Abstract
Leibniz must appear as something of a paradox to the reader of the recent literature on his thought (i.e., that written after the seminal work of Russell and Couturat). The Leibniz who appears in the commentaries is almost invariably Leibniz the logician/metaphysician, concerned to argue for a world of individual substances, later monads, mind-like, immortal, containing all and reflecting all, concerned to argue that this is all there is to our world and to every other possible world. But, on the other hand, most of us know, if only dimly, that Leibniz was a physicist of some note in his day, and, as such, was concerned with the determination of the basic laws that govern the bodies of everyday experience, the same problem that worried Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. But what status could the science of physics possibly have for a philosopher who, like Leibniz, seems to hold a metaphysics so distant from our common-sense conceptions of the world of physics? The perplexity is greater still when one finds, even in the standard works of Leibniz’s metaphysical corpus, like the Discourse on Metaphysics, numerous remarks to the effect that his metaphysics is intended to ground the true physics! What possible connection could there be between Leibniz’s metaphysical conception of what there really Is in the world, and his physics?
Earlier and much abbreviated versions of this paper were read at the University of Toronto, Ohio State University, and at a Joint meeting of the History of Science Society and the Philosophy of Science Association. I would like to thank audiences there for a series of lively discussions. Much of the material in the paper was developed in the course of a seminar I gave on Leibniz at Princeton University in Fall 1982. and I would like to thank the students, faculty, and philosophers from the larger community who attended and made the seminar so valuable for me. And finally, I would like to give special thanks to J.E. McGulre, Leonard Linsky, Howard Stein, and Robert Sleigh for all of their help. This paper is dedicated to H.L.G.-P., who was born at almost the same time as the paper was.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References-Notes
One might also claim that for Leibniz, bodies are phenomenal in a different, almost Berkeleian sense, the vision that the world of monads share in common, a vision that does not correspond to any external reality. For this reading, see, e.g. Montgomery Furth, “Monadology,” in Harry Frankfurt (ed), Leibniz: a Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: 1972);
and John Earman, “Was Leibniz a Relationist?.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1979), 263–276, esp. §4.
Jacques Jalabert, La Théorie Leibnizienne de la Substance (Paris: 1947), p. 26; see also pp. 37–8, 41–2, 54–5;
and Fernand Brunner, Études sur la Signification Historique de la Philosophie de Leibniz (Paris: 1951), pp. 216–220.
Robert M. Adams suggests something similar in a suggestive and valuable recent study. See “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance in Leibniz,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983), 217–257, esp. p. 224.
See Martial Gueroult, Leibniz: Dynamique et Métaphysique (Paris: 1967), pp. 205, 207.
See also Jalabert’s reply to this reading in Op.Cit., pp. 48f.
Gueroult, Op.Cit., p. 205.
In a few pages that deserve to be better known, CD. Broad notes an important transformation in Leibniz’s thought somewhere between 1699 and 1706. See Broad, Leibniz: An Introduction (Cambridge, England: 1975), pp. 87–90. According to Broad, Leibniz is basically an Aristotelian in the’80s and’90s, and only later does he adopt the idealism of the Monadology. While I shall argue that matters are somewhat more complex than that, much of the essay that follows can be regarded as an attempt to sharpen, expand, and carefully document some of Broad’s observations.
Broad’s thesis is also developed, in a somewhat different way in Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume (Ithaca: 1981), §§32–35. Loeb, though, sees the metaphysics of the’80s and’90s (he sets 1704 as the turning point) not as Aristotelian, but as Cartesian: “Leibniz began working within a dualist framework of minds and bodies.” (p. 299). Loeb argues that this account is necessary for an understanding of Leibniz’s claims about the noninteraction of substances, and for an appreciation of Leibniz’s original motivation for pre-established harmony. While Loeb is correct in noting important changes in Leibniz’s views, it will become clear that Loeb has misconstrued Leibniz’s earlier writings in important ways.
I shall follow common practice in calling Leibniz’s basic notion here the individual substance, as Leibniz often does in DM. But it should be noted that in the DM Leibniz sometimes uses the term “substance singulier” (DM9) or “substance particulier” (DM14, 15) for the same notion, suggesting that “individual substance” may not be a genuine technical term in the DM. It is also interesting to note that the term, “simple substance,” so prominent in later writings, does not seem to appear at all in the DM or the CA.
See DM22, 23, 33.
See DM10–12, 34. The phrase quoted is from DM12.
See DM12, 21.
DM12, emphasis added. The something to which forms are added, while connected with extension, is not intended to be Cartesian extended substance, as I shall later show. For a different view, see Loeb, Op. Cit., pp. 300–303, who seems to hold that in the DM and CA, Leibniz was tempted to simply distribute (Cartesian) minds through (Cartesian) bodies to deal with the problems he raises for Descartes’ account of body.
DM34. There is a certain hesitancy throughout these passages about whether or not any bodies in the world (with the exception of those connected with human minds) are in any way substantial. For example, an earlier draft of DM34 begins (with some alteration due to a fragment of a clause Leibniz dropped): I am not trying to determine if bodies are substances, speaking in metaphysical rigor, or if they are only phenomena like the rainbow, and thus if there are substances, souls, or substantial forms which are not intelligent. But supposing that bodies which make up an unum per se... The claim here, weaker than the one that appears in the final text of the DM, is that if bodies are to contain something substantial, then they must have forms. For similar hesitancy, see the earlier drafts of DM11, 12, and 35. In these cases, too, the hesitancy present in the hypothetical mode of presentation is missing from the final text. It is interesting that all of these passages survive into Leibniz’s final ms. of DM (Lestienne’s “Copie B”) before they are deleted. It is also interesting to note that there is a similar hesitancy well into the CA (see GII 71, 72, 77), a hesitancy that only disappears with the letter of 30 April 1687 (GII 98). This suggests that the hesitancy was removed only in the course of dealing with Arnauld’s objections, after what Leibniz originally took to be the final version of the DM. I would like to thank Robert Sleigh for emphasizing the significance of these passages to me. For more on the textual history of DM, see my textual notes (ii) on the DM appended to the table of abbreviations.
See GI 420 and R-L 107.
See, e.g. GII 74, 76–77, 97, 98, 120, 121, etc.
GII 96. See also GII 58, 72, 97, 118.
GII 118.
GII 72.
GII 97. We shall discuss what Leibniz means by phenomenal in this context below in §11.
GII 96.
See the discussion of this question in note 11.
GII 86–87.
GII 97.
