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Class 22: G. W. Leibniz: Introduction Ing 309 Class 22: G. W. Leibniz: Introduction ing. Leibniz usually wrote essays, small treatises, and letters to learned correspondents. With the rise of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) attended the intellectual journals in the second half of the seven• universities of Leipzig (1661-66) and Altdorf (1666- teenth century (Journal des Savants, Acta Erudi• 67), graduating with degrees in law and in philosophy. torum, etc.), he had a ready means of disseminating Invited to join the faculty at Altdorf, he chose instead to his thought. But Leibniz’s chosen form must be hand- enter the service of the elector of Mainz. He was sent led gingerly. One finds approximately the same set of on diplomatic business to Paris (1672-76); there he met typical Leibnizian theses in Leibniz’s various essays Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas Malebranche, among (from the “Discourse on Metaphysics” and “Primary others, and accomplished the basic work on his dif- Truths to the “New System of Nature” and ultimately to ferential and integral calculus. Leibniz returned to the Preface to the New Essays and “Monadology”). Germany, in 1676, in the service of the court of However, the formulations of the theses and the rela• Hanover, and along the way, he stopped in Holland tions they have with one another vary from essay to to meet Baruch Spinoza. In Hanover he became essay; these are not always minor differences. counselor and served in numerous roles: as mining Take, for example, the “Discourse on Metaphys• engineer (unsuccessfully supervising the draining of ics.” Leibniz intended the work as a philosophical the silver mines in the Harz mountains), head libra- framework within which theological disputes be- rian, adviser and diplomat, and court historian. His tween Protestants and Catholics might be resolved. chosen literary form was the occasional article or essay The structure of the “Discourse” displays this purpose. in a learned journal. Among the important essays he It begins with God, with an account of his perfection wrote but did not publish are “Discourse on Meta- and the creation, as well as an application of the physics” (1686), Dynamics (1689-91), and “Monad- principle of sufficient reason, and it ends with God, ology” (1714). In 1705, he finished his New Essays on with his relation to finite spirits, including humans. Human Understanding, a book–length commentary on In between, Leibniz discusses the metaphysics re• John Locke’s Essay, but did not issue the work. He did quired for those doctrines. Section 8 of the “Dis• publish several significant philosophical essays: “New course” explains the notion of an individual substance System of Nature” (Journal des Savants, 1695); so as to distinguish the actions of God from those of “Specimen of Dynamics” (Acta Eruditorum, 1695); and creatures. For that purpose, Leibniz introduces the Theodicy (1710). The latter is a loosely structured concept–containment theory of truth: a proposition is work, consisting largely of responses to Pierre true if and only if the concept of the predicate is Bayle’s skepticism. Leibniz maintained an extensive contained in the concept of the subject. A conse• circle of correspondents, including Simon Foucher, quence of this account is that “the nature of an indi• Arnauld, Malebranche, and Samuel Clarke.1 vidual substance or of a complete being is to have a There is nothing in Leibniz’s enormous body of notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and work that resembles, let us say, Descartes’s Medita• to allow us to deduce from it all the predicates of the tions or Spinoza’s Ethics, no authoritative expression subject to which this notion is attributed.” As Leibniz of Leibniz’s philosophy in a single volume. In part, says in section 9, “several notable paradoxes follow that lack must be due to his desire not to set himself up from this”; the “paradoxes,” however, are metaphysi• as head of a sect and to produce what he would cal doctrines Leibniz actually holds: the identity of disparagingly call a “learned magician’s book.”2 In indiscernibles—that two substances cannot resemble part, it must also be due to his manner of philosophiz• each other completely and differ only in number; the 1 There are a number of collections of Leibniz’s philoso- Historical and Comparative Study (Princeton: Princeton phical essays as well as editions of the Theodicy and New University Press, 1989); Robert Sleigh, Leibniz and Amauld Essays in English translation. For more on Leibniz, see (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Donald C. D. Broad, Leibniz: An Introduction (Cambridge: Rutherford, Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature Cambridge University Press, 1975); Stuart Brown, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Leibniz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Nicholas Jolley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to 1984); Catherine Wilson, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Leibniz (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995). 