فلسفه لایب‌نیتس

by Robert Latta, فاطمه مینایی (Translator)

Monadologie is one of Gottfried Leibniz’ works that best define his philosophy, monadism. Written toward the end of his life in order to support a metaphysics of simple substances, it's thus about formal atoms which aren't physical but metaphysical.
The Monadology is written in 90 logical paragraphs, each generally following from the previous. Its name is due to the fact that Leibniz, imitating Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno & Viscountess Anne Conway, wanted to keep together the meanings of monas (Greek, unity) & logos (treatise/science/word/reason). Therefore, the Monadology came to be the science of the unity.
The text is dialectically reasoned, facing questions & problems helping readers to advance. For instance, it can be accepted that composed bodies are something derived, extended, phenomenal or repeated according to simple substances (later expressed by Kant's phenomena-noumena dichotomy). Is the soul a monad? If affirmative, then the soul is a simple substance. If it's an aggregate of matter, then it cannot be a monad.
Leibniz, 1st using the term in 1696, ties almost all ancient & early modern meanings of "monad" together in his metaphysical hypothesis of infinitely many simple substances. Monads are everywhere in matter & are either noticeably active (awake), when they form the central or governing monad, which is the center of activity & of perception within an organism, or they are only weakly active (asleep), when they belong to the countless subordinate monads w/in or outside of an organic body. Monads are the sources of any spontaneous action unexplainable in mechanical terms. They constitute the unity of any individual. All monads are living mirrors representing the whole universe, because of the lack of any vacuum they have an irrecognizably obscure recognition of every body in the world; & they appetite, which means they strive from one perception to the next. Nevertheless all monads differ in the degree of clarity & distinction with which they perceive the surrounding world according to the organic body in which they're incorporated. The most fundamental level in the hierarchy of monads are the entelechies, which are genuine centers of a non-physical force, namely a spontaneous activity in organisms. If these centers are capable of sentiment & memory, as in animals, they're called souls. The highest level of monads are souls endowed with reason, or spirits, reflectively self-conscious.
Leibniz characterizes monads as metaphysical points, animate points or metaphysical atoms. In contrast to those physical atoms postulated by classic atomism they aren't extended & thus aren't bodies. As he explains in letters to Burchard de Volder & Bartholomew des Bosses, this doesn't imply that monads are immaterial. They rather consist of two inseparable principles constituting together a complete substance or monad: the innermost center of a monad, i.e. the mathematical point, where the entelechy, soul or spirit is located, is the monad's inner form. This form has no existence in itself, but is incarnated in a physical point or an infinitesimally small sphere, the "vehicle of the soul". This hull consists of a special matter, called primary matter (materia prima-matière primitive).
The problem that monads are supposed to have some kind of matter on the one hand, but to have neither any parts nor extension on the other, may be explained by the dynamic nature of primary matter. Leibniz conceives primary matter in contrast to the 2nd matter (materia secunda), i.e. extended & purely phenomenal bodies. Primary matter is a very fine, fluid & elastic matter, which he identifies in his early "Hypothesis physica nova" (1671) with aether, spiritus or matter of light, flowing anywhere thru every body. Strictly taken, this primary matter or matter of light doesn't consist in "extension, but in the desire to extension": "The nature of light strives to extend itself".
The animate centre of a monad cannot exist w/out the encasing coating fluid of light, because 1stly monads w/out this passive principle couldn't perceive any impressions from the exterior world, & because 2ndly they'd have no limitation of power. "It follows that God can never strip any created substance bare of its primary matter, even tho by his absolute power he can take off her 2ndary matter; otherwise he would make it become pure activity, which can only be himself." Only God is free from any matter, he's the creating 1st monad, out of which all created monads derive by continuous effulgurations. The punch-line of the monad or metaphysical point is its dynamical unity of the mathematical centre & the encasing physical point: The fluid ethereal sphere of the monad is extended, has parts & can be destroyed, but in every deformation or division of the sphere the mathematical point in which the soul is incarnated shall outlive within the smallest remaining fluid. Indestructible therefore isn't the whole sphere consisting in matter of lig...

