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Basic Writings: Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Chicago: The Open Court Pub. Co.; Publication date: 1908; Subjects: Metaphysics; Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Metaphysics; Philosophy / History
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1902
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About the author
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1,397 books561 followersGerman philosopher and mathematician Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz or Leibnitz invented differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton and proposed an optimist metaphysical theory that included the notion that we live in "the best of all possible worlds."
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a polymath, occupies a prominent place in the history. Most scholars think that Leibniz developed and published ever widely used notation. Only in the 20th century, his law of continuity and transcendental homogeneity found implementation in means of nonstandard analysis. He of the most prolific in the field of mechanical calculators. He worked on adding automatic multiplication and division to calculator of Blaise Pascal, meanwhile first described a pinwheel in 1685, and used it in the first mass-produced mechanical arithmometer. He also refined the binary number system, the foundation of virtually all digital computers.
Leibniz most concluded that God ably created our universe in a restricted sense, Voltaire often lampooned the idea. Leibniz alongside the great René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza advocated 17th-century rationalism. Applying reason of first principles or prior definitions, rather than empirical evidence, produced conclusions in the scholastic tradition, and the work of Leibniz anticipated modern analytic logic.
Leibniz made major contributions to technology, and anticipated that which surfaced much later in probability, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. He wrote works on politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Various learned journals, tens of thousands of letters, and unpublished manuscripts scattered contributions of Leibniz to this vast array of subjects. He wrote in several languages but primarily Latin and French. No one completely gathered the writings of Leibniz.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a polymath, occupies a prominent place in the history. Most scholars think that Leibniz developed and published ever widely used notation. Only in the 20th century, his law of continuity and transcendental homogeneity found implementation in means of nonstandard analysis. He of the most prolific in the field of mechanical calculators. He worked on adding automatic multiplication and division to calculator of Blaise Pascal, meanwhile first described a pinwheel in 1685, and used it in the first mass-produced mechanical arithmometer. He also refined the binary number system, the foundation of virtually all digital computers.
Leibniz most concluded that God ably created our universe in a restricted sense, Voltaire often lampooned the idea. Leibniz alongside the great René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza advocated 17th-century rationalism. Applying reason of first principles or prior definitions, rather than empirical evidence, produced conclusions in the scholastic tradition, and the work of Leibniz anticipated modern analytic logic.
Leibniz made major contributions to technology, and anticipated that which surfaced much later in probability, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. He wrote works on politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Various learned journals, tens of thousands of letters, and unpublished manuscripts scattered contributions of Leibniz to this vast array of subjects. He wrote in several languages but primarily Latin and French. No one completely gathered the writings of Leibniz.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 3, 2016
The thesis of the best of all possible worlds may seem trite, but Leibniz's intellect far outstripped that of Voltaire, or just about anyone else in the history of humanity. It's important to wrestle with the greatest thinkers, even if there's no guarantee of them actually being right about anything.
The last universal genius, he comes right at the end, before knowledge would become irrevocably divided and specialized.
So far in my reading I am trying to focus on one particular aspect of his thought, the Monad as a model of subjectivity distinct from both Descartes and Spinoza. As I read the Ethics, Spinoza tries to solve dualism by simply doing away with one half of the problem. Philosophy becomes a course of therapy, as we cure ourselves of our individual consciousness in order to identify with the whole. This certainly appears consistent with modern forms of naturalism and materialism, and so Spinoza's enduring popularity is understandable. Nonetheless, I remain unsatisfied with this type of thinking. Even if Descartes's notion of mind was always problematic, I don't think subjectivity can be done away with entirely. This is where I think we could do well to meditate on Monads.
The last universal genius, he comes right at the end, before knowledge would become irrevocably divided and specialized.
So far in my reading I am trying to focus on one particular aspect of his thought, the Monad as a model of subjectivity distinct from both Descartes and Spinoza. As I read the Ethics, Spinoza tries to solve dualism by simply doing away with one half of the problem. Philosophy becomes a course of therapy, as we cure ourselves of our individual consciousness in order to identify with the whole. This certainly appears consistent with modern forms of naturalism and materialism, and so Spinoza's enduring popularity is understandable. Nonetheless, I remain unsatisfied with this type of thinking. Even if Descartes's notion of mind was always problematic, I don't think subjectivity can be done away with entirely. This is where I think we could do well to meditate on Monads.
August 3, 2017
Some interesting ideas presented in the most boring way imaginable. I cried "uncle!" after about twenty pages. Too bad, because the topics would probably be fascinating if handled by a better writer.
