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The two-part notion of unity and multiplicity stands at the center of
Leibniz’s
philosophy and science. As the titles of the other papers in this
collection
suggest, it is a topic that extends to most areas of his thought. In
this paper,
I would like to excavate Leibniz’s original understanding of this
notion. I will
argue that, once we place Leibniz’s early texts in their proper
philosophical
context, we will be able both to identify the theological roots
of this two-part
notion and to grasp its most fundamental meaning.
Nearly from the beginning of his philosophical career, Leibniz main-
tained that
the harmony of the world was constituted of unity and multi-
plicity. While it is
clear that Leibniz took each of these features to be a cri-
terion of goodness,
their exact interrelation has not been easy to discern.
Not unreasonably, some
commentators have argued that they are in tension
with one another. According to
Rescher, for example, the “striking feature”
of the criteria is that they “are
opposed to one another and pull in opposite
directions”.Leibniz’s Metaphysics of
Nature (Dordrecht: 1981), 11. In the recent di-
scussions by Rescher
and others, scholars have focused on those texts by Leibniz in which
the
good-making criteria are described as simplicity or identity and diversity
or variety. For my di-
scussion here, there is no significant difference
between this terminology and that of unity and
multiplicity.
sion, but have acknowledged
the difficulties in resolving the tension.
Jolley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz
(1995), 382-410; Donald Rutherford, Leibniz andthe Rational
Order of Nature, New York: Cambridge University Press (1995), passim. For
citations
to other literature on the topic, see Rutherford and Blumenfeld.
argue here that there can be no genuine tension between these
good-mak-
ing criteria because it is God who is both the unity and the
multiplicity in
the world: for Leibniz, the supreme being is the unity in the
sense that the
unity in the world is constituted by it; it is the multiplicity in the sense
that
the variety in the world is merely its essence diversely manifested. This is
a
radical thesis and not one that has previously been advanced.
Previous
scholars have missed this fundamental fact about Leibniz’s metaphysics
be-
cause they have been unaware of his early Platonism.
That Leibniz’s early thought owes a great deal to Platonism will come
as a
surprise to many. The Platonism extant in seventeenth-century Ger-
many has not
generally been recognized and the Platonism of the professors
in Leipzig has not
been noted. Many recent scholars have identified Pla-
tonic and kabbalistic elements
in Leibniz’s mature writings and have spe-
culated about their source. Most have
assumed that the recognizably Pla-
tonic flavor of some of Leibniz’s mature writings
was due to his increasing
familiarity in the 1680s with the views of the Cambridge
Platonists, while
some have speculated about its scholastic and ancient
sources.
nic features in Leibniz’s
mature thought and then assumes that the source of these ideas must be
the
Cambridge Platonists in general and Francis Mercury van Helmont in particular. See
Allison
Coudert, Leibniz and the Kabbalah (Boston: 1995).
Daniel Fouke proposes that Leibniz acquires
his Platonic tendencies from the
Platonism inherent in scholastics like Aquinas. See his “Emana-
tion and the
Perfections of Being: Divine Causation and the Autonomy of Nature in Leibniz”,
Ar-
chiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76: 168-194. Some studies have taken
seriously the relation bet-
ween Leibniz and ancient Platonists like Plotinus,
but they have focused on Leibniz’s later thou-
ght and have not acknowledged the
role Platonism played in his philosophical development. The
best of these studies
remain Joseph Politella’s “Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Cabalism in
the
Philosophy of Leibniz”, unpublished dissertation, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia (1938);
and Rudolf Meyer’s “Leibniz und Plotin”, Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa V (1971): 31-54.
scholars
have been correct in their recognition of Platonic elements in Leib-
niz’s later
thought, but they have looked too far afield for its source. Leib-
niz drank from
the Platonic fountain as a young student in Leipzig. In his
typical fashion, Leibniz
took these raw materials and made them distinctly
his own, but there is no doubt
that he acquired a thorough familiarity with
them as a university student and that
they are the primary source of his
conception of the relation between God and
creatures. According to my ac-
count of the development of Leibniz’s metaphysics,
the basic features of his
Platonism were in place in 1671-72, several years before
he acquired a thor-
ough familiarity with the thought of Henry More, Anne Conway,
Francis
Mercury van Helmont, or any other Cambridge Platonist.
member of the so-called Cambridge Platonists, but they have
disagreed about which member of
More’s wide circle most influenced Leibniz and
when the influence occurred. To cite three exam-
ples, Coudert maintains that the
relationship between van Helmont and Leibniz became impor-
tant in the late 1680s
and that the former was the major source of Leibniz’s Platonism; Carolyn
Merchant
thinks that it was Anne Conway who had the most significant influence and that it
took
place in the 1690s; while Catherine Wilson argues that Ralph Cudworth was
the Platonist who
most influenced Leibniz and that it began in 1689. See
Merchant’s “The Vitalism of Anne Con-
way: Its Impact on Leibniz’s concept of the
Monad”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 17
(1979),
255-269; Wilson’s Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Historical and
Comparative Study (Princeton:
1989), 160f.
A question arises at this point: if Leibniz made active use of Platonic
ideas
early in his career, then why didn’t he call attention to it in the same
way that he
did to his use of Aristotelian thought? From his early period to
his late, Leibniz
proudly proclaims his rehabilitation of the philosophy of
Aristotle. In an important
publication of 1670, he argues that the new me-
chanical physics must be corrected
with the philosophy of Aristotle; and in
the first publication of a major part of
his system in 1695, he spends nearly
a fifth of the text justifying his use of the
Aristotelian philosophy.
138-145.
didn’t he call similar attention to the benefits of the philosophy of
Plato?
Leibniz was not motivated to explain his Platonism because that
philosophy
had not become the object of ridicule. On the contrary, the vast majority
of
Leibniz’s contemporaries were themselves inclined to turn to the
Platonic
tradition, both pagan and Christian, for inspiration concerning divine
top-
ics. However much Leibniz’s Platonism might come as a surprise to us,
it
did not surprise his contemporaries. As Leibniz explains in the Specimen
ofDynamicsof 1695, “[j]ust as our age has already saved from scorn...
Plato’s
ideas”, he will now “make intelligible the teachings of the Peripatetics
con-
cerning forms or entelechies” (GM VI 234f: AG 118f). In brief, I am
mak-
ing two claims: one about the intellectual context in which Leibniz’s
meta-
physics developed, the other about the content of that metaphysics.
The
first claim is that the philosophy of Plotinus, Proclus, Augustine,
Ficino,
Pico della Mirandola, and of course Plato himself was widely known
and
highly regarded throughout the seventeenth century and formed a major
part
of the intellectual context in which Leibniz’s cut his philosophical
teeth. The
second is that some of the most fundamental doctrines of Leib-
niz’s metaphysics are
thoroughly Platonic. In the present discussion I will
give little support for the
first claim except insofar as I argue for the sec-
ond. In the late 1660s, Leibniz
took his extensive background in Platonism
and molded it to fit his own conception
of substance. By combining his no-
tion of God with his theory of individual
substance, Leibniz went beyond
the Platonism of his teachers and contemporaries and
made that tradition
his own.
