, it would seem that the pre-
established harmony of soul and body can only obtain if something
like the doctrine of panorganicism is asserted. The reason for this is
that we can only conceive of a soul's body as being well founded (or an
actual mass) on the condition that it has a certain structure, one that
can be regarded as being determined by the monads from which that
body results. This point is best demonstrated with a simple example.
Consider a world of monads that express themselves as perfectly hard
(and hence indivisible) atoms, each endowed with a unique quantity of
force. Such monads offer everything needed for a Leibnizian world.
Assuming an agreement among what they express as the spatiotem-
poral and causal relations of their bodies, they support the requisite
notion of universal connection. But there would be no basis in princi-
ple for conceiving of the bodies of these monads as well-founded
phenomena. Although their bodies would appear to exhibit proper-
ties (force, resistance) indicative of reality, there would be no avenue
open for conceiving of monads that could ground this reality. As we
have seen, such monads would have to be ones that could be under-
stood as collectively determining (via the expressed relations of their
bodies) the body of their dominant monad. Yet we have supposed that
this atomic body is perfectly hard, without division or internal struc-
ture. It thus appears that the infinite division of matter, and more
particularly matter's organization as an infinite envelopment of or-
ganic creatures, is integral to Leibniz's account of the grounding of
bodies in reality, or to their being conceivable as well-founded phe-
nomena. 34 Unless the bodies of monads are regarded as having some
type of internal structure, there will be no basis for conceiving of
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232 NATURE
metaphysically real, abstract notions to complete notions, phenomena and
results to true substances, which are the only real unities and subsist always.
This divine artifice produces finally a perfect connection and harmony
among all things, such that it is impossible to conceive of anything better or
greater. And it is this which appears more than ever in the new system of
preestablished harmony, explained elsewhere, which gives an entirely different
face to the universe, as different to its advantage from that which was given to
it before as the system of Copernicus is different from that which is ordinarily
given to the visible world. (BH 62—3)
He regards these two doctrines as together conveying an impression
of the perfect harmony God has realized in the best of all possible
worlds. T h e advantage of the new "face" his system gives to the uni-
verse is that it renders transparent the role played by divine wisdom in
the selection of this world for existence. It is a construction of reason
that brings us nearer to comprehending how God's wisdom has deter-
mined every aspect of the created world, and how, as a consequence,
God has acted with perfect justice in creation. In this way, Leibniz's
metaphysics is enrolled in the cause of his theodicy. Against those who
see God as bringing the world into existence through an absolute
necessity, or through a will unconstrained by reason, Leibniz main-
tains that nature everywhere offers us "signs of order, choice, and
intelligence" (BH 62). It is these signs that the monadic, physical, and
panorganic models are intended to communicate.
Notes
1. For further discussion of Leibniz's critique of occasionalism, see Sleigh
1990, chap. 7; Rutherford 1993.
2. In the second edition of his Dictionary (remark L in the article
"Rorarius"), Bayle wonders whether the theory of preestablished harmo-
ny "raises the power and intelligence of divine art above what we can
imagine" (Bayle 1991, 247). Leibniz is unmoved by this objection. The
difficulty of conceiving of an intelligence capable of arranging such a
harmony is all the more reason to believe that divine wisdom has selected
this as the means by which the body and the soul are related. Cf. NE IV, x,
10 (RB 440-1).
3. In his discussion of preestablished harmony, Leibniz often employs the
term "soul" where he clearly means to include all monads. He defends
this usage in a 1710 letter to Rudolf Wagner: "You ask, finally, for my
definition of the soul. I reply that the soul can be taken broadly or
narrowly. Broadly, the soul will be whatever is alive or a vital principle,
namely a principle of internal action existing in a simple thing or monad,
to which external action corresponds. . . . And in this sense a soul is
ascribed not only to animals but also to all other perceiving things. Nar-
rowly, the soul is taken for a higher species of life, or for sensitive life"
(GP VII 528).
4. Cf. GP III 607/L 655; GP IV 391/L 409; GM VI 243/L 442; and GP III
217: "My views in philosophy . . . occupy the middle ground between
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 233
Plato and Democritus, since I believe that everything happens mechan-
ically, as Democritus and Descartes maintain against the opinion of [Hen-
ry] More and those like him; and that nevertheless everything also occurs
vitally and according to final causes, with everything being full of life and
perception, as against the opinion of Democriteans." We shall return to
Leibniz's idea of the "optimal mean" between mechanism and vitalism in
Chapter 9.
5. LH IV, V 11c Bl. 24T. This passage is from a study Leibniz composed
during his exchange with the German Cartesian J. C. Sturm, the culmina-
tion of which was the essay De ipsa natura, published in the Acta eruditorum
in September 1698 (GP IV 504-16/L 498-507). The original text is given
injanke 1963, 253.
6. Cf. GP 11 252/L 530-1; E 745-6.
7. For explicit statements of this view, see his letter to Dangicourt, written
several months before his death in 1716: "I believe that there are only
monads in nature, the rest being only phenomena which result from
them" (D III 499); and the Conversation of Philarete and Ariste, ca. 1711:
"[TJhere is even good reason for doubting whether God has made any
other things than monads, or substances without extension, and whether
bodies are anything but the phenomena resulting from these substances.
My friend whose opinions I have detailed to you gives evidence of leaning
toward this view, since he reduces everything to monads or to simple
substances and their modifications, along with the phenomena which
result from them and whose reality is established by their relations, which
distinguish them from dreams" (GP VI 590/L 625). Cf. GP II 256; GP II
265/L 535; GP II 269/L 537; GP II 281-2/L 539; GP II 451/L 604; GP II
473> 5°4; GP III 545; GP III 606/L 655; GP III 636/L 659; GP VII 501.
8. Throughout this section, I use the term "matter" to refer to what Leibniz
calls "secondary matter" (materia secunda), i.e., the matter of actual or
existing bodies, as opposed to "primary matter" (materia prima) or "primi-
tive passive power."
9. Typical is Voltaire's response. "Can you really believe," he asks rhetori-
cally, "that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each of these
has ideas, however obscure, of the universe as a whole?" (1877, vol. 22,
434). This can be contrasted with the reaction of Kant, who understood
much better Leibniz's intentions: "Is it really believable that Leibniz, the
great mathematician, held that bodies are composed of monads (and
hence space composed of simple parts)? He did not mean the physical
world, but its substrate, the intelligible world, which is unknown to us.
This lies merely in the Idea of reason, and in it we must certainly repre-
sent to ourselves everything which we think of as a composite substance as
composed of simple substances" (1973, 158).
10. Though not in published writings, or in widely circulated works such as
the Principles of Nature and of Grace. Here, more than anywhere, Leibniz's
inclination to sacrifice technical details for the sake of a popular approach
has prompted misinterpretations of his views. For his warnings to De
Voider and Des Bosses, see GP II 269-70/L 536-7; GP II 451/L 604.
11. See Broad 1975; Jolley 1986.
12. In an essay published in the Journal des Savants in 1696, Leibniz writes: "I
even believe that matter is essentially an aggregate, and consequently that
there are always actual parts. Thus, it is by reason, and not only by sense,
that we judge that it is divided, or rather that it is from the start nothing
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234 NATURE
but a multitude. I believe that it is true that matter (and even each part of
matter) is divided into a greater number of parts than can be imagined"
(GP IV 502).
13. "For where there is no true unity, there is no true multitude" (GP II 267).
"[I]n real things, unities are prior to a multitude, and there cannot exist
multitudes except through unities" (GP II 279). See also PNG §1; Mon
§2; NE IV, iii, 6 (RB 378).
14. I discuss this argument in detail in Rutherford 1990a. See also Garber
1985; Sleigh 1990, chap. 6.
15. Cf. his letters to Sophie of 19 November 1701 (GP VII 556-7), 30 No-
vember 1701 (GP VII 557), 31 October 1705 (GP VII 558-65), March
1706 (K IX 173—4); a n d n * s letter to Lady Masham of 10 July 1705 (GP
III 367).
16. CF. FN 320/AG 103. The same point is made in a 1712 letter to Bierling:
"Monads should not be confused with atoms. Atoms (as they are imag-
ined) have shape. Monads no more have shape than do souls; they are not
parts of bodies but requisites" (GP VII 503). See also GP II436/L 600; GP
II 451/I 604.
17. See McGuire 1976.
18. Cf. Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics: "I use the term 'result' [prosul-
tandi] to indicate a new idea, when from certain posited things something
else is determined because of its unique relation to them" (GM VII 21—
2/L 669).
19. In one of his category studies, Leibniz gives the following definition of
"aggregate": "[I]t suffices for an aggregatum that several beings different
from it are understood to coincide similarly in that one thing; namely, if
A, B, C are supposed in the same way, and by that fact L is understood to
be supposed, A, B, C will be aggreganda, L a whole made by aggregation"
(LH IV 7B, 2 Bl, 47 [V133]). Elsewhere, he writes that from posited
things "there result such things as the wholeness of an aggregate" (LH IV
8 Bl. 60 [V 1083]).
20. Cf. GP II 486/L 609; RB 145, 227, 265.
21. "And so when it is asked what we understand by the word 'substance/ I
warn that above all, aggregates should be excluded. For an aggregate is
nothing other than all those things taken at the same time from which it
results, [i.e., those things] which clearly have their union from the mind
alone on account of what they have in common, like a flock of sheep" (GP
II 256). See also GP II 101/M 126; GP II 517; GP VI 598/L 623; RB 146,
328—9. In Leibniz's terminology, "beings through aggregation" are with-
out exception "phenomena," which exist "by convention" rather than "by
nature." Cf. GP II 252/L 531; GP III 69.
22. "Beings through aggregation, such as a herd, a pool full of fish, a ma-
chine, are only semibeings [semientia], whose reality consists in the union
which a mind makes or in an extrinsic denomination or relation. Such is
distance or preestablished harmony, which makes it that one thing seems
to influence another; these are therefore mental or relational results"
(LH IV II, 5 c Bl. 23). "[Secondary matter results from many monads,
together with derivative forces, actions [and] passions, which are only
beings through aggregation, and thus semimentalia, like the rainbow and
other well-founded phenomena" (GP II 306).
23. "Phenomena are aggregates of substances, which are presented in a certain
way to a perceiver, and are thus considered by us as falling among the
substances" (LH IV I, 1a, Bl. 7). Cf. GP VII 344/AG 319; GP VI 625/AG
227.
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MONADS, MATTER, AND ORGANISMS 235
24. See Leibniz's notes for his letter to Des Bosses of 5 February 1712: "God
sees not only single monads and the modifications of every monad what-
soever, but also their relations; and the reality of relations and truths
consists in this. . . . And through these [relations], things seem to be
made one for us and truths can in fact be expressed concerning the whole
which are also valid according to God" (GP II 438/AG 199). He goes on to
suggest that the composite beings determined in this way are "simple
results" that "consist solely in true or real relations." A similar position is
expressed in notes composed, ca. 1715—16: "[Besides substances and
their modifications] there are relations, which are not produced per se,
but result when other things are produced and have reality indepen-
dently of our understanding: for they are there even when nobody is
thinking. Their reality comes from the divine understanding, without
which nothing would be true. Two things therefore acquire reality
through the divine understanding alone: all eternal truths, and, from
among the contingent truths, the relational ones" (LH IV 8 Bl. 60 [V
1083]; translation quoted from Mondadori 1990a, 628). In Rutherford
1994, I develop this reading in relation to Leibniz's doctrine of scientia
visionis.
25. See GP II 451/L 604-5; GP IV 564/L 580.
26. In general, for a relation to be predicable of two or more monads is for
them to agree in their expressions of their mutual relatedness. Thus, for
monad Mx to be dominant with respect to monads m2, m3, m4, . . ., it is
necessary and sufficient that My express the bodies of m2, m3, m4, . . . as
subordinate to its body, and that they in turn express their bodies as
subordinate to the body of MY.
27. According to Leibniz's doctrine of panorganicism, every organic body is
composed of an infinity of lesser organisms, each of whose bodies is in
turn composed of an infinity of lesser organisms, ad infinitum. Thus, the
"functional components" of any organic body will include an infinity of
subordinate organisms. We return to this point in the following section.
28. Cf. Mon §60.
29. In this way God overcomes the limited perspective of created monads:
"[B]etween the appearances of bodies given to us and the appearances
given to God there is as much of a difference as between a perspectival
projection [scenographia] and a ground plan [ichnographia]. For perspec-
tival projections differ according to the position [situs] of the viewer,
[while] a ground plan or geometrical representation is unique. God natu-
rally sees things exactly such as they are according to geometrical truth,
although at the same time he also knows how anything appears differ-
ently to someone else, and thus all other appearances are contained in
him eminently" (GP II 437/AG 199). Cf. D III 500; GP II 278.
30. See GP VI 590/L 625; and GP III 430/L 633, where Leibniz speaks of
Shaftesbury as overlooking his "reduction of matter or multitude to uni-
ties or simple substances."
31. The following passage from Leibniz's letter to De Voider of 30 June 1704
has often been read as supporting a version of phenomenalism: "[Con-
sidering the matter carefully, it may be said that tnere is nothing in the
world except simple substances and, in them, perception and appetite.
Matter and motion, however, are not so much substances or things [res],
as they are the phenomena of percipient beings, whose reality is located
in the harmony of the percipient with himself (at different times) and
with other percipient beings" (GP II 270/L 537). In Rutherford 1990b,
1994, 1995b, however, I argue against phenomenalist interpretations of
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Dynamics and the Reality of Matter
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DYNAMICS AND THE REALITY OF MATTER 239
be upheld if the concept of body is not limited to that of res extensa but
also involves an independent notion of force: "Since this law [of the
equality of cause and effect] is not derived [derivetur] from the concept
of matter, it must follow from something else which is in bodies,
namely, from force itself, which always preserves the same quantity"
(GM VI 241/L 441).7 Leibniz's demand that one be able to derive his
conservation law from the concept of matter is at first sight puzzling.
Assuming there is a quantity of force distinct from the Cartesian
quantity of motion that is conserved in dynamical interactions, why
does he think it important, and even necessary, that this law be given a
foundation in the nature of matter?
Throughout his mature writings, Leibniz advances two main claims
about the laws of motion. First, he insists that these laws are contin-
gent truths, which have their origin in considerations of fitness and
order. Second, he argues that to the extent that the laws of motion
have this character, and that they require the conservation of force, as
opposed to Descartes's quantity of motion, matter cannot be mere
extension but must instead be constituted from entelechies or sub-
stantial principles of force. Both these claims can be traced to Leib-
niz's underlying conception of the rational order of nature. The first
follows directly from his view of how God's wisdom has directed his
will in the choice of this world for creation. God has selected the laws
of motion and "certain other general laws," Leibniz writes in the
Theodicy, on account of their superior fitness (convenance), or insofar as
they correspond to "general reasons of good and order."8 He ex-
presses the same idea more fully in the Principles of Nature and of
Grace:
God's supreme wisdom has led him, above all, to choose laws of motion that are
the best adjusted and most suitable [les plus convenables] with respect to ab-
stract or metaphysical reasons. The same quantity of total and absolute force,
or of action, is preserved, the same quantity of respective force, or of reac-
tion; and finally, the same quantity of directive force. Furthermore, action is
always equal to reaction, and the whole effect is always equivalent to its full
cause. . . . [T]hese laws do not depend upon the principle of necessity, as do
logical, arithmetical, and geometrical truths, but upon the principle offitness,
that is, upon the choice of wisdom. (§11; GP VI 603/AG 210-11)9
In Leibniz's view, traces of divine wisdom can be discerned through-
out created nature, down to the level of phenomena. It follows that in
physics, as in all branches of natural philosophy, we are obliged to
approach nature under the assumption that it has been arranged
according to the architectonic ends of wisdom. This requires that we
suppose that nature acts in the fittest and most orderly manner pos-
sible.10 Leibniz is convinced that this method alone is consistent with
true piety, or a proper appreciation of the justice God has observed in
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244 NATURE
would not be natural but miraculous and God would be obliged to procure
the phenomena from them by a continual miracle: but they are not essential
to matter, that is, to what is passive in corporeal substance. (F 226-7)
Leibniz's solution is ingenious. The laws of motion are to be under-
stood as grounded in the nature of body, specifically in the entelechy
or principle of force from which bodies are constituted. However, we
are not to conceive of the laws of motion as following from the concept
of force or entelechy. Rather, these laws are intrinsic to the action of
the entelechy itself. In brief, the laws exhibited in the motion of
external bodies are grounded in the pattern of striving that is internal
to the entelechies constitutive of those bodies. Because it is under-
stood that entelechies operate in accordance with laws of appetite, or
the principle of the best, it follows that bodies, too, must exhibit a type
of final causation. The conservation of force ascribed to God's choice
of the most fitting laws of motion is thus explained in terms of the
mode of operation of the substances that provide matter with its
ground.
All of this needs to be fleshed out in more detail; however, we
should already have a good sense of how, in terms of its metaphysical
foundations, Leibniz sees his science of dynamics as preferable to
Cartesian physics and to mechanism in general. Mechanistic theories
threaten our appreciation of the wisdom God has exercised in cre-
ation. In conceiving of matter as mere extension (or as extension
endowed with resistance or hardness), such theories deny the role of
active principles in nature. In doing so, they remove from matter any
intelligible ground for force and final causation. Consequently, they
are committed to conceiving of the laws of motion, and of the force
that is communicated in motion, as the immediate product of God's
action. This wholesale transfer to God of the dynamic and teleological
properties of created things is, in Leibniz's view, the most significant
defect of Descartes's metaphysics of nature. If it allows room for the
Cartesian to escape the trap of Spinozism, it nonetheless remains at
odds with our understanding of this as the possible world in which
divine wisdom has realized the greatest intelligibility and order. It is
this point, above all, which Leibniz regards his dynamics as up-
holding.
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246 NATURE
body in circular motion, the force of gravity, and the force by which a
stretched elastic body begins to restore itself (GM VI 238/L 438).
Although living force and dead force are both intimately related to a
body's motion, it is dead force that is most clearly identified as the
cause or origin of motion. Leibniz sees his infinitesimal calculus as
holding the key to the relationship between these quantities:
I have devised a new way of expressing in a calculus the infinitely small
increments [progressus] of motion and the very beginnings of increments,
which are infinitely infinitely small. For since motion, inasmuch as it occurs in
time, is like an ordinary line, so it is proper that impetus, as the instantaneous
element of motion, should be like an infinitely small or infinitesimal line. But
conatus (e.g., gravity or the force of receding from a center), since it deter-
mines impetus through infinitely many28 repetitions, will be an infinitely infi-
nitely small quantity. (A I 13, 522~3)
If we think of a moving body as describing a path s during an interval
t, we can conceive of the impetus of that body as the infinitesimal
progress it makes during an instant, and its conatus as the infinitesi-
mally small beginning of that progress. In more precise terms, for any
moving mass m, we can represent its impetus at a given time by the
differential quantity m(ds/dt) (= mv), and its conatus by the quantity
m(dvldt). Thus, a double integration over time takes us from the con-
atus of a body to its motion.29 According to this analysis, conatus is
mathematically equivalent to the Newtonian equation for force, F =
ma. Leibniz's understanding of this quantity, however, is quite differ-
ent. Whether present in a moving body or one at rest, conatus is not
defined simply as the capacity of that body to accelerate an inertial
mass. It is instead regarded as the inherent momentaneous "effort" or
"striving" of a body to effect a change in its own state of motion.30
As an actual moment of striving toward a consequent state, conatus
is, in Leibniz's view, unquestionably something real. Nevertheless, it is
a basic assumption of his metaphysics that whatever is impermanent
or changing cannot be a real being per se. If it exists, it can only be as
the modification of something permanent or substantial. Thus, hav-
ing identified conatus as the origin of motion in bodies, Leibniz goes
on to insist that this derivative force must inhere in a prior substantial
principle. This claim figures prominently in his correspondence with
Burcher de Voider, who defends the position that force can be re-
garded as a property of extended matter alone and that it is unneces-
sary to introduce a further substantial ground. Leibniz's rejection of
this view is unequivocal:
[C]orporeal substances cannot be constituted solely out of derivative forces
combined with their resistance, that is, out of vanishing modifications. Every
modification presupposes something permanent. Therefore when you say,
"Let us assume there is nothing in bodies but derivative forces," I reply that
such a hypothesis is impossible. (GP II 251/L 530)
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252 NATURE
forced to call upon God to explain the source of matter's motion and
its conservation; on the other hand, vitalists, and earlier scholastic
"formalists," who seek to introduce intelligent or soullike principles
directly into matter in order to account for its effects.44 In his typical
conciliatory fashion, Leibniz maintains that both mechanists and for-
malist/vitalists have got part of the picture right, although both have
also erred in denying what their opponents accept:
I have found that most of the sects are right in a good part of what they
propose, but not so much in what they deny. The formalists, Platonists and
Aristotelians, for example, are right in seeking the sources of things in final
and formal causes. But they are wrong in neglecting efficient and material
causes and in inferring from this, as did Henry More in England and certain
other Platonists, that there are phenomena which cannot be explained me-
chanically. The materialists, on the other hand, or those who accept only a
mechanical philosophy, are wrong in rejecting metaphysical considerations
and in trying to explain everything in terms of sense experience. I flatter
myself to have penetrated into the harmony of these different realms and to
have seen that both sides are right provided that they do not clash with each
other; that everything in nature happens mechanically and at the same time
metaphysically but that the source of mechanics is in metaphysics. (GP III
607/L 655)
According to Leibniz, both sides in the debate sin against the principle
of intelligibility, either by failing to explain in a natural manner the
properties exhibited by matter, or by endowing it with spurious occult
qualities ("hylarchic principles," "plastic natures"). In both cases the
source of their trespass is a reliance on confused notions of body,
substance, form, and activity.45 As we have seen, Leibniz believes that
a complete account of corporeal phenomena would be impossible if
the substance of the world were limited to inert matter, or matter and
wholly distinct mental or spiritual substances. The concept of matter
by itself cannot explain the propensity of bodies to move or the spe-
cific pattern of their effects. To call on God to explain these phenom-
ena, as Descartes, Malebranche, and Newton are in different ways
forced to do, is no solution for Leibniz, since this amounts to a rejec-
tion of the idea that God's wisdom has directed his will in the choice of
this world for creation. These are the considerations that lead him to
insist on the necessity of immaterial principles.46 As a consequence,
Leibniz holds a limited sympathy for some of the esoteric doctrines
that oppose the main current of the scientific revolution, for example,
the broadly vitalist views of F. M. van Helmont and the Cambridge
Platonists.47 But it is necessary to emphasize that this sympathy is
strictly limited. Leibniz asserts with vigor that the particular phenom-
ena of nature are explicable only through mechanical laws. We have
no understanding of what it means to say that a body consists of
formlike substances, beyond our recognition that in an attempt to
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DYNAMICS AND THE REALITY OF MATTER 255
bodies of other monads). We have seen how we can exploit this scheme
in making sense of the grounding of the bodies perceived by individu-
al monads. In general, we may say that one monad expresses certain
other monads as a body, just in case the latter monads agree in their
expression of themselves as the ground of that phenomenon.
In a 1711 letter to Christian Wolff, Leibniz suggests how such a
story might be told in the case of dynamical phenomena:
You ask how the primitive force may be modified, for example, when the
motion of a weight is accelerated in descent; I respond that the modification
of the primitive force which is in the monad itself cannot be better explained
than by explaining how the derivative force may be changed in the phenome-
na. For what is exhibited extensively and mechanically in the phenomena is,
concentratedly and vitally, in monads.
He goes on to elaborate this account with a description of the forces
exerted by two colliding bodies. He then returns to the question of the
grounding of these forces in monads:
[W]hat is exhibited mechanically and extensively through the reaction of the
resisting body and the restoration of the compressed body is concentrated
dynamically and monadically (as I have already said) in the entelechy itself, in
which there is the source of mechanism and a representation of mechanical
things; for phenomena result from monads (which alone are true substances).
And while mechanical things are determined by external circumstances, by
that fact, in the source itself, the primitive entelechy is modified harmonically
through itself, since it can be said that a body has all its derivative force from
itself. (GLW 138-9)
What Leibniz appears to indicate here is that our only means of desig-
nating the monads that ground the forces exerted by a body is in
terms of the phenomena that would be perceived by those monads.
We may assume that monads invariably express the same universe of
phenomena. Internally, then, their perceptions will appear to evolve
according to the same mechanical laws as govern the operations of all
bodies.51 If we are now asked to specify more precisely the monads
that ground the forces exerted by a particular body, Leibniz implies
that these will have to be identified as the monads that express them-
selves, qua entelechies, as the origin of those forces. "[W]hat is.exhib-
ited mechanically and extensively through the reaction of the resist-
ing body and the restoration of the compressed body," he writes, "is
concentrated dynamically and monadically . . . in the entelechy itself,
in which there is the source of mechanism and a representation of
mechanical things."52 In general, if we pose the question of the rela-
tionship between a given phenomenon and the monads that ground
the phenomenon, our answer will have to be framed in terms of the
harmonious phenomena that would be perceived by those grounding
monads. Thus, if we ask which monads ground the active and passive
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forces exerted by a given body, our answer will be: those monads
(i.e., those instances of entelechy and primary matter) that express
themselves as the origin of those forces.
To complete our account of Leibniz's position, we must appeal to
the thesis of monadic embodiment. It is a central tenet of his philoso-
phy that every monad expresses itself as a creature endowed with an
organic body - a body to which it is related as a principle of motion
and unity. We may thus infer that to the extent that a monad ex-
presses itself as the ground for certain dynamical forces, it does so in
the guise of an organic creature. From the perspective of the monad,
this is what the grounding of dynamical force will look like: The
monads grounding a given force will be those which represent their
organic bodies as acting or reacting in ways that account for that
force. In understanding the physical forces exerted by two colliding
bodies, then, we will conceive of those forces as grounded in monads
that express themselves as corporeal creatures acting on, or reacting
to, other corporeal creatures. Taking up the perspective of the
grounding monads, the collision of two bodies is transformed into a
melee of organisms. This, at least, is how it would appear if, like God,
we were able to occupy simultaneously the perspectives of all the
relevant monads. 53
We can, however, go further than this. Within the best of all possible
worlds, each monad does not simply express itself as an embodied
creature; in addition, it is guaranteed that there exist monads answer-
ing to the content of its perception of itself as embodied - monads
expressing themselves as the functional components of that body.
Under this condition, we can speak of the latter monads as "resulting"
in an aggregate that is identifiable with the organic body of the domi-
nant monad. In Leibniz's terminology, this means simply that in con-
ceiving of these grounding monads in relation to each other - a
relatedness that can only be conceived in terms of the relations among
what they express as their organic bodies — we are invariably led from
a conception of those monads to a conception of the organic body
they ground. This has obvious consequences for our understanding
of the structure of matter. Assuming that phenomenal bodies are in
general well founded, the monads grounding the dynamical proper-
ties of matter will be simultaneously the entelechies, or soullike prin-
ciples, of masses of other monads. Thus matter, which is observed to
operate everywhere in accordance with mechanical laws, must also be
conceived as having a structure determined by the infinite envelop-
ment of organic creatures. Indeed, Leibniz states that matter would
not have the dynamical properties it is observed to have - the proper-
ties of an elastic medium - unless it were everywhere composed of
organisms enveloped within organisms:
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DYNAMICS AND THE REALITY OF MATTER 257
The laws of nature are of two types: dynamic and plastic or organic. There is
nevertheless this semblance of the organic in dynamic laws, that they could
not hold unless matter were everywhere elastic, nor would matter be every-
where elastic unless systems were arranged within systems. In this the dy-
namic corresponds to the plastic, which always has organs within organs.
(BH 51-2)54
From dynamics, then, we are ineluctably led back to the doctrine of
panorganicism. The forces exerted by what are seemingly inorganic
bodies are ascribed to their composition from an infinity of organ-
isms. Thus, no matter is ever truly inanimate: The "living forces"
exerted by bodies are, from another point of view, the endeavors of
living creatures.
I argued in the preceding chapter that we should interpret Leibniz's
account of created nature as involving an attempt to capture in theo-
retical terms the multiplicity of harmonies that divine wisdom has
bestowed on the best of all possible worlds. To this end, Leibniz sees
himself as justified in weaving together a variety of theoretical per-
spectives. Conceived in itself, the created world consists of an infinity
of soullike monads. To any one of these monads, however, nature is
represented as a plenum of bodies: bodies that move and interact in
accordance with the laws of mechanics but that also have a complex
organic structure. Finally, each created monad represents itself as
the soul of a single organic body, which it rules as a principle of
unity and action. It is the combination of these different perspec-
tives that underwrites the interplay of harmonies within the best of
all possible worlds. Grounding the physical forces of bodies are mon-
ads that, in agreement, express their organic bodies as the origin of
those forces. And, taken collectively, these same monads determine,
through their expression of their embodiment, an organic structure
that agrees with the structure that is observed everywhere in matter.
(See Fig. 1.)
Leibniz acknowledges that these agreements and harmonies are not
ones immediately apparent to finite creatures: "[OJnly the Supreme
Reason, who overlooks nothing, can distinctly grasp the entire infinite
and see all the causes and all the results" (RB 57). Nevertheless, as
rational minds, we are "capable of knowing the system of the uni-
verse, and of imitating something of it" through our models of its
order and harmony (GP VI 621/P 192—3). Nothing demonstrates this
better, Leibniz believes, than the science of dynamics. Through it, he
writes, "wonderful harmonies are revealed, from which it appears
most clearly that nature is the work of a supreme wisdom; and in this,
for one who acknowledges it and dwells in it, consists the greatest of
meditations and indeed the greatest satisfaction of our entire life" (A
I 13, 524).
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Phenomena Reality
(kingdom of bodies, efficient causes) (kingdom of souls, final causes)
Monads
Matter (entelechies operating in accordance
(bodies operating in accordance with laws of appetite)
with laws of mechanics)
compose individually,
represent (express)
themselves as
Living Organisms
(mass unified by a
dominant monad),
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DYNAMICS AND THE REALITY OF MATTER 259
Notes
1. See Gueroult 1967; Iltis 1971; Westfall 1971, chap. 6; Costabel 1973;
Garber 1995.
2. A good example of the significance Leibniz attaches to dynamics is his
claim that this science demonstrates the error of Descartes's account of
mind—body interaction and the corresponding truth of his own theory of
preestablished harmony. See GP III 607/L 655; GM VI 247/L 444-5. For
discussions of this claim, see Garber 1983; McLaughlin 1993.
3. In a 1691 article in the Acta Eruditorum, he writes: "[T]here is in motion
something other than what is purely geometrical, that is, than extension
and its bare modification. And in order to consider it properly, we must
recognize that it is necessary to add to it some higher or metaphysical
notion — namely that of substance, action and force. This consideration
seems to me important, not only in order to become acquainted with the
nature of extended substance, but also so as not to exclude from physics
higher and immaterial principles, [which would be] to the detriment of
piety" (GP IV 465). As late as 1715, Leibniz emphasizes to Remond the
importance he attaches to his work on dynamics: "My dynamics would
require a work of its own, for I have not yet said or communicated all that
I have to say on the matter. You are right, Sir, to judge that it is in good
measure the foundation of my system, because there we learn the differ-
ence between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric, and truths
which have their origin in fitness [convenance] and ends. And this is like a
commentary on the beautiful passage from Plato's Phaedo which I cited
somewhere in a journal, that while supposing that an Intelligence pro-
duces all things, it is necessary to discover their origins in final causes"
(GP III 645). Cf. A I 10, 140.
4. Brevis demonstratio erroris memorabilis Cartesii et aliorum circa legem naturalem,
Acta eruditorum, March 1686 (GM VI 117—19/L 296—8). For the details of
Leibniz's argument, see the works cited in note 1.
5. Leibniz describes this principle as his "general axiom, on which depends
all of mechanics" (GP I 393). Cf. GP II 62/M 71.
6. See his letter to Simon Foucher of 23 May 1687: "It is established that the
laws of M. Descartes do not agree with experience; but I have shown the
real reason for this, namely that he has misconstrued the notion of force"
(GP I 393). Cf. GP I 415; GP II 195/L 523; GM VI 246/L 444.
7. Cf. GP VI 588/L 624; GLW 34.
8. Theodicy, "Preliminary Discourse," §2. Significantly, Leibniz concludes this
section by noting that the "general reasons of good and order" that have
prompted God to this choice "may be overcome in some cases by stronger
reasons of a superior order." In this case God performs a miracle, by
producing in creatures "that which their nature does not bear" (GP VI
50/H 74). We return to this point later in this section.
9. To Wolff, Leibniz writes: "The principles of mechanics depend on higher
principles. . . . Such is the axiom that the whole effect is equal to the full
cause, which is certainly metaphysical, but has its ultimate foundation in
divine wisdom, which chooses the most fitting [convenientissimum] (GLW
129). See also GP III 636/L 659; GP III 645; GP VI 319-20/H 332-3.
10. See Chapter 2. One of Leibniz's fullest discussions of this topic is found in
his essay Tentamen Anagogicum (GP VII 270-79/L 477-85). Given our
insight into the principles of wisdom, he argues, it is possible to investi-
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DYNAMICS AND THE REALITY OF MATTER 261
miracle as "any event that can only occur through the power of the
creator, its reason not being in the nature of creatures" (GB 277). Cf. GP
III 517-18, 529; GP IV 520/L 494; GP IV 594; GP VI 240-1/H 257; GP
VII 417/AG 344. Leibniz accepts that in certain circumstances, for ex-
traordinary reasons of grace, God has seen fit to grant things qualities
that do not follow from their natures. In general, however, he is loath to
multiply miracles beyond necessity. Many events that pass for miracles
can be ascribed to the "ministry of invisible substances, such as angels,"
which "act according to the ordinary laws of their nature, being combined
with bodies more rarified and more vigorous than those we have at our
command" (Theodicy §249; GP VI 265/H 280). In places he appears to
limit the scope of the miraculous to religious mysteries, such as the Cre-
ation and the Incarnation (cf. Robinet 1955, 413)- For more on this topic,
see Sleigh 1990, 163—4; Rutherford 1993.
18. To Bourguet, Leibniz writes: "They [Newtonians] commit a shrewd so-
phism to give themselves an air of reasonableness and to make us appear
in the wrong, as if we were opposing those who assume gravity, without
giving reason for it. This is not at all true; we rather oppose the method
of those who assume irrational qualities, as the Scholastics once did, that
is, primary qualities which have no natural reason, to be explained by the
nature of the subject to which the quality must belong" (GP III 580/L
663). Cf. C 11-2/P 172-3; GLW 113; GP III 519; GP VII 337-44/AG
312-20. For a discussion of the range of Newtonian views on gravity, see
McMullin 1978, chap. 3.
19. Although this essay has little to say about the details of the science of
dynamics, its full title indicates how Leibniz sees the establishment of the
correct principles of this science as related to a clarification of the nature
of body: On Nature Itself, or On the Innate Force and Actions of Created Things,
for the Purposes of Confirming and Illustrating Their Dynamics (GP IV
504—16/AG 155—67/L 498—507).
20. Cf. his rejoinder to Malebranche in the Conversation ofPhilarete andAriste:
"[T]he principles of mechanism, of which the laws of motion are conse-
quences, could not be drawn from what is purely passive, geometrical or
material, nor proved by the axioms of mathematics alone. . . . [T]o justify
dynamical rules, it is necessary to have recourse to the true metaphysics
and to principles of fitness, which concern souls and have no less exact-
ness than those of geometers" (G VI 588).
21. Our concern in this section is limited to the attempts Leibniz makes to
ground the dynamical properties of matter in properties of monads. It
does not extend to the general question of the relationship between
corporeal forces and substantial principles of force, about which he may
have held different views at different points in his career. For a treatment
of the broader topic, which focuses on Leibniz's works from the 1680s
and 1690s, see Garber 1985, 1995.
22. As we shall see, he recognizes a further distinction within the categories
of primitive and derivative force between active forces and passive forces.
For the moment, we restrict our attention to the former.
23. LBr 258 Bl. 235. Cf. GP III 457; GM VII 242.
24. C 590/AG 91.
25. For a fuller discussion of Leibniz's reasoning about the relativity of mo-
tion, see Garber 1995, sec. 4.2.
26. Cf. GP II 257-8/L 532; GP II 262/L 533.
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262 NATURE
27. For an explanation of this distinction, see the Specimen dynamicum (GM VI
237—9/L 437—9). For useful discussions of these concepts, see Gueroult
1967; Westfall 1971, chap. 6; Robinet 1984.
28. Cf. GM V 325.
29. The relationship between conatus and vis viva (the force acquired by a
body through motion) is less easily explained. In some texts, such as the
Specimen dynamicum, Leibniz describes living force as arising "from an
infinite number of continuous impressions of dead force" (GM VI 238/L
438). However, living force cannot be regarded as a simple integration
over time of dead force. This yields impetus rather than vis viva, the
crucial point being that in uniformly accelerated motion (e.g., free fall),
where an equal infinitesimal increment of velocity is added at each mo-
ment, vis viva actually increases in proportion to the square of velocity (or
time). For this reason, Leibniz claims that if conatus is represented by the
quantity dv, living force will be represented by the integral fvdv (= v2),
which indicates the compounding (and not the simple addition) of con-
atus over time (GP II 155-6). As Westfall notes, it would be simpler to
treat living force as a function of space, since a body gains vis viva in
direct proportion to the distance it has fallen. That Leibniz did not adopt
this approach is probably best explained by the fact that an integration
over space had no clear metaphysical meaning for him (Westfall 1971,
300—1). For a more sophisticated treatment of these issues, see Bertoloni
Meli 1993, 84—91.
30. Cf. GP II 262/L 533; GP II 270/L 537; Westfall 1971, 301.
31. See his letter to De Voider of January 21, 1704: "You speak as if you do
not understand what I intend when I say that derivative forces are mere
modifications and that the active cannot be a modification of the passive.
Don't you understand, then, what is meant by modification, by active and
passive? . . . [F]rom the very fact that they are active and yet modifica-
tions, [I infer] that there is something primary and active of which they
are modifications" (GP II 262/L 533). Cf. GP II 171; GP II 257-8/L 532;
GP II 263/L 534; GP II 270/L 537; GP III 457; GLW 103, 130, 140.
32. It is presumably Leibniz's view that the monads grounding the resistance
of matter are those that are overwhelmingly confused or matter-bound in
their perceptions of the world, i.e., "brute monads" or "souls sunk in
matter." If this is so, it would be natural to posit some sort of propor-
tionality between the degree of confusion of monads and the resistance
of the matter they ground. As far as I know, this idea is never exploited by
Leibniz.
33. To De Voider, he writes that "it can be said that matter is real insofar as
the reason for what is observed to be passive in the phenomena is in
simple substances" (GP II 276).
34. Leibniz repeats this argument on many occasions. See GP II 183—4/L
519; GP II 241/L 527; GP II 269/L 536; FN 328; GP IV 467.
35. Leibniz sometimes links the property of extension directly to a monad's
primitive passive power, which he describes as involving a "striving [exi-
gentia] for extension" (GP II 306). An interesting variation occurs in a
1707 letter to Des Bosses, where he explains extension as the "continu-
ous, simultaneous repetition of position," and remarks that "simple sub-
stance, although it does not have extension in itself, nonetheless has
position, which is the foundation of extension" (GP II 339). I take it that
he is here propounding a view like that advanced in Chapter 7. Although
a monad is not itself an extended thing, it acquires a spatial position by
virtue of expressing itself as being located in an extended body.
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264 NATURE
49. Leibniz does attribute to God the capacity to "read" in the perceptions of
any monad the state of every other monad in the universe. I take it this
means that given his knowledge of any one monad's perceptions, God
would be able to draw conclusions, based on correlations among monadic
points of view, regarding the corresponding perceptions of every other
monad (cf. C 15/8 176—7; D II 2, 154). This, however, does not entail the
type of conceptual analysis envisioned in the text: an analysis leading
from particular corporeal properties to particular monadic ones.
50. Cf. GP II 444/L 602.
51. Cf. GP II 275; GP III 636.
52. Cf. GP II 503/L 613.
53. If this is difficult to imagine, think of a crowd of people pressing against a
closed door. To an external observer who did not distinguish this mass as
a mass of human bodies, the outcome of this situation —whether the door
did or did not resist the force impressed on it — could be described
entirely in terms of the laws of mechanics. From the perspective of each
human being involved, on the other hand, the scene would be first and
foremost one of intentional effort.
54. On the importance of the notion of elasticity and its relation to the
infinite division of matter, see Westfall 1971, 294-5; Breger 1984; Gar-
ber 1995, sec. 4.4.
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10
Corporeal Substance and
the Union of Soul and Body
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 267
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268 NATURE
ied creature becomes an unum per se. A man, he writes, is "an entity
endowed with a genuine unity conferred on him by his soul, notwith-
standing the fact that the mass of his body is divided into organs,
vessels, humors, spirits, and that the parts are undoubtedly full of an
infinity of other corporeal substances endowed with their own en-
telechies" (GP II 120/M 154).
We can best understand the problem Leibniz is struggling with in
the 1680s if we see him as attempting to accommodate an orthodox
conception of the unity of corporeal substance within the novel con-
straints of his own metaphysics. It is helpful in this context to compare
his view of soul—body union with that of Suarez. According to Suarez,
the union of any form with its matter - and hence of the human soul
with the human body - is a product of the "causality of form," or that
by which the form "necessarily communicates itself through itself to
matter, that is, not by effecting some other similar thing, but by com-
municating its own perfection and being to the latter, and by in this
way actuating it."7 Through the causality by which a form actuates its
matter and is thereby united with it, there arises a "composite substan-
tial nature," which is a unity per se. An example of this is the embod-
ied human being.8 Now, it is plausible to think that Leibniz has his
sights set on a position like this, consonant with religious doctrine and
a certain sort of common sense. However, he is bound by very differ-
ent starting points. He regards the soul as playing the role of a sub-
stantial form with respect to its organic body. The soul provides its
body with a principle of identity: The body persists as the thing it is
only to the extent that it is associated with the soul. Furthermore, it is
only through the body that the soul is located with respect to other
things and that it is able to act on and be acted on by other things. Yet
Leibniz is convinced that there is no direct contact or communication
between a soul and its body, not even a "causality of form." At most,
there is an agreement between the operations of the two, an agree-
ment grounded in the soul's capacity to express in an immediate man-
ner the state of its particular body. In virtue of this agreement, it is
possible to make assertions about the actions of the soul on the body,
or vice versa. However, such assertions must be understood solely in
terms of correlations among their respective states. One thing is
judged to act on another insofar as it expresses the latter more dis-
tinctly, or there is found within it an explanation of the changes that
occur in the latter.9
Because Leibniz limits what he calls the "physical" union of the soul
and the body to their preestablished harmony, he can at best mimic
Suarez's account of the unity of the soul—body composite. For Leibniz,
the soul is united with its body to the extent that it represents that
body as a single enduring thing, within which it is located and on
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL —BODY UNION 269
which and through which it acts. Yet all of this amounts simply to a set
of facts about the correlation between the actions of the soul and
those of the body. If preestablished harmony is the correct explana-
tion of soul—body union, then there is no deeper truth about how the
soul unifies the plurality of lesser creatures that make up its body. In
Leibniz's view, we may justifiably claim that there is within any living
creature a genuine unum per se: its soul. However, we cannot conceive
of this soul as conferring the true unity of a substance on the multi-
plicity of its body.10
We are left, I would suggest, with two possible explanations of
Leibniz's treatment of corporeal substance during the 1680s. At this
time, he may simply not have thought through the full consequences
of his doctrine of preestablished harmony for the unity of the soul-
body composite. Alternatively, he may have been well aware of these
consequences, yet willingly accepted the advantage of seeming to
defend the orthodox position that the soul—body composite is an
unum per se, when, strictly speaking, he could claim this only of the
soul itself. Although the latter hypothesis may hint too strongly of the
"preference for cheap popularity" that Russell discerned in Leibniz's
character,11 we shall find that in his later career Leibniz did not hesi-
tate to tailor the presentation of his views on corporeal substance to
match the expectations of his audience. In the present context, how-
ever, this is not an adequate explanation of the confusion we find in
his writings.12 This confusion is instead rooted, I believe, in the blur-
ring of two different conceptions of the necessary conditions for the
existence of a corporeal substance. According to the weaker of these
conceptions, for a living body to qualify as a corporeal substance
nothing more is required than that there be a substantial form that
functions as a principle of unity and identity for that body: a principle
according to which that body can be understood as enduring through
change as the same one body.13 As we have seen, by virtue of its
capacity to express the operations of its body, a substantial form can
be regarded as playing this role. As a result, there is reason for Leib-
niz to view the soul-body composite as an enduring corporeal sub-
stance.
We have also discovered, however, a stronger conception of sub-
stantial unity that lies at the very heart of Leibniz's metaphysics. Ac-
cording to this conception, something qualifies as a substance only if it
is intrinsically a unity, or an unum per se. It is this conception of unity
that cannot plausibly be ascribed to the soul-body composite. Al-
though the soul is itself an unum per se, the basis for its union with the
body is, in Leibniz's view, limited to the preestablished harmony of
their operations. This type of union does not support the assertion of
an intrinsic, or per se, unity. Consequently, in the strictest sense of the
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 273
substantial form of its body. Assuming that it defines the point of view
from which an organism represents the world, the dominant monad
functions as that organism's principle of unity and identity: Regard-
less of how its body (or the monads constituting its body) may change,
the dominant monad will continue to represent it (them) as the same
persisting body. Likewise, assuming the subordination of the body's
monads to the dominant monad, it is the latter that defines the char-
acteristic activity of the organism: The lesser monads of the body
necessarily represent their bodies as commanded by that of the domi-
nant monad, that is, by the body as a whole. These correlations
among the perceptions of monads support the notion that the domi-
nant monad acts as the substantial form of its body. At the same time,
however, this explanation of the monadic reality underlying the phe-
nomena demonstrates that, in the strictest sense, there is no unitary
organism, if this is understood as the composite of a soullike monad
and its associated corporeal mass. If Leibniz accepts the theory of
monads, he is committed to the rejection of organic creatures as ani-
mated bodies that possess the property of being an unum per se. At the
deepest level, the unity of the organism resides in the soul alone,
which persists as an embodied creature insofar as it always represents
some plurality of lesser monads as its organic body.21
I suggest that these conclusions define the central thrust of Leib-
niz's late metaphysics. Because it is a view contrary to both ordinary
experience and orthodox Christianity, it is, unsurprisingly, not one
for which Leibniz was able to find many ready adherents. Conse-
quently, during the last two decades of his life, he was forced to
expend considerable energy responding to critics of his metaphysics,
as well as simply explaining it to those who found its details bewilder-
ing. In the course of these efforts to reconcile his views with accepted
opinions, we find signs of what might appear to be retreats on Leib-
niz's part from the more extreme consequences of his position. This
applies especially to his account of corporeal substance. It remains for
us, then, to look more closely at these hesitations and to offer some
conclusion concerning the steadfastness of Leibniz's commitment to
the theory of monads.
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274 NATURE
their union. Seeing to the heart of Leibniz's position, he observed that
no simple harmony between the operations of the soul and body
could make it the case that the two together formed one substance, a
single human being. Hence, Leibniz had failed to explain the basis of
their union. 22 Tournemine identifies precisely the problem we
struggled with in the last section. To the extent that we embrace
Leibniz's account of union as preestablished harmony, we are barred
from providing an explanation of how the soul and the body combine
to form an unum per se.
Leibniz's reply to Tournemine, published in the same journal in
1708, is a masterful exercise in diplomacy.23 Respectful of the political
influence of the Jesuits, he has no interest in appearing overly innova-
tive. He is thus careful to insist that with his account, he does not deny
the possibility of a true "metaphysical" union between the soul and
the body:
I must admit that it would have been very wrong of me to object to the
Cartesians that the agreement God immediately maintains, between soul and
body, according to them, does not bring about a true union, since, to be sure,
my pre-established harmony would do no better than it does. My intent was to
explain naturally what they explain by perpetual miracles, and I tried to
account only for the phenomena, that is, for the relation that is perceived
between soul and body. But since the metaphysical union one adds is not a
phenomenon, and since no one has ever given an intelligible notion of it, I did
not take it upon myself to seek a reason for it. However, I do not deny that
there is something having this nature. (GP VI 595/AG 196—7)
On the surface, at least, this passage sees Leibniz recanting his strong
claim, in the New System and elsewhere, to have provided a solution to
the problem of soul—body union. Surely he is being disingenuous
when he writes in the same reply that he does not remember having
claimed that his preestablished harmony accounts for soul-body
union in a way that the Cartesian position does not. In any case, he
adds, "I declare that if I did ever make [this claim], I renounce it from
now on"; and he goes on to offer the preceding statement in its place. A
second crucial point is that Leibniz implicitly acknowledges here that
by itself the preestablished harmony of soul and body is insufficient to
render their composite an unum per se. For this, some additional meta-
physical union is necessary. Thus, whatever view he may have held in
the past concerning the relationship between the doctrine of pre-
established harmony and the substantiality of the soul-body compos-
ite, Leibniz now admits that the former is not enough. For the soul
and the body to form a composite substance, some stronger notion of
their unity is required.
It remains unclear exactly how much Leibniz commits himself to in
his reply to Tournemine. Is he really prepared to make room in his
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 275
philosophy for a metaphysical union between the soul and the body,
or is he merely engaged in a philosophical sleight of hand designed to
placate his Jesuit critic? Over and above the interest this question
holds from the point of view of Leibniz's later ontology, it takes us to
the very heart of his conception of the rational order of nature. The
crucial sentence in his reply is the following: "But since the metaphysi-
cal union one adds is not a phenomenon, and since no one has ever
given an intelligible notion of it, I did not take it upon myself to seek a
reason for it." The cynical reading of Leibniz's "recantation" would be
that while he does not rule out a metaphysical union as logically
impossible, he not only recognizes no grounds for believing that such
a union exists but positively discourages us from supposing its exis-
tence, since it has no phenomenal effects and no intelligible notion
can be formed of it.
Support for this reading can be found in his contemporary corre-
spondence with De Voider. In his last letter to De Voider, dated 19
January 1706, Leibniz writes:
You rightly despair of obtaining from me what I can give you no hope of
receiving and what I neither hope nor desire to find for myself. The Scholas-
tics commonly sought things which were not only ultramundane but Utopian.
The brilliant French Jesuit, Tournemine, recently gave me an excellent ex-
ample of this. He gave general approval of my pre-established harmony,
which seemed to him to supply a reason for the agreement which we perceive
between soul and body, but said that he still desired one thing - to know the
reason for the union between the two, which he held to differ from their
agreement. I replied that this mysterious [nescio quam] metaphysical union
which the School assumes in addition to their agreement is not a phenome-
non and that there is no concept [notionem] and, therefore, no knowledge
[notitiam] of it. So neither could I think of a reason that might be given for it.
(GPII 281/L 538-9)
While again not ruling out the possibility of a metaphysical union,
Leibniz is clearly much less sanguine here about its prospects. In
effect, he tells De Voider: Assume such a union if you want to engage
in pointless speculation; I who am interested in founding my meta-
physics on intelligible concepts alone will have no truck with it.24 The
contents of the De Voider correspondence strongly suggest that while
he is not prepared to deny outright the existence of a metaphysical
union, he also recognizes no positive grounds for asserting it. Seen
from this perspective, his reply to Tournemine must seem somewhat
contrived: an attempt to blunt the full force of his philosophy for the
sake of his critic.25
This conclusion is, I believe, essentially correct. It does not, how-
ever, quite represent the full story, for in certain contexts Leibniz
defends doctrines that though not contrary to reason, are nonetheless
"above reason." Creation, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the
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276 NATURE
Eucharist all represent religious mysteries that surpass human reason
yet are not contrary to reason, because they do not contradict "abso-
lutely certain and indispensable truths." In this respect, they are ac-
ceptable as dogmas of religion: Because they are neither demon-
strated by reason nor oppose reason, they are properly the province
of faith.26 Now, the critical question for us is whether he believes that
the situation is the same for the metaphysical union of soul and body.
Can this be described as a "mystery" that surpasses reason yet is de-
fensible on the basis of faith? Both in his reply to Tournemine and in
the Theodicy, Leibniz associates soul-body union with the religious
mysteries in that, in both cases, we are capable of only a partial,
analogical understanding of the relevant notions. Although he does
not go so far as to claim that the metaphysical union of soul and body
is itself a mystery whose acceptance faith demands,27 in the Theodicy
he does appear confident of the existence of such a union:
[W]e also mean something when we speak of the union of the soul with the
body to make thereof one single person. For although I do not hold that
the soul changes the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the
soul, and I have introduced the preestablished harmony to avoid this de-
rangement, I nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body,
which makes a supposition of them. This union belongs to the metaphysical,
whereas a union of influence would belong to the physical. ("Preliminary
Discourse," §55; GP VI 81/H 104)28
On the basis of the Theodicy alone, we would have to conclude that
Leibniz is quite sympathetic to the idea of a metaphysical union, and
hence to the idea of the human being as an unum per se or corporeal
substance.29 But we must remember that this is the Theodicy, a book
that Leibniz was prepared to release to the general public and for
which he craved the widest possible support. Working on the assump-
tion that a strong sense of caution directs all of Leibniz's actions, I
would suggest that this text is not the best guide to his deepest
thoughts. Some of these thoughts are, however, expressed in his late
correspondence with another Jesuit, Bartholomew Des Bosses, the
Latin translator of the Theodicy.
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278 NATURE
between the soul and the body, although he also does not see any
connection between this union and the phenomena.32
In September 1709, the correspondence takes a new turn. The
catalyst is Des Bosses's broaching the issue of how the doctrine of the
real presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist can be explained on
Leibniz's principles (GP II 388). Leibniz's response to this query is
revealing. As a Lutheran, he writes, he is personally committed to
neither transubstantiation (the orthodox Catholic position), nor con-
substantiation; that is, he himself believes neither that the substance
of the bread is transformed into the substance of the body of Christ,
nor that the substance of Christ's body comes to coexist with that of
the bread. All that he is prepared to accept is that Christ's body is
"present" in the sense that it is perceived (by God and the blessed) at
the time that the bread is received. While disengaging himself in this
way from the Catholic position, Leibniz nevertheless goes on to sug-
gest how transubstantiation might be accounted for in his philosophy.
Addressing the Catholic doctrine of real accidents, he hypothesizes
that the monads of the bread may be destroyed with respect to their
substantial nature — their primitive active and passive powers — while
preserving their accidents or derivative forces, and that the monads of
Christ's body may be substituted for them, with those new monads
exhibiting the phenomena of the bread by virtue of the preservation
of its accidents.33
Des Bosses is heartened by this response, yet raises an important
objection. He points out that unlike accidents, which are "absolute,"
Leibniz's derivative forces are modifications of primitive forces.
Hence, their being is wholly dependent on that of the primitive
forces, and with these destroyed the derivative forces will also be
destroyed (GP II 396). When Leibniz comes to reply to this criticism
he adopts a completely different tack. Now, instead of maintaining it is
the constitutive monads of the bread that are destroyed at the conse-
cration, he claims it is a certain "superadded union" that is destroyed,
to be replaced by "some divinely substituted equivalent" union:
Since bread is not in fact a substance, but a being through aggregation [ens per
aggregationem] or a substantiatum resulting from innumerable monads through
some superadded union, its substantiality resides in this union; thus it is not
necessary for your view that those monads be destroyed or changed by God,
but only that there be removed that through which they produce a new being
[ens novum], namely that union. In this way, the substantiality residing in them
will cease, although there will remain the phenomenon, which now will not
arise from those monads, but from some divinely substituted equivalent for
the union of those monads. Thus no substantial subject will in fact partici-
pate. However, those of us who reject transubstantiation have no need of such
things. (GP II 399)
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL—BODY UNION 279
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28O NATURE
can continue to exist without that bond (although they will then form
only an ens per aggregationem); and, conversely, that bond can through
a miracle be united with a completely different set of monads.
4. The phenomenal accidents of bodies are grounded in (or are
results of) their constitutive monads; nevertheless, in a secondary
sense these accidents are also modifications of the substantial bond,
which naturally receives its modifications from the monads it unites
"as an echo" (GP II 495-6/L 610-11).
5. Although bread is not itself a corporeal substance, it is an aggre-
gate of corporeal substances. Transubstantiation can now be ex-
plained as follows: At the moment of the consecration, God destroys
the substantial bonds of the monads constitutive of the bread and
substitutes for them the bond definitive of the substantiality of
Christ's body. Because the monads of the bread remain, the same
phenomena will remain. But those phenomena now miraculously be-
come modifications of the substantial bond of Christ's body. A sub-
stantial change thus occurs without any change occurring in the mo-
nads themselves or in the phenomena that result from them (GP II
459, 482).
This does not cover all the intricacies of the theory Leibniz presents
to Des Bosses, but it is sufficient for our purposes. It is, to say the
least, a theory of baroque complexity. It is also a theory that never
completely convinces Des Bosses, who persistently presses Leibniz on
the need for real accidents. Most important of all, the theory strikes
one as being little more than an academic exercise for Leibniz, as he
himself at one point all but admits to Des Bosses.36 From the outset,
Leibniz makes it clear that he personally does not accept the doctrine
of transubstantiation. Thus, he can hardly be held responsible for a
theory that is introduced solely for the purposes of accounting for
that doctrine. 37 On its own, the theory of substantial bonds is some-
thing of an embarrassment. Leibniz holds that the addition of a sub-
stantial bond to an aggregate of monads has no effect on the phenom-
ena that result from that aggregate. The bond can be added or
removed by God at will without any discernible change. At the same
time, corporeal accidents are claimed as modifications of substantial
bonds, which they receive "as an echo" from the monads they unite.
It is little wonder that Leibniz periodically comes back to reassert his
own preference for the theory of monads. Midway through the corre-
spondence he writes: "I consider the explanation of all phenomena
solely through the perceptions of monads functioning in harmony
with each other, with corporeal substances rejected, to be useful for a
fundamental investigation of things" (GP II 450/L 604).38 He presses
Des Bosses to suggest a way in which transubstantiation can be recon-
ciled with "the hypothesis of bodies reduced to phenomena" (GP II
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 28l
Coda
The Des Bosses correspondence is of critical importance for empha-
sizing the point that, within the theory of monads, composite corpo-
real substance is only conceivable on the condition that there is admit-
ted a real union among monads, in the form of something like a
vinculum substantiale. Such a union does not come cheaply in Leibniz's
philosophy. In contemporary notes, he suggests that a real union
would require an act of divine will over and above the act that issues in
the creation of monads and their preestablished harmony.40 Al-
though a handful of passages show Leibniz seriously pondering such
a device, the most reliable texts come down firmly on the side of
monads alone, with real union and composite substance rejected. And
this is exactly what we should expect given his deep and abiding
commitment to the ideality of relations.41
When presented with challenges to this conclusion we can only
proceed on a case-by-case basis, paying careful attention to context. I
end with one such case. A passage that seems on the face of it to
acknowledge the existence of composite substance is §3 of the Princi-
ples of Nature and of Grace:
[E]ach distinct simple substance or monad, which makes up the center of a
composite substance (an animal, for example) and is the principle of its unity,
is surrounded by a mass composed of an infinity of other monads, which
constitute the body belonging to this central monad. (GP VI 598-9/AG 207)
To assess the significance of this passage, we should be aware of three
things.42 First, the reference to "composite substance" does not ap-
pear in the first draft of the Principles. There Leibniz merely writes
that "each simple substance or monad is surrounded by a mass com-
posed of an infinity of other monads, which constitute its organic
body."43 Second, the Principles were specifically prepared for a popu-
lar audience: on the one hand, Prince Eugen in Vienna; on the other,
the circle of the Due d'Orleans in Paris. Third, at the same time he was
preparing the Principles, Leibniz composed another summary of his
system, which was intended for Nicolas Remond, chief counselor to
the Due d'Orleans, who had been pleading for a further elaboration
of his views. The document Leibniz prepared is remarkable in being
one of the most explicit statements extant of his reduction of matter
to monads; it contains no mention of real union or corporeal sub-
stances.44 It ends with this cautionary remark to Remond:
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282 NATURE
But I fear that this letter so full of abstract thoughts far removed from what is
commonly imagined may repel you. I would ask that you not meditate on it
for too long at one time; it would be better to return to it. I want you to note,
however, how I value you and honor you in writing to you what I would not
readily write to others. Thus, this letter must be only for you. Many others
would find it absurd or unintelligible. (GP III 624)
Leibniz in fact never sent this document to Remond. He instead for-
warded a copy of the less abstract Principles of Nature and of Grace, now
emended to include a mention of "composite substance." We can only
conclude that on reflection he decided that Remond was not among
"the wise" and that it would be imprudent to reveal his mind too
openly to him. 45
In this small incident of a text drafted and a text withdrawn, two
valuable lessons are contained. Reinforced is the point that Leibniz's
deep metaphysics - the "abstract thoughts" that many would find
"absurd or unintelligible" - is the metaphysics of monads, in which all
other beings, including living creatures, are no more than "phenome-
na" and "results." Underscored at the same time is the importance of
the remark once made to Placcius, "whoever knows me only by what I
have published does not know me" (D VI 1, 65). Whatever the under-
lying motivation, there is no doubt that Leibniz was prepared to tailor
his message to suit the needs and expectations of his audience. As
readers of his works, we must be sensitive to these differences, capa-
ble of distinguishing the discours exoterique from the discours acromati-
que. Nowhere is this more critical than in the case of Leibniz's lifelong
engagement with the question of corporeal substance. 46
Notes
1. Garber 1985, 63. Cf. Broad 1975, 87-90.
2. See Garber 1985, 65—6; C. Wilson 1989, 191—4.
3. See Chapter 6.
4. As noted in Chapter 6, Leibniz's views concerning body and corporeal
substance remain unsettled in the Discourse. In early drafts in particular, a
number of sections raise doubts about whether there are any corporeal
substances, or whether minds alone are substances and bodies only phe-
nomena. See DM §§11, 12, 14, 34, 35.
5. In the Arnauld correspondence, Leibniz initially appears uncertain how
far to extend the doctrine of corporeal substances. In his letter of 8
December 1686, he writes: "[I]f I am asked in particular what I say about
the sun, the earthly globe, the moon, trees, and other similar bodies, and
even about beasts, I cannot be absolutely certain whether they are ani-
mated, or even whether they are substances, or, indeed, whether they are
simply machines or aggregates of several substances. But at least I can say
that if there are no corporeal substances such as I claim, it follows that
bodies would be only true phenomena, like the rainbow. . . . And if there
were none, it then follows that, with the exception of man, there is noth-
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 283
ing substantial in the visible world" (GP II 77/AG 80). What is most
striking about this passage is Leibniz's confidence that "man" is an excep-
tion. The explanation is perhaps found in the following remark to Ar-
nauld from the same letter: "Besides, the last Lateran council declares
that the soul is truly the substantial form of our body" (GP II 75/AG 78).
Later in the correspondence, Leibniz seems more willing to assert the
existence of an infinity of lesser substantial forms. See his letters of 30
April and 9 October 1687 ( G P H 99-100/M 124-5; G P H 118-20/M
151-4)-
6. See his letter to Arnauld of 30 April 1687: "One will never find any fixed
principle for making a genuine substance from many beings through
aggregation; for example, if those parts which conspire towards one and
the same end are more fitted for composing a genuine substance than
those which are contiguous, all the officers of the Dutch East Indies
Company will form a real substance, much better than a heap of stones.
But what is the common end, if not a likeness, or else an order of active
and passive relationships which our mind perceives in different things?"
(GP II 101/M 127). As I understand Leibniz's account of soul—body
union, it is likewise based on nothing more than an "order of active and
passive relationships." Hence, it determines only a being through aggre-
gation.
7. Disputationes Metaphysicae XV, vi, 7 (Suarez 1965, vol. 1, 520).
8. Disputationes Metaphysicae XV, vi, 10; XV, i, 6 (ibid., 524, 499).
9. See DM §15; GP II 69-71/M 84-8.
10. In earlier writings, Leibniz had advanced an account of soul-body union
that is much closer to that of Suarez. According to the theory of "hyposta-
tic union," a mind A unifies a body B just in case (1) A is a thing which
subsists per se, (2) A can only act on other things through B, and (3) A acts
immediately on B and not through anything else. See De incarnatione dei
seu de unione hypostatica, 1669—70 (A VI 1, 532—5), and the discussion in
Mercer and Sleigh 1995. Whether or not we accept this theory as offering
a coherent account of the unity of the soul-body composite, it clearly
cannot have the same force once Leibniz begins to interpret causal rela-
tions in terms of preestablished harmony. When he makes this move, he
rules out the possibility of the mind's unifying the parts of the body
through a direct action on them. Once again, there will be at most a
unification of the body in the mind, which represents the parts of the
body as a persisting whole.
11. Russell 1937, vi.
12. Note that the text that most clearly indicates this confusion, De mundo
praesenti, consists of Leibniz's private working notes.
13. In notes ca. 1678—82, Leibniz writes: "Substantial form or soul is the
principle of unity and duration, matter that of multitude and change"
(LH XXXV 11, 14 Bl. 16-21 [V 2039]).
14. Glenn Hartz has objected that even if Leibniz cannot give an explanation
of how the soul and the body unite to form an unum per se, his many
references to corporeal substance show he believes they must (cf. Hartz
1992, 540). I would find this objection more compelling if Leibniz did not
go out of his way to urge the doctrine of preestablished harmony as a
solution to the problem of soul—body union. In offering such a "solu-
tion," Leibniz is claiming to know what makes the soul and the body a
single composite entity; however, his account defines the soul—body com-
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284 NATURE
posite as an unum per accidens rather than an unum per se. In response, it
might be argued that Leibniz's account of union as preestablished harmo-
ny does not rule out his entertaining a stronger notion of union that
could succeed in rendering the soul—body composite an unum per se. As
we shall see, this is a position to which Leibniz is driven — but not until the
early years of the eighteenth century.
15. Bossuet 1912, vol. 6, 348.
16. See also the draft of the New System (GP IV 476).
17. This, I take it, is the significance of Leibniz's cryptic statement that "the
soul has its seat in the body by an immediate presence which could not be
greater, since the soul is in the body as unity is in the resultant [resultat] of
unities, which is a multitude" (GP IV 485/AG 144). I assume he is using
the term "resultant" in the sense discussed in Chapter 8. Five years after
the publication of the New System, Leibniz's position has, if anything, only
hardened. He writes to the Electress Sophie on 12 June 1700: "I do not
agree that it is impossible for human reason to conceive of that in which
consists the union of the soul with the body. I would believe instead that
this problem is now entirely resolved by a system explained elsewhere"
(GP VII 555).
18. GP VII 501-2; D III 499-500; C 13-14/P 175.
19. See GP II 250/L 529; GP II 256, 261-2; GP II 265/L 535; GP II 269/L
537; GP II 275-8; GP II 281-2/L 539.
20. In the same letter, Leibniz stresses that a dominant monad exerts no
influence on the enmassed monads of its body: "Properly and rigorously
speaking, perhaps, we should not say that the primitive entelechy impels
the mass of its body, but only that it is joined with a primitive passive
power which it completes, or with which it constitutes a monad. Nor can it
influence other entelechies, not even the substances existing in the same
mass" (GP II 250).
21. Although this point is usually left implicit, it does have textual support. In
a letter to De Voider of 9/20 January 1700, Leibniz writes: "When I say
that the soul or entelechy cannot affect the body, I do not mean by this a
corporeal substance, of which it is the entelechy which is one substance, but an
aggregate of all the other corporeal substances constituting our organs,
for one substance cannot influence another and thus also cannot influ-
ence an aggregate of others" (GP II 205; emphasis added). See also his
1698 letter to Johann Bernoulli: "But although the body of an animal, or
my organic body, is composed in turn of innumerable substances, nev-
ertheless these are not parts of the animal or of me" (GM III 537); and his
letter to Fardella of March 1690 (FN 324/V 2157). A good example of
Leibniz's effort to preserve the vocabulary of "corporeal substance," while
at the same time claiming that reality consists only of monads, is his letter
to Bierling of 12 August 1711: "I call corporeal substance that which con-
sists of a simple substance or monad (that is, a soul or soul-analogue) and
an organic body that is united to it. But mass is an aggregate of corporeal
substances. . . . [A]ny mass contains innumerable monads, for although
any one organic body in nature has its corresponding [dominant] monad,
it nevertheless contains in its parts other monads endowed in the same
way with organic bodies subservient to the primary one; and the whole of
nature is nothing else, for it is necessary that every aggregate result from
simple substances, as if from true elements" (GP VII 501-2).
22. Referring to Leibniz's figure of the soul and the body as two clocks work-
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286 NATURE
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CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE AND SOUL-BODY UNION 287
41. One of the few texts in which he presents the theories on an equal footing
is an undated fragment, likely composed during the Des Bosses corre-
spondence: "Two systems: one of monads, the other of real composites.
Real composites are of two sorts: immobile or unchangeable, space;
changeable, bodies, and these are either aggregates from corporeal sub-
stances or substances. Corporeal substances must therefore have some-
thing real besides ingredients, or else there will be nothing left except
monads. This real superaddition is what makes the substantiality of
body" (LH IV I, la, Bl. 7).
42. See Andre Robinet's introduction to his critical edition of the Principles
(Robinet 1986). My quotation from the draft of the Principles is taken
from this text.
43. Significantly, the only union mentioned in any version of the text is the
"physical" union, determined by the "perfect harmony between the per-
ceptions of the monad and the motions of bodies" (GP VI 599/AG 208).
44. The following is an excerpt from this text: "I believe that the entire
universe of creatures consists only of simple substances or monads and
their collections [assemblages]. . . . The collections are what we call
'body'. . . . However, all these bodies and all that we attribute to them are
not substances, but only well-founded phenomena, or the foundations of
appearances, which are different in different observers, but which are
related and come from the same foundation, like different appearances
of the same city viewed from several sides" (GP III 622).
45. Leibniz later sent Remond a letter, dated 4 November 1715, that includes
an explicit acknowledgment of composite substances: "Secondary matter
(as, for example, the organic body) is not a substance, b u t . . . a collection
[awas] of many substances, like a pool full of fish or like a herd of sheep;
and consequently it is what is called an unum per accidens, in a word, a
phenomenon. A true substance (such as an animal) is composed of an
immaterial soul and an organic body, and it is the composite of these two
that is called an unum per se. . . . [S]ouls agree with bodies, and among
themselves, by virtue of the preestablished harmony, and not at all by a
mutual physical influence, save for the metaphysical union of the soul
and its body, which makes them compose an unum per se, an animal, a
living being" (GP III 657-8). This letter should be compared with his
letter to Pierre Dangicourt of 11 September 1716: "I am also of the
opinion that, to speak exactly, there is no extended substance. . . . The
true substances are only simple substances or what I call 'monads.' And I
believe that there are only monads in nature, the rest being only phenom-
ena which result from them. Each monad is a mirror of the universe
according to its point of view and is accompanied by a multitude of other
monads which compose its organic body, of which it is the dominant
monad" (D III 499—500).
46. Leibniz appeals to the distinction between exoteric and acromatic (or
esoteric) writings on several occasions. See A VI 2, 416; D V 26; F 234;
NE II, xxix, 12 (RB 260—1). For an insightful discussion of Leibniz's
philosophical method, which goes some way toward undermining
Russell's charge of his duplicity, see Cook 1992. Special attention must be
paid here to Leibniz's irenical aims. Undoubtedly, part of his intention is
to show that his philosophy is consistent with a wide range of religious
commitments. Thus, if the issue of metaphysical union were one on
which reason was genuinely indifferent, it would be open to Leibniz to
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288 NATURE
decline such a union while at the same time granting it to Catholics like
Tournemine, Des Bosses, or Remond. In this case, he could claim that
his basic principles were consistent both with the system of monads and
with a richer ontology that embraces corporeal substances. I am doubtful,
however, whether Leibniz's foundational views concerning unity and re-
lations would support such a move.
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Conclusion
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2gO CONCLUSION
Note
1. LH IV, VIII, 10 Bl. 51-2 (BH 108-11).
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Index
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298 INDEX
divine justice: definition of, 12; and bodies, 215—16, 230—2; maximization
retribution, 15-17, 54, 59-60; see also of, 31-4, 39-40, 199-200, 214, 226-
divine wisdom; theodicy 32; multiple levels of, 32-4, 199,
divine wisdom: and infinite division of 227—9, 231—2, 257—8; and perfection,
matter, 87; and panorganicism, 202- 32-5, 53, 200; see also divine wisdom;
3; and preference for perfection and preestablished harmony, of soul and
harmony, 13—14, 31—4, 214; and prin- body; universal harmony
ciple of intelligibility, 240-4; in rela- Hartz, Glenn, 283 n.14
tion to divine justice, 12; in relation to Helmont, F. M. van, 172 n.67, 2 5 2
world's fitting construction, 14, 17, Hippocrates, 38, 166 n.11
227, 232, 239—40; see also metaphysics
division, method of, see concepts ideas: analysis as mark of distinct, 83-5;
dynamics, science of: and conception of distinct versus confused, 83—5; of di-
substance, 148—54, 238; developed in vine understanding, 75, 77, 103-4,
opposition to Cartesian physics, 237- 115—16, 118—19, 128 n.24; expressive
40, 244 of essence, 83-5; innate, 83-5; as
objects of thought and dispositions,
encyclopedia: of all human knowledge, 82-3; relation between human and di-
100-5; a n d demonstration of truths, vine, 75, 77; see also concepts; intellect
76-7, 101-2 identity of indiscernibles, 142-3, 160
entelechy: as ground of laws of mo- impetus, see force, derivative
tion, 243-4, 249-50; see also force; infinitesimal calculus, 246
monads; substance intellect: and reflection, 80-5; as source
Epicurus, 7 of distinct ideas, 83—5; as source of
essence, see being knowledge of being, 71, 73, 84-5
evil: permitted by God, 7, 10—11; prob- intelligibility: principle of, 240-2, 252;
lem of, see theodicy; three species of, principle of continuity and, 30—1; and
distinguished, 10-11, 20 n.17 rational order of nature, 2, 242, 243;
expression: definition of, 38—9; see also of reality, 50—1, 74—5; see also order
universal expression
extension, analysis of, 248-9 Jolley, Nicholas, 96 n.46, 115
Jungius, Joachim, 132 n.61
fittingness: of laws of nature, 28-9, 239, justice: as "charity of the wise," 12, 54—
243; of organic body to dominant 5; three grades of human, 55-6; see
monad, 227—8; of world's construc- also divine justice; piety
tion, 14-15, 17; see also divine wisdom
force: derivative, 245-7; living versus Kant, Immanuel, 79, 89, 94 n.32,
dead, 245; primitive active, 148—53, 95 n-44> 233 n.9
247; primitive passive, see primary kingdom of souls and kingdom of bod-
matter ies, 215-16, 230—2
freedom of divine will, 11 — 12 knowledge, see ideas; intellect; senses;
truth
Gale, George, 23 Kulstad, Mark, 94 n.38, 96 n.46
Garber, Daniel, 158, 170 n.58, 172 n.67,
285 n.24 labyrinth of continuum, 221
general science, 100-3, 105 law of series, see substance
goodness: conflict among different spe- laws of motion: grounded in appetitions
cies of, 14-15, 17-18, 46—9; three of monads, 249-50; natural to matter,
species of, distinguished, 14, 47; see 238-41, 243-4; see also contingency;
also perfection dynamics, science of
Locke, John, 100, 133
Hacking, Ian, 165 n.3 Loffler, Friedrich Simon, 150
happiness: and intellectual enlighten- love, disinterested, 56—8; see also piety
ment, 47, 51-4, 58-9, 61-2, 240-1; Lullism as influence on Leibniz, 100-1,
maximization of, 13-14, 46-54; and 125 n.5
pleasure, 49-51
harmony: definition of, 13-14, 31-2; of Malebranche, Nicolas, 40 n.5, 252
kingdom of souls and kingdom of Mates, Benson: on compossibility, 185—
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INDEX 299
8; on Leibniz's nominalism, 115-16, relations of, 161, 188-97; simplicity
131 n.51 of, 159
matter: as aggregate of monads, 219, More, Henry, 263 n.44
221—5; analysis of properties of, 86— motion: laws of, see laws of motion; un-
9, 220-1, 226, 227, 237—8, 241—2, reality of, 245
246—9, 254; as confused appearance Mugnai, Massimo, 173 n.75
of monads, 219, 226, 238, 249—50; multitude, analysis of, 220-1, 237
elasticity of, 256—7; essence of, 218-
21, 238—9, 241-4; as grounded in re- nature: laws of, 26-9, 239, 243; rational
ality of substances, 88-9, 220, 224-5, order of, 2, 242, 243
227—8, 249—50; as infinitely divided, nominalism, Leibniz's, 115-18
87, 220; as multitude, 220-1, 248;
primary, see primary matter; as result occasionalism, 213-14, 260 n.13
of monads, 222, 225-6, 228-9; unre- occult powers, 242, 260 n.16
ality of mechanical properties of, 87, order: of arrangement (situs), 111, 189-
155-7; a s well-founded phenomenon, 90; definition of, 32-3; as means to
222, 227-9 greatest harmony, 32-3, 201; as
mechanism: Leibniz's reaction to, 86—9, means to greatest perfection, 26-31,
244; reconciled with vitalism, 217, 200—4; as not in conflict with variety,
251—3; relies on abstractions, 87-8 23—4; principle of, see continuity prin-
Mencke, Otto, 150 ciple; as satisfying to reason, 29—31,
Mercer, Christia, 165 n.2, 166 n.5 33—4; and simplicity, 26—31; space-
Merchant, Carolyn, 172 n.67 time, 189—92; of succession, 111-15,
metaphysical goodness, see goodness; 189-90; temporal grounded in causal,
perfection 191, 195-6
metaphysics: and analysis of sensory ex- organisms, 201-4, 218, 230-1; and
perience, 73, 85—90; as demonstrative grounding of dynamical force, 256; as
science, 72—9; Leibniz's conception of, results and well-founded phenomena,
71-9, 85-90; moral purpose of, 2-3, 224-5, 227-30, 256
289—90; as science of divine under-
standing, 63, 73; as science of divine panorganicism, 201—4, 212, 218, 228—
wisdom, 63, 73; see also being 31, 235 n.27; as consistent with theory
minds: as capable of indefinite increases of monads, 229-30
in perfection, 52-4, 60-1; as creators Parkinson, G. H. R., 131 n.52, 147,
of perfection, 58, 61-2, 66 n.30; form 172 n.67
moral kingdom with God, 15—16, 59— perception: confused versus distinct,
60, 62-3, 165; limited cognitive ca- 80—2; and petites perceptions, 80, 164,
pacity of, 87-9, 225, 254; possess 206 n.17; as property of all sub-
greatest perfection, 48—9, 52—3, 164- stances, 37-9, 79; as property of mo-
5; share common mode of under- nads, see monads; and universal
standing with God, 241; see also ideas; expression, 39-40, 146-7; and uni-
reflection versal harmony, 37-40
miracles as violations of principle of in- Pereboom, Derk, 95 n.44
telligibility, 241 perfection: of creatures, 25, 47, 178—81;
monads: actions and passions of, 162-4, of God, 24—5; identified with meta-
192—3; appetitions of, 160—4, 17&— physical goodness, 24; maximization
80; conditions for aggregation of, of, 22—6, 180—1, 199—200, 203—4; in
222—5; degrees of perfection of, 162, relation to harmony, see harmony; in
164, 178-81; dominant, 203, 218, relation to variety and order, 22—6,
224; as ground of force and resistance 200-1; world's progress in, 52, 58-62,
of matter, 244-50; as immediate req- 65 n.20
uisites of matter, 221, 251; incor- persistence, see substance
poreality of, 162; intercourse phenomenalism, 225—6
(commercio) of, 191-3, 195-6; intrinsic piety: as highest degree of justice, 56—
denominations of, 161-2, 184; as nev- 62; and love of God, 60—2; presup-
er without organic body, 193—4, 203- poses belief in divine justice, 59-60;
4, 215; perceptions of, 160-4, 178— in relation to love, 56, 58
80; in relation to matter, 250-1, 253; Placcius, Vincent, 282
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3°° INDEX
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INDEX 3O1
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