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ABSTRACT
Leibniz believed the ‘true concept of substance’ is found in ‘the concept of forces or powers’. Accordingly, he conceived monadic substances as metaphysically primitive forces whose modifications manifest both as monads’ appetitions and perceptions and as derivative forces in monads’ organic bodies. Relationships between substances, and in particular the ethical relationships that hold between rational substances, are also foregrounded by Leibniz’s concept of substances as forces. In section one, we discuss the derivative forces of bodies. In section two, we consider monads’ perceptions and appetitions. Section three attends to ethical aspects of Leibniz’s account, focusing in particular on souls’ representative natures and the correspondence that obtains between perceptions in one and perceptions in all others. In section four, however, I argue that Leibniz’s commitment to the doctrine of the conservation of force makes it impossible for any one substance to pursue its own advantage by increasing its active force without there being a correlative disadvantageous decrease in the active force of substances elsewhere in the universe. While the reconciliatory proposals offered do not entirely remove the tension between Leibniz’s ethics and his physics, they do soften its severity and allow it to be regarded in a more positive light.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Lloyd Strickland and two anonymous referees for their insightful criticisms and comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1 Leibniz was not alone in recognizing the importance of force for understanding the notion of substance. As Valtteri Viljanen has argued, force or power is key to the understanding of Spinoza’s concept of God or Nature and had been acknowledged by Plato and Aristotle (Viljanen, Spinoza’s Geometry of Power).
2 ‘I believe … that everything is filled with animated bodies. And in my opinion there are incomparably more souls than there are atoms according to Mr. Cordemoi, who makes their number finite, while I hold the number of souls, or at least of forms, to be infinite. And since matter is infinitely divided, no portion can be designated so small that it does not contain animated bodies, or at least bodies endowed with a primitive entelechy or, if you permit me to use the concept of life so generally, with a vital principle; in short, corporeal substances, all of which one can say in general that they are living’ (to Arnauld, 9 October 1687: A II ii 249; L 343). Opinion is divided as to whether animal-like corporeal substances appear also in Leibniz’s later writings. See, for instance, Garber, Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad; Arthur, Leibniz. I myself am convinced that Leibniz did retain corporeal substances in the later years, even if he seldom described them as such (see Monadology §§66–70 and Phemister, Leibniz and the Natural World).
3 ‘[D]erivative force or accidental force, which we cannot deny to moving bodies, must be a modification of primitive force, just as shape is a modification of extension’ (to Jacquelot, 22 March 1703: GP III 457; WF 201). See also, to Des Bosses, 19 August 1715, postscript: LB 354–57).
4 Secondary matter (moles) is ‘an aggregate of corporeal substances’ (to Bierling, 12 August 1711: GP VII 501)). As a continuous plurality of co-existing substances (i.e. ‘the existence of parts at one and the same time’), secondary matter satisfies Leibniz’s definition of an extended thing (to De Volder, 24 March/3 April 1699: LV 72–3).
5 See also, to Masham, September 1704: GP III 362–3; WF 219; Considerations on Vital Principles and Plastic Natures: GP VI 545–6; L 590.
6 The reading I have presented here has been argued in more detail in Phemister, Leibniz and the Natural World, chaps 1–3 and 8.
7 See, for instance, ‘A Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes and Others concerning a Natural Law’, published in the Acta Eruditorum in March 1686 (GM VI 117–19; L 296–302. For more detailed discussion of Leibniz’s physics, see Arthur, Leibniz, chap. 6 and Garber, Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad, chap. 4.
8 As Leibniz clarifies in his Notes on Michael Angelo Fardella, bodies are aggregates of substances and
although the aggregate of these substances constitutes body, they do not constitute it as parts, just as points are not parts of lines, since a part is always of the same sort as the whole. However, the organic bodies of substances included in any mass of matter are parts of that mass … And therefore there are substances everywhere in matter, just as points are everywhere in a line. And just as there is no portion of a line in which there are not an infinite number of points, there is no portion of matter which does not contain an infinite number of substances. But just as a point is not a part of a line, but a line in which there is a point is such a part, so also a soul is not a part of matter, but a body in which there is a soul is such a part of matter.
9 Leibniz connects the external action of the creature (the corporeal substance) with the activity and distinct perceptions in the dominant monad through the notion of perfection at Monadology, §§48–49.
10 See also Discourse on Metaphysics, §33: A VI iv B 1582–3; AG 65. To Arnauld, 30 April 1687: A II ii 175–6; LA 113.
11 See also: ‘[T]he minute insensible perceptions of some perfection or imperfection, which I have spoken of several times and which are as it were components of pleasure and of pain, constitute inclinations and propensities but not outright passions’ (New Essays: A Vi vi 194; RB 194).
12 Conversely, the harbouring of feelings of hatred and contempt towards oneself or others will have the opposite effect and serve only to increase suffering, disorder and imperfection.
13 See also Phemister, Leibniz and the Environment, 117–18. In this paper, I confine my remarks to the perfection of individuals and to the perception by individuals of their own and other individuals’ perfections. I do not here address any issues relating to the perfection of the world as a whole.
14 Leibniz adopts a dismissive attitude with respect of the pains suffered by nonhuman nonrational animals, regarding it as ‘very slight’ (Theodicy §250: GP VI 266; H 281).
15 I am grateful to the anonymous referee who raised this issue.
16 The activity that leads to distinct perception is not separable from the passivity that results in confused perception: ‘confused thoughts … invariably accompany the most distinct [thoughts] that we can have’ (Reply to the Comments in the second edition of M. Bayle’s Critical Dictionary: GP IV 563; WF 117).
17 By way of compensation, we may note that though increases in the active force and perfection of some substances must be balanced by decreases in the active force and perfection of others, these decreases must presumably be balanced in turn by increases in the active force and perfection of other substances within the system.
18 To Arnauld, 30 April 1687: A II ii 189; LA 124–5. Leibniz, however, also suggests that minds may be released on death from this eternal dance (A II ii 189; LA 124–5).