Abstract
Daniel Garber (Princeton University, USA), in Monads on my Mind shows that monads were very much on Leibniz’s mind in the late 1690s. In these crucial years between about 1695 and 1700, Leibniz was beginning to work out the details of the monadology, what monads are, and how they are to function as the ultimate building-blocks of his metaphysics. In this essay, Daniel Garber looks carefully at the development of the argument in those years, as Leibniz’s view was undergoing what has to be regarded as a major shift. He begins by reviewing what he takes to be Leibniz’s position in what he has called his middle years, the years between the late 1670s and the mid-1690s, before monads, when Leibniz’s view of the world was grounded in corporeal substances. He then traces at least one of the paths by which monads came into Leibniz’s world during those important years of transition.
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Notes
- 1.
See Garber (2009), Chap. 8.
- 2.
For a fuller development of the early years and the transition to his middle period discussed in this section of the paper, with full references and documentation, see Garber (2009), Chap. 1.
- 3.
References to Leibniz’s writings are generally given in the main text. When available, the English translation is given in parentheses following the original language citation.
- 4.
Leibniz to Arnauld, 30 April 1687, A II, 2, 169. See also A II, 2, 82; A II, 2, 114–15; A II, 2, 186; A II, 2, 248.
- 5.
Leibniz to Arnauld, 28 Nov/8 Dec 1686, A II, 2, 121–22. See also A II, 2, 115–16; A II, 2, 119; A II, 2, 120–21.
- 6.
- 7.
My main defense of this thesis is Garber (2009), where I present a developmental account of Leibniz’s philosophy that shows the place that the middle years occupy in the larger development of Leibniz’s thought. The most substantial attack on the “middle years” thesis of a corporeal substance metaphysics is found in part III of Adams (1994).
- 8.
Leibniz (1695, 300; AG 142), emphasis added. Note that I am citing the original publication of the Système nouveau since the standard text, given in GP IV is from a version with later additions.
- 9.
On this see the Dictionaire de L’Académie française (1694), s.v. “constituer.” For further reflections on the notion of constitution in Leibniz, see Nita (2008, 191–193).
- 10.
Before 1690, there are only a handful of occurrences of the term “simple substance” in the Leibniz texts that we have. For a discussion of the evolution of Leibniz’s vocabulary, see Garber (2009, 331f).
- 11.
For a fuller discussion of this passage and Leibniz’s account of continuity, see Garber (2015).
- 12.
It should be noted that the word ‘monad’ or the adjective ‘monadicus’ appear earlier in Leibniz’s 1663 theses, De principio individui (A VI, 1, 7), in the 1666 De arte combinatoria (A VI, 1, 173, 185, 220, 222), in notes on Martianus Capella in 1673 (A VI, 3, 199) and in notes on Henry More in 1676 (A VI, 3, 356). Later the term appears in discussions of John Wilkins in 1686 (A VI, 4, 31), John Dee in 1688 (A VI, 4, 919), and Ralph Cudworth in 1689 (A VI, 4, 1946). But none of these uses seem to have any substantial connection with the later metaphysical use of the term.
- 13.
See Leibniz for Sturm, prior to 5 July 1697, A II, 3, 335–344; Sturm for Leibniz, 10–15 October 1697, A II, 3, 384–385; Leibniz for Sturm, end of October 1697, A II, 3, 386–393.
- 14.
For a discussion of some later views on the relation of monads, understood as nonextended and mind-like, to the extended world, see Garber (2009, Chap. 9).
- 15.
Note that there is a collection of Wagner’s writings and documents, with an extensive introduction with biographical information and background, Wagner (1997).
- 16.
- 17.
The full dossier is found in A II, 3, 673–739. A small portion of the exchange was published earlier in Leibniz (1948, 389–399).
- 18.
On the debate over substance between Leibniz and Thomasius, see Utermöhlen (1979) and Garber (2009, 321–322, 329–331). For an account of the exchange between Leibniz and Wagner that emphasizes the roots of the discussion in Thomasius, see Pelletier (2011). Pelletier is also at work on a monograph on Leibniz and Wagner (see Pelletier, forthcoming).
- 19.
See A VI, 4, 1666–1671; AG 101–105.
- 20.
See, e.g., A II, 3, 676, where Wagner, in the context of proposing that points can be contiguous, considers an alternative, that tiny lines are next to one another, and so a circle might turn out to be a polygon, properly speaking. The discussion of this issue extends over a number of letters.
- 21.
See Leibniz’s response to Foucher, GP IV, 491–492 (AG 146–147), cited in part earlier.
- 22.
On this theme, see Garber (2009) Chap. 9.
- 23.
GP III, 616; cf. Leibniz to Hugony, 14 March 1714, GP III, 682.
- 24.
Although the Principes de la nature et de la grâce were sent to various correspondents by Leibniz and are known to have circulated, we have no direct knowledge of anyone to whom Leibniz sent a copy of the Monadology. For a history of its posthumous publication in 1720 and 1721, see Lamarra et al. (2001), and esp. p. 59 for some speculations on the transmission of the manuscript to Christian Wolff and Heinrich Köhler, its first editors and translators.
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Garber, D. (2015). Monads on My Mind. In: Nita, A. (eds) Leibniz’s Metaphysics and Adoption of Substantial Forms. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9956-0_11
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