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, Classics, 18th Century, Essays

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1714

Reviews

[امیر لطیفی · Rating 3 out of 5]

درباره‌ی کتاب
کتاب در چند بخش نوشته شده است؛
- بخش اول مقدمه و مرور زندگی لایب‌نیتس است.
- بخش دوم اندیشه‌ها و فلسفه‌ی لایب‌نیتس را به صورت کلی مرور می‌کند. این بخش نه به اندازه‌ی کافی کوتاه و کلی‌ست، نه به صورت کافی جزئی و مشروح.
- بخش سوم برای بررسی تفضیلی اندیشه‌های لایب‌نیتس است. این بخش کاملاً منسجم نوشته شده است. تقریباً چیزی را ناگفته نمی‌گذارد.
- بخش چهارم نگاهی تاریخی و انتقادی دارد به لایب‌نیتس. این بخش خواندنی است و در آن از خیلی‌ها صحبت می‌شود از جمله دکارت، اسپینوزا، کانت، فیخته و هگل.

فارغ ازا اینکه فهم فلسفه‌ی لایب‌نیتس به خودی‌ خود چقدر سخت یا سهل است، این کتاب بهتر هم می‌توانست نوشته شود. بخش دوم کتاب چندان مفید نبود. مشکل دیگر پاورقی‌های پرشماری بودند که گاهی یک صفحه را پر می‌کردند.

اگر با لایب‌نیتس آشنا هستید و قرار نیست این کتاب را بخوانید، همچنان نگاه تاریخی و انتقادی این کتاب در فصل چهارم برای‌تان جذاب خواهد بود.

لایب‌نیتس در ارتباط با دیگر فلاسفه
الهیات لایب‌نیتس متاثر از اسپینوزا و دکارت است. آشنایی با این دو فیلسوف در فهم لایب‌نیتس بسیار کمک خواهد کرد. ضمناً در این کتاب بارها به نوشته‌های لایب‌نیتس در کتابی اشاره می‌شود که وی در نقد یکی از آثار جان لاک نوشته است. لایب‌نیتس از دو اصل بسیار سود جسته است: اصل جهت کافی که اسپینوزا بسیار به آن پرداخته است و اصل امتناع تناقض که ارسطو فراوان از آن گفته است.

حد و خودآگاهی
لایب‌نیتس سکون را حرکت بسیار جزئی می‌داند. در میان هر دو چیزی، بی‌نهایت چیز دیگر را تصور می‌کند. اینها ضمن خواندن کتاب مرتب من را یاد حد ریاضی می‌انداخت که در مدرسه می‌خواندیم. او همچنین چیزها را به زنده و مرده تقسیم نمی‌کند و تنها میزان زنده بودن را متفاوت می‌داند. چنین پنداری ضمن هم‌پوشانی با ایده‌ی همه‌روان‌انگاری (Panpsychism) اسپینوزا، در بسط مفاهیم مربوط به آگاهی و خودآگاهی هم کاربرد دارد.

منادولوژی
مناد‌ها و منادولوژی از ابتدایی‌ترین و برای من بی‌مزه‌ترین مفاهیم دستگاه فلسفی لایب‌نیتس هستند:
لایب‌نیتس جهان را متشکل از ذرات بسیار کوچک و هماهنگِ خداگونه به نام «منادها» می‌داند. منادها منفذی ندارند که بتوانند تاثیر بپذیریند یا روی یکدیگر تاثیر بگذارند. هر مناد بیانگر فقط یک قسمت از جهان به نحو متمایز است، همان قسمتی که در ارتباط است با جسمی که مناد برابر آن است. منادها یک عالم را از نظرگاه‌های مختلف ادراک میکنند.

