Leibniz's Monadology: A New Translation And Guide

by Lloyd Strickland

This complete specification must encompass a plurality within the unity or the simple. For as every natural change takes place by degrees, something changes and something remains; and consequently in the simple substance there must be a plurality of affections and relations, even though it has no parts.

Premise 1: Without simple substances there could be no compounds. Premise 2: There are compounds. Conclusion: Therefore there are simple substances.

But this cannot go on forever; there has to be something non-compound that grounds the reality of the parts of the compound, that is, simple things,

These physicists suppose that if there are fundamental elements then they will be material in nature.

So in a sense, the atoms of modern physics are not true atoms at all, because they can be divided, whereas a true atom would be something that cannot be divided.

Although Leibniz does not say so explicitly, what this ultimately means is that monads cannot be material things, at least in Descartes’ sense of ‘material’. The dominant theory of matter in Leibniz’s day was that developed by Descartes, who identified matter with extension, that is, having the three dimensions of length, breadth, and width.

According to Leibniz, however, the atomists applied the name ‘atom’ to something which is at least in principle divisible, namely a material atom.

But this just raises the question, often not addressed by atomists, of how a material thing could take up space and have shape and size and yet be incapable of division. Leibniz often claims that no answer is possible here; for example, in a text from 1689 he writes ‘no reason can be given why bodies of a certain smallness should not be further divisible’.

We are less likely to be misled by what Leibniz says if we keep in mind that he recognises two levels of reality which, while apparently very different, are certainly not separate.

For multiply Nothing ten thousand millions of times into nothing, the Product will be still Nothing.’30 How, then, do compounds result from monads? An answer to this question cannot be found in the Monadology itself, and even in other writings Leibniz does not offer a single, definitive answer,

written shortly before his death in 1716, Leibniz writes: ‘I believe that there are only monads in nature, everything else being only phenomena that result from them.’

Leibniz stating in M2 that ‘the compound is nothing but an accumulation or aggregate of simples’. How monads can be aggregated into bodies is not addressed in the Monadology,

It is important to note, however, that while the aggregation of monads into a body is something that occurs in the mind, the monads being aggregated exist outside of the mind which aggregates them.

Although phenomenalism and the aggregate thesis can appear to be mutually exclusive hypotheses, there are some writings in which Leibniz explicitly endorses them both.

Leibniz now argues that there is no inter-substance causality, or transeunt causation, that is, causation between substances, in which one substance acts on another.

The visible species can be thought of as being very thin surface layers which evaporate and are released into the air. If they happen to come into contact with a suitable sense organ (namely the eye) then the visible species enter through it and from there enter the mind, producing a visual perception.

he simply asserts that accidents (that is, properties which are

not part of a substance’s essence) cannot become detached from a substance, nor wander around outside of them.

however, he explains that if accidents could do these things then evidently they would be self-subsistent beings in their own right, because they wo...

Malebranche denied not only causality between created substances, as Leibniz did, but also causality within created substances; in other words, both inter-substance and intra-substance causality. Hence Malebranche denied that a created mind can cause an effect in a body, that a body can cause an effect in a mind, that one body can cause an effect in another body, and that a mind can cause an effect in a mind.

He claimed that a true cause ‘is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effects’.51 (Hobbes and Spinoza offered similar accounts.)52 But according to Malebranche, such a connection is found ‘only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects’.

For it is impossible that God will a thing and it not happen, whereas it is possible that a created being will a thing and it not happen.

This is the Scholastic doctrine of the suppositum, according to which actions belong to (that is, must be attributed to) a suppositum, that is, a substantial individual. So actions could not be attributed to aggregates of substances, properties of substances, or parts of substances, but only to substances themselves.

that most widely accepted principle of philosophy – that actions belong to substances.

Here Leibniz moves from ‘actions belong to substances’ to ‘every substance acts’ and ‘every substance acts always’, but his rationale for this step is not clear. Nevertheless, the claim that substances always act is axiomatic for Leibniz.

Leibniz insisted that every substance has a complete concept, that is, a set of descriptions that detail everything that will ever happen to it throughout its entire existence.