GII 96. Later we shall discuss Leibniz’s claim that extension and thus bodies cannot be made up of points. For Leibniz’s argument against atomism, the claim that bodies are made up of uniform, infinitely hard small bodies, see, e.g., texts from 1690 Leibniz wrote against atomism, GVII 284–288, and the discussion of atomism in the Specimen Dynamicum of 1695, GMVI 248–249 (L 446–447). See also the discussion in Gueroult, Leibniz, pp. 98ff, and in
Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, 2nd ed. (London: 1937), §45.
GII 58.
GII 72.
B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: 1972), p. 583.
GII 86. See also GII 87, 106.
GII 97.
It should be noted that while the reply to Arnauld excludes the claim that bodies are simple aggregates of souls or forms, it doesn’t exclude the possibility that all reality is mental in another sense. The reply is consistent with the claim that corporeal substances, the unities that make up bodies, are organized packets of souls, souls organized so as to form complex substances. This is the account that Adams defends in “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance,” §3. However, one might expect that if this were Leibniz’s position, he would have taken this opportunity to inform Arnauld of it. This question is taken up in more detail below in §11.
GII 76.
Ibid.
GII 75. The position is attributed to the “last Lateran Council” in this text, but clearly with Leibniz’s approval.
GII 120.
GII 76.
See GII 73, 75.
See GII 120.
GII 77. See also GII 72–73, 75, 76–77.
I’m not sure what to say about the quote I earlier gave from GII 72: “...The substance of a body, if bodies have one, must be indivisible; whether it is called soul or form does not concern me.” This passage seems pretty clearly in opposition to the reading I am proposing insofar as it seems to suggest that that which is real in bodies is just souls or forms. But this runs so counter to the rest of what Leibniz seems to say in the CA that I am certain that there must be a way of rendering the passage consistent with my reading of the rest of the CA. Now, when Aristotle discusses the term ‘ousia,’ later translated as ‘substance’, he sometimes considers form to be the proper signification of that term. On this, see Léon Robin’s note in André Lalande, Vocabulaire Technique et Critique de la Philosophie, 8th ed. (Paris: 1960), pp. 1048–49. Robin further claims that “the form and the quiddity, following the logical and ontological tendencies which dominate Aristotelianism, are substance more immediately than the individual, which... is a composite [of form and matter], while the form and quiddity are simples.” Unfortunately Robin gives no references later than Aristotle. But perhaps it may be possible to fit Leibniz’s statement into this tradition. On such a reading, since the form is properly identified with the term ‘substance’, form is, indeed, the substance of body, but, nevertheless, the unities that ground the extended bodies of everyday experience are composite entities, forms (substances) that unite bodies. It may also be possible to understand the passage in another way. Forms or souls may be the substance of a body insofar as it is by virtue of having a form or soul that a body is a genuine substance. It is in this way that Leibniz sometimes seems to understand the similar claim that “forms constitute substances;” sec the discussion of this locution below in note 135. And, finally, it is also possible that the phrase is a slip of the pen. The passage is part of a draft, and was not sent to Arnauld. And in the parallel passage of the letter he actually sent (GII 76–77), Leibniz’s text can easily be interpreted consistently with the doctrine I am trying to attribute to him.
GII 98.
GII 161. This was not in the text sent to Arnauld. See R-L 93.
GII 118. The version of this passage given in G is somewhat richer and more explicit than the version Arnauld actually received. Cf. R-L 85–86.
GII 120.
GII 119. This is a passage not found in the letter Arnauld received. See R-L 87, note (1). Secondary matter will be discussed below in §11.
Given in Etienne Gilson, Index Scholastico-Cartesien (Paris: 1979), p. 126.
Fr. Eustacius a S. Paulo, Summa Philosophiae Quadripartita&...(Cambridge, England: 1648), pp. 123–124.
In referring to the forms as souls, and comparing the composition of a corporeal substance with that of a human being, Leibniz seems to imply that all forms are immaterial substances. If this is, indeed, Leibniz’s position, then he is departing from the orthodox position of, say, St. Thomas, for whom the only substantial forms that are substances, capable of existing separate from matter are rational souls, human or angelic. See, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans, by Armand Maurer (Toronto: 1968), pp. 51–59; Summa Theologica q 75 a 2–3. But if this was Leibniz’s position, he was not the first to interpret Scholastic doctrine in this way. See, e.g.,
Descartes’ definition of form in ATIII 502, and the discussion in Étienne Gilson, Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien (Paris: 1975), pp. 162–63. It is interesting to note, though, that in a text discussed below in note 82, Leibniz seems to deny that forms, even including the human soul, are substances. And, as discussed below in §111, even if forms are substances, Leibniz held that they never exist in nature without bodies. So, even if forms are substances, they never have any opportunity (short of a miracle) to display their capacity for Independent existence.
DM11. See also DM10, GII 58.
GII 119. This, again, is from a passage not sent to Arnauld. See R-L 87 note (1).
See GII 65ff for Arnauld’s initial response to Leibniz’s use of the term ‘substantial form’ on GII 58.
GI 198–99 (L190).
It is common practice in the secondary literature that deals with Leibniz’s debt to Scholastic Aristotelianism to assume that Leibniz is a monadologist throughout his mature writings. It is no wonder, with that pre-supposition, that commentators invariably find the connections between Scholastic doctrine and Leibnizian metaphysics superficial at best, even when Leibniz is quite consciously appealing to Scholastic notions of form and matter. See, e.g., Joseph Jasper, Leibniz und die Scholastik (Münster: 1898/99), pp 39ff;
Fritz Rintelen, “Leibnizens Beziehung zur Scholastik,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 16 (1903), pp. 157–188 and 307–333, esp. 326ff;
L. Jugnet, “Essai sur les Rapports entre la Philosophie Suarézlenne de la Matière et la Pensée de Leibniz,” Revue d’Histoire de la Philosophie et d’Histoire Général de la Civilisation, Fasc. 10 (15 Avril 1935), pp. 126–136;
Hervé Barreaux, “La Notion de Substance chez Aristote et Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana supp. 14 (1972), 241–250.
For the logical argument, see DM8–11, and for the dynamical argument see DM12, 18, 21.
Eustacius, Op.Cit., p. 119.
For a concise account of the Scholastic distinction, see Joseph Owens, “Matter and Predication in Aristotle,” in Ernan McMullin (ed), The Concept of Matter in Greek and Medieval Philosophy (South Bend, Indiana: 1963), pp. 79–95, esp. p. 86.
GII 119. The bulk of this passage was not in the letter Arnauld received. See R-L 87 note (1). In fact, the original letters sent to Arnauld contain no explicit distinction between primary and secondary matter. However, I think that the distinction is implicit in those letters, and helps make clear the doctrine there, as Leibniz himself seems to have realized when he added the bulk of this passage to the original letter. Cf. my textual note (iii) on CA appended to the table of abbreviations.