لایب‌نیتس و نیچه
جذابیت لایب‌نیتس برای من نگاه خاکستری‌اش به همه‌ چیز از جمله تعاریف، چارجوب‌های موجود و فلسفه‌ی پیش از خودش است. به نظر می‌آید در دوره‌ای لازم بوده کسی چنین میاندارانه دنبال آشتی باشد. همانطور که در تقابل با این آشتی‌جویی‌، لازم بوده روزی کسی بیاید مثل نیچه و لگد بزند زیر بساط فلسفه‌‌ی پیش از خودش. ولی در نهایت فکر می‌کنم با صلح یا جنگ، دیالکتیک باید ادامه داشته باشد و نمی‌توان گفت لایب‌نیتس، نیچه یا هر کسی دیگری توانسته‌اند ما را به جایی برسانند که جای رسیدن است و پهن کردن فرش و بی‌خیال نشستن و گوش دادن به صدای شستن یک ظرف زیر شیر مجاور.

[I'm Kian · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب برشی از کتاب مفصل ِ اصلیست
واقعا منتقدانه بحث کرده.مروری هم میتونید به اسپینوزا و علی الخصوص دکارت هم داشته باشید.به نظرم خیلی کتاب مفیدیه.لایب نیتس واقعا تاثیر گذار بوده

[isabela baldini · Rating 5 out of 5]

o melhor de todos os mundos possíveis é um mundo em que eu posso ler leibniz

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it the most logically sound philosophy? No. But is Leibniz and his Monad-theory the most hilarious bit of rationalism? Abso-friggin-lutely.

You're monads! I'm monads! We're all monads! Monads are monads!

[Σταμάτης Καρασαββίδης · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this as a part time reading since it was extremely easy to read and to comprehend, simple and precise language with good translation. Interesting system of thought overall, which, while i had some disagreements and instances over sprcific things, they were all things that Spinoza already went over and corrected in his masterwork "ETHICA".
Good, short, easy and a very nice read.

4/5

[lindsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a little raindrop? Cute.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Monodology twice. First, in college, quickly from a collection of essays and with little discussion. Second, in graduate school, with more attention. I didn't get more than a glimmer of its meaning and I doubt the teacher understood it much better than we did, but I thought it was a brilliant alternative to prevailing metaphysical assumptions. Imagine a world predicated on such assumptions! (Perhaps Borges did.)

Ideally, after some serious grounding in the logico-mathematical underpinnings of their thinking, a grounding that might be given in a series of lectures, one should read Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz together, as all three of them were much concerned with the mind/body problem. Afterwards, and with some prior attention to Hume, one could read Kant. The History of Classical Modern Philosophy course I took at Loyola tried to do this, but much too quickly and with, I believe, not enough understanding on the part of its teacher of either Spinoza or Leibniz.

[Julie Hannier · Rating 4 out of 5]

livre très honnête, l’idée de la monade est révolutionnaire, franchement, Leibniz a pondu un truc vraiment pas mal. Je dirais pas que c’est le meilleur bouquin de philo, mais quand même, c’est vraiment bien

[Henrik Haapala · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This is the best of all possible worlds.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

[Leo46 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely mind-numbing read. 90 paragraphs of going in and out of thinking you understand Leibniz and not understanding him at all. He's basically describing a system to perceive the world in terms of these monads that discursively change and actualize in both appearance and essence (in terms of what types of monads they are) on the basis of plenum. This text really helps understand the father of "idealism," or at least the important idealism of the modern period that got dismantled post Hegel. I really don't know what rating to give this because it's obviously great and truly profound sometimes, but it's honestly not written optimally; perhaps I'll change the score later if I revisit the text.

[Tohid hadinejad · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب به صورت کلی به موضوعات مطروحه در فلسفه لایپ نیتس می پرداز. زندگی او را در ابتدای کار بررسی می کند و سپس به سراغ آرای اصلی وی می رود و درنهایت کلیات مهم فلسفه او را به میان می کشد. نظریاتش و اختلاف وی با دکارت و اسپینوزا را به خوبی نشان می دهد و جوهرشناسی وی را به خوبی به بحث می گذارد در کل می توان گفت مطالعه کتاب برای کسانی که می خواهند به آرای وی آشنایی پیدا کنند خوب است ولی بهتر از پیش از آن در مورد نظرات دکارت و اسپینوزا در مورد جوهر مطالعه کنند هر چند که کتاب خود توضیحاتی در این باب دارد.

