Written in 1714, the “Monadology” is widely regarded as a classic statement of much of Leibniz’s mature philosophical system. In just 90 numbered paragraphs, Leibniz outlines—and argues for—the core features of his system, starting with his famous doctrine of monads (simple substances) and ending with the uplifting claim that God is concerned not only for the world as a whole but for the welfare of the virtuous in particular. This chapter begins by considering the circumstances of composition of the (...) “Monadology” and its publication history before offering a detailed analysis of the claims and arguments found therein; I suggest the text is best read as dealing with three distinct realms, the metaphysical (§§1–-60), the physical (§§61–-82), and lastly the moral (§§83–-90). The chapter concludes with a consideration of the fate and influence of this seminal text. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MONADOLOGY OF 7HE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Michael Wreen THE WORLD AND THOUGHT of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov are not easily entered into. There is something, some barrier, which seems to hinder, if not prevent, a feeling of belonging, a feeling of ease, citizenship, and camaraderie. What is it diat holds die reader back, what makes him feel particularly Ul-at-ease in the world of The Brothers Karamazov, and especially (...) in die presence of the Karamazovs? The answer is that the world of the novel resembles the world of Leibniz's Monadology, a world so different from the world of our everyday conceptions, and so different from the world of most novels, that the reader is left "freefloating," so to speak, until he, as a spirit, has been accommodated and then assimilated by it. To begin with, there is the matter of setting. There are practically no landscapes in The Brothers Karamazov and no extended descriptions of nature. Secondly, buildings, both their interiors and exteriors, are barely sketched, and when described at all, it is usually the psychological state that the human design excites ("It was an odd arrangement ofrooms") that is important, and not the design or structure itself. Objects existing in their own right and "pure surfaces" are not to be found. The one building (with grounds) that is described at length is the monastery, but even here description is used symbolically, as a reflection ofthe spiritual states ofthe monks and The Elder. Similarly, clothing exists only as a clue to the psychological or spiritual state of its wearer. Dmitri's rag with the 1,500 roubles is the analogue of his condition, just as Smerdyakov's hoped-for foppish apparel is of his. 318 Michael Wreen319 Still more unusual is the infrequent mention of two of the biological necessities of life, food and sleep. Food seems to be something that the characters can take or leave, but more often than not, simply forget about; the stomach does not seem to exist for any except one of them. Once or twice the characters do eat, but eating seems to be an accidental side-effect of spending time with, a spiritual infection caught from, the thoroughly carnal Fyodor. The monks, it must be admitted, are concerned with food — though it would be more accurate to say diat they are concerned with die lack of it, or even more strongly, widi maintaining the lack of it. As for sleep, collapse from complete exhaustion (from sustained physical exertion and/or emotional excitement, or from orgiastic debauchery), sickness, and brain fever seem to be preferred to normal sleep. Days are long— so long, in fact, that night is more like an extension of day dian night. Another descriptive element which warrants notice is the physical appearances and personal histories of die dramatic personae. The truth, as far as physical appearances are concerned, is clear and simple: everyone, with the exception ofIvan, is described once and briefly. In the first thirtyfive pages or so, most of the major personages are introduced, "outfitted" with noses, eyes, ears, bearings, statures, mannerisms, traits, etc., and — here we come to the second aspect noted above — then given summary histories. After that, diey are set in dramatic motion. The opening chapters are descriptive and expository, a report of what was and is the case as far as mise en scene and physical equipage are concerned; and except for brief moments when the never-named narrator indulges in short "sermons" about man or God, the mode of narration never returns to descriptive exposition, but remains dramatic and focused on the interplay and clash of personality. Characters do act and think for themselves, and we see diem directly in the acting out of dieir lives. A bit of background information having been provided, we don't have to be told anydiing more; we can observe for ourselves, from the inside. The catalogue offacts is discarded, and in its place is put the experience of events and feelings. The objective, external perspective yields to the internal, subjective perspective, and the reader crosses over from the familiar and cozy world of Dickensian externality to the strange and disconcerting world ofDostoyevskian intemality... (shrink)

This paper is about the relationship between actuality and potentiality. Two paradigms are considered: Leibnizian possible worlds, which is rooted in classical physics; and the consistent histories quantum theory of Griffiths, Gell-Mann, Hartle, and Omnès. I explore an interesting connection between these two paradigms. The analysis goes beyond a comparison of classical and quantum physics to consider how modern physics might be integrated into a more comprehensive view of the world, in the spirit of Leibniz’s own philosophy.

Drawing on my previous paper “Monadology and Music”, I will further pursue the analogy between Monadology and music. I wish to emphasize that good examples of “pre-established harmony” can be extracted from this analogy. Also, a good illustration of “Leibniz’s Demon” can be obtained. This Demon is such that it can tell, given a piece of matter, the whole history of the world, past, present, and future. In terms of finite examples of musical pieces and their performances, Leibniz’s (...) point of this Demon can be better understood. (shrink)

This introductory overview comprises a brief account of Leibniz's own monadology; a discussion of the reception of his philosophy up to Kant; and a short overview of the monadologies developed after Kant's first Critique, made via a summary of key points raised in this guest issue, highlighting recurrent themes, which include questions of historiography.

