On Leibniz's Monadology
Leibniz's Monadology (Process Theology)
Monad: active indivisible substances that have innate within them the ‘Reason’ for all their determinations (creative evolution?). Leibniz uses corporeal mechanicalism (metaphysics) to go deeper than Descartes did. Leibniz says Descartes succumbed to the use of Occult forces to explain away his Mechanicalism (Mechanical Universe), because he refused to go deeper into the metaphysics of the mechanics at play deep in the material. Descartes thought of material (extension) as more of a dumb (demiurge?) unintelligent occult act (forces are the word scientists explain away tough metaphysics). Leibniz revives the material (extension) through his Monadology (the five criteria of substance):
Leibniz’s first principled reason against Descartes - “If all that there is in bodies is extension and the position of the parts, then when two bodies come into contact and move on together after the contact, that one which was in motion will carry along the body at rest without losing any of its velocity, and the difference in the sizes of the bodies will effect no change,” - this is contrary to experience. A body in motion which comes into contact with one at rest loses some of its velocity and its direction is modified, which would not happen if the body were purely passive. “Higher conceptions must therefore be added to extension, namely, the conceptions of substance, action and force; these latter carry the idea that which suffers action, acts reciprocally and that that which acts is reacted upon.”
Leibniz’s second principled reason against Descartes - every philosophy which is exclusively mechanical denies change (Parmenides) and to hold that everything is changeless and that there are only modifications of position and displacement in space or motion. Leibniz claims that motion itself is a change and should have its reason in the being which moves or which is moved, for even passive motion must correspond to something in the essence of the body moved. Difference of corporeal elements through form, this form, position, motion, and all the extrinsic modifications of bodies should emanate from an internal principle analogous to that which Aristotle calls nature. “Extension is an attribute which cannot constitute a complete being from which it can be obtained neither action nor change; it expresses merely a present condition but in no case the past or future, as the conception of a substance should.” (Letter to Arnauld) Extension is frozen in time, a dead concept (static).
Extension cannot be substance, on the contrary it presupposes substance. “Aside from extension there must be a subject which is extended, that is, a substance to which continuity appears (of duration?). For extension signifies only a continued repetition or multiplication of that which is expanded, a plurality, a continuity or co-existence of parts and consequently it does not suffice to explain the real nature of expanded or repeated substance whose conception precedes that of repetition.” Extension seems to suggest it’s simply a repeated static process, a plurality of extensions then appear but this fails to explain the real nature of the repeated static process whose conception comes before that repeated static process.
The conception of substance necessarily implies the idea of unity. Two stones far apart do not form a single substance, even if we soldered them together we would still see them differently in our mind. Every compound is no more a single substance than is a pile of sand or a sack of wheat - the employees of a company form a single substance. “Why do many rings when interlaced to form a chain compose a veritable substance rather than when there are openings so that they can be taken apart? There were fictions of the mind.” A compound is never a substance and in order to find the real substance we must attain unity or the indivisible. To say there are no unities is to say that matter has no elements, in other words that it is not made up of substance but is a pure phenomenon like a rainbow. This concludes that either matter has no substantial reality or else it must be admitted that it is reducible to simple and consequently unextended elements, called Monads. The idea of Monads (substance pluralism) allows us to conceive properly of the idea of unity.
Leibniz brings forth another argument for his theory of Monads: the essence of every substance (monad) is in force, which fact is as true of the soul as of the body. It can be proved a priori. Is it not evident that a being really exists only insofar as it acts? (Creative decision, Whitehead). A being absolutely passive would be a pure nothing and would involve a contradiction; or by hypothesis, receiving everything externally and having nothing through itself, it would have no characteristic, no attribute, and hence would be a pure nothing. The mere fact of existence therefore presupposes a certain force and a certain energy.