GII 100. Note the variants in R-L 72.
GII 107.
GII 120.
See, on this, A. Boehm, Le “Vinculum Substantiate” Chez Leibniz (Paris: 1962), pp. 35–58.
For an interesting account of the way the form harmonizes with its body, see R.M. Adams, “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance,” §2.
These later denials are in response to an attack on Leibniz’s doctrine of pre-established harmony that Boehm, Op.Cit. has convincingly argued is central to Leibniz’s later thought on the vinculum substantiate in particular and to his thought on composite substance in general. The attack is found in Rene-Joseph de Tournemine, “Conjectures sur l’Union de l’Ame et du Corps” and “Suite des Conjectures...,” in Mémoires pour l’Histoire des Sciences et des Beaux Arts (Mémoires de Trévoux), May 1703, pp. 864–875 and June 1703, pp. 1063–1085. Tournemine’s objection is quite simple. Calling to mind Leibniz’s often repeated two-clock example for illustrating pre-established harmony (see, e.g., GIV 498–500 (L459–60)), Tournemine writes: “Thus correspondence, harmony, does not bring about either union or essential connection. Whatever resemblance one might suppose between two clocks, however justly their relations might be considered perfect, one can never say that the clocks are united just because the movements correspond with perfect symmetry.” (pp. 869–870) Leibniz’s first reaction was to deny that there is anything to union over and above harmony. See, e.g. his remarks to DeVolder in 1706, GII 281 (L 539). But in the response he published in the Mémoires de Trévoux in 1708 (GVI 595–6), he suggests that union, like the mysteries of the faith, surpasses philosophical understanding. Note, by the way, that the title of the piece Leibniz published embodies a mistaken reference to the original publication of Tournemine’s critique; contrary to what Leibniz implies, it was not published in March 1704.
GII 58.
GII 75. See also GII 112, 136.
For a number of attempts to explicate this notion, see McMullin, Op.Cit.
Gilson, Index, p. 169. See also ibid., §§59, 272, 273, and Eustachis, Op.Cit, pp. 120, 123.
Gilson, Index p. 173. See also Eustacius, Op.Cit., p. 122.
Eustacius, Op.Cit., p. 120.
For an account of primary matter, understood in this way as internal to a monad, see, e.g. B. Russell, Leibniz, §86. It should be remarked that Russell also recognizes a different sense of primary matter, that found in the dynamics. On his view “Materia prima, as an element in each monad, is that whose repetition produces the materia prima of the Dynamics.” (p. 144). What I shall attempt to establish in this section and §V below is that the primary matter of the metaphysics is the same as that of the dynamics, and in both cases, is something outside of the soul-like forms, at least in the context of the Aristotelian metaphysics that, I claim, Leibniz held in the period of the CA. It should be noted that the attribution of primary matter to an incorporeal substance, like the monad, is very much within a certain Scholastic tradition. St. Bonaventura, for example, among many others, held that angels and human souls involved both form and primary matter. See, e.g., St. Bonaventura, In I Sent, d 8 p 2 a 1 q 2; In II Sent, d 3 p 1 a 1 and d 17 a 1 q 2. Having matter in this sense, though, is something quite different from being a body or a corporeal substance for both Bonaventura and Leibniz of the monadology. That Leibniz doesn’t have this notion of matter in mind in the context of what I have called the Aristotelian metaphysics is clear from the fact that he talks repeatedly of corporeal substances.
GVII 322 (L 365). This notion of primary matter is also suggested in a number of the letters to DesBosses. See, e.g., GII 324–5, 378. In one passage, GII 435 (L 600) Leibniz suggests that the primary matter of extended bodies derives from the primary matter (called there passive power for reasons that will become clear in §V below) of individual monads, as, I remarked in the previous note, Russell held. The developments that led Leibniz to the internalization of primary matter in immaterial substance is the main theme of Georg Wernick, Der Begriff der Materie bei Leibniz in seiner Entwicklung und in seinen historischen Beziehungen (Jena: 1893). I would disagree, though, with the account Wernick gives of corporeal substance at the time of the CA on pp. 27–29.
GII 119. The reference to extended mass here suggests that the target may be Cartesian extended substance, though the last clause, referring to the Scholastic doctrine of act and potency, suggests that the doctrine of primary matter is at issue as well. For statements of the Scholastic doctrine that form gives actuality to matter see, e.g., the references cited below in note 95.
GII 118–119.
The text is published in two places, in L.A. Foucher de Careil, ed., Nouvelles Lettres et Opuscules Inedits de Leibniz (Paris: 1857), pp. 317–325, and in the appendix to
Ludwig Stein, Leibniz und Spinoza (Berlin: 1890), pp. 322–325. There are some significant differences between the two transcriptions; Foucher de Careil, e.g., seems to drop a sentence on p. 322, line 10 that Stein gives, but on the other hand, includes more of the ms. than Stein gives. Both texts should be consulted. For ease of reference, though, in the notes below I shall refer to the text as simply “Fardella,” and give the pagination as found in Foucher de Careil’s transcription.
For a general discussion of Fardella and his relations with Leibniz, see Salvatore Femiano, “Uber den Briefwechsel zwischen Michelangelo Fardella und Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana 14 (1982), 153–183.
For example, on Fardella, p.320, Leibniz seems to assert that the soul is a substance, while on p. 322 he seems to deny it. And on p. 320 he asserts that the (corporeal?) substance is not a part of a body, while on p. 322 he admits that there are senses in which substances can be considered parts of bodies. The Fardella letter, thus, seems to be more of a working paper than a polished statement of Leibniz’s position.
The quote is from C 522 (L 270). Cf. also GII 370 (L 598) where the Latin is “terminationes” Points are called “extremities of extension” in GIV 478.
Points are called “modi ficationes” in GII 370 (L 598), “modifications” in GIV 478, and “modalités” in GIV 491.
GII 370 (L 597).
GII 370 (L 598).
For other statements of this account of points and their relation to extension, see, e.g. GI 416; GII 300; GVI 627; GVII 560; NE 152, etc. I have not emphasized chronology here since the position is one Leibniz seemed to have held from at least the early 1680s to the end of his life. Russell offers a different account of the modality of points. “They are thus mere modalities, being a mere aspect of the actual terms, which are metaphysical points or monads.” (Leibniz, p. 105). I can see no textual support for his reading.
Fardella, p. 323.