In the early twentieth century, a rare strain of British idealism emerged which took Leibniz's Monadology as its starting point. This paper discusses a variant of that strain, offered by Hilda Oakeley. I set Oakeley's monadology in its philosophical context and discuss a key point of conflict between Oakeley and her fellow monadologists: the unreality of time. Oakeley argues that time is fundamentally real, a thesis arguably denied by Leibniz and subsequent monadologists, and by all other British idealists. (...) This paper discusses Oakeley's argument for the reality of time, and Oakeley's attack on the most famous account of the unreality of time offered in her day: that of J. M. E. McTaggart. I show that Oakeley's critique of McTaggart can be extended to challenge all monadologists, including that of the great monad, Leibniz himself. (shrink)

The article discusses fascinating points of similarity and difference between Leibniz's Monadology and Heidegger's 'The Thing', two of the greatest short works in the history of philosophy. But the key point of intersection between them is not widely recognised: indirect causation.

This article is an introduction to Herbart's monadology. It discusses the fundamental concepts of his monadology and its similarity to Leibniz's monadology. A final section discusses the vexed question of Herbart's realism. It is argued that Herbart is more a transcendental idealist than a realist.

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano, known in his lifetime as ‘the Bohemian Leibniz’, is best known as a logician and mathematician, but he also developed a monadology in which the monads, which he called ‘atoms’, have spatial location and physical properties. This essay summarizes and assesses his monadology.

One of the most intriguing – and arguably counter-intuitive – doctrines defended by environmental philosophers is that of positive aesthetics, the thesis that all of nature is beautiful. The doctrine has attained philosophical respectability only comparatively recently, thanks in no small part to the work of Allen Carlson, one of its foremost defenders. In this paper, we argue that the doctrine can be found much earlier in the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who devised and defended a version of positive (...) aesthetics in the early modern period, grounded in a conception of the world as a world of monads, each of which individually fulfils the rationalist aesthetic criteria of multiplicity-in-unity and that taken together ensure that the world as a whole is a harmoniously ordered system of multiple and diverse individuals, whose intelligible order and variety is made known to us through natural scientific endeavour. In showing this, we advance two further theses: first, that Leibniz's vers.. (shrink)

In the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), Kant remarks that Stahl, with his admission of immaterial forces for the explanation of organisms, was “closer to the truth than Hoffmann and Boerhaave, to name but a few,” although the latter adopted a “more philosophical method.” This puzzling statement is very significant for the understanding of Kant’s reception of animism, as it documents Kant’s reaction to the issues raised by the Leibniz-Stahl controversy and his striking preference for (...) Stahl’s nonmechanistic account of organisms. Kant agrees with Stahl that organisms suggest the existence of immaterial thinking beings, but at the same time, the example of this speculative hypothesis leads him to question the explanatory power of metaphysical hypotheses in natural philosophy in general, as well as the possibility of empirically distinguishing among different hypotheses, such as monadology, materialism, and hylozoism. After the analysis of Kant’s skeptical conclusions in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, I discuss how this earlier connection of medicine, life sciences, and metaphysics leaves traces in Kant’s later work, by analyzing Kant’s discussion of Samuel Sömmering’s claim that matter “can be animated” in On the Organ of the Soul (1796) and the preliminary drafts for this essay. (shrink)

This article is about Gilles Deleuze's book Le Pli. Leibniz et le Baroque from 1988. It shows how Deleuze's notion of folding captures some basic intuitions in Leibniz and how they relate to each other. To this purpose, I propose five figures, all referring to the same basic fold, all illustrating how the consideration of such figures allows developing central elements of Leibniz's monadology. These figures can help, I hope, alleviate some of the fundamental difficulties in understanding Deleuze's approach (...) to the Monadology from the non-Deleuzian perspective of contemporary Leibniz scholarship and give a sense of the synthetic, explanatory force that Deleuze's notion of folding has in relation to Leibniz's monadological metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explores systematic parallels between the criticisms of Kantian cognitive dualism provided by Salomon Maimon within his 'Essay on Transcendental Philosophy' of 1790 and F.W.J. Schelling within his 'General Overview of the Most Recent Philosophical Literature' of 1797. It discusses how both Maimon and Schelling suggest that the difficulties with Kant's cognitive dualism are so severe that they can only be resolved by recourse to a Leibnizian position, in which sensibility and understanding, and matter and form, arise from one (...) and the same cognitive source. It thus shows how Maimon and Schelling – within 1790 and 1797, respectively – sketch systems of transcendental philosophy explicitly modelled on the Leibnizian philosophy, which both of them interpret as claiming that God is immanently contained within the human soul. (shrink)

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Many discussions of Kant’s picture of monads in his early Physical Monadology highlight the similarities between the view in it and Roger Joseph Boscovich’s view. Though I find this comparison interesting, I argue in this paper that Kant shows significant strands of having a fundamentally non-Boscovichian view in this work. Moreover, I trace the various strands that, I believe, pushed Kant to think about things in a non-Boscovichian way.