2 See Brown, Leibniz, 6-8. 310 indestructibility of substances—that a substance can The Preface to the New Essays also contains begin only by creation and end only by annihilation; Leibniz’s characteristic set of theses, but again they and the complete world view of substance—that every are reworked. Reflecting on Locke’s opinion that substance is like a complete world and like a mirror of there is nothing in our mind that we are not actually the whole universe, expressing, however confusedly, conscious of perceiving, Leibniz develops his everything that happens in the universe, whether past, doctrine of petites perceptions: at every moment present, or future. As further consequences of his there is an infinity of perceptions in us that we do not theory of substance, Leibniz argues against Descartes consciously perceive. These small perceptions in- that extension cannot constitute the essence of any volve infinity; as a result, the present is filled with the substance and rehabilitates substantial forms as the future and laden with the past, everything conspires essence of extended substances (sec. 10-12). He together, and the whole sequence of the universe distinguishes between certainty and necessity: the could be read in the smallest of substances. The truth of each event, however certain, is nevertheless insensible perceptions also constitute the individual, contingent, being based on the free will of God, which is individuated by the traces that these whose choice always has its reasons, which incline perceptions preserve of its previous states, without necessitating (sec. 13, which provokes the connecting it up with the individual’s present state. correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld). He That is why, according to Leibniz, death might only further argues a thesis of spontaneity (sec. 14–16)— be a state like that of sleep. Leibniz also explains the that everything that happens to a substance is a pre-established harmony holding between the soul consequence of its idea or of its being, and that nothing and the body by means of these insensible determines it, except God alone—applying the thesis perceptions. Moreover, the thesis of the identity of to the relation between mind and body (sec. 33). indiscernibles follows as well: because of insensible variations, two individual things cannot be perfectly By the “New System of Nature,” Leibniz’s alike and must always differ in something over and concept–containment account of truth and his above number. According to Leibniz, the identity of complete–concept theory of substance seem to dis- indiscernibles would “put an end to such doctrines as appear. The essay begins with a consideration of the the empty tablets of the soul, a soul without thought, labyrinth of the continuum: the principles of a true a substance without action, void space, atoms, and unity cannot be found in matter alone, since every- even particles in matter not actually divided, thing in matter is only an aggregation of parts to complete uniformity in a part of time, place, or infinity. A multitude can derive its reality only from matter [...] and a thousand other fictions of philoso- true unities. This explanation requires Leibniz to phers which arise from their incomplete notions”— postulate formal atoms and to rehabilitate substan- about which he disputed with Locke in the New tial forms, which, in turn, requires the indestructi- Essays and subsequently debated (indirectly) with bility of substances: every substance that has a true Isaac Newton in the Letters to Clarke. unity can begin only by creation and end only by annihilation. It also requires the thesis of sponta- As is clear, the particular interpretive challenge neity: God originally created the soul (and any other Leibniz poses is that his characteristic doctrines real unity) in such a way that everything must arise seem to change through time, depending on the for it from its own depths through a perfect sponta- purpose of the essay, the issues he is addressing, and neity relative to itself, and yet with a perfect confor- the audience to which he is speaking—whether he mity relative to external things. Moreover, sponta- is seeking reconciliation between Catholic and neity entails that every substance represents the whole Protestant churches in the “Discourse on Meta- universe, from a certain point of view, in virtue of its physics,” discussing Cartesian problems in learned own laws, as if in a world apart. Ultimately, the thesis journals such as the Journal des Scavants, or com- of pre-established harmony also follows: there will be menting on Lockean themes in the New Essays (or a perfect agreement among all these substances, even when he is unfolding logical consequences in producing the same effect that would be noticed “Primary Truths” or explicating the foundations of his if they communicated through the transmission of Theodicy in the “Monadology”). species or qualities. .
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