Fardella, p. 322. It should be noted that this passage somewhat carelessly mixes two different analogies, one between points and substances, and another between points and souls. It is the latter that interests me here. That Leibniz considered them different analogies, and did not identify the souls of the second analogy with the substances of the Hrst is shown quite clearly by the quote that follows.
Ibid.
To continue the analogy, one might claim that just as points are modal, so are souls. This seems to be Leibniz’s motivation for a rather puzzling statement. Immediately following the last quotation, Leibniz writes: “The soul, properly and accurately speaking, is not a substance, but a substantial form, or the primitive form existing in substances, the first activity, the first faculty of acting.” (Fardella, p. 322) (The language here: “primus actus, prima facultas activa” suggests theAristotelian notion of entelechy; cf. De Anima 412a27 and its standard Latin translations.) Cf. the discussion in note 45. This sits nicely with Leibniz’s claim, discussed below in §111, that there is in nature no soul that exists without a body. But it sits poorly with other passages, even in the same letter, as remarked in note 73, in which Leibniz seems to say that the soul is a genuine substance. Be that as it may, it is extremely interesting that at this point, in 1690, Leibniz could even consider the possibility that the soul, the very model of the later monad, is not a substance. A similar claim, that the substantial chain is modal rather than substantial, is considered but rejected in a 1713 letter to DesBosses because it would follow from that that “bodies would be mere phenomena.” See GII 481.
For an interesting and closely connected, but much later use of the same geometrical analogy in the letters to DesBosses, see GII 435 (L 600).
GII 120.
The two notions of the phenomenal I find in the CA are very clearly distinguished in Grua 322–323, a passage that Grua dates as 1683–1686(?). I make no claims that Leibniz’s conception of the phenomenal in the later writings is exactly the same as the notions he worked with in the mid-1680s.
GII 97. See also Fardella, p. 320. In writing to Fardella, Leibniz considers rainbows as phenomenal in this sense, rather than in the second sense we shall consider below, as he more often considers them. Perhaps he is thinking of the rainbow as a spatially located array of color.
GII 119. See also GII 76.
GII 101.
Cf. the account of the rainbow Descartes gives in Discourse VIII of his Meteorology.
GII 101.
GII 101. I follow here the text given in R-L 73–74; the later addition of “sensible qualities” as an example of something phenomenal in this sense seems out of place. See also GII 72, 99.
An indication of the substantiality of things phenomenal in this sense is a bit of technical terminology Leibniz uses elsewhere. Things genuinely real are substances, of course, but things phenomenal in this sense are what he elsewhere calls substantiata, or semi-substances. See C 13, 438; GII 506 (L 617). “Well-founded phenomenon” might be a good term for this sense of the phenomenal. But even though Leibniz does use the term “well-founded appearance” once in the CA (GII 118), it does not seem to be a technical term, and the term “well-founded phenomenon” does not appear at all. Furthermore, I’m not sure how exactly this notion of the phenomenal corresponds to what he later will call well-founded phenomena. While clearly they are related, I want to leave open the possibility that there might be significant differences. For a general account of the notion of the phenomenal in Leibniz, see R.M. Adams, “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance,” esp. §§1 and 3. Adams, though, makes the assumption that Leibniz’s views on these questions remain largely unchanged from the DM on (see his p. 217).
GII 118.
GII 118–119.
See, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q 44 a 2 ad 3; q 45 a 4 ad 3; q 66 a 1 e; De Principiis Naturae, in R.P. Petrus Mandonnet, S. Thomae Aquinatis Opuscula Omnia (Paris: 1927), vol. I. p. 8. It should be noted, though, that this was a question of some debate among later Scholastics.
On this see, e.g., Allan B. Wolter, “The Ockhamist Critique,” in Ernan McMullìn (ed), Op.Cit, pp. 124–146.
GII 119.
It is because form without matter (unlike matter without form) has unity that it can be considered a substance, presumably.
It should be noted, though, that in the CA Leibniz is careful to say that, as a matter of fact, there are no forms or souls in the world that actually exist without bodies. See, e.g., GII 124. This issue will arise again in §111 in connection with the immortality of corporeal substances.
See DM8, 9, 14.
GII 116. This is not found in the letter Arnauld received. See R-L 82 note (3).
GII 112. This passage suggests that the mirroring thesis, the doctrine that every substance expresses the entire world of which it is a part, is completely neutral on the question of Leibniz’s ontology; it is consistent both with idealism and with the sort of Aristotelianism that I have been attributing to Leibniz. The quote just given, together with the example Leibniz gives earlier on GII 112 of a perspectival projection expressing a ground plan suggests that it is even consistent with a Cartesian world of extended substances. However, the mirroring thesis and its relation to Aristotelianism and Cartesianism is a very complex question that goes beyond the scope of this paper.
GII 66.
GII 76.
See GII 85, where Arnauld gives his mistaken first impression of Leibniz’s position and acknowledges his mistake.
GII 87.
GII 100. See also Arnauld’s similar objection from the fact that plants can be propagated from cuttings and tree limbs can be grafted (GII 85) and Leibniz’s answer (GII 92).
It is possible, too, that neither half of the worm is animate, strictly speaking. That is, it is possible that splitting kills the worm (cf. Leibniz’s theory of death below) and that the motion of both parts is purely mechanical.
GII 122. For Arnauld’s question, see GII 108.
GII 123. See also GII 100.
Leibniz’s account of generation is the exact mirror of his account of death. The natural ingenerability of souls and forms entails that generation must proceed by the transformation of a very small animal into a larger one, from an animal seed, so to speak, to animals large enough for us to see. This, in any case, is how it goes for non-rational animals. Rational souls, though, are worthy of special creation; they are custom made, as it were, for their bodies. See, e.g. GII 75, 116–117.
See GII 72, 75, 76, 116–117, 124.
See GII 116–117.
GII 124.
See, e.g., some of Leibniz’s letters to Bernoulli in 1698 (GM III 551 (L 511–512)), to DeVolder in 1703 (GII 248–249, 257 (L 528, 532)), and to DesBosses In 1706 (GII 324–325).
This is suggested, e.g., by Leibniz’s reply to Arnauld’s split-worm objection on GII 100. Leibniz seems to take it for granted throughout the CA that there are no problems individuating souls or forms. To the best of my knowledge, one doesn’t get an explicit discussion of that problem, nor, for that matter, a full discussion of the individuation of animals until 1703–1704, in Leibniz’s elegant examination of Locke on personal identity. See NE, Book II Ch. 27. It should also be noted that Leibniz is quite careful to set certain bounds on how an organism can transform its body. While an organism can change its body by adding or losing parts from one moment to the next, Leibniz denies the natural (vs. miraculous) possibility of metempsychosis, the transfer of a soul or form from one body at one moment to a completely different one at the next. While a soul can completely change its body over time, it must, for Leibniz, proceed part by part. See, e.g., GII 99–100, 124.
GII 121.
Insofar as the claim that all souls have bodies seems to depend on the principle of perfection, it would seem that the immortality of corporeal substances must be contingent. The whole doctrine of immortality and indivisibility of substances seems to rest on the immortality and indivisibility of souls. It is plausible that this doctrine, in turn, rests on the claim that souls are genuine substances. This, I think, is one of Leibniz’s strongest motivations for denying that souls are unsubstantial, a position he considered in the Fardella letter. See note 82.
DM10.
GII 76.
DM8. In an earlier draft of DM8, Leibniz uses a different example, that of the ring of Gyges or Polycrates, claiming that while the shape of the ring is not a substance that has a CIC, the ring itself may be conceived of as having a CIC which contains all of its properties. But, Leibniz notes, this can hold only under the assumption that the ring “has a consciousness,” i.e., a soul that makes it into a substance, a soul to which the CIC can attach. It is obvious why the example was dropped.
GII 76.
Mon. 62–65.
Mon. 66–67.
Mon. 1–3.
Mon. 17–19.
GII 270 (L 537). See also GIII 636 (L 659); GVI 590 (L 625), etc.
PNG 3. See also GII 506 (L 617); GVI 588 (L624); GVII 501–502; etc.
This is not to say that there is no hesitation in the DM and CA. But the hesitation is over a different question. As I pointed out in note 11, Leibniz is not absolutely certain, at least in the beginning, whether bodies have forms or whether they are empty phenomena. But Leibniz is quite certain there that if something has a form, then it is a genuine substance.
See the accounts cited above in note 5.
For a discussion of what may be Leibniz’s earliest flirtation with idealism in 1670 or so, see my essay, “Motion and Metaphysics in the Young Leibniz,” in Michael Hooker (ed.) Leibniz: Critical and Interpretative Essays (Minneapolis: 1982), pp. 160–184. I should point out that the relation between this early period of Leibniz’s thought and his mature work now looks considerably more complex than 1 represent it as being on pp. 175–176 of that essay.
For further instances of Leibniz’s earlier idealistic thought, see also the so-called Paris notes of 1676, I. Jagodinski, ed., Leibnitiana Klementa Philosophiae Arcanae de Summa Rerum (Kasan: 1913), p. 110 (L 162), and an unpublished fragment from 1680(?) quoted in
Erich Hochstetter, “Von der wahren Wirklichkeit bei Leibniz,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 20 (1966), 421–446; esp. 439. Hochstetter also quotes two fragments, one from 1678(?), one from 1680(?) that are suggestive of the Aristotelian position that, I have argued, is found in the CA.
See Hochstetter, Op.Cit., pp. 429, 431. These passages are suggestive, and call for a more careful examination of Leibniz’s thought before the mature works of the 1680s than I can undertake in this essay. Later in this section I shall note later instances of both Leibniz’s idealism and his Aristotelianism.
For 1692–1693, see GIII 97; for 1696 see GVII 542 and GIV 415; for 1697 see GIII 205.
See Gl 420. Leibniz also considered publishing the CA in 1707. See R-L 107.
Fardella, p. 319–320.
Fardella, p. 322. The Fardella letter is somewhat more reflective on certain issues than CA. The most conspicuous developments involve the conception of the soul, and the way in which corporeal substances make up bodies. On the former, as I remarked in note 82, Leibniz at least considers the possibility that souls are not substances. On the latter, Leibniz claims that “the indivisible substance enters the composition of the body not as a part, but rather as an essential internal requisite” (p. 320). His idea seems to be that a part of a whole is of the same sort as the whole (“…geometers give the name ‘part’ only to those constituents which are of the same sort [homogenea] as the whole” (p. 323)). Thus, to use his example, a point is not part of a line, but only a shorter line is such a part (p. 320, 322). Thus, since the substance is a unity, but the body a collection, it cannot be part of a body, strictly speaking, just as one might say that a soldier is not a part of the army. Substances seem to be essential internal requisites of bodies in the sense that if there were no substances, then there could be no aggregates either. Leibniz wavers on this, though, and late in the letter (pp. 322–323) admits various senses in which corporeal substances and their organic bodies can be considered parts of bodies, finally conceding that “if anyone wants to call such things parts, I would allow that.” (p. 323)
For example, Leibniz talks of “the forms which constitute substances” and “points of substance constituted by forms or souls” (GIV 479, 483 (L 454, 456)), and Leibniz claims that the substances which ground bodies are “absolutely destitute of parts.” (GIV482 (L456)). But as suggestive as these passages are of the later monads, they are not decisive. The Fardella letter shows the complexity of Leibniz’s thought about parts. And in a letter written three years later to John Bernoulli, which is, as I shall later show, very much within Leibniz’s Aristotelian framework, Leibniz writes: “…not the flock, but the animal, not the fish pond, but the fish is one substance. Moreover, even if the body of an animal, or my organic [body] is composed, in turn, of innumerable substances, they are not parts of the animal or of me.” (GMIII 537). The sense in which forms constitute substance within Leibniz’s Aristotelian framework is suggested in a passage from the earlier draft of the New System. Leibniz writes: “Thus I found that in nature, outside of the notion of extension it is necessary to employ that of force, which renders matter capable of acting and resisting…. This is why I consider it [force] as constitutive of substance, being the principle of action, which is its character.” (GIV 472). Given the connection between (active) force and form to be discussed below in §V, Leibniz could say the same about form: it is constitutive of substance in the sense that it is the source of activity, one of the marks of substancehood for Leibniz, as he often wrote. For the connection between substantiality and activity, see e.g., the Specimen Dynamicum of 1695, GMVI 235 (L 435), or the “Correction of Metaphysics” of 1694, GIV 469–470 (L 433).
GIV 473.
GIV 491.
GIV 492.
GMIII 542.
GIII 227. The connection between form, matter, and force will be discussed below in §V.
GIII 260. See also a near contemporary letter to Bernoulli, GMIII 536–537 and a passage from CA, GII 119–120.
GIV 510 (L 503).
GII 171 (L 517).
GMIII 542. This conception of the monad explains a passage Leibniz wrote to Bernoulli in a letter from about the same time. Leibniz wrote: “How far a piece of flint must be divided in order to arrive at organic bodies and hence at monads, I do not know. But it is easy to see that our ignorance in these things does not prejudice the matter itself.” (GMIII 552 (L 512)). This passage is, of course, utterly unintelligible if the term “monad” is to be understood as Leibniz uses it later in the Monadology. The first occurrence I know of the term “monad” (as opposed to the related term “monas”) is in a letter to Fardella, 3/13 September 1696. See A. Foucher de Careil, Op.Cit., p. 326. The monad is there simply defined as “a real unity.”
GIV 511 (L 503–504).
GIII 454–455.
GIII 457–458.
NE 440. The monad here seems to be not like a soul, but like an animal with a soul. However, in other passages from the NE (NE 145, 231), the monad seems, like the monad of the Monadology, to be soul-like.
NE 328–329. See also NE 231–232 and 318.
NE 344. The distinction suggested here is even more complete than distinctions suggested earlier. It should be noted, by the way, that in Remnant and Bennett’s translation, they mistakenly add an “essential” to the word “properties.”
For the idealistic strand in 1695–1696, see the references from the “New System…” cited in note 135 and GVII 540, 542; for 1700, see GVII 551–553; for 1702 see GIII 72 and GIV 561 (L 578–579); for 1703 see GII 252 (L 530–531); for 1704–1705 see GII 270 (L 537), GIII 367, and GVII 566. I hesitate to set a final date by which I would claim that Leibniz has definitely set aside his Aristotelianism. While idealism certainly seems to dominate Leibniz’s thought after 1704 or so, there are some passages written later than this that are highly suggestive of the metaphysics of the CA. See, e.g. GII 306 and GIII 657. I am also struck by certain passages in the correspondence with DesBosses in which Leibniz suggests that if there were substantial chains, then they would bind monads together and form genuine Aristotelian substances, matter, form and all. See, e.g. GII 435 (L 600) and GII 506 (L 617). One might, in fact, read the substantial chain as an attempt to capture an Aristotelian conception of substance, like the one espoused in the CA, within the context of a monadological idealism. On this, see also GVI 588–90 (L 624–25).
See, e.g., NE 145, 225, 378–379.
Russell, Leibniz, pp. 2–3.
Cf. Ibid., p. 1.
Ibid., p. v. For bibliographical information about Couturat’s collection, see the table of abbreviations under’C’. For Couturat’s development of this reading, see the preface to La Logique de Leibniz (Paris: 1901), and, in much greater depth, “On Leibniz’s Metaphysics,” in Frankfurt, Op.Cit., pp. 19–45.
See the introduction to Michel Serres, Le Système de Leibniz (Paris: 1968).
GIII 568.
See, e.g., GIII 205; GIII 606–607 (L 634–655); GIV 291; GIV 477ff. (L 453ff.); GMVI 240–242 (L 440–441); etc.
Robert Adams has demonstrated a similar complexity in Leibniz’s thought on contingency. See his essay, “Leibniz’s Theories of Contingency,” in Michael Hooker (ed.), Op.Cit., pp. 243–283.
J.E. McGuire and George Gale are undertaking this project in a forthcoming paper.
For general accounts of the mechanist program and its history, see, e.g., Richard Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science (New York: 1971);
Marie Boas, “The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy” Osiris X (1952), 412–541; or
E.J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture (Oxford: 1961), esp. part IV Chapter III.
See Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, part II §§25, 27. See also Descartes’ letter to Henry More, August 1649, ATV 403–404, in Anthony Kenny, Descartes: Philosophical Letters (Minneapolis: 1981), pp. 257–258.
God is given as the “universal and primary cause” of motion in Principia II, 36. There is good reason for believing that Descartes held that minds, both human and angelic count as genuine causes of motion too. On this see my essay, “Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature in Descartes and Leibniz,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983).
For the derivation of the conservation law, see Principia II, 36, and for the derivation of the three subsidiary laws, see Principia II, 37–42. It is important to Descartes that the derivation be from God’s attributes, rather than from any decision He might have made to create the world in one way rather than another; there is no place for final causes in the physics Descartes wanted to create. On this, see my “Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature…,” Loc. Cit. On Descartes’ laws of motion and the role played by God in their derivation, see Alan Gabbey, “Force and Inertia in the Seventeenth Century: Descartes and Newton,” and Martial Gueroult, “The Metaphysics and Physics of Force in Descartes,” both in Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics (Sussex: 1980).
GMVI 242 (L 441)
The context of DM8, where Leibniz argues that individual substances have complete individual concepts and the internal marks and traces by virtue of which those concepts apply suggests that Leibniz saw this argument as intended primarily to refute occasionalism and establish that individuals are genuine sources of activity. DM1–7 deals with God as a cause, and DM8 is presented as dealing with how “to distinguish the actions of God from those of creatures.” See also passages in the CA (GII 46–47, 68–69) where Leibniz claims that it is an immediate consequence of the doctrine of DM8 that each individual substance is the source of its own activity.
GIV 508–509 (L502).
GIV 507 (L500–501). See also GIV 396–397 (Lang. 702–703). For a discussion of Leibniz’s reaction against occasionalism and Spinozism, see Brunner, Op.Cit., pp. 222–225. Though Leibniz rejects the Cartesian picture of God as the continual mover, he does not reject the doctrine of continual recreation on which it rests. For Leibniz’s non-cartesian version of God’s continual recreation, see Jalabert, Op. Cit., pp. 167–178.
The rejection of the Cartesian picture of God as the universal shuffler of bodies happened early on in Leibniz’s development and, I think, was the crucial move that eventually led to his mature philosophy. On this see my “Motion and Metaphysics in the Young Leibniz,” Loc. Cit.
DM21. There are numerous other presentations of this same argument, mostly in the’80s and’90s. See GIV 464–465 (W100–101); GVII 447–448; GMVI 240–241 (L440–441); GVII 280–283, and in the Phoranomus of 1689, excerpts of which are published in C.I. Gerhardt, “Zu Leibniz’ Dynamik,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 1 (1888), pp. 566–581, esp. 577–581. Shorter presentations of the argument and clear references to it are found in GI 350–351, 415; GII 170 (L516–517); GII 186–187; GIII 623; GIII 636 (L659); GIV 510–511 (L503–504); GVI 320; L278. For the history and context of one presentation of the argument, see
Pierre Costabel, “Contribution a l’étude de l’offensive de Leibniz contre le philosphie cartésienne en 1691–1692,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 20 (1966), 264–287.
DM21.
This conclusion is argued in GVII 280–281 and GMVI 240 (L440).