One of Leibniz’s most original ideas is his conception of the living individual as a hierarchical network of living beings whose relationships are essential to the proper functioning of its organic body. This idea is also valid to explain any existing order in nature that depends on the set of relationships of living beings that inhabit it. Both ideas are present in the conception of the natural world that Leibniz presents in his Monadology through his idea of biological infinitism. (...) According to this idea, nature consists of infinite theatres where living beings unfold their vital functions. Through this idea Leibniz defines both the biological complexity of nature and the living individual, which is in turn a portion of nature that unfolds from an infinite set of inferior living beings. The thesis that I defend in this work is that this Leibnizian understanding of the living individual and the natural complexity that includes infinite hierarchical levels of individuality has a marked ecological sense, as we would say today. This Leibnizian metaphysics of individuality that we could call biological is also interesting in light of the recent studies in the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Anstatt die Herkunft von Leibniz' Monadenkonzept in rezeptionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive nachweisen zu wollen, erklärt die vorliegende Studie die offensichtliche Präsenz und Virulenz des Monadenbegriffs im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert selbst zu ihrem Untersuchungsgegenstand.Sie rekonstruiert den frühneuzeitlichen Bildungskanon zum Pythagoreismus, in dem der Monadenbegriff tradiert worden ist, und analysiert vor diesem Hintergrund die monadologischen Philosophien von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff und Andreas Clavius. An reichem Quellenmaterial zeigt sie, wie die ahistorisch argumentierenden Monadologien von Leibniz und Wolff von deren Zeitgenossen rehistorisiert bzw. (...) "repythagoreisiert", in das Raster des Antike-Moderne-Verhältnisses verortet und auf diese Weise evaluiert worden sind.Ein die Studie beschließender Ausblick fasst die Ergebnisse zusammen und weist selektiv auf die Wege der Monaden in die Moderne hin. (shrink)

The basic concepts 'person' (Person), I/self (Ich) and 'subject' (Subjekt) structuring the Russian discourse of personhood (Personalität) developed during the philosophical discussions of the 1820s-1840s. The development occurred in the course of an intense reception of German Idealism and Romanticism. Characteristic of this process is that the modern meaning of personhood going back to the theological and natural-law interpretations of the person in Western Europe does not exist in the Russian cultural consciousness. Therefore the Russian concepts of personhood demonstrate the (...) influence of the semantic innovations of Romanticism. Correspondingly, the semantic core of the Russian discourses on personhood is not the idea of an 'autonomous person' but that of an 'unique individuality'. Here, personhood is not the indefeasible attribute of every man, but the mark of inimitable individuality. Accordingly, the basic distinction underlying the discourse on personhood in Russia is not the differentiation between 'person' and ' thing' as in the European tradition, but the distinction between 'individual' and (anonymous) 'community'. Also, in the meaning of the concept of I/self the dominant differentiation is not that between I/self (Ich) and not-I/not-self (Nicht-Ich), but that between I and We. This discourse on personhood centring on the idea of individuality took form in Russia starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, in particular in aesthetics, psychology, and educational theory, as well as in the philosophy of history. The comparative intercultural analysis of the history of concepts pertaining to personhood in the German-Russian cultural transfer brings to light the dialectic of European modernity in which a degree of tension is visible between the idea of personal autonomy and individuality. (shrink)

L’Instauration philosophique (1939) is one of the most relevant philosophical works by Étienne Souriau. In this book, the French philosopher tries to outline the main laws which define the instauration of a philosophical theory, in order to construct a philosophy of philosophies. Pleroma is one of the key-concepts of this work, and it refers to the dimension that includes all the well-established philosophical perspectives. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct some issues connected to this work, regarding specifically the (...) notion of pleroma. The paper underlines the connection between L’instauration philosophique and the philosophical milieu in which it was written, and then stresses the relevance of artworks and aesthetics for Souriau’s idea of instauration. The paper deals with the architecture of pleroma, and finally examines some similarities and some differences between the pleroma and Leibniz’s Monadology. (shrink)

In the Monadology Leibniz has us imagine a thinking machine the size of a mill in order to show that matter can’t think, or, in his terms, cannot have perceptions: his well-known Mill Argument. The argument is often thought to rely on the unity of consciousness and the notion of simplicity. Leibniz himself did not see matters this way. For him the argument relies on the Cartesian “Mode-Nature View”, and the idea that perception is not a modification of matter (...) because perception is active and matter is passive. At the same time, there are traces in Leibniz of a different argument that relies on the idea that perception is an “internal” action, an action of a thing on itself as opposed to an “external” action, where a thing acts on a different thing. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive account of Kant’s development from the 1755/56 metaphysics to the cosmological antinomy of 1781. With the Theory of the Heavens (1755) and the Physical Monadology (1756), the young Kant had presented an ambitious approach to physical cosmology based on an atomistic theory of matter, which contributed to the foundations of an all-encompassing system of metaphysics. Why did he abandon this system in favor of his critical view that cosmology runs into an antinomy, according to (...) the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)? This book answers this question by focusing on Kant’s methodology and the internal problems of his 1755/56 theory of nature. A decisive role for Kant’s critical turn plays the argument from incongruent counterparts (1768), which drew much attention among philosophers of science, though not sufficiently in Kant research. Furthermore, the book analyses the genesis of the cosmological antinomy in the 1770s, the logical structure of the antinomy in the CPR, its relation to transcendental idealism, as explained in the “experiment of pure reason” (1787), and its role for the teleology of human reason. The book is addressed to Kant scholars, philosophers of science, and students of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