[Kev Nickells · Rating 5 out of 5]

For reasons of spending a lot of time thinking about code in my dayjob, I wanted to go to the origin (per se) of 'monads'. To see what the metaphor was, or how the monad that is typically 'mathematical' gets applied to a broader context. And there's a few other essays attached.

Gottfried spends a lot of time being catty about Descartes. Which is great. It's very much 'of its time' philosophy but this is just prior to what you might call the specialisation of the field - Theology, mathematics, metaphysics, physics and probably a few more subjects all curdle up together. Whether the arguments are convincing or not (which seems a neuter question now) it's a fascinating way of constructing a coherent universe. Objects are considered in terms of their extensions, acting forces. The God-ness or otherwise of an object in space is important to resolve. You wouldn't write this book now simply because so much of that context is occluded from view, and so many prepositions are long-settled (the nature of gravity and so on).

The monad as a kind of in-divisible acting agent that inheres Godlike properties is particularly interesting - I hadn't really considered that a large part of the contemporary moral discussion over abortion, for instance, finds its reflection here. If one considers a soul to exist, if one operates with that as a preposition, then one must arguably see the soul in terms of coming-to-existence, and that must happen 'at some point'. That is to say, if we want to argue in favour of something like the soul, we would still think in terms dictated (or at least shadowed in) Leibniz's monadology. For my own clarity - it isn't _teleology_ that dictates those modes of thought but rather _entelechy_, which is to say also that Aristotle haunts a lot of normative epistemics.

I don't have good resolutions to those aporia and I've been reading these things for a long old time.

Anyway - it's a lush wee book; I do miss spending time in the fussy world of pre-enlightenment. I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone that doesn't already have that itch to scratch, but this is a lush, perspicacious thinker rendered with a lush, perspecacious translation.

[Marco Sán Sán]

No había leído nada de Leibniz, no me deja claro si es un esclavo del pensamiento, lo que él llama razón, o si fue capaz de percibir la correlación entre sensación y pensamiento resultante de la percepción y finalmente la realidad que deriva en la razón, ósea la descripción del entorno.

Finalmente me da la intuición que motivado por Spinoza intenta dar síntesis a eso que él mismo Spinoza deja abierto a lo inabarcable: Dios. Para así instrumentalizar a la razón y sea simplemente percibida. Esas ambiciones...

[Frank Landis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Monadology does not describe a philosophy. It is a metaphysical speculation on how the universe operates. It is the best words that Leibniz could find to describe the universe.
Leibniz was a great thinker on many different topics, making his view important to be familiar with and to understand.
His description helped me find views of the universe that are profoundly deep and meaningful to me.
We are looking at the same universe as he did. Look deeper and try to see what he did.

[Serhii Rafalskyi]

Філософські есеї Ляйбніца годилося би читати у 7-9 класах середньої школи разом із книжками з основами біології, механіки та динаміки, паралельно вираховуючи диференційні рівняння.

Ляйбніц — одна з важливих тропок до Дельоза.

[Presiam Milchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Monadology is the best argument for the existence of God I have ever come across

[ana carolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

digamos que é meio fofo

[amelia janina skrzypczak]

coś pięknego...

[Rasul A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny logic - clearly a genius but Monads are a strange topic. Probably should re-read.

6.5/10

[Azzam To'meh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant read which attempts to synthesize much of the philosophy occuring in the days of Leibnez. It is one of the smoothest philosophical reads I have come to encounter, except that it becomes a bit bad and escalates too quickly at the end, taking to many tennents forgranted. However, the very idea of monads is indeed strange, that cannot be doubted. A very smooth read though...

[eesenor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leibniz presents his theory that this is 'the best of all possible worlds'.

[Tom Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to like Leibniz, I really do. I like his project of pulling Western metaphysics out of the "substantial forms" mess. But I can't help feeling that his ontology is just so much garbage.

[Steve Heikkila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best of all possible books on early modern metaphysics.

[Reuben Slade · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is essential is that the monad in a teleological principle, that the monad is written against Spinoza's final cause.

[Mjalili]

instead