Leibniz goes so far as to say no substance (monad) can be passive. Passion in a substance is nothing else than an action considered bound to another action in another substance. Every substance (monad) acts only through itself and cannot act upon any other (think Nietzsche’s view of the world as forces, forces act only through itself [never externally] and through the will to power [differential element] relates to other forces [Monad through immanence]). The monads have no windows through which to receive anything from outside. They do not undergo any external action and consequently are never passive. All that can take place inside a monad is the process of spontaneous activity through development of their own essence (flower blooming). All that there is then, is that the states of each one correspond to the states of all the others. When we consider one of these states in one monad as corresponding to a certain other state in another monad, in such a way that the latter is the condition of the former, the first state is called a passion and the second is called an action. This is to say that between all monad-substances is a pre-established harmony, in accordance with which each one represents or expresses the whole universe (Alan Watts, we are each the universe waving). But this is ever only the development of its own activity.
Spinoza vs Leibniz
Leibniz restored to created substances the activity which the Cartesian school had too much sacrificed - Leibniz attempted to create a clearer distinction between the created (natured nature) and the Creator (naturing nature). Substance Pluralism: he justly remarked that the more the activity of the created things is diminished, the more necessary becomes the intervention of God, in such a way that if all activity in created things is suppressed, then we must say that it is God who brings everything in them to pass and who is at the same time their being and their action (operari et esse). How do Spinoza and Leibniz differ then? Would we not thus make nature the life and the development of the divine nature? In this hypothesis, nature is reduced down to a mass of modes - of which God (Monad the Godhead) is the substance. God is therefore all that there is of reality in bodies (extension) as well as in spirits (thought, mind/world-mind). To connect Spinoza to Leibniz we will need to consider the aforementioned five fundamental reasons and consider a few more things.
Those who deny that the essence of bodies is only in force, either admit the vacuum with the Atomists, ancient (against Parmenides) and modern, or else like the Cartesians they do not admit it. Let’s analyze both the atomist position and the Cartesian position.
Atomists
The Atomists, disciples of Democritus and Epicurus, the universe is composed of two elements, the vacuum and the plenum, on the one hand space and on the other hand bodies. Bodies are reducible to a certain number of solid ‘corpuscles’ (scientific term for a minute body or cell in an organism), indivisible, with differing forms, heavy and animated by an essential and ‘spontaneous motion’. These are the atoms which by their coming together constitute bodies as a whole. In Quantum Mechanics, there are electrons and holes, that is to say an electron and a position in space that there is no electron but could fit an electron if were to move into the position. This ‘hole’ concept is an empty space and is very useful for electrical engineering formulas involving transistors and their functionality. For the atomists, atoms occupy an adequate sized space for themselves, which have exactly the same ‘extension’ and the same forms as the respective atom. If at the moment an atom becomes motionless in some place we imagine lines drawn following its contours (like an object being traced for transference). Is it not clear that if the atom were removed, we should have preserved its ‘effigy’, hole or a sort of silhouette - its geometric form upon a foundation of empty space? We should obtain thus a portion of space, a hole, in contrast with the full atom which was there before.
Now let’s look at how the Atomist might view the atom/hole concept. How would an atomist distinguish the full atom from the hole? What are the characteristics that may be found in one and not in the other? Is that the atom is being extended but the hole is not? No, for the hole is extended just like the full atom. They both have exactly the same form as well. Do they differ on being indivisible? No, because it is still more difficult to understand the divisibility of space than of the body. Everything that depends on extension is the same in the full atom and the empty atom (hole). But this empty atom (hole) is not a body and contains nothing corporeal; therefore extension is not the essence of bodies and perhaps does not constitute a part of this essence. May we say that it is the motion which distinguishes the full atom from the empty atom (hole)? Well before beginning to move, the atom must have already been something - because by definition that which is nothing in itself can neither be at rest, nor in motion. Motion, therefore, is a dependent and subordinate phenomenon which already presupposes a defined essence. If we examine this carefully we will see that what really distinguishes the full atom from the empty atom (hole) is its solidity or weight. Neither solidity nor weight, however, are modifications of extension - both come from force. It is accordingly, force not extension which constitutes the essence of the body.