The main topic of my paper concerns the theological-philosophical nexus between the intensive and qualitative spatiality of the Monad and the Origenian idea of Apokatastasis as a nexus that can clarify Benjamin's latest idea of the Messianic World. The first step will be, therefore, to explain Benjamin's use of the Origenian notion of Apokatastasis in his Essay on Leskov and in the Passagenwerk. Secondly, I will discuss how and to what extent such use is relevant for Benjamin's idea of Messianism. (...) Thirdly, I will propose the thesis that, for Benjamin, a messianic idea of time implies a monadological idea of space. In this regard, the relationship between continuity and discontinuity, which is crucial to understand the late Benjamin's idea of history, must be understood precisely as a dialectical relationship that involves not only time but also space. The figure of intermittence – as we shall see – expresses in the most suitable way the intertwining of space and time as dialectically and messianicaly oriented. This sequence of logical steps and critical considerations will shed light on the true nature of Benjamin's idea of dialectics and on its relationship to the idea of the totality. The real term of confrontation of Benjamin's late philosophy does not concern, therefore, Heidegger, but Hegel. In the light of this confrontation, Heidegger's Being and Time is already in pieces. It is as it were – we can say – behind Benjamin's movement of thought. (shrink)

The theory of living beings as machines of nature and the conception of composite substances endowed with conjoined souls, entelechies, or monads, as well as that of organic bodies, were solidified over the course of the transformations of Leibniz's thought that issued in the New System of Nature. On this basis, the monadological versions of a system of nature centered upon the integrated organization ad infinitum of living beings were gradually articulated. Leibniz aimed to spell out a science, or physiology (...) of vital processes, that would be, as much as possible, in agreement with the epistemological exigencies of the complex metaphysical model that he had elaborated. On the one hand, Leibniz offers a critical evaluation of the methodological options that divide the allegiances of the physicians and naturalists who are his contemporaries; what is more, he determines the profile of the analyses and explications that are to be promoted. For This double preoccupation translates into the scientific exchanges and correspondences that accompany the construction of the theory of organic bodies as constituents of machines of nature. The author focuses on the particular case of the propositions concerning the science of the living that stem from his reaction to the work of Georg Ernst Stahl. (shrink)

Hopkins begins his study with Plato's written and unwritten theories of eidê and Aristotle's criticism of both. He then traces Husserl's early investigations into the formation of mathematical and logical concepts, charting the critical necessity that leads from descriptive psychology to transcendentally pure phenomenology. An investigation of the movement of Husserl's phenomenology of transcendental consciousness to that of monadological intersubjectivity follows. Hopkins then presents the final stage of the development of Husserl's thought, which situates monadological intersubjectivity within the context of (...) the historical a priori constitutive of all meaning. An exposition of the unwarranted historical presuppositions that guide Heidegger's fundamental ontological and Derrida's deconstructive criticisms of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology concludes the book. By following Husserl's personal trajectory Hopkins is able to show the unity of Husserl's philosophical enterprise, challenging the prevailing view that Husserl's late turn to history is inconsistent with his earlier attempts to establish phenomenology as a pure science. Contents: Introduction Part I Descriptive Psychology 1. Investigation of the Origin of Number 2. Investigation of the Origin of Logical Signification Part II Cartesian Transcendental Phenomenology 3. Investigation of the Origin of Objective Transcendence 4. Investigation of the Origin of Subjective Transcendence Part III Historical Transcendental Phenomenology 5. The Crisis of Meaning in Contemporary European Science 6. Historical Investigation of the Phenomenological Origin Part IV Husserl and his Critics 7. Fundamental Critiques of Transcendental Phenomenology 8. A Husserlian Response to the Critics. (shrink)

Working on Leibniz’s vast essays and texts can seem overwhelming. As exciting as it is to study the details of the Monadology and Discourse on Metaphysics, the Theodicy and the letters to Arnauld, it can be terrifying to sit back and think that there are thousands of other pages of equally sublime and often more difficult philosophical material. The personal notes are particularly daunting. Because Leibniz wrote these for himself, it is often difficult to grasp his reasoning and decipher (...) his underlying philosophical motivation: he typically neither states his most basic assumptions nor articulates how the piece he is presently writing fits into a general plan or project. Sometimes he just plays with an idea or tries out an argument. As Leibniz himself wrote about his notes: “instead of treasure..., you will only find ashes; instead of elaborate works, a few sheets of paper and some poorly expressed vestiges of hasty reflections, which were only saved for the sake of my memory.” But even Leibniz’s more polished essays can be unnerving in manuscript. These sheets—which contain deletions, additions, an enormous number of reformulations, and reconsiderations—reveal an impatient intellect hurrying to express its ideas. Because Leibniz is so often reluctant to set the stage for a philosophical proposal or to acknowledge its various implications, one often has to go well beyond the text in order to understand how the proposal at hand relates to other parts of his thought. Moreover, Leibniz encourages confusion by using one terminology in one text and an entirely different one in another. The moral to the story is clear: one cannot depend either on a single essay or on a small group of passages taken in isolation from others in the same period. When it comes to Leibniz’s writings, it is necessary to take the widest possible textual perspective. (shrink)

This paper studies Francisque Bouillier’s contribution to cousinian Spiritualism, from his first text on the History of Cartesian Philosophy from 1839 to the publication of Du principe vital et de l’âme pensante, a work which was likewise considerably amended as a result of the polemics it gave rise to. The paper is concerned with the reception of Leibniz in a double sense. In a positive sense, Bouillier managed to reintegrate in the caricature of the Cartesian soul conceived by the Cousinians, (...) a force that was criticized by the latter. In a negative sense to the extent that, for Bouillier, the direct re-appropriation of Leibniz’s dynamic ontology was impossible without completely breaking with Cousin himself. Hence, Bouillier’s reception of Leibniz took the form of a progressive suppression of a monadological tendency in favor of a rehabilitation of a theory of minute perceptions. The primacy of the interior sense that results from this allowed him to construct a Descar.. (shrink)

This book explores the persistence of Pythagorean ideas in theoretical physics. It shows that the Pythagorean position is both philosophically deep and scientifically interesting. However, it does not endorse pure Pythagoreanism; rather, it defends the thesis that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality. The book begins by examining Wigner's paper on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. It argues that, whilst many issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics disappear upon examination, there are some core (...) issues to do with the effectiveness of mathematics in fundamental physics which remain. The core issues are the existence of the laws of nature and our minds ability to fathom them, the use of formal mathematics in discovering things about the quantum world, the fact that deep mathematics is needed to describe fundamental physics, and the asymptotic nature of the quest for knowledge. These issues are the focus of the book. The author seeks to explain them within a metaphysical framework that takes mind and mathematical structure as its fundamental principles. The framework - called quantum monadology - combines ideas from Leibnizian monadology, set theory, and consistent histories quantum theory. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz possessed one of history's great minds. The German philosopher, mathematician, and logician invented calculus. His metaphysics bequeathed a set of problems and approaches that drove the course of Western philosophy, from Kant's eighteenth century until the present day. For over fifty years, the study of Leibniz has been a consistent passion for distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher. _On Leibniz_ offers eleven of his essays, written with signature clarity, exploring the aspects of Leibniz's work and life that still resonate (...) in the discipline of philosophy. Rescher's essays are snapshots of Leibniz, lucidly drawn case studies that explain the fundamentals of his ontology: the theory of possible worlds, the world's contingency, space-time frameworks, and intermonadic relationships. Several illuminating pieces reveal Leibniz as a substantial contributor to theories of knowledge. Discussions of his epistemology and methodology, its relationship to John Maynard Keynes and Talmudic scholarship, broaden the traditional view of Leibniz as a uniquely metaphysical thinker. Rescher also explores, in four absorbing biographical essays, Leibniz's scholarly development and professional career in historical context. As a "philosopher courtier" to the Hanoverian court, Leibniz was associated with the leading intellectuals and politicians of his era, including Spinoza, Huygens, Newton, Queen Sophie Charlotte, and Czar Peter the Great. A concluding essay holds up Leibniz's mode of philosophy as a role model for today's scholars. Rescher argues that many current problems can be effectively addressed with principles of process philosophy along lines inspired by Leibniz's monadology. _On Leibniz_ is essential reading for students of Leibniz and Rescher alike. (shrink)

What is Leibniz’s argument for simple substances? I propose that it is an extension of his prior argument for incorporeal forms as principles of unity for individual corporeal substances. The extension involves seeing the hylomorphic analysis of corporeal substances as implying a resolution of matter into forms, and this seems to demand that forms, which are themselves simple, be the only elements of things. The argument for simples thus presupposes the existence of corporeal substances as a key premise. Yet a (...) theory of simple substances as the elements of things threatens to preclude the existence of corporeal substances for Leibniz, and the extension of the argument for forms into an argument for simples is not cogent. If nothing else rides on the simplicity of individual substances, then perhaps instead of being its most fundamental tenet, the doctrine of simples—the monadology—is something that over-extends and destabilizes Leibniz’s metaphysics. (shrink)

A number of recent authors have raised the question of Leibniz’s commitment, during the 1680s and after, to the reality of corporeal substances. In contrast to the standard reading of him as embracing early on a view of substance which is in all essential respects that of the “Monadology”, it has been argued that Leibniz is in fact inclined to recognize two distinct types of substance: on the one hand, unextended soul-like substances ; on the other hand, quasi-Aristotelian corporeal (...) substances. Some commentators have seen Leibniz as deciding definitively by the late 1690s in favor of the monadic theory. Others, however, have argued for a more complicated reading of his development, seeing Leibniz as struggling with the problem of corporeal substance for much of his career. (shrink)

A number of recent authors have raised the question of Leibniz’s commitment, during the 1680s and after, to the reality of corporeal substances. In contrast to the standard reading of him as embracing early on a view of substance which is in all essential respects that of the “Monadology”, it has been argued that Leibniz is in fact inclined to recognize two distinct types of substance: on the one hand, unextended soul-like substances ; on the other hand, quasi-Aristotelian corporeal (...) substances. Some commentators have seen Leibniz as deciding definitively by the late 1690s in favor of the monadic theory. Others, however, have argued for a more complicated reading of his development, seeing Leibniz as struggling with the problem of corporeal substance for much of his career. (shrink)

The many equivocations that, in several respects, characterised the reception of Leibniz's Principes de la Nature et de la Grâce and Monadologie, up until the last century, find their origins in the genetic circumstances of their manuscripts, which gave rise to misinformation published in an anonymous review that appeared in the Leipzig Acta eruditorum in 1721. Archival research demonstrates that the author of this review, as well as of the Latin review of the Monadologie, which appeared, the same year, in (...) the Supplementa of the Acta eruditorum, was Christian Wolff, who possessed a copy of the Leibnizian manuscrip since at least 1717. This translation figured as a precise cultural strategy that aimed to defuse any idealist interpretation of Leibniz’s monadology. An essential part of this strategy consists in reading the theory of pre-established harmony as a doctrine founded on a strictly dualistic substance metaphysics. (shrink)

Kant’s dissertation for the Master’s degree Succinct Exposition of Some Meditations on Fire was written in Latin in 1755 as a sample (specimen) preceding a Master’s exam, but its first printing did not appear until 1838. What is the relevance of this Master’s dissertation for historical and philosophical studies? To answer this question I analyse the structure and give a brief summary of the dissertation, look at the history of its writing and try to identify the place of this work (...) among Kant’s other papers on natural philosophy. I then demonstrate that Kant’s concept of ether as an elastic matter of fire, heat and light containing the forces of attraction and repulsion originates in the dissertation On Fire. I identify the provisions in Kant’s early works which he later develops in the Master’s dissertation and establish continuity between the text of On Fire and the so-called Physical Monadology, draw parallels between the ideas enunciated by Kant in his first dissertation and the interpretation of ether in the printed works that followed. Finally, I put forward the hypothesis of the heuristic potential of the On Fire treatise for the analysis of Kant’s manuscript legacy. Perhaps this dissertation will enable researchers to clear up some tangled propositions in Kant’s Opus Postumum. However, a series of further studies is needed to verify the hypothesis. (shrink)

One of the greatest of modern philosophers, on a par with his contemporary John Locke, Leibniz was born in Leipzig in 1646, died in Hanover in 1716. He was a leading figure in European intellectual circles, and the founder of the Academy of Berlin. His strange, complex metaphysical system established him as the third of the great 'Rationalists', after Descartes and Spinoza. Along with the 'New System', his most famous philosophical works are the Discourse of Metaphysics and Monadology. He (...) also made important contributions to logic, mathematics, theology, jurisprudence, and history.Gathered here for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centred on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the `New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication'. In this classic essay Leibniz introduced to a broad European readership the strikingly original metaphysical ideas he had come to a decade earlier. His 'system' became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers: Simon Foucher; Henri Basbage de Beauval; Francois Lamy; Isaac Jacquelot; the Englishwoman Damaris Masham; Pierre Desmaizeaux; René Joseph de Tournemine; and most notably the great French philosopher and scholar Pierre Bayle. (shrink)

It is shown in this article in how far one has to have a clear picture of Gödel’s philosophy and scientific thinking at hand (and also the philosophical positions of other philosophers in the history of Western Philosophy) in order to interpret one single Philosophical Remark by Gödel. As a single remark by Gödel (very often) mirrors his whole philosophical thinking, Gödel’s Philosophical Remarks can be seen as a philosophical monadology. This is so for two reasons mainly: Firstly, because (...) it pictures a monadology already via its form. And secondly, because Gödel wanted to establish in his Philosophical Remarks a modern monadology in adapting the philosophical principles of Leibniz’s monadology to modern science. This article will only deal with the first aspect that has been mentioned namely that a single remark by Gödel (very often) mirrors his whole philosophy (at the time) for example: set theory, perception and intuition of mathematical objects and axioms, the nature of the human mind, the concept and existence of God, and so on. This renders it extremely difficult to interpret Gödel’s philosophical remarks but interpreting it provides also a deep insight in Gödel’s philosophical thoughts. (shrink)

The Death of the Past argues that critical problems in the philosophy of history, such as the the truth of historical texts, how texts relate to the past that they are about, and the nature of historical explanation, can be successfully investigated if we accept the claim that historical writing is historicist--perspectival (from the standpoint of the historian) rather than purporting to be like an eyewitness account (as in the first-person "presentist" views critiqued by Enzo Traverso). This approach admits all (...) relevant evidence as subject to analysis in order to determine the widest point of view, as opposed to the biased "eyewitness" approach, which observes only partially. The link between the past itself and historical knowledge is radically broken, giving the latter the wisdom of hindsight across a broader temporal field from the events examined up to the present. The truth about the past is only accessible from a later point in time; "the past" itself is not a reality for the historian; it no longer exists. Frank Ankersmit offers a surprising foundation for the historicist notion of history: Leibniz' monadological universe, in which each monad or substance has its own point of view. There is no deeper ontology to which they owe their status--just an infinity of monads and a corresponding infinity of points of view on other monads. So with historical representations, statements about the past that can be either true or false but not depictions of the past itself. In striking contrast to Hayden White's view, Ankersmit insists that historical writing is no less rational than the sciences-- mathematical and scientific writing has its counterpart in the writing of history. (shrink)

Leibniz standardly associates “mechanism” with extended material bodies and their aggregates. In this paper, I identify and analyze a further distinct sense of “mechanism” in Leibniz that extends, by analogy, beyond the domain of material bodies and applies to the operations of immaterial substances such as the monads that serve, for Leibniz, as the metaphysical foundations of physical reality. I argue that in this sense, Leibniz understands “mechanism” as an intelligible process that is capable of providing a sufficient reason for (...) a series of changes. I then apply these findings to enrich our understanding of Leibniz’s well-known mill argument in Monadology ¶17: although material machines and mechanisms cannot produce perceptions, the perceptual activity of immaterial monads is to be understood as “mechanical” according to this analogical sense. (shrink)

A new advanced systems theory concerning the emergent nature of the Social, Consciousness, and Life based on Mathematics and Physical Analogies is presented. This meta-theory concerns the distance between the emergent levels of these phenomena and their ultra-efficacious nature. The theory is based on the distinction between Systems and Meta-systems (organized Openscape environments). We first realize that we can understand the difference between the System and the Meta-system in terms of the relationship between a ‘Whole greater than the sum of (...) the parts’ and a ‘Whole less than the sum of its parts’, i.e., a whole full of holes (like a sponge) that provide niches for systems in the environment. Once we understand this distinction and clarify the nature of the unusual organization of the Meta-system, then it is possible to understand that there is a third possibility which is a whole exactly equal to the sum of its parts that is only supervenient like perfect numbers. In fact, there are three kinds of Special System corresponding to the perfect, amicable, and sociable aliquot numbers. These are all equal to the sum of their parts but with different degrees of differing and deferring in what Jacques Derrida calls “differance”. All other numbers are either excessive (systemic) or deficient (metasystemic) in this regard. The Special Systems are based on various mathematical analogies and some physical analogies. But the most important of the mathematical analogies are the hypercomplex algebras, which include the Complex Numbers, Quaternions, and Octonions, with the Sedenions corresponding to the Emergent Meta-system. However, other analogies are the Hopf fibrations between hyperspheres of various dimensions, nonorientable surfaces, soliton solutions, etc. These Special Systems have a long history within the tradition since they can be traced back to the imaginary cities of Plato. The Emergent Meta-system is a higher order global structure that includes the System with the three Special Systems as a cycle. An example of this from our tradition is in the Monadology of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. There is a conjunctive relationship between the System schema and the Special Systems that produce the Meta-system schema cycle. The Special Systems are a meta-model for the relationship between the emergent levels of Consciousness (Dissipative Ordering based on the theory of negative entropy of Prigogine), Living (Autopoietic Symbiotic based on the theory of Maturana and Varela), and Social (Reflexive based on the theory of John O’Malley and Barry Sandywell). These different special systems are related to the various existenitals identified by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time and various temporal reference frames identified by Richard M. Pico. We also relate the special systems to morphodynamic and teleodynamic systems of Terrence Deacon in Incomplete Nature to which we add sociodynamic systems to complete the series of Special Systems. (shrink)

