Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) avait demandé à ce qu'on aborde sa pensée par ce court texte : monadologie et sociologie. Les monades évoquent Leibniz et c'est au grand philosophe mathématicien que Tarde veut se rattacher, lui qui s'intéresse aussi bien aux sciences naturelles que sociales. On a là un des premiers exposés de la philosophie de la différence aujourd'hui remise à l'honneur par Gilles Deleuze.
for some reason it took me about two weeks to warm up to Tarde's style and presentation. i picked up this book immediately after finishing Discourse on Metaphysics + On Monadology. ive been reading this dense little treatise in between breakfast and lunch, working on a few pages at a time, and basically absorbing nothing of substance. but one night i decided to dig through the rest of it in one go. in retrospect i must say i've never felt more intellectually rewarded to have finished a book!
MS is a fascinating and ambitious reworking of leibnizian monadology towards a pansociology. tarde seeks to revitalize the non human world by sociologizing it, that is, by ascribing belief and desire to the elements (e.g. atoms, although it's actually relations goes all the way) which compose the macroscopic order. in a strong sense, elements are simply relations. elements may be apparently stable and homogeneous, but their homogeneity effaces the fact that they are an assemblage of monads with internal differences and aspects that are not subordinated to the hegemonic monad. it all starts with difference and culminates in difference (identity empirically, logically and ontologically presupposes difference).
if you're not already familiarity with at least some leibnizian metaphysics, the short two essays Discourse on Metaphysics and On Monadology should suffice.
"To exist is to differ" is one of the main thoughts. Despite the monadology and the search for evidence of this theory in the scientific throwings of its time, in reality, it comes down to a more abstract category of difference. Singularity or difference - these are the starting point options for Tarde. No less funny is his rejection of ideologues on the other side of the Rhine (the old empty pap of Teutonic ideologues - in the English version) - his opposition to the opposition (being and non-being, ego and non-ego), the Absolute is unacceptable - acceptable becoming and disappearance, acceptable a fan of options that are REALLY DIFFERENT. At the same time, choosing science, Tarde does not notice that his monadology itself is closer to philosophy, even if it is cleared of the processing of philosophy - which deprives it of charm - time did not accept Tarde as having made a breakthrough in the sociology and sociologization of science, but resurrected it as nomadologist, making an interesting figure for neonomadology and - possibly - those who will still prove themselves.