Cartesians
The Cartesians (spiritually as well incidentally enough) are unwilling to admit the possibility of a vacuum (empty atom) and maintain that all space is full - the demonstration is still more simple, for we may ask what filled space, taken in its entirety, differs from empty space taken in its entirety. Both are infinite; both are ideally divisible and both are really indivisible; both are susceptible of modalities in form or of geometrically defined forms. Perhaps it will be claimed that in full space the particles are movable and can ‘supplant’ one another; in this case we are back in the preceding line of argument and we shall ask in what these movable particles are distinguished from the immovable particles of space among which they move (Parmenides). Thus the Cartesians, like the Atomists, will be obliged to recognize that the plenum (bodies, extensions) is distinguished from the vacuum only by:
Resistance
Solidity
Motion
Activity
All equaling into a total concept ‘Force’
Berkeleyans
Leibnizian Idealism differs from Berkeleyan Idealism, Berkeleyeleyan idealism is a superficial one which does not hold up under examination: it takes the body for when I have reduced the whole universe to a dream of my mind and to an expansion of myself the question will still remain: from where does this dream come from and what are the causes which have produced in me such a complicated hallucination. These causes would be outside of me and would go beyond me on every side; it would therefore be very inappropriate for me to call them myself, for the I is strictly that of which I have consciousness. The Fichtean Ich, which by reaction against itself thus produces the nicht-ich is only a complicated and artificial ‘beating around the bush’ for saying in a paradoxical form that there is a not-I (hole, anatman). At most, we can conjecture with the absolute idealism that the I and the not-I are the only two faces of one and the same being, which involves them both to an infinite activity; but we thus reach a position very far from the idealism of Berkeley.
Leibnizians
Leibnizian Idealism can be shown a priori that matter taken in itself is something ideal and super-sensible, at least to those who admit a divine intelligence. For it will be readily granted that God does not know matter by means of the senses; for it is an axiom in metaphysics that God has no senses and consequently cannot have sensations. God cannot be warm or cold; he cannot see colors – he is pure intelligence (world-mind, St. Augustus used Plato’s theory of forms here) and can conceive only the purely intelligible (infinite attributes, humans [Cogitos, minds] finitely possessing only thought/extension); not that he is ignorant of the phenomena of nature, only that he knows them in their intelligible reasons and not through their sensible impressions, by means of which creatures (natured nature) are aware of them. Sensibility supposes a subject with senses, organs and nerves, that is, it is a relation between created things (entities, natured natures). From God’s point-of-view, matter is not sensible; it is, as the Germans say, übersinnlich. The conclusion is easy to draw from this perspective, namely, that God, being absolute intelligence, necessarily sees things as they are, and conversely the things in themselves are such as he sees them. Matter is, accordingly, such in itself as God sees it, but he sees it only in its ideal and intelligible essence; where we see that matter (extension) is an intelligible something and not something sensible (modes of extension are sensible, not the attribute extension itself).
To be sure we may not conclude from this point that the essence of matter (body) does not consist in extension, for it could be maintained that extension is an object of pure intelligence quite as well as force. But without taking up the difficulty of disengaging extension from every sensible element, I wish to establish only one thing, that Leibniz cannot be reproached with idealizing matter – since this must be done in every system that admits a divine Logos and a foreordaining reason.
Euler and Pythagoras
Euler criticized Leibniz’s Monadological system, his principle objection to Leibniz being the impossibility of composing an extended whole out of non-extended elements. Euler says the necessary consequence of Leibniz’s system is to deny the reality of extension and of space, and therefore launches into a difficult idealistic labyrinth. I believe it is possible to separate the system of monads from the system of the ideality of space. We can do so by inverting Pythagoras: Pythagoras says bodies are composed of two elements:
The intervals (διαστήματα)
The monads (μονάδες)
To Pythagoras, the monads were mere geometric points, but for Leibniz they are active points that are radiating centers of activity/energies. Forces are what constitute the essence of the body, not extension (Deleuze-Nietzsche). For let us suppose with the Atomists, someone like Newton let’s say, the reality of space, vacuums, and atoms. It is no more difficult to conceive of monads in space than of atoms; a point of indivisible activity might be at a certain point of space and a collection of points of activity would constitute the mass which we call a body. Now, even if we grant that these points of activity are separated by space, yet when they were taken together they might produce upon the senses the impression of continuous space. Let’s take a table (body) for example, everyone knows that there are forces, that is to say, vacuums, between the parts (Newton Occult Forces - ultimately unexplainable by Newton’s own system therefore euphemized). These vacuums escape our sense organs (Buddha-nature), thus appearing to us that the bodies are continuous (two rocks soldered into one, two entities/monads), like a circle described by spinning a sparkler firework in the air.
Admittedly it is difficult to regard into space forces non extended and consequently having no relation to space, but monads (plural substances) can still ‘exist’. It cannot be said, however, by those who consider the soul as a non extended force (anatman) AND as an individual substance (atman), for they are obliged to recognize that it is in space although in its essence it has no relation to space; therefore, there is no contradiction for them in holding that a simple force (monad) is in space. To flip this though by denying that the ‘soul’ is in space and putting it in the body instead, is it not clear that this would be attributing to the soul a character which is true only of God? Those who consider the soul as a divine idea - an eternal form temporarily united to an individual - might say this. Thus regarded, as with the idealists or Spinoza, the soul is not in space. But it must be asked, if the soul is represented as an individual and created substance (natured nature and naturing nature, pantheist vs panentheist) how could it be thought of except as in space and in the body to which it is united? Still more, therefore, in the case of monads if we admit that they may be in space then the appearance of extension is explained without difficulty. However, the monads that compose the body (the whole totality of monadic elements comprising it) cannot be said to be feeling, thinking, or willing. A distinction can be made but also similar characteristics of the two can still be understood. The atoms for instance, have they not in common with the soul, existence, indestructibility, self-identity? And does the argument of the identity of the ego in contrast with the changing nature of organized matter, cease to be valid, because the atom is quite as self-identical as the soul? Atoms and the soul are both single, indivisible substances and if this common character does not prevent their being distinguished, one must ask then why have in common a character essential to all substance, specifically, the attribute of activity? Here a startling revelation occurs with a bolder take on Leibniz’s monadological system being compatible with a type of Eastern reincarnation type of philosophy of mind - all monads, while not feeling, thinking, willing, in the sense of their particular modalities (human vs animal, Bergson’s instinct vs intelligence), could still possess a type of ‘thinking’ soul. This is a type of ontological framework that could place doubt onto a subject-object type framework that humans use to subjugate their environment (nature) - especially needed in a time where through the mediation of Capitalism, Nature suffers.
Leibniz places doubt onto the Mechanical Universe mythological framework (ontological presuppositions), but an objection that the Leibnizian excites is that the system of monads weakens the argument of a first mover, since it implies that matter can be endowed with active force and consequently with spontaneous motion. Leibniz does not meet this objection in a convincing manner and says merely that a refuge must be made to God to explain the coordination of movements. This, however, avoids the point, for the coordination has no relation to the argument of the first mover, only to that of the ordering and of the arrangement which is a completely different matter (creativity, logos). We may remark here that Leibniz, in order to establish the reality of the force in corporeal substance, much more frequently uses the fact of resistance to motion, than that of the so-called spontaneous motion (not to object to that though). For example, one of his principle arguments is that a moving body, when it comes into contact with another, loses motion in proportion, α, to the resistance which the other opposes to it, and this is what he calls inertia (physics term that can be described better with Calculus than with Algebra). It is evident, therefore, that if a substance in repose reveals itself by its resistance to motion, the argument of the first mover, far from being weakened, is on the contrary strengthened. Even if a spontaneous disposition to movement, be admitted to the elements of bodies, yet experience compels us to recognize that this disposition passes over into action only upon the excitation of an exterior action because we never see a body put in motion except in the presence of another.
The actual indifference to movement and to repose, which at the present time is called, in mechanics, inertia, must always be admitted, whether we posit in the body a ‘virtual’ disposition to movement or whether, on the contrary, the body be considered as absolutely passive; in either case there must be a cause determining the motion; it is not necessary that this first cause produce everything in the body moved, and that it should be in some sort the total cause of the motion; sufficient is it for it to be the complementary cause as the ‘Peripatetics Schoolmen’ used to say. Furthermore, inertia must not be mixed up with absolute inactivity. Leibniz showed us admirably that an absolutely passive substance would be a pure nothing (Plotinus); that a being is active in proportion as its in existence; to be and to act are the same thing, “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia”. From the fact, however, that a substance is essentially active, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s endowed with spontaneous motion, for that is only a special mode of activity and is not the only one. For example: resistance, or impenetrability, is a certain kind of activity, but it is not motion. They are commonly mistaken, therefore, who think that the theory of active matter does away with a first cause for motion, because even if motion be essential to matter, we still have to explain why no portion of matter is ever spontaneously in motion.
According to Leibniz, every being is essentially active. To not act is to not exist; quid non agit non existit. Now from this, whatever acts is force; therefore, everything is force or a compound (collect/bundle) of forces. The essence of matter is not, as Descartes thought, inert extension, it is action, effort, energy. The body is a compound which itself consists of forces, simple elements, unextended –incorporeal atoms (full atoms and empty atoms [holes]). Thus the universe is a vast Dynamism (the theory that mind [or phenomena of matter] is due to the action of forces rather than to motion or matter), a wise system of individual forces, harmoniously related under the direction of a primordial force, whose absolute activity permits the existence outside of itself of the appropriate activities of created things, which it directs without absorbing them. This system, therefore, may be reduced to three principal points:
It makes the idea of force predominate over the idea of substance, or rather reduces substance to force
It sees in extension only a mode of appearance of force and compares the bodies of simple and unextended elements as more or less analogous, except in their degree, to what is called the soul
It sees in the forces not only general agents or modes of action of a universal agent, as having the scientists, but it sees also individual principles, both substances and causes which are inseparable from the material, or rather which constitute matter itself; Dynamism thus understood is only universal spiritualism.
Conclusion
This examination was to illuminate the different difficulties that may be raised against the Leibnizians and their Leibnizian Monadology, especially from the point-of-view of Cartesian spiritualism. There still is left some examination to be done from the perspective of those who deny the plurality of substances, that is, from the Spinozistic or pantheistic point-of-view.
Remember the core strength of Leibniz’s system is in the fact of individuality, of which the advocates of the unity of substance have never been above to give an explanation. It is true though that we must pass here from the ‘objective’ to the ‘subjective’ standpoint, because it is in the consciousness that the individuality manifests itself in the most striking manner, while in nature it is more veiled. Therefore one must become a Whiteheadian Panentheist Spinozist to combat the Pantheist Spinozans. This plane of immanence is being analyzed more and more to this day from many different angles – that which we have been content to only barely mention it here not desiring to skim over problems connected to the knottiest points of metaphysics (Process Philosophy) and of the philosophy of religion (Process Theology).
Deleuze-Leibniz-Whitehead-Bergson Assemblage
Deleuze says Whitehead is the successor of Leibniz “What is an Event?”. Deleuze links Bergson to Leibniz as well “movement as it happens” (and of course Deleuze writes a whole book about Bergson). Deleuze comments on “Having a Body” with “Perceptions in the Folds” and gives us the “Status of Calculus” through Leibniz, and its applications “Differential Relations”. I will be exploring these topics in further analyses.
Sources:
G.W. Leibniz, “Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology”
Steven Strogatz, “Infinite Powers”
Giles Deleuze, “The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque”
Freidrich Nietzsche, “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks”