Abstract

The central metaphysical question of Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics is how to distinguish the actions of God from those of his creatures. In his letter to Arnauld of April 30, 1687, Leibniz wrote that as long as one does not have the knowledge of what a substance is "one will have nothing on which to settle... a solid principle." Thus it seems that the answer to the question of substance is at the same time the solution to the problem of metaphysics. Alas the problem begins where the solution lies. There are four different theories of substance in Leibniz's writings, so the question arises as to which of them provides the answer to Leibnizian metaphysics.