Consequently, although substances are spatially simple, that is, have no parts, they are nevertheless qualitatively complex, that is, have many qualities.

This is itself a higher order, metaphysical law, which holds that ‘the more things are analyzed the more they satisfy the intellect’.78 The law of order is thus an architectonic (architectural) principle that God applies to his creation on account of his supreme wisdom.

By combining his definition of perception, the representation of a plurality within the unity, with the claim of M13, that a monad’s complete specification encompasses a plurality within the unity, Leibniz is able to conclude that perceptions are the basic states of monads. In other words, not only do all monads have perceptions, but they always have them.

but in M15 he merely conceives that it might be this way, that is, that there might be unconscious perceptions. Indeed, he chides Descartes’ followers for not even entertaining the idea of unconscious perceptions.81 On this point he could have singled out just about any other philosopher or school for criticism.

But minds also have what Leibniz calls ‘distinct inclinations’, that is, ones which involve a conscious striving for an end supplied by reason.84 These appetites Leibniz refers to as the ‘will where the perception is an intellectual judgement’.

but rather the more modest one of showing that the idea of plurality-in-unity is perfectly intelligible.

But in a unified substance, where can you find the cause of the change of its operation?

Thus to Bayle he insisted that the plurality of perceptions in the unity had the same effect as does a plurality of parts in a machine, that is, preceding perceptions influence succeeding ones in a unity much like the preceding motion of parts influences the succeeding motion of parts in a machine.

It will be asked how the composite can be represented in the simple, or the multitude in unity. I answer that it is somewhat like when an infinity of radii converge and form angles in the center, simple and indivisible though it is.88

This must therefore be sought in the simple substance, and not in the compound or machine. Moreover, this is the only thing that can be found in the simple substance, that is, perceptions and their changes. It is also in this alone that all the internal actions of simple substances can consist.

Premise 1. There is no conceivable mechanical explanation for how material things could perceive. Premise 2. If there is no conceivable mechanical explanation for how material things could perceive, then material things could not perceive. Conclusion. Material things could not perceive.

Here he insinuates that self-sufficiency is this perfection. That monads are self-sufficient is known from M11, which established that each monad is the source of its own changes.

This is significant, because it means that when a monad comes around from a stupor it is not starting to have perceptions again, as its sequence of perceptions was never interrupted by the stupor in the first place, but that it starts being conscious of its perceptions again.

And it follows that the first conscious perception it experiences upon waking up must have been caused by a preceding perception (because there is nothing else inside the monad that could have caused it, and nothing outside the monad could have done so either);

and since that latter perception wasn’t conscious (because the monad was then in a stupor), it must have been unconscious. Therefore there are...

because it violates the principle of causal likeness

which holds that ‘like causes like’, or ‘like can only be caused by like’. This principle was popular among the Scholastics, and was often assumed to be true by early modern philosophers as well.101 According to this principle, motion causes motion, and perception causes perception, but there can be no causality across different categories; so for example, motion cannot cause perception, and perception cannot cause motion.

‘sensation is perception that involves something distinct and is joined with attention and memory’.

Leibniz concedes that it does in some way resemble reason,107 and on that basis he is even prepared to call it ‘the shadow of reason’.

Moreover, the fact that animals are able to act on the basis of past experiences indicates that they are able to recall this experience in some way, and hence that they are endowed with memory. Leibniz suggested that animal souls have memory in M19; now he has evidence for the claim.

In order to account for the ability of animals to act on past experiences (affirmed in M26), Leibniz now appeals to the imagination, which reproduces (in a much fainter form) previously experienced perceptions.

here he draws the natural corollary that when humans act that way, they act as beasts do, that is, as empiricists.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from simple animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, by raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. And this is what is called in us the rational soul or mind.

There are two distinct abilities referred to here. The first is what we would now call ‘discursive reason’: this is the ability to work logically, see connections, make inferences, arrive at conclusions, and so on. The second alludes to the idea that there are a set of truths that fall under the domain of the faculty of reason. In other words, a set of truths that