Leibniz appeals to experience in rejecting the geometrical laws in, e.g., GIV 465 (W101) and GIII 636 (L659). But, as Leibniz knew perfectly well, a suitable physical hypothesis can render virtually any laws of motion consistent with experience. This, in fact, is Leibniz’s strategy in his own early physics, in which he proposed laws of motion very similar to the “geometrical” laws he is rejecting in the argument under discussion (the laws are proposed in his Theoria Motus Abstracti of 1671) and rendered them consistent with experience by way of a physical hypothesis (the Hypothesis Physica Nova). For the classic account of this early system, see
A. Mannequin, “La Premier Philosophie de Leibniz” in his Etudes d’Histoire de la Philosophie (Paris: 1908), v. 2. The better suggestion is that the geometrical laws are inconsistent with metaphysical first principles. See, e.g., GII 170 (L517); GMVI 240 (L440–441). The most obvious principle violated is the principle of equality of cause and effect, the princile that underlies Leibniz’s famous conservation of mv2 law. If the geometrical laws were right, then any collision of a moving body with a body at rest would result in an increase in mv2, and any head-on collision would result in a decrease.
It should be remarked that this argument works only if we assume that the laws that govern the behavior of bodies in motion derive from something intrinsic to body. Descartes could claim that that which determines the behavior of bodies is God and His activity is such as to block Leibniz’s derivation.
GMVI 241–242 (L441). Cf., e.g., DM18; GIV 465–466 (W101); GVII 283; Phoranomus in Gerhardt, “Zu Leibniz’ Dynamik,” Loc. Cit., p. 580. It should be noted that what Leibniz calls force here is sometimes called power (potentia or puissance). See, e.g., GIV 395 (Lang. 701) and GIV 523.
GMVI 238 (L438).
Force is also connected with mass, of course.
GMVI 237 (L437). See also GIV 395 (Lang. 701).
This is not to say that Leibniz’s conception of passive force is identical to Newton’s conception of inertia. On this, see Howard Bernstein, “Passivity and Inertia in Leibniz’s Dynamics,” Studia Leibnitiana 13 (1981), 97–113. In what follows, though, I shall continue to use the term inertia to refer to this aspect of Leibniz’s passive force.
The “Brief Demonstration” is given with a later appendix in GMVI 117–123 (L296–302). For other presentations of the argument in works of the same period, see DM17, GIV 370–372 (L393–395); GMVI 243–246 (L442–444); GMVI 287–292; etc. Strictly speaking, the argument is carried out in terms of the Cartesian notion of quantity in motion, size times speed, and the point is that force is proportional to mv2 and that this must be something different than quantity of motion. For discussions of the argument, see Carolyn litis, “Leibniz and the Vis Viva Controversy,” Isis 62 (1971), 21–35; George Gale, “Leibniz’ Dynamical Metaphysics and the Origins of the Vis Viva Controversy,” Systematics 11 (1973), 181–207; and Gueroult, Leibniz, pp. 28–34. The main argument in the “Brief Demonstration” involves an a posteriori assumption, Galileo’s law of free fall. For a discussion of an a priori argument that Leibniz offers to the same conclusion, see Gueroult, Leibniz, chapter V.
DM18. See also GII 98 and Leibniz’s remarks on Descartes’ definition of motion, GIV 369 (L393). Leibniz’s position is an interesting one. One the one hand, he believes that there is, in a sense, a real fact of the matter about what is in motion and what is at rest; in a given collision the body with active force is, in a proper sense, in motion, and the body with passive force (resistance) at rest (though not completely, since its parts will still be in motion). But, at the same time, Leibniz is a radical relativist in physics, rejecting Newton’s bucket experiment and arguing that the laws of motion must be invariant under all transformations. This was a position especially emphasized in the Dynamica of the late 1680s and some writings from 1694–1695. See GMVI 484f, 507f; GMVI 253 (L449–450); GMII 184–185; 199 (L418, 419); C590. For a discussion of Leibniz’s relativism, see, e.g., John Earman, “Leibnizian Space-Times and Leibnizian Algebras,” in Butts and Hintikka (eds.), Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: 1977), and
Howard Stein, “Some Philosophical Pre-History of General Relativity,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 8 (Minneapolis: 1977). While this looks inconsistent, it is not. The claim is that the laws of physics that are framed in terms of size, motion and, in general, the modes of extension, are radically relativistic, but that force, which goes beyond motion and extension, fixes what might naturally be called real motion and rest.
GII 120. See also GIV 394 (Lang. 700).
I have emphasized force as a cause of motion and resistance. But in many ways, I find Leibniz’s doctrine quite unclear. It is not clear at all just how it is that force, something that Leibniz considers to be quite different from motion, is supposed to cause motion or the resistance to motion. Furthermore, Leibniz holds that force is also that which is real in motion and extension, which, for Leibniz, are phenomenal in a sense discussed above in §11. See, e.g., GMVI 235 (L436). Leibniz, in fact, doesn’t seem to distinguish the two roles force plays: “…even though force is something real and absolute, motion belongs to the class of relative phenomena, and truth is found not so much in phenomena as in their causes.” (GMVI 248 (L446)). The claim is obscure and its connection with the claim that force is the cause of motion is difficult. The problem is somewhat illuminated by a comparison that Leibniz draws between his conception of the relation between force and motion or extension, and the mechanist conception of the relation between motion and extension on the one hand, and color, taste, sound, etc. on the other. See, e.g., DM12; GI 392; GII 119. The suggestion seems to be that just as a certain configuration of shape, size, motion is, for the mechanist, what causes a body to be red, say, and at the same time, is that which is real in the redness of the body, so a certain distribution of forces is both the cause of the modes of extension and that which is real in them. But the status of motion and extension within Leibniz’s Aristotelian metaphysics is a difficult question and raises issues too complex to enter into in this paper.
GIV 469 (L433).
GII 97–98; emphasis added.
GIV 473. See also GMVI 241–242 (L441).
GMVI 237 (L437).
Ibid.
GMVI 236 (L436). The passage quoted deals specifically with derivative active force.
GIV 473; emphasis added.
GMIII 552 (L512). The same analogy is used in a number of other places, e.g., GII 270 (L537); GIII 457. Derivative force is called a modification in GII 251 (L530); GII 262 (L533); GIII 356. It is not clear in some of these passages, though, just what derivative forces are modifications of, whether they modify substances (or matter or form, the constituents of substances), or whether they are modes of aggregates of substances. On this see note 213 below.
GIV 395 (Lang. 701); emphasis added.
Cf. Lady Masham’s complaint to Leibniz that “force…cannot be the essence of any Substance” (GIII 350) and Leibniz’s answer: “This is doubtless because you talk of changeable forces, which one commonly conceives. But by primitive force I understand the principle of action, of which the changeable forces are only modifications.” (GIII 356).
