Philosophical Views of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Essay Example

Leibnizs conception of substance Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany. He received his Doctorate of Laws at Alder. He became a legal counselor in the court of Mainz. In 1672, he was sent to Paris on a diplomatic mission. In 1676, he was at the service of various nobles such as in the court of the Duke of Brunswick. Leibniz’s philosophical system is as follows: His conceptions of the nature of propositions and of substances. All propositions assert the inclusion of one concept in another. Thus, anyone who fully understands the concept of man must know everything else that is to know about him – his current situation, history and future. Such full understand is beyond the grasp of our finite minds, but is not beyond the grasp of God Any object in the universe is connected in some way or another. Every substance is like an entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole world which it portrays, each one in its own fashion. Each substance reflects all the others. No substance can really cause any change in any other. What happens to be causal interaction among substances is really a “pre-established harmony” among them, reflecting the fact that God created each one with an eye to all the rest. The identity of indiscernibles – of all the harmoniously evolving substances in the universe, no two are alike in every respect. If any two were completely alike, they would be one substance rather than two. God chose the actual world from among many other possibilities. Our world is somehow better than any of the others, for God always chooses what is best. The mere possibility of these other worlds defeats the implication that whatever happens in our world is necessary. Leibniz’s view rule out human freedom. God has decreed that “the will shall always seek the apparent good in certain particular respects. He, without at all necessitating our choice, determines it by that which appears most desirable”. Whatever we do stems from our own will, and is done in pursuit of our vision of the good. Hence, anything we do is our own responsibility. God inclines our soul without necessitating them. Leibniz was dissatisfied with the way Descartes and Spinoza had described the nature of substance because he felt they had distorted our understanding of human nature, freedom and the nature of God. To say, as Descartes did, that there are two independent substances – thought and extension – was to produce the impossible dilemma of trying to explain how those two substances interact as body and mind either in human beings or in God. Spinoza had tried to solve the dilemma by saying that there is only one substance with two knowable attributes, though and extension. But to reduce all reality to a single substance was to lose the distinction between the various elements in nature. To be sure, Spinoza spoke of the world as consisting of many modes in which the attributes of thought and expression appear. Still, Spinoza’s monism was a pantheism in which God was everything and everything was [art of everything else. To Leibniz, this conception of substance was inadequate because it blurred the distinctions among God, humans, and nature each of which Leibniz wanted to keep separate. Paradoxically, Leibniz accepted Spinoza’s single-substance theory and his mechanical model of the universe. However, he presented such a unique theory of this one substance that he was able to speak of the individuality of persons, the transcendence of God, and the reality of purpose and freedom in the universe. Extension versus Force. Leibniz challenged the fundamental assumption upon which both Descartes and Spinoza had built their theory of substance, namely, extension implies three-dimensional size and shape. Descartes assumed that extension refers to material substance that is extended in space and is not divisible into something more primary. Spinoza, too, considered extension as an irreducible material attribute of God and Nature. Leibniz disagreed. Observing that the bodies or things we see with our senses are divisible into smaller parts, why can we not assume, asked Leibniz, that all things are compounds or aggregates? Leibniz rejected this notion of atoms because Democritus had described these atoms as extended bodies as irreducible bits of matter. Such a particle of matter would have to be considered lifeless or inert and would have to get its motion from something outside itself. Rejecting the idea of matter as primary, Leibniz argued that the truly simple substances are the monads and these are the true atoms of nature or the elements of things. The monads differ from atoms in that atoms were viewed as extended bodies whereas Leibniz described the monad as being force or energy. Leibniz therefore said that matter is not the primary ingredient of things. Instead monads with their element of force constitute the essential substance of things. Leibniz wanted to emphasize that substance must contain life or a dynamic force. Whereas Democritus’ material atom would have acted upon itself in order to move or become a part of a large cluster, Leibniz said that simple substance, the monad, is capable of action. He added that compound substance is the collection of monads. Monas is a Greek word which signifies unity or that which is one. Simple substances, lives, souls, spirits are unities. Consequently, all nature is full of life. Monads are extended; they have no shape or size. A monad is a point not a mathematical or physical point but a metaphysically existent point. Each monad is independent of other monads and monads do not have any causal relation to each other. It is difficult to imagine a point that has no shape or size yet Leibniz wanted to say this in order to differentiate the monad from a material atom. Actually his thinking here resembles the 20th century notion that physical particles are reducible to energy or that particles are a special form of energy. Essentially, Leibniz was saying that monads are logically prior to any corporeal forms. True substances, then, are monads and these Leibniz also call souls to emphasize their nonmaterial nature. Each monad is different from the others and each possesses its own principle of action and its own force. Leibniz says, “There is a certain sufficiency which makes them the source of their internal actions and so to speak incorporeal automata.” Monads are not only independent and different. They also contain the source of their activity within themselves. Moreover, in order to emphasize that the rest of the universe does not affect their behavior, Leibniz says that the monads are windowless. But there must be some relation between all monads which make up the universe some explanation for their orderly actions. This explanation Leibniz finds in his idea of a preestablished harmony. Preestablished harmony. Each monad behaves in accordance with its own created purpose. These windowless monads each are following its own purpose for a unity of ordered universe. Even though each is isolated from the other, their separate purposes form a large-scale harmony. It is as though several clocks all struck the same hour because they keep perfect time. Leibniz compares all these monads to several different bands of musicians and choirs playing their parts separately and so placed that they do not see or even hear one another. Nevertheless, Leibniz continues, they keep perfectly together by each following their own notes in such a way that he who hears them all finds in them a harmony that is wonderful and much more surprising than if there had been any connection between them. Each monad, then, is a separate world but all the activities of each monad occur in harmony with the activities of others. In this way, we can say that each monad mirrors the whole universe but from a unique perspective. If anything were taken away or supposed different all things in the world would have been different. From what they are like at the present. Such a harmony as this could not be the product of an accidental assortment of monads instead they must be the result of God’s activity whereby this harmony is preestablished. To Leibniz, this fact of a universal harmony of all things provided a new proof of the existence of God. He had accepted for the most part the earlier attempts to prove God’s existence. He says of these that nearly all of the means which have been employed to prove the existence of God are good and might be of service if we would p[perfect them. But he was particularly impressed by this perfect harmony of so many substances which have no communication with each other. This harmony, he believed, pointed to the existence of God with surprising clearness because a harmony of many windowless substances can only come from a common cause. This resembles the argument from design and from a first cause although Leibniz modified the argument from cause with his principle of sufficient reason. Ariew, Roger and Watkins, Eric (eds.). 2000. Readings in Modern Philosophy, Volume I (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Associated Texts). Indianapolis: Hackett. Read More