Abstract
I will give an overview of the fascinating communication between G. W. Leibniz and Pierre Bayle on pre-established harmony and sudden change in the soul which started from Bayle’s footnote H to the article “Rorarius” in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) and ended in 1706 with Bayle’s death. I will compare the views presented in the communication to Leibniz’s reflections on the soul in his partly concurrent Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (1704) and argue that many topics in the communication with Bayle are discussed with more details in Nouveaux essais. I also argue that the communication helped Leibniz to respond to Locke’s views concerning uneasiness in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, xxi. Bayle himself, however, was not able to completely understand Leibniz’s views on spontaneity as he was unaware of the contents of the Nouveaux essais, especially the systematic role of petites perceptions in Leibniz’s philosophy of mind. I will also reflect on whether the controversy could have ended in agreement if it would have continued longer.
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Notes
- 1.
When discussing the New System, I will refer to the post-publication revised version in GP IV 477–87 and the English translation in Leibniz 1997 (WF 10–20). I use the following abbreviations of Leibniz’s works: A=Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (Leibniz 1923), GP=Die Philosophischen Schriften (Leibniz 1961) and WF=Leibniz’s New System (Leibniz 1997).
- 2.
Leibniz published his theory of forces in an article called Specimen dynamicum (part 1 appeared in Acta eruditorum, 1695).
- 3.
A selection of the documents concerning the discussion following the publication of the New System is conveniently translated to English in WF.
- 4.
Here Leibniz anticipates his view in New Essays II, xx, §6 as I will argue later.
- 5.
This idea is quite Spinozistic. Compare Ethics 2, p17.
- 6.
I will return to the example later.
- 7.
In New Essays (II, xx, §7) Leibniz argued that we can be cheerful when we are being tortured and feel depressed when we are having fun (A VI 6 166).
- 8.
However, in another comment of 1705 Leibniz says that he does not think the soul gives itself its first feelings. They are received with its existence from God at the moment of creation and from the first feelings all the others follow (WF 102). Leibniz agrees here with his early view in De Affectibus (1679) where he, influenced by Hobbes, argued that affects follow from each other. Change in the series takes place only when a greater apparent perfection is encountered. See Roinila (2015).
- 9.
A notable exception is Bolton (2013).
- 10.
On tolerance leading to understanding each other within a controversy, see Dascal (2010: 27–32).
References
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Roinila, M. (2016). Leibniz, Bayle and the Controversy on Sudden Change. In: Scarafile, G., Gruenpeter Gold, L. (eds) Paradoxes of Conflicts. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41978-7_3
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