Economics is often believed to be a `value-free' discipline, and even an `a-moral' one. My aim is to demonstrate that homo œconomicus can recover his ethical nature if the philosophical roots of contemporary economics are laid bare. This, however, requires us to look for an alternative foundation for the idea of `social order,' a foundation which economics is ill-equipped to provide because of its exclusive focus on calculative rationality. But a new ethical perspective on homo œconomicus and on the manner (...) in which he chooses his actions is possible. My aim here is to make this new perspective explicit.Two claims lie at the heart of this paper. The first claim is that economics as practised nowadays — that is, as a discipline concerned with the analysis of the interactions between individual decisions and the collective effects of these interactions — is a particular form of metaphysics, based on a particular articulation between self-centredness and other-centredness. The second claim is that, unbeknownst to the vast majority of economists, the basic principle of individual optimization contains the seed of a radical reformulation of what the emergence of `social order' is all about. More specifically, economics will be claimed to be a specific metaphysical discipline based on the monadological worldview inherited from Leibniz and re-arranged to fit the empiricist bias of 18th-century thinkers, and the principle of individual optimization will be claimed to be compatible with a very different metaphysical view of the human subject, a view which `turns subjectivity inside out', so to speak, and treats optimizing calculation as a response rather than as an initiative.The first claim is rather general, and not completely new — it has been hinted at, for example, by Jon Elster in an early book written in French, but it has received precious little attention among economists so far, with the result that economics has become increasingly blind to the philosophical roots of its most fundamental views on individual decision and on social order. The second claim applies to economics and homo œconomicus a general suggestion coming from Alain Renaut, that we ought to make good use of the accusations of incoherence voiced against the monadological scheme in order to re-think the way in which human subjectivity works. Renaut, however, remains at the level of the history of the philosophical concept of subjectivity. Although he does, in passing, make some mention of possible implications for the social sciences, he never goes into the full analysis of what the critique of monadological metaphysics implies for modern theories of society, and for economics in particular. One of my main goals here is to fill this gap.Let me now be more specific about the steps of my analysis. Defending my two claims will require, first of all, a rigorous understanding of the basic methodological stance adopted by economics, namely the idea that social order `emanates' from a bunch of self-centred subjectivities making separate optimizing decisions. Accordingly, in Section 2, I will trace out the analogy that exists between Leibnizian monadology and modern-day economics. The aim there will be to show that economics, unwittingly but for nevertheless deep ethical reasons, has remained `stuck' in a very specific metaphysical position which virtually no contemporary philosophy of subjectivity any longer acknowledges. Section 3, then, will show how the combination of monadology and empiricism which still prevails in contemporary economics can be overcome by entering an altogether distinct philosophical domain characterized by the primacy of Other over Self.While this alternative philosophical stance has experienced a surge of interest in recent decades, it has left the social sciences, and particularly economics, completely untouched. The reason is, I will claim, that this strand of philosophy adopts a form of methodological altruism which stands in contrast both to the methodological individualism of economics and to the methodological holism of various strands of post-Durkheimian sociology. In Section 4, then, I analyze some of the far-reaching consequences for economics which would flow from taking into account `non-I' motives which are not `We' motives, i.e., motives for action which are neither mere holist pastings onto individualism nor mere individualist mitigations of holism.The principle of choice of action through individual optimization will appear as the `hinge' between two worlds: although initially anchored within a worldview where social coexistence is a by-product of individual calculations, the idea of optimization will be seen to be compatible with a very different, and indeed almost reversed worldview, one where individual calculations emerge as by-products of social coexistence — the term `social' being itself radically re-thought in a non-holistic direction.The aim of my analysis, ultimately, is to formulate a challenge for contemporary economics and its implicit view of the interaction between individual and society: Can the combination of monadological and empiricist thinking so strongly ingrained in economics be overcome in the direction of a radically `other-oriented' view of the human subject? Many economists will doubtless believe it cannot; however, they will now, at least, have to explain why they hold to the older view and hence they will have to uncover their often hidden ethical and metaphysical presuppositions. I view this not as an undue disturbance or as mere conceptual hair-splitting, but as a timely opportunity to clarify some deep philosophical issues which haunt economics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 421-422 [Access article in PDF] Konstantin Pollok. Kants Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. Ein kritischer Kommentar. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2001. Pp. x + 546. Cloth, € 98.00.Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MFNS) was published in 1786, one year after his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and thus also falling in the period between the two editions of the Critique (...) of Pure Reason. Long assigned a tertiary status within the corpus, the MFNShas for several reasons been the subject of renewed scholarly attention in the past two decades. Attempts to trace the origins of analytic philosophy beyond the work of the logicists and the Vienna Circle have focussed attention on neo-Kantian "scientific epistemologists" such as Helmholtz, Hertz, and their contemporaries, for whom Kant's philosophy of science formed a common point of departure. This more general concern is complemented by Kant scholars' increasing interest in his philosophies of mathematics and the sciences. Finally, there is greater appreciation of the importance of the Metaphysical Foundations for our understanding of Kant's revisions to the first Critique, for instance his emphasis in the B-edition on the necessity of external intuition to the "objective reality" of the categories.Earlier neglect of the MFNS was not merely the product of indifference to these issues, for it is an obscure book, even for Kant. In extending the transcendental metaphysics of the Critique into the domain of empirical science, Kant demands of his reader a thorough grasp of the critical philosophy. To complicate matters, the larger part of the text involves a detailed analysis of classical scientific concepts taken from the Leibnizian and Newtonian traditions. Kant often draws on his earlier writings on the natural sciences, such as the Physical Monadology, and either modifies or, in the case of pre-critical sources, inverts these to fit their new context. The book often seems to be little more than a rationalist deduction of the key concepts of Newtonian physics, at least as Kant understood them. In order to extract philosophically interesting arguments from this mixture of physical science and transcendental philosophy, one must have a firm grasp of the background in the history of science and of Kant's oeuvre as a whole. To date, there have been only two full-length studies (by Addickes and Plaass) devoted to this short work, and neither of them attempted to cover it as a whole. Konstantin Pollok's commentary of the MFNSwill therefore fill an important gap in the secondary literature. [End Page 421]Pollok's Critical Commentary, which is written in a clear anduncomplicated academic German, steers a middle course between textual analysis and criticism. The author accords each major division of the book (the Preface, Phoronomy, Dynamics, Mechanics, and Phenomenology) its own chapter, and then follows the argumentative lines of these closely. But Pollok's text does not mirror Kant's "mathematical" sub-division of the MFNSinto axioms, theses, and scholia. These are often grouped together and commented on as a single argumentative whole, which is keyed with the title of the main sub-division. The body text of the commentary consists of textual exegesis, quotations, and references to historical sources, as well as to the larger context of Kant's philosophy. The lengthy footnotes address discussions and controversies in recent secondary literature, as well as Pollok's evaluation of these. He quotes both primary and secondary sources at length, thereby freeing the reader from the bother of tracking down quotations in order to grasp what is at issue. This aid is, however, counterbalanced by his legitimate decision to quote all sources in the original language, with the exception of those available to Kant only in translation.Critical discussion is strictly confined to the conceptual context of Kant's time, in that the significance of Kant's arguments for later developments in the philosophy of science, and their status from the standpoint of such later developments are not addressed. But this decision still leaves open significant interpretative play: one can approach the... (shrink)