October 7, 2024
AN EXCELLENT COLLECTION OF THREE IMPORTANT WORKS BY ONE OF THE GREAT 17TH CENTURY "RATIONALISTS”
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher; he developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton.
In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he wrote, "Against those who think that God might have made things better than he has... It seems to me that the consequences of such an opinion are wholly inconsistent with the glory of God... To show that an architect could have done better is to find fault with his work. Furthermore this opinion is contrary to the Holy Scriptures when they assure us of the goodness of God's work." (Pg. 5-6)
After observing that "God does nothing which is not orderly," he adds, "I use these comparisons to picture a certain imperfect resemblance to the divine wisdom, and to point out that which may at least raise our minds to conceive in some sort what cannot otherwise be expressed. I do not pretend at all to explain thus the great mystery upon which depends the whole universe." (Pg. 10-11)
He argues, "certain philosophers... have constructed a demonstration of God that is extremely imperfect. It must be, they say, that I have an idea of God, or of a perfect being, since I think of him and we cannot think without having ideas; now the idea of this being includes all perfections and since existence is one of these perfections, it follows that he exists... it is when he is assured of the possibility of a thing, that one can boast of having an idea of it. Therefore, the aforesaid argument proves that God exists, if he is possible. This is in fact an excellent privilege of the divine nature, to have need only of a possibility or an essence in order to actually exist, and it is just this which is called ens a se [`being out of itself"]." (Pg. 40-41)
Of miracles, he says, "These are a part of the general order and conform to the principal purposes of God and consequently, are involved in the concept of this universe, which is a result of these designs. Just as the idea of a building results from the purposes or plans of him who undertakes it, so the idea or concept of this world is a result of the designs of God considered as possible." (Pg. 109)
In his Correspondence, he asserts, "I maintain that every substance involves in its present state all its past and future states and even expresses the whole universe according to its point of view, since nothing is so far from anything else that there is no relation between them." (Pg. 233)
In his Monadology, he begins with the statement, "The Monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple substance, which goes to make up composites; by simple, we mean without parts... These Monads are the true Atoms of nature, and, in fact, the Elements of things." (Pg. 251)
He asserts, "Therefore God alone (or the Necessary Being) has this prerogative that if he must necessarily exist, and, as nothing is able to prevent the possibility of that which involves no bounds, no negation, and consequently, no contradiction, this alone is sufficient to establish a priori his existence. We have, therefore, proved his existence through the reality of eternal truths." (Pg. 260-261) Later, he adds, "Thus although each Monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specifically pertains to it, and of which it constitutes the entelechy." (Pg. 265)
He states his famous "principle of Sufficient Reason, in virtue of which we believe that no fact can be real or existing and no statement true unless it has a sufficient reason why it should be thus and not otherwise. Most frequently, however, these reasons cannot be known by us." (Pg. 258)
Leibniz's philosophy (which, perhaps surprisingly, was treated very respectfully by the arch-rationalist Bertrand Russell) is less popular these days than his fellow rationalists Descartes and Spinoza; but some of this ideas (e.g., the Principle of Sufficient Reason) have had lasting influence; this is an excellent collection of his writings, and makes a useful introduction to his thought.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher; he developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton.
In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he wrote, "Against those who think that God might have made things better than he has... It seems to me that the consequences of such an opinion are wholly inconsistent with the glory of God... To show that an architect could have done better is to find fault with his work. Furthermore this opinion is contrary to the Holy Scriptures when they assure us of the goodness of God's work." (Pg. 5-6)
After observing that "God does nothing which is not orderly," he adds, "I use these comparisons to picture a certain imperfect resemblance to the divine wisdom, and to point out that which may at least raise our minds to conceive in some sort what cannot otherwise be expressed. I do not pretend at all to explain thus the great mystery upon which depends the whole universe." (Pg. 10-11)
He argues, "certain philosophers... have constructed a demonstration of God that is extremely imperfect. It must be, they say, that I have an idea of God, or of a perfect being, since I think of him and we cannot think without having ideas; now the idea of this being includes all perfections and since existence is one of these perfections, it follows that he exists... it is when he is assured of the possibility of a thing, that one can boast of having an idea of it. Therefore, the aforesaid argument proves that God exists, if he is possible. This is in fact an excellent privilege of the divine nature, to have need only of a possibility or an essence in order to actually exist, and it is just this which is called ens a se [`being out of itself"]." (Pg. 40-41)
Of miracles, he says, "These are a part of the general order and conform to the principal purposes of God and consequently, are involved in the concept of this universe, which is a result of these designs. Just as the idea of a building results from the purposes or plans of him who undertakes it, so the idea or concept of this world is a result of the designs of God considered as possible." (Pg. 109)
In his Correspondence, he asserts, "I maintain that every substance involves in its present state all its past and future states and even expresses the whole universe according to its point of view, since nothing is so far from anything else that there is no relation between them." (Pg. 233)
In his Monadology, he begins with the statement, "The Monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple substance, which goes to make up composites; by simple, we mean without parts... These Monads are the true Atoms of nature, and, in fact, the Elements of things." (Pg. 251)
He asserts, "Therefore God alone (or the Necessary Being) has this prerogative that if he must necessarily exist, and, as nothing is able to prevent the possibility of that which involves no bounds, no negation, and consequently, no contradiction, this alone is sufficient to establish a priori his existence. We have, therefore, proved his existence through the reality of eternal truths." (Pg. 260-261) Later, he adds, "Thus although each Monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specifically pertains to it, and of which it constitutes the entelechy." (Pg. 265)
He states his famous "principle of Sufficient Reason, in virtue of which we believe that no fact can be real or existing and no statement true unless it has a sufficient reason why it should be thus and not otherwise. Most frequently, however, these reasons cannot be known by us." (Pg. 258)
Leibniz's philosophy (which, perhaps surprisingly, was treated very respectfully by the arch-rationalist Bertrand Russell) is less popular these days than his fellow rationalists Descartes and Spinoza; but some of this ideas (e.g., the Principle of Sufficient Reason) have had lasting influence; this is an excellent collection of his writings, and makes a useful introduction to his thought.
November 14, 2025
some great points, at other times also suggesting some wild stuff.
February 14, 2026
Leibniz’s singular brand of idealism smacks of a haughty, obdurate mode of domination, an aloofness just as insulting to the suffering of our world today as it was to Voltaire's… For all that, I can not deny that I find his thinking almost seductively elegant, dazzling in its parsimony and in many ways rather radical in its content, even today.
Leibniz takes the divine perfections very, very seriously. Anything less than total and utter obedience to God’s necessarily perfect will—no matter how odious the situation on the ground may be—cannot and must not be tolerated. His theodicy resembles a subjugated, self-estranged inversion of Nietzsche’s eternal return — fate is confronted not in and through one’s ardent affirmation, but through one’s submission. Tellingly enough, Leibniz compares those who would dare complain like Voltaire to “dissatisfied subjects whose attitude is not very different from that of rebels”.
According to the perfect and self-sufficient arrangement of monads, Leibniz’s world admits of no variance, no chaos, no aberrations; God’s necessarily ordering of the world renders such a thought not just impossible but incomprehensible. By applying the principle of sufficient reason to the idea that our world was chosen from out of the infinite possible universes in the mind of God, Leibniz concludes that this sufficient reason, according to God’s perfection, must be that this universe in which we find ourselves is indeed itself the best of them all. The world of phenomena may appear ruled by discontinuity, irrationality, and schism, but, in esse, this is simply symptomatic of our finitude (which is itself responsible for sin); were we able to grasp the mind of God (Leibniz allows that the holy soul is better able to comprehend the divine mysteries) all the events of world history would ring out in perfect harmony, and all evil would disappear into the infinite patchwork of the good.
Here I notice not only a step in the direction of the Kantian limits upon reason (especially in the antimonies), but also the less conceptually sophisticated germs of what would become Hegel’s absolute—the identity of identity and non-identity—bringing the alienated, unknown mind of God down to earth in the immanence of Geist.
Famously, this all largely follows from Leibniz’s micrological metaphysics of the monad – deriving the “true Atoms of nature”, which, it must be stressed, seem to occupy a different plane from the material, ad infinitum divisibility of matter – Leibniz is no vulgar atomist, as it might initially appear. The monad is the only real substance, reflecting God and the universe from its unique, particular, and self-sufficient perspective. Each monad, or entelechy, is an “incorporeal automaton”, varying, by virtue of its capacity for desire, in its degree of perception—”the passing condition which involves and represents a multiplicity in the unity”—from the absolutely simple substance to the human soul; its concept contains all that has and all that will ever happen to it, expressing diachronic and spacial infinitude as a function of the idea that “nothing is so far from anything else that there is no relation between them”.
Such a notion of the particular’s infinite extension both in space and time embodies how Leibniz, like Hegel, understood the particular as an aspect of the universal, but here mediation is not found in the immediate interpenetration of the extreme terms (Hegel’s dialectical syllogism), but in the divine intervention of God. What Leibniz misses in his strictly emanationist account is the reciprocal relation between the particular (monad) and the universal (God) — the monad is “a living mirror”, but its reflection is passive and cannot influence the nature of that which determines it.
In light of the pressing Cartesian impasses in Leibniz’s day, the monad could be read as, in part, his attempt to resolve the pineal gland’s aporia without resorting to a primitive occasionalism. After reaffirming the divine guarantee of our clear and distinct perceptions, Leibniz conceptualises a rather bizarre theory of causality, confident that it clears up the relation between body and mind. When one substance "causes" an "effect" in another substance (and by extension, every substance in the universe), this merely reflects the former’s perfection over and above the latter’s relative imperfection – perfection here referring to the expression of the divine.
If we will recall, no monad actually interacts with any other monad without the intervention of God, who ensures their consistent and coherent interrelation. The soul, then, does not, strictly speaking, cause the movement of the body; rather, God arranges the body and soul such that when the soul desires change, the body independently changes its orientation. Whilst this theory of coincidence strikes many of us as both woefully inadequate and hopelessly arbitrary, I would here like to quote Leibniz in full on the subject. The following analogy is somewhat laborious and protracted in expression, but for whatever reason I find it utterly beautiful:
“To employ a comparison, I will say in regard to this concomitance, which I hold to be true, that it is like several bands of musicians or choirs separately taking up their parts and placed in such a way that they neither see nor hear one another, although they nevertheless, agree perfectly in following their notes, each one his own, in such a way that he who hears the whole finds in it a wonderful harmony much more surprising than if there were a connection between the performers. It is quite possible also that a person who is close by one of two such choirs could judge from the one what the other was doing, and would from such a habit (particularly if we supposed that he was able to hear his own choir without seeing it and to see the other without hearing it), that his imagination would come to his aid and he would no longer think of the choir where he was, but of the other, and he would take his own for an echo of the other, attributing to his only certain interludes, in which certain rules of symphony by which he understood the other did not appear, or else attributing to his own certain movements which he caused to be made from his side, according to certain plans that he thought were imitated by the other because of the inter-relationship which he found in the kind of melody, not knowing at all that those who were in the other choir were doing also something which corresponded according to their own plans”
A neat image, to be sure, but does this leave human autonomy? Even our very thoughts are dependent on the divine will! This seemingly intractable problem of freedom provides the animating (and somewhat tedious) disagreement between Leibniz and Arnauld, precipitated by Leibniz’s contention that Adam’s concept does in fact include all that would ever happen to him (and, by extension, the rest of humanity). Leibniz tries to subdue the troubling implications of this by asserting that, in essence, all he is really saying is that “the predicate is contained in the subject of true propositions”, but in this case the predicate is almost entirely unbounded by the usual limits of the concept.
He argues that the connection of events, whilst not necessary, is nonetheless certain – a distinction imposed in order to carve out space for freedom of thought and action that I can’t quite get on board with. Leibniz, then, doesn’t exactly succeed in developing a sustainable harmony between his moral, theological, and metaphysical efforts, but his wonderfully poised ambition is still a true delight to behold.
Leibniz takes the divine perfections very, very seriously. Anything less than total and utter obedience to God’s necessarily perfect will—no matter how odious the situation on the ground may be—cannot and must not be tolerated. His theodicy resembles a subjugated, self-estranged inversion of Nietzsche’s eternal return — fate is confronted not in and through one’s ardent affirmation, but through one’s submission. Tellingly enough, Leibniz compares those who would dare complain like Voltaire to “dissatisfied subjects whose attitude is not very different from that of rebels”.
According to the perfect and self-sufficient arrangement of monads, Leibniz’s world admits of no variance, no chaos, no aberrations; God’s necessarily ordering of the world renders such a thought not just impossible but incomprehensible. By applying the principle of sufficient reason to the idea that our world was chosen from out of the infinite possible universes in the mind of God, Leibniz concludes that this sufficient reason, according to God’s perfection, must be that this universe in which we find ourselves is indeed itself the best of them all. The world of phenomena may appear ruled by discontinuity, irrationality, and schism, but, in esse, this is simply symptomatic of our finitude (which is itself responsible for sin); were we able to grasp the mind of God (Leibniz allows that the holy soul is better able to comprehend the divine mysteries) all the events of world history would ring out in perfect harmony, and all evil would disappear into the infinite patchwork of the good.
