Abstract
Paul Lodge (Mansfield College Oxford, UK), in the paper Corporeal Substances as Monadic Composites in Leibniz’s Later Philosophy, considers whether there is a defensible reading of the claim that, in his later philosophy, Leibniz characterizes entities composed of a dominating monad and a plurality of subordinate monads as “corporeal substances” (the M-Composite View). This reading has been subject to a number of criticisms by Brandon Look and Donald Rutherford in the introduction to their translation of Leibniz’s Correspondence with Des Bosses. The author argues that there is room for the claim that the M-Composite View accurately captures Leibniz’s intention in this passage, and, contra Look and Rutherford, that at this time in his career Leibniz was sincere in his assertion that entities of this kind are substances. The author finishes by presenting, as a working hypothesis, the suggestion that Leibniz may have been happy with the M-Composite View throughout the remainder of his life.
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Notes
- 1.
Another well-known instance, to which I shall return later in this paper, is to be found in Section 3 of the Principles of Nature and Grace (GP VI, 598–99; AG 207).
- 2.
The translation in this passage is Look and Rutherford’s. It deviates slightly from my own translation in the Yale edition of the Leibniz-De Volder correspondence (see Lodge 265). I follow the translations in LR here and in other places where the differences are of no consequence for the purposes of this paper. These are generally cited using other standard sources, with an asterisk to indicate any deviation from those sources.
- 3.
See LR lxxii-lxxix.
- 4.
See Adams (1994, 269).
- 5.
Look and Rutherford present another, somewhat later, passage from a letter to Bierling of 1711 in which Leibniz tells him “I call a corporeal substance that which consists in a simple substance or monad (that is, a soul or soul analogous) and a united organic body” (GP VII, 501).
- 6.
It should, however, be noted that the Qualified Monad Conception has been defended at some length by Donald Baxter (1995).
- 7.
See Lodge 2001 for a more detailed discussion of this issue.
- 8.
I will ignore the possibility here that Leibniz might be willing to extend to term “monad” to include corporeal substances – as he appears to do in some other contexts, such as his letter to Johann Bernoulli of 30 September 1698 (GM III, 542; AG 168) – given that this seems to be explicitly ruled out in the fivefold scheme.
- 9.
See Rutherford (1995, Chap. 6).
- 10.
See Lodge c-ci.
- 11.
Leibniz’s account of the domination relation, which appears to have been introduced into his thinking at this time, is never clearly articulated in his writings. Interesting attempts to explicate this notion further can be found in Look (2002) and Duarte (2012). But each of these involves a good deal of philosophical speculation.
- 12.
Tournemine discussed Leibniz’s views in his Conjectures on the Union of Soul and Body, which appeared in the Mémoires de Trévoux of May 1703. Leibniz responded in the same journal in 1708 in a piece entitled Comment of M. Leibniz on an article in the Mémoires de Trévoux of March 1704 (the reference here is to the date of the Amsterdam edition of the journal). See WF 246–51 for translations of the relevant parts of these articles.
- 13.
See the New System of the Nature of Substances (GP IV, 483–87; WF 17–20), the Explanation of the New System (GP IV, 493–98; WF 47–52), Extract from a Letter by M. Leibniz about his Philosophical Hypothesis (GP IV, 500–03; WF 65–67) and the Explanation of the Difficulties which M. Bayle Found with the New System (GP IV, 517–24; WF 79–86).
- 14.
- 15.
See Lodge (2001).
- 16.
See Rutherford (1995, 221–226).
- 17.
Also see the Conversation between Ariste and Philarete from 1712/15 in which Leibniz speaks of “corporeal substance, composed of soul and mass” (GP VI, 588; AG 264).
- 18.
Notably, it would be necessary to find a way of accommodating the following claim that Leibniz makes in his final letter to Des Bosses, of 29 May, 1716, “Composite substance does not formally consist in monads and their subordination, for then it would be a mere aggregate, that is, an accidental being” (LDB 371).
- 19.
Many thanks to Martin Pickup for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
References
Adams, R. M. 1994. Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baxter, D. 1995. Corporeal Substances and True Unities, Studia Leibnitiana 27: 157–84.
Duarte, S. 2012. Leibniz and Monadic Domination, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 6: 209–48.
Lodge, P. 2001. Leibniz’s Notion of an Aggregate, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9: 467–86.
Look, B. 2002. On Monadic Domination in Leibniz’s Metaphysics, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10: 379–99.
Rutherford, D. 1994. Leibniz and the Problem of Monadic Aggregation, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76: 65–90.
Rutherford, D. 1995. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Lodge, P. (2015). Corporeal Substances as Monadic Composites in Leibniz’s Later Philosophy. 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_8
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