Leibniz's Monadology: A New Translation And Guide

by Lloyd Strickland

this faculty can access and pronounce upon,

But nothing in these examples tells us that ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is a necessary truth, one that is true in all times and at all places and could not possibly be otherwise. Yet according to Leibniz we do know that this is necessary, and we know it via the faculty of reason. Somehow reason ‘sees’ beyond the world of sense;

reason is after all the natural light, which literally illuminates necessary truths, makes them visible to us).

I would like to know how we could have the idea of being if we did not, as beings ourselves, find being within us.’

I thereby conceive what is called substance in general, and it is also the consideration of myself that provides me with other metaphysical notions, such as cause, effect, action, similarity, etc., and even those of logic and ethics. So it can be said that there is nothing in the under standing that did not come from the senses except the understanding itself,

Although Leibniz calls these notions innate, this does not mean that we are born knowing them. Rather, because their source is one’s own self, which exists from the moment of birth onwards (and indeed, from the moment of creation onwards), the notions are always in us virtually, that is, potentially, waiting to be discovered,

the principle of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we consider that there can be found no fact that is true or existent, or any true assertion, unless there is a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, even though most often these reasons cannot be known to us.

Such philosophers would exempt the will (at least) from the principle of sufficient reason, but Leibniz did not; he insisted that the principle had no exceptions. Consequently, he believed that everything in the universe is potentially explicable,

The ‘resolving’ of a truth tends to involve substituting some or all of its terms for their definitions. So the resolution of the truth ‘a bachelor is unmarried’ would involve substituting the definition ‘an unmarried man’ for ‘bachelor’, to give ‘an unmarried man is unmarried’, which is an identity.

For this reason, Leibniz sometimes says that truths of fact depend upon the will of God;132 after all, it is God who decides which contingent things will exist

As for primary truths of fact, these are inner experiences which are immediate with the immediacy of feeling. This is where the first truth of the Cartesians and St Augustine belongs: I think, therefore I am. That is, I am a thing which thinks. But . . . not only is it immediately evident to me that I think, but it is just as evident that I think various thoughts: at one time I think about A and at another about B and so on.

The claim that there are simple ideas which cannot be defined, and primary principles which cannot be proved, is here advanced as an axiom. Leibniz here supposes that the substitution of terms in conceptual analysis (that is, replacing one term by its definition) is not a process that can go on indefinitely, in which case it must reach ‘simple ideas’, that is, primary concepts that admit of no further analysis.

he claims that the simple ideas are the attributes of God (that is, goodness, power, knowledge, and so on), as everything else can be resolved into (some combination of) them.

the difference being that necessary truths are resolvable in a finite number of steps, while the resolution of contingent truths requires an infinite number of steps.

will involve the infinite complexity of the universe, both at the time of his writing and at all moments prior to that. Accordingly, if we had access to Leibniz’s complete concept, and were capable of carrying out infinite steps of analysis, we would be able to show that the concept of the predicate ‘wrote M36’ is contained in the concept of the subject ‘Leibniz’, and hence determine the sufficient reason for his writing M36.

With regard to objects in space, Leibniz takes there to be infinite complexity here, because all physical objects relate to – and have an effect on – all other physical objects. Consequently, the sufficient reason for any particular physical event (like a hand moving a quill over a page) will involve every other physical thing and event in the entire universe.

Hence his writing M36 can be explained in terms of physical (efficient) causes, which operate on his body and led his hand to write, and in terms of psychical (final) causes, which operate on his soul and led it to formulate and strive for its own ends.

so it must be that the sufficient or ultimate reason lies outside the succession or series of this detail of contingencies, however infinite it may be.

The crucial part of the argument is the claim that the sufficient reason for a contingent thing cannot be found in other contingent things.

Therefore, even if you should imagine the world eternal, because you still suppose only a succession of states, and because you will not find a sufficient reason in any of them, and indeed no matter how many states you assume you will not make the least progress towards giving a reason, it is evident that the reason must be sought elsewhere . . . From this it is evident that not even by supposing the eternity of the world can we escape the ultimate, extramundane reason of things, i.e. God.

Now suppose that there are two Gods, A and B; if they are genuinely Gods then both would satisfy this definition. But the identity of indiscernibles holds that if everything that is true of A is also true of B (that is, they are indiscernible), then A and B are one and the same thing (that is, identical). In order for there to be two they would have to differ in some respect, but that would mean one of them not being either omnipotent or omniscient or perfectly good, and of course such a being could not be called ‘God’ at all because it would fail to satisfy the definition of God.

‘God is unique. For if there are many, they will differ, and indeed they will differ in their perfections, because nothing else is understood in God, and so each one of them is lacking some perfection, contrary to the definition of God.’

What determines a thing’s degree of reality for Leibniz is not how self-sufficient it is, or the number of qualities it has, but rather the magnitude of its qualities or attributes, such as power or knowledge. As there can be infinite degrees of these qualities, Leibniz holds that there can be infinite degrees of reality, as opposed to just the three recognised by Descartes.

For Leibniz, an essence is possible if the concept of it does not contain a contradiction.

As an essence, then, Macbeth can be said to exist ideally, that is, as an idea in the mind of someone or something, and therefore whatever reality this essence has must be derived from this mind.

Leibniz insists that this is the case with all essences, possibilities, and eternal truths: they all derive whatever reality they possess from being conceived by a mind.

For if there is a reality in essences or possibilities, or indeed in eternal truths, it must be the case that this reality be grounded in something existent and actual, and consequently in the existence of the necessary being,

Now what would happen if, even for a moment, an eternal truth would cease to be thought by any finite mind? There are two possible answers. First, that the eternal truth in question would hang unsupported in the air (so to speak) for however long it remained unthought of by finite minds. But this would mean that its reality was ungrounded for that time, which is impossible.

The second option is that, if every finite mind ceased to think about an eternal truth for a time, then for however long it remained unthought of by finite minds the eternal truth would have no reality at all, that is, it would quite literally be nothing. This presumably means that it would, for that time, not be true at all. But it is absurd to suppose that there might be a time when ‘2 + 2 = 4’ (for example) ceases to be true, no matter how brief that time might be.

If one’s essence includes necessary existence then one’s essence is inseparable from existence. The essence of God (i.e. the necessary being) includes necessary existence. Therefore the essence and existence of God are inseparable.

‘if there were ideas and truths different from those of the divine essence, which God must know necessarily, and, approve independently of his will, God would not be a God which is sufficient to himself through himself, alone necessary to himself, nor perfect through himself’.

Why, though, can only one of these possible universes exist? Why can’t God create them all, or create one universe which includes all possibles? To this, Leibniz’s answer is: because not all possibles are compossible, that is, not all possibles are able to exist in the same universe. As far as one can tell, Leibniz did not advance a reason for this view; in one text from 1680 he even states that it is ‘unknown to men’ why certain things are incompossible.177 Despite that, Leibniz consistently maintained that ‘there are many possible universes, each collection of compossibles making up one of them’.

It might seem odd that in M53 Leibniz insists that God has a choice only to proceed to state that there is a sufficient reason ‘determining’ God’s choice. But ‘determining’ here does not mean ‘forcing’ or ‘necessitating’ but rather something softer like ‘resolving’, that is, the sufficient reason is what enables God to whittle down the number of available choices to just one and makes him want to choose it.

Leibniz objected that if God’s will were moved without a reason, as Clarke maintained, it would violate the principle of sufficient reason.

Hence a particular entelechy or soul is dominant in a living body inasmuch as it possesses perceptions that are more distinct than those enjoyed by all the other entelechies or souls in that body.

It is also on account of this that there is never true generation, nor perfect death, taken in the rigorous sense of the term as consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. And what we call generation is development and growth, just as what we call death is enfolding and diminishing.

At the end of M83 Leibniz refers the reader to T147, where he explains that God allows man to govern his own little world, that is, his own life, in accordance with reason. If M83 is to be read in light of this, it suggests a different sense of minds being images of God.

Moreover, because minds are images of God, his interest in them is not one of curiosity (as would be the relationship of an inventor to his machine) but rather one of concern and love (as would be the relationship of a benevolent monarch to his subjects and of a father to his children).