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Leibniz, Bayle and the Controversy on Sudden Change Markku Roinila (In: Giovanni Scarafile & Leah Gruenpeter Gold (Ed.), Paradoxes of Conflicts, Springer 2016)

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Leibniz, Bayle and the Controversy on Sudden Change Markku Roinila (In: Giovanni Scarafile & Leah Gruenpeter Gold (Ed.), Paradoxes of Conflicts, Springer 2016) Leibniz, Bayle and the Controversy on Sudden Change Markku Roinila (In: Giovanni Scarafile & Leah Gruenpeter Gold (ed.), Paradoxes of Conflicts, Springer 2016) Leibniz’s metaphysical views were not known to most of his correspondents, let alone to the larger public, until 1695 when he published an article in Journal des savants, titled in English “A New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances, and of the Union of the Soul and Body” (henceforth New System).1 The article raised quite a stir. Perhaps the most interesting and cunning critique of Leibniz’s views was provided by a French refugee in Rotterdam, Pierre Bayle (1647−1706) who is most famous for his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697). The fascinating controversy on Leibniz’s idea of pre-established harmony and a number of other topics lasted for five years and ended only when Bayle died. In this paper I will give an overview of the communication, discuss in detail a central topic concerning spontaneity or a sudden change in the soul, and compare the views presented in the communication to Leibniz’s reflections in his partly concurrent New Essays on Human Understanding (1704) (henceforth NE). I will also reflect on whether the controversy could have ended in agreement if it would have continued longer. The New System Let us begin with the article that started the controversy, the New System. The article starts with Leibniz’s objection to the Cartesian doctrine of extension as a basic way of explaining motion. Instead, one should adopt a doctrine of force which belongs to the sphere of metaphysics (GP IV 478). This is because one cannot find the principle of unity in mere matter, as material things cannot be at the same time material and perfectly indivisible. Leibniz combined his new theory of forces or dynamics with the old scholastic doctrine of substantial forms, arguing that their nature consists in force in the sense that from it follows something analogous to feeling and desire which relates them to souls.2 To put these together, substantial forms are, in a sense, souls which contain not only actuality or the fulfilment of possibility, but also an originating activity which Leibniz calls primary force (GP IV, 479). According to Leibniz, the difference between minds and bodies is of kind rather than degree. Bodies or natural machines are machines, whatever change occurs in them (such as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly); whereas rational souls are above the changes in nature, as they are images of God. They possess unities, the ability to say “I”, which is never possible for machines of nature, even for animals (GP IV, 481−483). Thus spiritual machines are real unities with self-consciousness and moral identity; that is, they can systematically strive for happiness and perfection. In the second part of the article Leibniz strives to show how these two kinds of machines work together. His explanation is founded on his doctrine of pre-established harmony, which God created with the substances, determining by an single act the relations between the substances, including the human soul and the aggregate that is its body. Leibniz also gives a lucid formulation of a spiritual automaton: a substance with an active principle (primitive force), reason (self-consciousness, will to good) and spontaneity (freedom). It strives automatically to the good, but is nevertheless free as it possesses intelligence and spontaneity. In addition, the representations of the substance are fairly accurate, and this is the reason why it is able to strive to perfection in imitation of its creator, God (GP IV 486). There were quite a number of critics of the New System, but I will here limit myself to Pierre Bayle (1647−1706), arguably the sharpest of them all. Bayle was a professor of history and philosophy in Rotterdam and was known primarily for his Dictionnaire historique et critique and his journal Nouvelles de la république des lettres. Leibniz’s discussion with Bayle was very important and led partly to his only published work Theodicy (1710). The communication started when Bayle added an extensive footnote H to the article “Rorarius” in the first edition of his Dictionnaire (1697). Leibniz’s response was published in Histoire des ouvrages des savants in 1698, but Bayle’s reflections did not appear until 1702 when the second edition of the Dictionnaire was published (WF 68−69). Naturally Leibniz was very eager to read the edition once it was published and very quickly he wrote