Leibniz on substance in the Discourse on Metaphysics

Dialectica, 2005

The paper examines three essays that Leibniz wrote in 1688, immediately after the composition of the Discourse on Metaphysics, one of his most organic philosophical works. The main topics which emerge from these essays are: the relationship between substance and accidents; the nature of accidents; and, more generally, the nature of abstract entities. Given that accidents’ nature is that of changing, Leibniz sees how hard it is to give an account of the relationship between substance and accidents that does not imply any change in the substance, when its accidents undergo a change. To find a way out of this problem, Leibniz assumes that abstract terms (whiteness, wisdom, etc.) do not name real properties or real parts of substances, and that any sentence containing real abstract terms can be rephrased as a sentence containing logical abstract terms, which do no imply any commitment to the existence of real properties. Coherently with this nominalistic attitude, Leibniz ends up, in the Theodicy and in his correspondence with Des Bosses, considering accidents as modes or internal modifications of the substance.

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2006

A historically persistent way of reading Leibniz regards him as some kind of conceptualist. According to this interpretation, Leibniz was either an ontological con-ceptualist or an epistemological conceptualist. As an ontological conceptualist, Leibniz is taken to hold the view that there exist only concepts. As an epistemological conceptualist, he is seen as believing that we think only with concepts. I argue against both conceptual-ist renditions. I confront the ontological conceptualist view with Leibniz's metaphysics of creation. If the ontological conceptualist interpretation were right, then Leibniz could not invoke compossibility as a criterion of creation. But since he does invoke compossibility as a criterion of creation, the ontological conceptualist approach cannot be right. I confront the epistemological conceptualist interpretation with Leibniz's assertion of non-conceptual content. Since Leibniz acknowledges non-conceptual content at least when it comes to metaphysical knowledge, Leibniz could not have been an epistemological conceptualist either. So, Leibniz could not have been a conceptualist at all.

The Leibniz Review, 2014

We argue in this paper that Leibniz’s characterization of a substance as “un être” in his correspondence with Arnauld stresses the per se unity of substance rather than oneness in number. We employ two central lines of reasoning. The first is a response to Mogens Lærke’s claim that one can mark the difference between Spinoza and Leibniz by observing that, while Spinoza’s notion of substance is essentially non-numerical, Leibniz’s view of substance is numerical. We argue that Leibniz, like Spinoza, qualifies the substance as “one” primarily in a non-numerical sense, where non-numerical means per se unity or qualitative uniqueness. The second line of reasoning suggests that the term “one” should be understood as a-unity-presupposed-by-multiplicity in two senses: a) externally, in the sense of being presupposed by higher complex structures, such as aggregates, and, b) internally, in the sense of having itself a complex structure. We develop an analogy along these lines between the role the notion of a fundamental unity plays in Leibniz’s view of numbers and his view of substance. In other words, we suggest that looking at the role units play in Leibniz’s view of mathematics can shed some light on the role they play in his metaphysics.

P Lodge and T Stoneham eds. Locke and Leibniz on Substance (Routledge), 2015

1985

The subject of creation has long been recognized as central to Leibniz's philosophy. 1 In general, the tendency has been to understand Leibniz's view of the creation of the universe as the actualization of a set of possible substances which stand together in a relation of pre-established harmony. 2 From there, scholarly interest generally seems to shift to questions concerning Leibniz's views on such related subjects as, e.g. the reasons behind God's choice to create one set of possibles rather than another, or the naturenecessary or contingent-of the relation between the possibles which God creates or actualizes. Undoubtedly these are all areas of serious and absorbing interest. Still, one concern which appears to have been overlooked is the quite literal question of how Leibniz views God's action in the creation of possibles in the first place. What does God actually do when he creates? What does this actualization of possibles actually amount to? In what follows I wish to detail the specifics of Leibniz's account of God's creation/actualization of the world. My main purpose in doing this is to draw attention to a little-noted but important feature of Leibniz's metaphysics. This is that Leibniz's view of creation is one which he uses specifically and intentionally to support his well-known view that existing things have their own force or power which is the source of their activity. 1 Nicholas Rescher's comment is representative: "Leibniz, more than any other modern philosopher, took seriously the idea of a creation of the universe, giving it a centrally important place in his system" (Leibniz:

2007

This work presents Leibniz’s subtle approach to possibility and explores some of its consequential repercussions in his metaphysics. Ohad Nachtomy presents Leibniz’s approach to possibility by exposing his early suppositions, arguing that he held a combinatorial conception of possibility. He considers the transition from possibility to actuality through the notion of agency; the role divine agency plays in actualization; moral agency and human freedom of action and the relation between agency and necessity in comparison to Spinoza. Nachtomy analyzes Leibniz’s notion of nested, organic individuals and their peculiar unity, in distinction from his notion of aggregates. Nachtomy suggests that Leibniz defined possible individuals through combinatorial rules that generate unique and maximally consistent structures of predicates in God’s understanding and that such rules may be viewed as programs for action. He uses this definition to clarify Leibniz’s notions of individuation, relations and his distinction between individual substances and aggregates as well as the notion of organic individuals, which have a nested structure to infinity. Nachtomy concludes that Leibniz’s definition of a possible individual as a program of action helps clarifying the unity and simplicity of nested individuals. The book thus reveals a thread that runs through Leibniz’s metaphysics: from his logical notion of possible individuals to his notion of actual, nested ones.

In some remarks from his later years, Leibniz connects Averroes's views on a unique active intellect with Spinoza's substance monism. The present article discusses the question of whether Averroes's notion of a unique active intellect could be understood as one of the sources of Leibniz's early substance monism. It will be argued that the early Leibniz was familiar with a variety of diverging interpretations of Averroes. Some of these ascribe individuation to a plurality of substantial forms and analyze the dependence of human intellectual activities on the active intellect in terms of 'assisting' causation. Other interpretations do imply versions of substance monism, either with respect to human minds or generally with respect to natural particulars. However, these versions of substance monism are compatible with versions of substance pluralism, either because a plurality of animal minds with activities of their own is acknowledged or because the notion of substance is regarded as an equivocal concept, corresponding to the different degrees in which created beings participate in the divine being. Considering the possible impact of these diverging interpretations on the early Leibniz will point towards the relevance of distinguishing the notions of substance as active being and of substance as independent being.