Here I notice not only a step in the direction of the Kantian limits upon reason (especially in the antimonies), but also the less conceptually sophisticated germs of what would become Hegel’s absolute—the identity of identity and non-identity—bringing the alienated, unknown mind of God down to earth in the immanence of Geist.
Famously, this all largely follows from Leibniz’s micrological metaphysics of the monad – deriving the “true Atoms of nature”, which, it must be stressed, seem to occupy a different plane from the material, ad infinitum divisibility of matter – Leibniz is no vulgar atomist, as it might initially appear. The monad is the only real substance, reflecting God and the universe from its unique, particular, and self-sufficient perspective. Each monad, or entelechy, is an “incorporeal automaton”, varying, by virtue of its capacity for desire, in its degree of perception—”the passing condition which involves and represents a multiplicity in the unity”—from the absolutely simple substance to the human soul; its concept contains all that has and all that will ever happen to it, expressing diachronic and spacial infinitude as a function of the idea that “nothing is so far from anything else that there is no relation between them”.
Such a notion of the particular’s infinite extension both in space and time embodies how Leibniz, like Hegel, understood the particular as an aspect of the universal, but here mediation is not found in the immediate interpenetration of the extreme terms (Hegel’s dialectical syllogism), but in the divine intervention of God. What Leibniz misses in his strictly emanationist account is the reciprocal relation between the particular (monad) and the universal (God) — the monad is “a living mirror”, but its reflection is passive and cannot influence the nature of that which determines it.
In light of the pressing Cartesian impasses in Leibniz’s day, the monad could be read as, in part, his attempt to resolve the pineal gland’s aporia without resorting to a primitive occasionalism. After reaffirming the divine guarantee of our clear and distinct perceptions, Leibniz conceptualises a rather bizarre theory of causality, confident that it clears up the relation between body and mind. When one substance "causes" an "effect" in another substance (and by extension, every substance in the universe), this merely reflects the former’s perfection over and above the latter’s relative imperfection – perfection here referring to the expression of the divine.
If we will recall, no monad actually interacts with any other monad without the intervention of God, who ensures their consistent and coherent interrelation. The soul, then, does not, strictly speaking, cause the movement of the body; rather, God arranges the body and soul such that when the soul desires change, the body independently changes its orientation. Whilst this theory of coincidence strikes many of us as both woefully inadequate and hopelessly arbitrary, I would here like to quote Leibniz in full on the subject. The following analogy is somewhat laborious and protracted in expression, but for whatever reason I find it utterly beautiful:
“To employ a comparison, I will say in regard to this concomitance, which I hold to be true, that it is like several bands of musicians or choirs separately taking up their parts and placed in such a way that they neither see nor hear one another, although they nevertheless, agree perfectly in following their notes, each one his own, in such a way that he who hears the whole finds in it a wonderful harmony much more surprising than if there were a connection between the performers. It is quite possible also that a person who is close by one of two such choirs could judge from the one what the other was doing, and would from such a habit (particularly if we supposed that he was able to hear his own choir without seeing it and to see the other without hearing it), that his imagination would come to his aid and he would no longer think of the choir where he was, but of the other, and he would take his own for an echo of the other, attributing to his only certain interludes, in which certain rules of symphony by which he understood the other did not appear, or else attributing to his own certain movements which he caused to be made from his side, according to certain plans that he thought were imitated by the other because of the inter-relationship which he found in the kind of melody, not knowing at all that those who were in the other choir were doing also something which corresponded according to their own plans”
A neat image, to be sure, but does this leave human autonomy? Even our very thoughts are dependent on the divine will! This seemingly intractable problem of freedom provides the animating (and somewhat tedious) disagreement between Leibniz and Arnauld, precipitated by Leibniz’s contention that Adam’s concept does in fact include all that would ever happen to him (and, by extension, the rest of humanity). Leibniz tries to subdue the troubling implications of this by asserting that, in essence, all he is really saying is that “the predicate is contained in the subject of true propositions”, but in this case the predicate is almost entirely unbounded by the usual limits of the concept.
He argues that the connection of events, whilst not necessary, is nonetheless certain – a distinction imposed in order to carve out space for freedom of thought and action that I can’t quite get on board with. Leibniz, then, doesn’t exactly succeed in developing a sustainable harmony between his moral, theological, and metaphysical efforts, but his wonderfully poised ambition is still a true delight to behold.
February 22, 2022
The correspondence drags but I recommend the monadology. A convincing and optimistic outlook
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews