Abstract

Since the publication of the interpretations of Leibniz's metaphysics by Bertrand Russell and Louis Couturat early in this century, his philosophy has been largely understood in the light of the doctrine of the complete concept of the individual. It is striking that this doctrine does not appear in any work Leibniz published in his lifetime. Instead, in his published works, he stresses the debt which his metaphysics owes to dynamics, the science of motion. This claim has been little understood and largely discounted by his interpreters. ;In this work, I attempt to shed light on the interrelation between these two areas of Leibniz's thought. This is done in two steps. First, an argument is found for two of the most characteristic theses of Leibnizian metaphysics, viz., the non-interaction of simple substances and the mind-like nature of simple substances, which depends in part on dynamics. Second, I show that, as Leibniz claimed, "force brings the strongest light to bear on our understanding of the true concept of substance." In particular, I show how the concept of force developed in dynamics was adapted by Leibniz to solve problems surrounding the explication of the essence of non-interacting simple substances. The interpretation of the essence of a Leibnizian substance based on the dynamics is shown to be superior to interpretations based on the doctrine of the complete concept of the individual