I have argued elsewhere that the conception of substance developed by
Leibniz
during the 1660s has its roots in the Aristotelian philosophy, as he
interpreted it.Discourse on Me-
taphysics", in N. Jolley, ed., The
Cambridge Compamon to Leibniz, 67-123. For a more complete
account of
that position, see my forthcoming Leibniz Metaphysics: Its
Origins and Development
(Cambridge Unversity Press).
sophical proposals about unity and multiplicity in
the period of 1668-72, it
is necessary to recognize that Leibniz intended to
combine elements from
the Platonic tradition with those from the Aristotelian.
Although the texts
of this period are obscure, they contain some of the crucial
steps made by
Leibniz on the way to the development of some of the fundamental
doc-
trines of his metaphysics. We will be able to discern these steps once
we
recognize that within these texts Leibniz turns to a Platonic model when
he
has to articulate the relation between God and creatures (what I call
his
metaphysics of divinity) and to an Aristotelian one when he has to
describe
the features of individual created substances (what I call his
metaphysics of
substance).
Background to Leibniz’s Platonism
Before turning to the pure form of Platonism that Leibniz imbibed as a
student,
it is worth noting the unpure form that was also available to him.
Recent
scholars have emphasized the fact that scholastic philosophy itself is
full of
Platonism, and it has been argued that Leibniz’s use of Platonic doc-
trine may
have come from such sources.
tonomy
of Nature in Leibniz”, 176.
both
Leibniz and his contemporaries imbibed large doses of Platonism
along with their
scholasticism and therefore that their Aristotelianism was
by such means tainted,
this was not the primary source of Leibniz’s Pla-
tonic tendencies. What has not
been previously noted - and what is impor-
tant for an understanding of Leibniz’s
two-part notion of unity and multi-
plicity - is that as a student in Leipzig he
learned a pure form of Platonism
which was clearly distinguished from the thought
of Aristotle and which
continued to influence him for years to come. Let us now
turn to those
sources.
The nature of Platonism in seventeenth-century Germany has not
been
systematically studied and my own research to date has been cursory. But
it
is perfectly clear that the professors and students in Leipzig were
thor-
oughly acquainted with that philosophical tradition. They were not
scholars
of Plato, but they were inheritors of a vast literature of writings
which they
called Platonic and which they considered a treasure trove of ideas.
Making
frequent use of images that one finds throughout the history of
Platonism,
they speak of that philosophy both as a source of divine wisdom which
like
the sun illuminates everything it shines upon and as a fountain of
truth
which has flowed through the thinkers of many centuries and which
nour-
ishes their own thought.
the most delicious waters of wisdom must drink from that perennial fountain”.
See Ficino, Opera(Basil: 1576), p. 1945.
pressive: they refer to the whole range
of ancient, medieval, and Renais-
sance thinkers and move easily between pagan and
Christian authors. It is
important to emphasize that these German philosophers often
do not dis-
tinguish among sources, but tend to treat Platonism as a warehouse of
ideas
to rummage through. What I would like to do now is to offer a summary
of
the Platonic doctrines which are proposed in the texts of Leibniz’s
prede-
cessors in Leipzig and which influenced the development of his early
con-
ception of unity and multiplicity.
the form of Platonic tradition inaugurated by Plotinus [...] and
lasting in its pagan form down to
the sixth century A.D. from the teaching of
Plato’s immediate disciples (the ‘Old Academy’) and
from the Platonism of the
earlier Roman Empire (‘Middle Platonism’)”. See Wallis, Neoplatonism
(London:
1972), 1. I follow P. Merlan who thinks that neoplatonism as a
term is “misleading, in
that to some it may suggest a more radical difference
between the philosophies of Plato and Ploti-
nus than is warranted”. See Merlan’s
“Greek Philosophy from Plato to Plotinus” in A. H. Ar-
mstrong, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy
(Cambridge, En-
gland: 1967), 14-132, 14.
A journey through this Platonic terrain may strike some readers as diffi-
cult
going. Some of its landmark doctrines (e.g., emanation, levels of being)
are not
easy to grasp from our philosophical perspective. That some of the
great
philosophical minds in the history of philosophy have found such
views obvious is
small comfort. While I cannot hope to expand our philo-
sophical intuitions here,
I would like to make the background assumptions
of Leibniz’s metaphysics of
divinity as plausible as possible. The very fact
that some of these doctrines are
extremely odd to us helps to explain why
their full significance in Leibniz’s
philosophy has not been adequately ap-
preciated by twentieth-century scholars.
We must do what we can to under-
stand these doctrines. For our present purposes
we will have to be satisfied
with the briefest of accounts and the most cursory
of analyses. Although it
is virtually impossible to determine which original
sources most interested
the young Leibniz, he was surely aware of the philosophy
of Plotinus and
Augustine. I have chosen to focus on the thought of these two
philosophers
more than others for three reasons: their versions of Platonism were ar-
guably
the most influential in history, they are frequently cited by the pro-
fessors
and students at Leipzig, and Leibniz’s early metaphysics of divinity
bears a
striking resemblance to many of their proposals. We cannot ascer-
tain whether or
not Plotinus and Augustine were the main sources of Leib-
niz’s Platonism, but we
can be certain that Leibniz learned about their
thought as university student in
Leipzig.
Unity and reality
For many ancient thinkers, ontological priority was to be explained pri-
marily
in terms of self-sufficiency. As one scholar makes the point, “that
which stands
in need of nothing for being what it is is ontologically prima-
ry”.The Cambridge Companionto Plotinus
(Cambridge, England: 1996), 217-249, p. 245.
that the lower stratum in the
hierarchy was supposed to depend on and be
caused by the higher. In Plato’s Republic the sensible things depend on the
Ideas or Forms
which themselves depend on the Good. For many of the
philosophers who followed
Plato, it was taken to be obvious that unity and
perfection were intimately
related to being so that the more reality some-
thing has, the more unified and
perfect it must be. For both Christian and
non-Christian Platonists, the idea
seems to be that there is a supremely per-
fect, wholly simple, and unified being
on which all else depends. The impli-
cation was that only the highest being was
wholly perfect, self-sufficient,
simple, and real and that the beings in the
lower strata had diminishing de-
grees of these features. What is less a unity,
for example, is less real and
what is less real is constituted and explained by
what is more unified and
hence more real.
The third century philosopher, Plotinus (205-270/71), focused primar-
ily on the
unity of the supreme being and maintained that the greater the
simplicity or
unity, the greater the reality, self-sufficiency, and perfection.Enneads: III.8.10.20-26;
VI.2.11.9-18, VI.9.1.14. With some minor variations,
translations are by A. H.
Armstrong, Plotinus: Enneads (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
1990).
He writes:
there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other
than all
the things which come after it, existing by itself, not mixed with the
things
which derive from it [...] For if it is not to be simple, outside all
co-
incidence and composition and really one, it could not be a first
principle;
and it is the most self-sufficient, because it is simple and the first of all:
for
that which is not the first needs that which is before it, and what is not
sim-
ple is in need of its simple components so that it can come into
existence
from them (V.4.1.6-15).
Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study
(Cambridge, England: 1988), chapter 1.
From our twentieth century perspective, it is difficult to grasp why unity
or
simplicity should be the key metaphysical and ontological notion. Nor is
a
satisfactory justification of this assumption very easy to construct. Part
of
the motivation behind the assumption is the belief that what is eternally
and
immutably itself is what is most real. It is fascinating that for Plotinus
and
many other thinkers (e.g., many kabbalists) the supreme being did not
ad-
mit of predication because to attribute anything to the One was to make
a
division between subject and property. Such thinkers believed it
improper
to attribute to the supreme being positive features and preferred
instead to
claim that the One just was perfection or being itself. The simplicity
or
unity of the One might be understood as what contains every positive
at-
tribute without distinction or division. It is like a storehouse of being
within
which there is neither distinction nor division and yet where every
positive
possibility exists potentially. There can be a distinction or division
within
being only outside the One. Plotinus is fairly straightforward about the
rela-
tion between being and unity in the products of the One. He writes
that
“nothing is real which is not a unity” (VI.6.13.30) and moreover that
“a
thing is a unity by the presence of the One” (VI.6.14.27-28).
According to Plotinus, the “unbounded” perfection of the One is such
that it
“overflows” with being. As soon as something is produced or cre-
ated, there is
multiplicity in that the being and perfection of the One is
manifested in a
number of ways. When the being of the One overflows, it
produces the world of
Ideas. Although there are multiple Ideas, they are as
unified as anything can be
other than the One itself. In the words of one
Plotinus scholar, they are “a
unity-in-multiplicity”.
val
Phitosophy, 241.
world of Ideas itself overflows and eventually becomes
the multitude of
things in the material world. Of course, the Plotinian image of
the over-
flowing of Being would not do for Christian Platonists. Orthodoxy
de-
manded the free choice of God and many Christians turned to a model
of
God according to which the divine mind contained all positive essences or
Ideas.Timaeus
there is the suggestion that the Forms are somehow in the intellect of
the
creator who then models the things of the world on them, see 30c-d, 39e.
tion of
God was that of an infinite divine mind which contained the Ideas
and which
freely created a world modelled on them.
tremely odd. After all, for Plato and Plotinus the basic idea was that it
is the very abundance of the
being of the One that by
its nature must overflow. From this perspective, it seems
at least odd, if
not absurd, to think that the abundance of being could be
controlled so that only part of it would
flow forth. As he did with so many
other Platonic doctrines, Augustine cleverly interwove the
basic Platonic
assumption and Christian doctrine. The result was a plausible creation story
that
became a commonplace among Christian theists.
posed to be a positive attribute that God chooses to instantiate in
some
way in the world. However, the result of the Christian account was like
that
of the Plotinian one: everything in the created world was understood to
be
a manifestation of the divine One. Glossing over details, the basic idea
is
that the multiplicity and diversity in the world is the essence of the
supreme
being variously manifested. It is noteworthy that the same basic idea
ap-
pears in the thought of many Jewish kabbalists where the divine
attributes
are supposed to emanate to all levels of creation so that every being
partici-
pates in all of them. Christian kabbalists like Raymond Lull and
Johann
Reuchlin, who were widely known in Germany in the seventeenth
century,
followed in this tradition and maintained that every creature
exemplified all
the divine attributes. For Lull, each creature is infused with
all the divine
features so that one can grasp them at every level of being.
modern Christian kabbalist. For a
brief introduction to Reuchlin, see Moshe Idel, “Introduction
to the Bison
Book Edition” and G. Lloyd Jones, “Introduction”, both in Johann
Reuchlin: On theArt of the Kabbalah, trans. by Martin and Sarah
Goodman (Lincoln: 1993). There is a good deal
of secondary literature written
on Lull. For a basic introduction, see Francis Yates, The Art of
Me-mory (Chicago: 1966).
here is nicely
expressed by Philo, the first century Jewish Platonist, who
writes: “he [...]
fills the whole world with himself”.De posteritate Caini V. 14; trans. by C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (Peabody, Massa-
chusetts: 1993).
The supreme being as transcendent and immanent, as unity and multiplicity
Some obvious problems arise at this point. The supreme being is sup-
posed to be
wholly self-sufficient, yet it is said to be in everything.
Crea-
tures are supposed to be finite and limited, yet they are said to be in the
supreme being and to share its features. The supreme
being is supposed to
be in the creatures, yet they are supposed to be in it. What are we to think?
While I dare not take on
anything like a full account of the relation be-
tween the supreme being and its
products, I would like to summarize cer-
tain aspects of that relation. There are
three closely related questions which
are particularly relevant to Leibniz: (1)
how can the supreme being or the
One be transcendent from its products while they
are in it? (2) how can the
supreme being be both
transcendent from its products and immanent in
them? and (3) how can the One be
both the unity and the multiplicity in
the world? Answers to these questions will
place Leibniz’s own conception
of the relation between God and creatures in its
proper perspective.
Before facing these questions, however, it will be important to remind
ourselves
that they apply with equal force to the Judeo-Christian God. As
Paul writes to
the Ephesians, there is: “One God and Father of all, who is
above all, and
through all, and in you all” (Ephesians 4: 6). In Acts we are
told: “For in Him
we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28); and
in the Book of Psalms, we
find that the “Lord, art high above all the earth”
(Psalms 97: 9) and yet is
intimately related to all things. At Psalm 148 (3-8),
the entire universe is told
to pay tribute to God who not only created all
things, but also is their constant
source:
Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars.
Praise Him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were
created;
He established them forever and ever; He gave them a duty which shall not
pass
away.
Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all depths;
Fire and hail, snow and mist, storm winds that fulfill His command.
God’s wisdom extends to every worldly object. As Yahweh asks Job: “Who
has put
wisdom in the clouds, or given understanding to the mists?” (Job
38: 36). The
answer of course is the supreme being. At the very first of
the Confessions, Augustine worries aloud to God: “Without you,
whatever
exists would not exist. But does what exists contain you? I also have
being
[...] which I would not have unless you were in me. Or rather, I would
have
no being if I were not in you”. To add to the confusion, Augustine
quotes
Paul, according to whom God is: “of whom all things are, through
whom
all things are, in whom all things are” (Rom. 11: 36).
How can the One be both transcendent and immanent? The problem
is acute:
according to Plotinus, the One is “alone by itself’ and simple,
while it is also
“everywhere” and “fills all things”. As Plotinus puts it:
“How then do all things
come from the One, which is simple and has in it
no diverse variety?” The solution to the problem lies in a distinction be-
tween
the One insofar as it is supremely self-sufficient and the One insofar
as it is
the principle on which all else depends. Plotinus writes: “The One is
all things
and not a single one of them: it is the principle of all things, not
all things,
but all things have that other kind of transcendent existence”
(V.2.1, 1-4). The
crucial point here is that the One is “all things” insofar as
it is their
principle or source and it is “not a single one of them” insofar as
it is the
perfect, self-sufficient, and unified reality. He continues: “All these
things
are the One and not the One: they are he because they come from
him; they are not
he, because it is in abiding by himself that he gives them”
(V.2.2.24-26). The
One is transcendent in that it is self-sufficient and in
need of nothing else.
Plotinus writes in a passage we have seen: “there must
be something simple before
all things, and this must be other than all the
things which come after it,
existing by itself, not mixed with the things
which derive from it...”
(V.4.1.6-10). But the One is also immanent in that
it is the source of everything
else and that on which everything constantly
depends: the One “is the principle
of all things [...] because as principle it
keeps them in being [...] and because
it brought them into existence”
(V.3.15.27-29). These texts suggest a solution to
our general problem as to
how the One can be both transcendent from its products
and immanent in
them. In order to understand this, we need only recognize what
one scholar
has called their “nonreciprocal dependence”.
in the following way: “Reality is a structure of
dependence, the posterior depending on the prior,
being constituted by the
prior, incapable of existing ‘without’ the prior which can exist without
it.
The prior is thus part of, or in, the posterior (as constitutive of it),
just as the posterior is poten-
tially in the prior (as coming from it):
causes are ‘in’ their effects and effects are ‘in’ their causes.
But while a
part of the posterior, the prior is also apart from it as independent of it. Thus
the
prior is both immanent in the posterior and transcends it: The One is
‘everywhere’ and ‘nowhere.’
As independent and as prior, the cause is
different from the posterior, its effect, superior in per-
fection and more
powerful: causes [which are prior ‘by nature’]...are superior to their
effects.”
See Dominic O’Meara, “The Hierarchical Ordering of Reality in
Plotinus” in The CambridgeCompanion to Plotinus, ed.
by Gerson, 66-81, p. 79.
that it exists
wholly independently of all its creatures and needs nothing
else to be what it
is. For creatures, this is not the case; they depend fully
and constantly on the
One.
To conceive the complicated way in which the One is immanent in the
world, we
must turn to our first question: how the supreme being or the
One can be
transcendent from its products while they are in it? To
grasp
how the products of the One are in it while it
exists independently of them,
one must understand that their nature and being
comes from the One and
never exist independently of it while it exists independently of them. Think
of a
fountain which is unconnected to any source of liquid and yet which
spews forth
streams of water. The existence of the fountain in no way de-
pends on the water
and yet the nature and being of the water depends en-
tirely on the fountain.
Like the fountain, the One exists independently of
what flows from it; like the
water, the products of the One continually de-
pend on their source. In this
case, the products of the One and the water of
the fountain “exist in” their
source in that their very existence depends on
it. The ‘exists in’ relation here
consists in ontological dependency. In this
sense, a being B exists in a being A
just in case the whole being and nature
of B depends continually on A. To speak
metaphorically, B exists in A be-
cause the being and nature of B flows from
A.
Let’s now turn to our second question, namely, how the supreme being
can be both
transcendent from its products and yet in them? According to
Plotinus and other
Platonists, the One is entirely apart from and “beyond”
its products and yet in
them and constitutive of them. To grasp how the
One is transcendent and yet in
its products, we have to turn to the causal
relation between it and them. In
Plato’s Republic the Good is supposed to
be the cause or
source of the Ideas which themselves are supposed to be
the cause or source of
the sensible things. In the Platonic literature, there
are three standard ways to
describe the causal relation between higher and
lower strata in this ontological
hierarchy. In the participation relation, the
individual on the lower stratum is
supposed to participate in that of the
higher; in the model-image relation the
higher is said to be a model for the
lower or to generate the lower as an
imperfect image of itself. It is impor-
tant for our purposes that a lower level
object can be said to have a prop-
erty though in an inferior way to an object on
the higher level. The at-
tributes or properties of a higher sphere are
transmitted to those of the
lower but in a less perfect form.Plotinus on
Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study, “It is an un-
derlying
feature of Plotinus’ thought that the explanation of any feature must be in virtue
of
something that possesses the feature in question in a ‘more perfect’ way
than the thing to be ex-
plained” (14).
lation in the hierarchy and the one most relevant to Leibniz is
that of ema-
nation. Drawing on Plato’s analogy to the sun in the Republic and assuming
the other causal notions, this
relation compares the One to the Sun whose
rays flow from it. Oversimplifying
somewhat, we can say that: if the perfect
A has an attribute f, then A can
emanate f-ness to a lower being B. In the
emanative relation, A loses nothing
while B comes to instantiate f-ness. A
remains transcendent and pure, while B
becomes an imperfect image of the
perfect f. The emanative process is assumed to be continual so that B
will
participate in f-ness and have f even imperfectly only as long as A acts
or
emanates f-ness. It is important to emphasize the fact that, in the
emanative
causal relation (as with the other two), the f of A is greater and more
per-
fect than that of B and yet that the f in B resembles its cause.Enneads, V. 1.6.37-39,
IV.3.10.32-42,
V.5.9.1-10. The account of emanative causation offered here is based on but
varies
slightly from the excellent discussion of Eileen O’Neill, “Influxus
Physicus”, in Causation in EarlyModern Philosophy, ed.
by S. Nadler, Steven (University Park, Pa: 1993) 27-55. For more on
ema-
native causation in Plotinus, see John Bussanich, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics
of the One” in Gerson’s
The Cambridge Compamon to Plotinus, 38-65, esp. 46-58; and
O’Meara, op. cit., sects. II, III.
prepared to explain how it is that the One is transcendent from its
products
and yet in them. The perfection and transcendence of the One remains
un-
changed while it continually emanates its attributes to its products,
which
then have those attributes in an imperfect and hence distinctive
manner.
Recent scholars have insisted, in a way that is quite relevant to
Leibniz, that
Plotinus is not a pantheist and does not believe that the being of
the One
constitutes the being of its products. The causal
theory of emanation helps
to see how this is so. As Plotinus writes in a passage
quoted above: “all
[created] things have that other kind of transcendent
existence...[T]he
One is simple and has in it no diverse variety” (V.2.1.1-5).
For any attribute
of a creature, that attribute is derived from the One and yet
the attribute
exists in the creature in a way quite distinct from that of the
One. Plotinus
puts it nicely when he explains that the One “is like the things,
which have
come to be” except that they are “on their level” and “it [the One] is
bet-
ter” (VI.8.14.33 -34). The One is in the creatures in
the sense that it ema-
nates its attributes to them; it remains transcendent from
them because it
neither loses anything in the emanative process nor shares any of
its perfec-
tions with them. It is perfect; they are not. Plotinus writes: “[the
One] must
be other than all the things which come after it, existing by itself,
not mixed
with the things which derive from it, and all the same able to be
present in a
different way to these other things” (V.4.1.6-8). Elsewhere, he
explains “the
One is always perfect” while “its product is less than” the One (V.
1.6.39-40).
The Platonic conception of the causal relation between the supreme be-
ing and
its creatures helps to explain how the Judeo-Christian God can be,
in Paul’s
words, “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through
all, and in you
all” (Ephesians, 4: 6). As Augustine makes the point in his
Confessions:
I considered all the other things that are of a lower order than yourself, and
I saw that they have not absolute being in themselves, nor are they entirely
without being. They are real in so far as they have their being from you,
but
unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that
which
remains in being without change that truly is...[God] himself
ever
unchanged, he makes all things new (VII. 17).
The causal relation between the supreme being and its products offers a
fairly
straightforward account of how the One can be both transcendent
and in its
products. Here the ‘exists in’ relation is to be understood in
terms of emanation
where the basic idea is that attributes of the One em-
anate to its products and,
in that sense, exist in them. The One remains
pure and transcendent while its
attributes or properties “exist in” the crea-
tures. The crucial point to
understand is that the properties exist in the
products in a manner wholly
different than the way they exist in the One.
The perfect being A emanates f-ness
to B so that B participates in f-ness
and f-ness is in B, but the f-ness in B is
inferior to the f-ness in A. A has f
perfectly; B has it imperfectly.
With this account of the causal relation between the supreme being
and its
creatures in hand, we are prepared to answer our third question,
namely, how the
transcendent One can be both the unity and multiplicity in
the world. That the
One is the multiplicity in the created world is fairly
straightforward: when the
One overflows its being and attributes, it neces-
sarily produces a multiplicity.
It exists in the multiplicity in the sense that it
is immanent in its products.
But they also necessarily participate in the
One. In his discussion of the
relation between individual souls and Nous or
what is
sometimes called the world soul, Plotinus is fairly explicit
about
how the unity of the former relates to the many. He writes:
How, then, is there one substance in many souls? Either the one is present
as a
whole in them all, or the many come from the whole and one while
it abides
[unchanged]. That soul, then, is one, but the many [go back]
to it as one which
gives itself to multiplicity and does not give itself; for
it is adequate to
supply itself to all and to remain one; for it has power
extending to all things,
and is not at all cut off from each individual thing;
it is the same, therefore,
in all.
will be able to
individuate among souls. For a recent discussion of this problem in Plotinus
and
references to other secondary literature, see Henry Blumenthal, “On Soul
and Intellect” in TheCamhridge Companion to Plotinus,
ed. by Gerson, 82-104, esp. 84-85.
The more perfect being remains unchanged and transcendent despite the
fact that
all the less perfect and multiple beings acquire their unity and be-
ing from it. According to Plotinus, each of us is a unity because the
One
emanates its oneness to us. The One is perfeetly unified, each of us is
im-
perfectly unified. But whatever unity each of us has is due to the
continual
emanation of the perfect oneness or unity. In this sense, each of us
exists
and is one because the One emanates its unity to us and each of us
thereby
participates in it.
Platonism in Leipzig
The works of the two most prominent professors at Leipzig in the mid-
dle of the
seventeenth century, Johann Adam Scherzer (1628-83) and Jakob
Thomasius
(1622-84), show a thorough acquaintance with Platonism.
with Erhard Weigel whose works are also a
mixture of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and other phi-
losophies. Unlike
Thomasius and Scherzer, Weigel’s Platonism has been noted in the secondary
li-
terature. See K. Moll, Der junge Leibniz
(Fromann-Holzboog, 1978), Vol. I.
the works of Scherzer, we find
kabbalistic doctrines as well as Renaissance
Platonism. For our purposes, suffice
it to say that Scherzer accepts some-
thing very like the Plotinian account of
the relation between God and crea-
tures. He writes that God contains all things
while remaining fundamentally
simple; God acts constantly to conserve his
creatures while “nothing in him
is changed, nor is it depleted”;Vade mecum sive manuale philosophicum quadripartitum
(Leipzig: 1686), I, 52-53.
rally from a subject” as a
result of its properties or modes;Vade mecum..., I, 66.
unity is nothing other than God”;Trifolium orientale... (Leipzig: 1663), 123.
immutable is contrasted with accidents or
creatures which are multiple and
mutable;Collegii Anti-Sociniani (3rd ed., 1702), 98. Collegii Anti-Sociniani, 131.
finally that God is “the reason of reasons, the fountain of all
things, the uni-
form and omniform form, [...] the unity in the multitude”.Vade mecum, 53.
It may come as a surprise to many scholars to discover that Jakob
Thomasius,
Leibniz’s mentor and a well-known Aristotelian, wrote a good
deal about both
Platonism and the kabbalistic tradition. Thomasius pro-
duced a number of books
in which he refers to the whole range of Platonic
philosophers, both pagan and
Christian, early and late. Thomasius is firmly
Aristotelian in his conception of substance, but thoroughly Platonic in
his
account of the relation between God and creatures.Exercitatio de Stoica mundi exustione here, several of
his other
works include long discussions of Platonism.
sius,
God is “the fountain of features which flow into creatures”, but he in-
sists
that this flowing or emanation be understood in the right way, namely,
as that
which God wills.Exercitatio de Stoica mundi exustione
(Leipzig: 1676), 251-253.
with the unity and
simplicity of God and notes that according to some Pla-
tonists “the essence of
God permeates” everythingExercitatio de Stoica mundi exustione
, 189, 217f.
early exposure to Platonism end with his university
studies. Most of his fa-
vorite authors during the 1660s were those who wrote
extensively on the
kabbalah and “the divine Plato”.
rich Alsted, both of whom he considers
“most learned” (see e.g. A, VI ii 416, 420; A, VI i 74,
278), and both of
whose works are full of discussions of Platonists and Platonism.
Unity and Multiplicity in Early Leibniz
With this background in place, I would like to turn to Leibniz’s early
philosophy
in order to discern his conception of the relation between God
and the world and
the role that unity and multiplicity play in that account.
Between 1668 and 1676,
during the time he was developing the core fea-
tures of his metaphysics of
substance, he was also enormously interested in
the Platonic philosophy. When he
began to work on the relation between
God and the world, he turned to the
Platonic model that he had learned as
a student in Leipzig. As he wrote in 1671:
Plato’s Timaeus is “a specimen of
the most profound
Platonic philosophy” because, with the Parmenides,
“it
admirably accounts for the one and Being, that is, God” (A, VI ii 475).
So, what did Leibniz learn from his teachers? How does he conceive
the relation
between God and creatures? In the very early works of the
mid-1660s, Leibniz says
almost nothing about the relation between God
and the created world. In the texts
written between 1663 and 1668, there is
neither serious discussion of the
relation between God and creatures nor
extensive use of the Platonic metaphysics
articulated above. Leibniz’s pri-
mary interest during the middle years of the
1660s was the wholesale re-
structuring of legal practice although he was also
concerned to erect his
own mechanical physics. Leibniz mentions the divine Ideas
in passing in his
university Disputation of 1663 (A, VI i
18), refers frequently to a variety of
Platonists during the period, takes notes on Platonist texts, but makes mini-
mal
use of Platonic doctrines. We need not jump to conclusions however;
the young man
had not shed the Platonism of his teachers. In the well-
known Dissertation on the Combinatorial Art of 1666, Leibniz briefly turns
to
the topic of the relation between God and creatures in a way that dis-
closes his
dormant Platonism. After the title page of the published text,
Leibniz presents
some “corollaries” which are supposed to follow from this
combinatory art and
which fall into four categories: logic, metaphysics,
physics, and practical. One
of the metaphysical corollaries is: “God is sub-
stance; creature is accident”
(A, VI i 229: L 75). Throughout the 1660s,
Leibniz uses the Latin term ‘accidens’ in a fairly standard scholastic way: an
accident
is a non-essential property which can be said “to flow” from the
essence of the
thing of which it is a property. Micraelius, for example,
writes in his Lexicon Philosophicum that an accidental property “flows
from
the essential principles” although it is not “part of the essential
consti-
tuents”.accidens in the period, see Micraelius’ Lexicon Philosophicumterminorum Philosophis unitatorum,
Jena, 1653 and Rudolph Goclenius’s Lexicon
Philosophicum,
Frankfurt, 1613 (repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1980).
God and
creatures is important. It implies that creatures both flow from
God’s nature and
reflect that nature, but do not do so necessarily. In other
words, the passage
suggests that, during the time he was working on physi-
cal and legal topics,
Leibniz accepted the Platonism of his teachers and sim-
ply had no reason to use
it.
But he soon would. When Leibniz turns his attention to theological is-
sues, his
Platonism makes its grand entrance. It is in the Catholic
Demon-strations of the late 1660s where Leibniz first confronts the
sorts of theolog-
ical problems that require a precise analysis of the relation
between God
and creatures. In developing his views about this relation, he turns
to the
Platonic model. The results are profound. It is in this context that
Leibniz
begins to construct his metaphysics of divinity and to articulate for the
first
time the notion of harmony at its core.
Prior to 1667, the only references to harmony that we find in Leibniz’s
papers
appear either in legal and logical contexts (and have nothing to do
with
metaphysics) or in the notes which Leibniz took on Johann Bisterfeld’s
book.
ford has rightly noted a
similarity between Bisterfeld’s conception of harmony and that of Leibniz,
and
has suggested there might have been a “direct influence” of Bisterfeld on Leibniz.
It is highly
improbable that Bisterfeld was a major source for Leibniz’s own
conception of harmony. There is
no doubt that Leibniz thought well of Bisterfeld’s
book and that some of his ideas are quite like
those of the Herborn
philosopher. But there is very little reason to believe that Bisterfeld was
as
important as Thomasius, Scherzer, and Weigel in this regard. Leibniz hardly
ever refers either to
Bisterfeld or to his book after 1671 and he never
includes Bisterfeld in any of the lists of philoso-
phers who influenced him
on these matters. See Rutherford’s Leibniz and the Rational
Order ofNature (New York: 1995) for a discussion of Bisterfeld
(36-40) and of harmony in general
(passim).
gance and harmony in the world that coincides with the divine will” (A, VI
i
344), but he does not develop this provocative idea. In his essay On Tran-substantiation, Leibniz presents for the very first time some
of the details of
his metaphysics of divinity. Concerning the general relation
between God
and creatures, he proclaims his account to be similar to “Plato in
the
Timaeus about the world soul”, to “Aristotle in the Metaphysics
and
Physics about the agent Intellect”, to the Stoics and others. Like these
other
philosophers, he maintains that God is “diffused through everything”.
proposals seem clear. The
relevant text in the Academy edition reads as follows (with the illegible
bits
in the text marked with dots by the editors): “Ipse Plato in Timeo animam mundi,
Aristoteles
in Metaphysicis et Physicis Intellectum agentem per omnia
diffusum, Stoici Substantiam Mundi
Deum statuentes, Averroes Aristotelis
Intellectum...propagans, Fracastorius et Fernelius Origi-
nem formarum...in
hoc consentiunt omnes: Substantiam, naturam, principium...” See A, VI i
511.
It is interesting that Thomasius compares these philosophical positions in his Exercitatio deStoica mundi exustione, 215-216.
Leibniz is fairly clear about how this diffusion occurs: God chooses
“among
the infinitely really diverse Ideas” in his mind to create some so that
“[t]he
substance of each [non-human] thing is not so much mind as it is an
Idea
of a concurring mind” (511-12: L 118). For each non-human
substance,
there is a corresponding Idea in God’s mind. As I argue elsewhere,
these
Ideas play an important metaphysical role in this essay.
predecessors of Leibniz’s notion of a
complete concept.
for us here is that Leibniz
conceives of each Idea as a product of God. In
some
marginal notes, he refers to an Idea as “an act” of God (A, VI i 513)
and
writes:
Ideas are the same thing as the Substantial forms of things. Ideas are in
God as
an action is in an agent, as Creation is in God. If someone should
ask: Is an
Idea a created thing or not? It should be reponded: Is a creature
a created thing
or not? (A, VI i 510)
The relation between God and creatures articulated here conforms to
the
interpretation offered of the “metaphysical corollary” in Dissertion on thethe Combinatorial Art. The substances of non-human
things are products of
God which flow from his nature and belong to that nature.
The Ideas are
distinct from one another, but they are all Ideas in God. In the Confessionof Nature Against the Atheists Leibniz defines an action of
substance as a
variation of essence. In On
Transubstantiation, each Idea is a variation of
the essence of God and in
that sense it “flows” from the divine nature.
However, even at this early stage,
Leibniz is careful to insist that the
supreme being chooses which Ideas to create
and that it do so among an in-
finite number of possibilities. But the underlying
assumption here remains
that God’s essence is diffused through every created
thing in the world. It is
this assumption that constitutes the fundamental idea
in Leibniz’s original
notion of harmony. In this essay, the diversity (or
variety) among created
substances arises from the fact that the Ideas are
distinct; the unity (or iden-
tity) among them comes from the fact that they are
all acts or emanations of
the same thing.
Besides On Transubstantiation, the most important theological
text that
treats harmony is the Conspectus, an outline of
Leibniz’s Catholic
Demonstrations, which includes a stunning array of theological
and
philosophical topics. When Leibniz turns to the possibility of the
beatific
vision in his outline, he writes: “the beatific vision or [seu] the
intuition of
God, face to face, is the contemplation of the universal Harmony of
things
because GOD or [seu] the Mind of the Universe is nothing other than
the
harmony of things, or [seu] the principle of beauty in them” (A, VI i
499).
We need to proceed carefully here. Since the whole point of the CatholicDemonstrations was to avoid heresy and promote
religious concord, we
should not read this passage as an heretical harangue. Leibniz
is here dis-
cussing the topic of beatific vision and how it is that human beings
might
come “face to face” with God. According to Leibniz here, the goal of
hu-
man life is the recognition of harmony where that is the same thing as
the
intuition of God: when we “contemplate the universal Harmony of things”,
we
are face to face with the divine. In the writings of Plotinus, we find the
idea that
the beatific vision is something like an intuition of how all things
are one.
Leibniz suggests the same thing. The beauty or harmony in things
just is the supreme
being who has made itself present in the various mani-
festations of itself.
But we need to do some explaining at this point. It is one thing to say
that God
is diffused throughout the world, it is another to equate this di-
vine emanation
with beauty and harmony. The use of such aesthetic criteria
is itself noteworthy.
What does Leibniz have in mind? For an answer to this
question, we need to turn
to Leibniz’s other major project during the late
1660s. At the same time that he
was developing the metaphysical theology
of the Catholic Demonstrations, he was thinking
about matters of ju-
risprudence. In a series of notes written between 1669 and
late 1671 he in-
vestigates a wide range of theological, metaphysical, and ethical topics.
These
texts, entitled Elements of Natural Law, treat a number of
related
topics: human virtue and goodness, divine and human justice, and
universal
harmony. That Leibniz would discuss such heady metaphysical topics in
a
text about jurisprudence should not come as a surprise: in a published
work
of 1664 he is quite explicit about the fact that “the greatest mysteries”
must be
considered by the student of jurisprudence because unless such
things are known
before hand one cannot judge properly about the just and
unjust. In this work of
1664, entitled Example of Collected PhilosophicalQuestions
Concerning Law, Leibniz proclaims that it is philosophy afterall
that
sits “on the throne of wisdom” (A, VI i 73). It is not surprising there -
fore
that the Elements of Natural Law contains brief solutions to
some of
the grand philosophical questions in an attempt to construct the proper
ba-
sis for an analysis of legal matters. The text also offers clues to his
original
conception of harmony.
In the Elements of Natural Law, Leibniz describes the dominant
feature
of God’s world for the first time as universal harmony which he
defines
both as “diversity compensated by identity” (A, VI i 484) and as
“identity
compensated by diversity” (477). He offers some important clues
about
how he envisages the interrelation between the two parts of this
notion.
The basic intuition here is that there is a single thing which underlies
all the
diversity and to which it is all ultimately reducible. Leibniz writes:
“There is
greater harmony when there is greater diversity, which nonethess is
reduced
to identity. (For there cannot be grades in identity, but in variety)”
(479).
But it does not follow from this fact that harmony is a function of
variety.
Things must be various, but the unity underneath must be evident. He
ex-
plains: “Variety delights but only when it is reduced to a unity”, it must
be
“elegant, conciliatory” (484). About variety, Leibniz proposes that
“identi-
cal propositions” are not pleasing “because [...] they conform too much”
to
one another, as do rhythmic verses which return “to the same ending”.
The
right sort of variety consists in the juxtaposition of the same elements in
dif-
ferent ways. For example, to make a pleasing song “it is sufficient for
the
last part of the ending to repeat with a changed beginning” and that
the
“dissonances” be “brought into harmony in the end” (485). There is
an
aesthetic criterion at work here where the beauty of an object is a
function
of how much the elements of the same thing can be made to vary in
subtle
ways while the unity or singleness of the thing remains evident. The
basic
point seems to be that the harmony of the world is a function of the
variety
of ways in which the same essence of God is diffused in the world while
re-
maining recognizably the same thing. God is like an infinite melody
played
in infinitely complex ways.
That this melody is recognizably the same, despite the diversity, is
crucial to
Leibniz’s early proposals in ethics. He agrees with his Platonist
predecessors
that the perfection of God is diffused in the world and
therefore that emanation
or harmony plays an important moral function.
According to Leibniz in the Elements of Natural Law, the process of be-
coming a good
person is that of stripping away the chaos and “constant
confusion of human
affairs” and coming to grasp “the infinity” of God.
For the good person, “the
dissonance” of things will be compensated
“through consonance”. From the
contemplation of harmony, we will be
“lead away from all desire and sadness, and
all other affections” until we
eventually “increase our admiration” of God (485).
According to Leibniz,
“the Good is when harmony is understood thoroughly” (478);
“once we
elevate our eyes to universal harmony” it becomes “obvious that
every-
thing loves everything” (481). We can avoid the complications of
the
moral epistemology here and direct our attention to the implied
metaphys-
ical lessons. To oversimplify somewhat, in the Elements of Naturai Law,
the goal of life is to come to recognize that
within all the enormous diver-
sity everything is fundamentally an emanation of
God and hence that e-
verything is a proper object of love. In a letter to
Antoine Arnauld of 1671,
Leibniz summarizes his position: “I am planning to treat
the Elements ofNatural Law in a short book in which
everything will be demonstrated from
definitions alone. I define a good person
[...] as one who loves all people
[...]; harmony as diversity compensated by
identity. For variety always de-
lights us, once it is reduced to a unity...I
show that it is the same thing to
love others and to love God, the seat of
universal harmony (A, II i 173-174:
L 150).
At this point a summary is in order. In the late 1660s Leibniz was
working on a
number of interrelated projects which required that he articu-
late for the first
time his conception of the relation between God and the
world. For a model of
that relation, the young man turned to the Platonism
of his teachers according to
which a single, unified supremely perfect being
chooses to emanate its perfections into
every part of the created world.
Leibniz’s original conception of harmony
develops from that tradition. As
the texts presented above make clear, in
Leibniz’s original conception of
harmony, the supreme being emanates or diffuses
its essence into its pro-
ducts. Because those products are emanations of its
essence, its unity is in
the world. In a note of 1671, Leibniz asserts that
harmony “is the unity of
many things, that is, it is unity compensated by
variety. Moreover God is
the one who is everything” (A, VI ii 283). In another
text of the same year,
Leibniz asserts that “the origin
[ratio]” of things will be “in Mind, that is,
in the one in the many.
Therefore, [it will be] in Harmony, that is, in the
unity of many things, or [seu] diversity compensated by identity. Moreover
God is
the one among everything”.
est in singulorum cogitatione, erit ergo in pluribus. Ergo omnibus. Ergo
in Mente, id est uno in
multis. Ergo in Harmonia id est unitate plurimorum,
seu diversitate identitate compensata. Deus
autem est unus omnia” (A, VI ii
283).
Leibniz is explicit in the texts of 1668-71 that God is the unity in the
world;
he is less so about the fact that God is the multiplicity in things. As
noted, he
clearly maintains in his essay On Transubstantiation that it
is an
Idea of God that constitutes the substantial nature of a non-human
sub-
stance and moreover that each Idea is different from every other.
culated solves the problem of
the individuation of substance. One of the most difficult questions
facing the
interpreter of Aristotle is how the substantial form is supposed to make an
individual a
thing distinct from all other individuals. Because Aristode’s
texts are not clear on this issue and
because the answer to this question is
important to any account of Aristode’s most fundamental
principles, the issue
was hotly debated by the schoolmen. The latter differ on whether the form
or
the matter or the union of the two is responsible for the individuation
among substances. Accor-
ding to Leibniz in On
Transubstantiation, the Idea differentiates the matter. See A, VI i 518.
For a
thorough account of Leibniz on individuation, see Laurence C.
McCullough, Leibniz on Indivi-duals and Individuation
(Dordrecht: 1996).
lows that the Ideas of God constitute the
diversity among the non-human
substances of the world. In other words, despite
the scarsity of explicit tex-
tual support, it seems clear that Leibniz took God
to be the multiplicity as
well as the unity in the world. For someone as firmly
rooted in the Platonic
tradition as Leibniz was, there was no reason to make an
issue of this aspect
of the world. That the fullness of the being of God would
make the world
as full and diverse as possible is one of the most fundamental of
Platonic
tenets, as is the view that the resulting diversity is merely a
manifestation or
emanation of God.
the idea is that the world will be as full as possible, and
perhaps (2) the principle of the identity of
indiscernibles, where the idea is
that no two manifestations of God’s essence should be the same.
In other
words, the assumption that the world will be as full as possible is closely
related to the
view that no two things in the world will be identical. For
more details, see Christia Mercer, Leib-niz’s Metaphysics:
its Origins and Development, New York, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999,
esp.
chapters 6 and 10.
Leibniz does become quite insistent about the fact that God is the
multi-
plicity in the world. This happens when he begins to combine his
meta-
physics of divinity with his metaphysics of substance. He does this
in
1676.
Soon after developing his account of the relation between God and
creatures,
Leibniz went to Paris. Between his arrival in 1672 and the au-
tumn of 1675,
Leibniz applied most of his enormous intellectual energies to
mathematics. One of the results of this intensive work was a break-through
on the
development of the calculus in the second half of 1675. It was in the
spring of
1676 when Leibniz once again began to investigate seriously the
metaphysical
relation between God and creatures. He elaborates on his ear-
lier account of God
as unity and he develops more fully his conception of
God as multiplicity.
Leibniz asserts that things are to God as properties are
to essence. He
writes:
It can surely be said that all things are one, that all things are in God, in
the
same way the effect is contained in its full cause [causa sua plena] and
a
property of any subject [is contained] in the essence of that same
subject.
For it is certain that the existence of things is a consequence of the
Nature
of God, which brings it about that only the most perfect things can
be
chosen (A, VI iii 370).
In another text, Leibniz writes:
There is the same variety in any kind of world, and this is nothing other
than
the same essence related in various ways, as if you were to look at the
same town
from various places; or, if you relate the essence of the number
6 to the number
3, it will be 3 x 2 or 3 + 3, but if you relate it to the number
4 it will be 6/4
= 3/2, or 6 = 4x3/2. So it is not surprising that the things
produced are in a
certain way different (A, VI iii 523: P 83).
The multiplicity in the world results from the fact that the essence of God
is
emanated or expressed in an infinity of ways. But he also maintains that
all
things share the same essence, namely, the essence of God. He writes:
The attributes of God are infinite, but none of them involves the whole
essence
of God, for the essence of God consists in the fact that he is the
subject of all
compatible attributes. But any property or affection of God
involves his whole
essence [...] But when all other attributes are related to
any attribute, there
result modifications in it. Hence it comes about that the
same Essence of God is
expressed wholly [expressa sit tota] in any kind of
World, and so God manifests
himself in an infinity of ways [infinitis modis]
(A, VI iii 514: P 69-71).
There is no tension between unity and multiplicity as good-making criteria.
Unity
is what God is as transcendent and perfect; multiplicity is what he is
as
immanent. The reason the world is so good is because the essence of the
perfect
One is expressed in the world in as many ways as possible.
Some of the passages quoted above and others like them in the papers
of De summa rerum have suggested to some scholars that during the
period
of 1676-78 Leibniz was deeply influenced by Spinoza. The result of this
in-
fluence is supposed to be that he became a pantheist. As Robert Adams
puts it in
his recent book, Leibniz denied “the ontological externality” of
creatures.Leibniz:
Determinist, Theist, Idealist (Oxford: 1994), 128. Mark Kul-
stad has
also argued that Leibniz is a pantheist in his “Did Leibniz Incline toward
Monistic Pan-
theism in 1676?”, International Leibniz Congress (1994), pp.
424-428.
is not pantheism, it is Platonism. He writes:
It seems to me that the origin of things from God is of the same kind as
the
origin of properties from an essence; just as 6 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1,
there-
fore 6 = 3+3, = 3x2, = 4
+ 2, etc. Nor may one doubt that the one ex-
pression differs from the other, for
in one way we think of the number 3 or
the number 2 expressly [expresse], and in
another way we do not; but it is
certain that the number 3 is not thought of by
someone who thinks of six
units at the same time. It would be thought of, if the
person were to impose
a limit after three had been thought. Much less does
someone who thinks
of six units at the same time think of multiplication. So just as these proper-ties differ from each other and from
essence, so do things differ from eachother and from God (A, VI iii 518
f: P 77; my emphasis).
The point here is that the attributes of the supreme being will be manifest
in
any of its products. Since possible worlds and possible individuals are
products
of God, each is an emanation of the divine essence. As Leibniz
concieves the
relation now, the divine attributes of God will be manifest in
any of its
products. But while the essence and being of the supreme being
emanate to its
products, each creature is an inferior image or expression of
that essence and is
not identical to it. Leibniz was not a pantheist
during
the period of 1676-77 and what sounds like pantheism is
seventeenth-cen-
tury Platonism.
We have arrived at Leibniz’s original conception of harmony. But it is
reasonable
to ask at this point exactly what relevance this conception has
for his later
thought. There are two points to make. First, Leibniz’s Platonic
conception of
the relation between God and creatures developed hand-in-
hand with his
Aristotelian conception of substance. I have argued elsewhere
that there is a
theory of substance in the texts of 1668-70. For example, in
On Transubstantiation, Leibniz defines a substance as that
which has its
own principle of activity and as a being which subsists per
se.
tion of substance, see
Christia Mercer, Leibniz’s Metaphysicis, cit., chapters 3
and 4. For a more
thorough discussion of Leibniz’s relation to pantheism, see
my “Leibniz and Spinoza on Sub-
stance and Mode”, Rationalists, ed. Derk Pereboom, Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming.
Leibniz defines substance in exactly the same way, but he also
makes acti-
vity the source of harmony. In some essays written in 1672, he maintains
that
individual created minds are the source of the harmony in the world.
As he
emphasizes in the first few months of 1672, “nothing is more won-
derful in all
of philosophy” than that from the activity of mind “follows
harmony, that is,
diversity compensated by identity” (A, VI iii 57; also A,
VI iii 67, 101). In an
essay entitled On the True Method in Philosophy
andTheology written in the middle of his Paris stay, he claims: “every
substance
is active and every active thing is called a substance” (A, VI iii
158). Not
only does Leibniz continue to describe minds as fundamentally active,
even
during his so-called pantheistic period, he develops a version of what
later
becomes his principle of the identity of indiscernibles. In a text of 1
April
1676, entitled Meditation on the Principle of the
Individual, Leibniz makes it
clear that every finite thing has its own
principle of activity or mind and
that no two minds are the same. Or, as he
writes at the end of a text quoted
above: “So just as these properties differ
from each other and from essence,
so do things differ from each other and from
God” (A, VI iii 518f). It fol-
lows that finite things differ from one another
because each has its own
unique mind and that each mind is itself a different
expression of God’s
essence. Each mind has a principle of activity by means of
which it can ex-
press that essence. God is transcendent from it and immanent in
it.
6, 9-10.
In short, according to my interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophical
de-
velopment, beginning in the late 1660s and continuing throughout his
ca-
reer, Leibniz’s most basic assumption about finite created substances
was
that they were causally autonomous from God. The reason God gave
every
substance its own principle of activity was so that it would be distinct.
But
this distinctness amounts to no more than that each substance is just
an-
other expression, among a multiplicity of expressions, of the oneness
of
God. It is this idea that stands at the center of the philosophy of the Di-
scourse on Metaphysics and Leibniz’s later
works. Leibniz does not use
the same language in the latter texts, but he
persists in believing that God is
both the unity and multiplicity in the world.
To cite only a couple of
texts:
In Discourse on Metaphysics 14 he writes that “Now, first of
all it is very
evident that created substances depend upon God, who preserves
them and
who even produces them continually by a kind of emanation, just as
we
produce our thoughts. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and in
all
ways the general system of phenomena which he finds it good to produce in
order to manifest his glory, and he views all the faces of the world in all
ways
possible...” (AG 46).
In Monadology, 47 he explains that “God alone is the primitive
unity or the
original simple substance; all created or derivative monads are
products,
and are generated so to speak by continual fulgurations of the divinity
[...],
limited by the receptivity of the creature, to which it is essential to be
limit-
ed” (AG 219).
not
exacty the same; but we can ignore the distinction here.
There remains much to be said about Leibniz’s many remarks concern-
ing unity and
multiplicity in the world. I do not mean to suggest that the
brief analysis
offered here will solve all the interpretive problems that arise
concerning such
comments. It will not. But, by excavating Leibniz’s original
understanding of
this two-part notion, I do hope to have placed such re-
marks in their proper
philosophical context and to have offered a crucial
clue to their deciphering.
That God is the unity and multiplicity in the
world is a fact about Leibniz’s
metaphysics that has gone unnoticed for too
long.