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Leibniz: the Last Great Christian Platonist

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Leibniz: the Last Great Christian Platonist chapter 3 Leibniz: The Last Great Christian Platonist Jack Davidson Many of the Platonic doctrines are … most beautiful.1 ∵ Leibniz (1646–1716) was the last great philosopher in the rich tradition of Christian Platonism that began before Augustine (354–430) and ran through Pseudo-Dionysius (early sixth century), John Scottus Eriugena (c. 800– c. 877), Anselm (1033–1109), Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) and Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) Florentine Academy. With the advent of figures like John Locke (1632–1704), David Hume (1711–1776), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), philosophy became both mundane and largely secular. This chapter focuses on the most influential of the 17th-century German Platonists, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. As anyone who knows of the history of Platonism from Plato onward realizes, classifying Leibniz as a Platonist is to place him in the company of philosophers who hold (sometimes wildly) different views, so some specifi- cation is necessary. These days, “Platonism” is used by scholars of ancient philosophy to describe what they take to be actual doctrines in the Platonic canon, doctrines Plato developed or continued to hold in the dialogues after the early, Socratic dialogues, e.g., the theory of the Forms.2 In contemporary metaphysics, “Platonism” refers to the view that certain abstract truths, like those of mathematics and logic, exist independently of time and space and human thought. Frege, Gödel, and Russell were all Platonists in this sense, as 1 D ii 222/l 592. Leibniz citations in the text and notes are by abbreviation keyed to the bibli- ography. Entries separated by a slash refer to the original and the English translation of that same passage, respectively. 2 This assumes a model of Platonic interpretation according to which the dialogues can, at least for the most part, be divided between different stages or chronologies of compositions based on themes and stylometry, e.g., early, transitional, middle, and late, and that by the middle period, say of the Republic, the views expressed are Plato’s mature views. Not all scholars accept this model. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004285163_004 44 Davidson was Leibniz, with slight modification. The term, or a close relative, was also used by philosophers or movements who saw Plato as their intellectual ances- tor and inspiration. Leibniz is very much a Platonist in this sense. The problem with this use is that thinkers so grouped hold radically heterogeneous views and methods of doing philosophy. Since philosophers and theologians contin- ued systematically to interpret Plato, defend him, and incorporate what they took to be his insights into their own works, present-day historians often use a chronological taxonomy by referring to medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and modern Platonism(s). “Platonism” is often contrasted with “Neo-Platonism” a term coined in the early nineteenth century by German scholars interested in distinguishing what they took to be a new stage of Platonism developed by Plotinus (204/5–270), a Hellenized Egyptian who spent the last twenty-five years of his life teaching at Rome. Like those before and after him, he believed himself to be interpret- ing and defending Plato’s own views. By the third century, however, Plotinus had roughly 600 years of Greek and Roman Platonism, or, more accurately, Platonisms, to reflect upon. His engagement and creative modification of this eclectic Platonic tradition resulted in a rationalist metaphysical system that was then subsequently shaped and modified by his student, Porphyry (c. 234– c. 305); the latter’s student, Iamblichus (c. 245–325); and Proclus (412–485), who was instrumental in the transmitting Platonism to the medieval world. It is worth noting that Plotinus mentions Aristotle more than Plato, and in some ways explicates Plato’s metaphysical and theological system in Aristotelian terms. This is not surprising, as many of his predecessors used Aristotelian ele- ments in constructing their interpretations and versions of Platonism. Indeed, the conscious and more often unconscious borrowing between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions continued to such an extent that thinkers are not infrequently described by scholars as Platonic Aristotelians or Aristotelian Platonists. The case of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) is instructive. It is likely that the only actual Platonic texts he read were fragments of the Timaeus embedded in a commentary. He would be almost incomprehensible to a reader unacquainted with Aristotle. At the same time, the influence of Plato and of ancient, Arabic, and medieval Platonists on Aquinas was substantial. This chapter proceeds as follows: §1 sketches out challenges to studying Leibniz. §2 provides a brief account of his life and intellectual climate. §3 presents some Platonic themes in Leibniz’s thinking. §4 examines Leibniz’s views on the concept of the Platonic and Neo-Platonic conception of the world soul. §5 discusses his views on the Platonic theory of innate ideas, and §6 takes up the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation in Leibniz’s metaphysical system. §7 offers a brief overview of his mature metaphysical system. In .
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