a reply to Bayle, choosing not to publish it despite Bayle’s wish for him to do that. The reply was not published until 1716 in another journal called Histoire critique de République des lettres. Thus the discussion on New System took a very long time. In addition, Leibniz was privately busy reflecting Bayle’s and others comments and several drafts of replies and letters were left unfinished. Thus there are several versions of letters he sent and did not send to Bayle and also his private notes on the article “Rorarius” (WF 69-70).3 Note H of “Rorarius” Let us start with the footnote H to “Rorarius”, where Bayle presented a counter-example to Leibniz’s pre-established harmony between the mind and the body. He asks how a dog’s soul can operate independently of its body if there is no direct interaction between them. If a dog is thought to be more than a mere physical machine, a sort of intermediate level between machines of nature and spiritual machines, one would suppose that it has some sort of spontaneity, freedom to do what it chooses to do. Therefore Bayle cannot understand the series of spontaneous internal actions which could make a dog’s soul feel pain immediately after having felt pleasure even if there was nothing else in the world (Bayle 1697: 697): I can understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain when, whilst it is very hungry and eating some bread, it is suddenly hit with a stick; but that its soul should be constructed in such a way that it would have felt pain at the moment that it was hit, even if it had not been hit, and even if it had continued to eat the bread without being disturbed or prevented, that is what I cannot understand (Bayle 1697: 697; WF 73-74). Bayle argues that according to Leibniz’s views, the dog would feel pain even if there is no cause for it because the state of pain is “programmed” in its substantial form. Related to this question is the relationship between spontaneity and negative feelings. If we suppose that the soul has spontaneity or activity, how can it feel passivity or negative feelings such as pain? (Bayle 1697: 697). The assumption behind Bayle’s argument is clearly that the natural continuation from pleasure is toward more pleasure and that a sudden change in the body would not necessarily take place in the soul at all (see also Rutherford 2005: 170). It is also evident, as Pelletier notes (2015: 165 & 170), that Bayle’s take on spontaneity here is related to external factors, which was the common received view of the time; whereas for Leibniz the change is related to internal activity or passivity. Bayle is in fact arguing that Leibniz’s pre-established harmony is not really very different from Malebranche’s and others occasionalism, as there would have to be God which guides the substances, that is, intervenes to produce the sudden change from pleasure to pain. Surely one cannot imagine that these kinds of sudden changes can happen simultaneously in the mind and the body if it is supposed that they follow their own laws? This is especially true of simple substances such as monads, as they would not have parts which would affect other parts in the substance. Leibniz’s Letter to the Editor, July 1698 Leibniz replied in a letter to the editor of the journal Histoire des ouvrages des savants in July 1698. He made a distinction between spontaneity and voluntariness. Everything voluntary is spontaneous, but there are spontaneous actions which are not chosen, and which consequently are not voluntary. The states of the soul are always connected to its past states (WF 81). By this Leibniz means that the past states are present in the soul in the form of dispositions, as minute, insensible perceptions (petite perceptions). We do not know distinctly the future states of the soul, but there are in each soul traces of everything that has happened to it before certain moment in its history and traces what will happen to it later (WF 83). Thus the substance’s complete notion or substantial form “marks” the soul with tiny traces of its complete history. The spiritual machine has in this way a sort of complete program written by symbols, which to the agent herself looks like confused gibberish. Only its author, God, can interpret the code, hack the message (WF 83). Because of this cognitive chaos in the soul there has to be an external principle in the production of one’s actions. But this is not deus ex machina, as Bayle argues, because all the cognitive states of a substance follow from each other naturally (although we do not always notice it). There is always a continuity between states of the soul which is due to the confused little perceptions which we are not aware of. Because of this there are only natural, not miraculous consequences in the soul. We are not usually aware of these perceptions because there is an infinite multitude of them and we cannot tell them apart (WF 83).
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