Leibniz also suggests that “primitive force is the law of the series, as it were, while derivative force is the determinate value which distinguishes some term in the series.” (GII 262 (L533)). The mathematical analogy is interesting, and we shall return to it again. But I think it is not as illuminating with respect to the metaphysical status of derivative forces as their conception as modifications of form and matter. George Gale emphasizes the mathematical analogy in his essay, “The Physical Theory of Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana 2 (1970), pp. 114–127, esp. p. 122f.
GMVI 236–237 (L436–437). See also GII 171 (L517); GIV 395–399 (Lang. 701–704); GIV 510–511 (L503–504).
GIV 395 (Lang. 701).
My account is not unlike the one given by George Gale in “The Physical Theory of Leibniz,” Loc. Cit. Gale identifies three levels, the metaphysical level (monads), the explanitory level (corporeal substances), and the observable level (bodies). See his diagram on p. 116. My claim is that what concerns Leibniz in his physical writings in the 1680s and 1690s is Gale’s explanatory and observable levels.
GIII 54–55 (L353). It is important to note here that Leibniz, unlike Descartes, sees God as a deliberative agent, and is quite happy to admit final causes in physics. On this see my essay, “Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature…,” Loc. Cit.
GIV 507 (L500).
DM18.
GIV 399 (Lang. 705).
GIV 507 (L501). See also GIV 562 (L579); GVII 283; GMIII 545; GMVI 241–242 (L440–441).
See GMVI 241 (L440–441).
GMVI 237 (L437).
The most systematic such attempt occurs in the Dynamica from the late 1680s, where the principle of equality of cause and effect is laid down as an axiom, and the laws of motion and impact derived from it. See GMVI 435ff. The principle of equality of cause and effect is given on p. 437.
GII 40.
See note 194.
This is what Leibniz calls directive or progressive force. See GMVI 238–239 (L439); GMVI 495–496. In addition, the composite body will have what he calls “respective or proper force…, that by which the bodies included in an aggregate can interact upon each other.” (GMVI 239 (L439)). It should be noted that Loemker’s translation of this passage from the Specimen Dynamicum is misleading; he renders the single Latin word ‘respectiva’ both as ‘relative’ and as ‘respective.’
See GMVI 253–254 (L450); GMVI 496ff.
This is, in essence, an argument we examined earlier. See the discussion in note 170.
See the discussion of the phenomenality of space in §11 and the discussion in note 183.
GII 275. See also GII 251 (L530). I take the simple substances here to be monads.
GII 306. See also a letter to Nicholas Remond from 1715 (GIII 636 (L659)) where Leibniz relates this conception of derivative force to inertia. Two remarks are in order here. Though Leibniz clearly holds that derivative forces pertain to aggregates of monads or simple substances, he still persists in the view that, as opposed to primitive forces, derivative forces are modal or accidental. See, e.g., GII 257 (L532); GII 270 (L537), etc. Leibniz is certainly entitled to this, as long as they are understood to be modes or accidents, not of individual substances, but of aggregates of individual substances. This is, indeed, exactly how they are construed in a chart that Gerhardt gives as an appendix to a letter to DesBosses from August 1715 (see GII 506 (L617)). There derivative forces are categorized as either modifications of composite substances (genuine substances formed from a multitude of modads) or as what he calls “semiaccidents” that pertain to “semisubstances,” non-substantial aggregates of monads. This leads to a second remark. Though derivative forces clearly pertain to collections of monads, collections of the basic constituents, Leibniz doesn’t always consider derivative forces phenomenal. In the DesBosses correspondence, where Leibniz is trying to specify the conditions under which monads can come together and form a genuine composite substance, he seems to hold that while derivative forces pertain to the composite (rather than to the simple substances or monads that make up that composite), insofar as the composites can, under appropriate conditions (with the help of a substantial chain) form a genuine composite substance, derivative forces can be real, the real modes of composite substances. See, on this, the chart to which I referred earlier in this note. In this way one might read the DesBosses letters not only as an attempt to ground the theological doctrine of transubstantiation, but as an attempt to save the reality of physics. For a similar reading of the substantial chain in the DesBosses letters, see Christiane Fremont, L’Être et la Relation (Paris: 1981). Fremont, though, does not seem to be aware of Leibniz’s conception of corporeal substance in his earlier writings. For an account of the vinculum substantiate in the DesBosses correspondence emphasizing Leibniz’s theological motivation, see R.M. Adams, “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance,” §5.
“There are individual and particular behaviors [functiones] appropriate to each individual natural thing, as reasoning is to human beings, neighing to horses, heating to fire, and so on. But these behaviors do not arise from matter which…has no power to bring anything about. Thus they must arise from the substantial form.” (Conimbrian commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics, in Gilson, Index…, p. 127.) For Descartes’ version of a Scholastic account of gravity, see ATII 223.
AT XI 7.
GII 78.
DM18. See also, e.g., DM10, GIV 470 (L 433); GIV 478 (L 454); L 289; C 341–342; etc. Note that, as discussed earlier, this claim rests ultimately on two claims discussed above in §5, the rejection of the occasionalist conception of God as the universal shuffler of bodies, and the rejection of the laws that, Leibniz claims, would follow from the nature of extended bodies as such.
See GII 72–73.
GIII 217.
GVII 451 (L472).
See also L289; GI 199 (L 190); GIV 559–560 (L 577–578); etc. This is close to at least some statements that Leibniz gives of pre-established harmony, at least one of whose consequences is that the behavior of an organism can be explained either in terms of the activity of the soul, or in terms of the physical laws that govern the body. Cf. the account of pre-established harmony given in my essay, “Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature…,” Loc.Cit.
DM10. See also GII 58, GII 78; GIV 345–346; GIV 397–398 (Lang. 703); GIV 479 (L454); GVII 317 (PM85); GMVI 242–243 (L 441–442), etc.
L 288. I have not been able to check the original Latin of this passage which, to the best of my knowledge, is available outside of the manuscripts only in Loemker’s English translation.
GIV 397–398 (Lang. 703). See also L 289; GMVI 242 (L 441).
GMVI 236 (L 436).
The situation may be different when we are dealing with rational souls, where reasons for action may sometimes be accessible, as Leibniz suggests in one undated fragment. See C329 (W 89).
This idea was suggested to me by Alan Gabbey in conversation and in an unpublished lecture.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garber, D. (1985). Leibniz and the Foundations of Physics: The Middle Years. In: Okruhlik, K., Brown, J.R. (eds) The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5490-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5490-8_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8923-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-5490-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive