Sorglose Nacht

Overview

The Principles is among the last philosophical texts of Leibniz. It provides a short summary written in lay style of his philosophy. Taken together with the Monadology, Theodicy and the New System, Leibniz found it to be a coherent and comprehensive statement of his philosophy. (cf. Pauline Phemister, Leibniz and the Natural World pp. 7-8)

Outline

1. Substances
   1. A substance is a being that is capable of action.
   2. Substances can be simple (having no parts) or composite (collection of simple substances, monads).
   3. Simple substances = unities; Composite substances = multiplicities
   4. Lives, souls, and minds are simple substances, and therefore where there is simple substance there is life.
   5. Since the whole world is built out of simple substances, life is everywhere in nature.
2. Monads
   1. Because monads have no parts, they can’t be made/unmade.
   2. They also cannot come into or go out of existence. They last as long as the universe does.
   3. They can’t have shapes or sizes (since for this they would need parts).
   4. Therefore, they must be distinguished by their qualities (perceptions) or actions (appetitions).
   5. A simple substance can be in many states at once since these states match up with its various relations to things outside it. (E.g. a geometrical point is simple, but is at the center of infinitely many angles.
3. Causes
   1. Nature is totally full of simple substances, which are separated by their actions, and in a constant state of change relative to one another.
   2. A body is an infinite number of monads clustered around a central monad.
      1. If we can think this, then we can think that the central monad corresponds with the states of the body.
      2. This means that a body is a collection of progressively complex machines, a natural automaton.
      3. In turn, this means that every monad is a living mirror which represents the universe in accordance with its own point of view.
      4. “Living” refers to a monad’s being its own source of activity.
      5. Deleuze loves this bit.
   3. A monad’s perceptions arise out of its other perceptions by the laws of appetites (the final causes) just as changes in bodies arise from the laws of movement (the laws of efficient causes). [Note: formal and efficient causes in the Aristotelian sense.]
4. Animals, Subconscious Perceptions
   1. Since every organism is made up of smaller forms of life (less complex monads, say, organs), and so are these, and so on, then not only is life everywhere, but there are “infinite levels of life.”
   2. A sufficiently complex (?) lifeform is called an animal, and its (central?) monad is called its soul.
   3. Non-reasonable animals (”bare life”) have unelevated monads for souls. They don’t have distinct enough perceptions to be remembered.
      1. Here’s a distinction between perception (say, mere perception or sentience) and awareness (say, reflective knowledge or sapience).
      2. Awareness is not given to all souls and no soul has it all the time.
      3. Here’s where Cartesians went wrong - they didn’t grok le petit perceptions (we now say: subconscious perception).
5. Minds
   1. Animals have interconnected perceptions in a way that is not quite by reason. (A dog remembers a stick with which it has been beaten.)
      1. This is to say that it is grounded only in the memory of effects, without knowledge of causes.
   2. The kinds of animals that can understand causes (and therefore other analytic principles) are rational animals. Their soul-monads are called minds. Minds are capable of reflective acts (self-knowledge, science).
6. Death
   1. The ancients believed that life emerged from chaos, but we now know that it comes from organized systems (seeds), and therefore from other forms of life.
   2. Since this is the case, since animals do not emerge out of nowhere when they are born, it is unlikely that they disappear completely when they die. There is no metempsychosis, rather merely metamorphosis.
7. Since nothing comes about without sufficient reason, and since things do exist, we should be able to give a reason why there being something is preferable to there being nothing.
8. God
   1. The sufficient reason for the existence of the universe can’t be found in the order of contingent things (bodies and their representations in souls).
      1. It can’t be in bodies because there’s never a reason in matter for its own motion. The material reasons for the motion of matter are causal, and as we know, if we follow this chain, we regress infinitely.
   2. Therefore the sufficient reason for the universe must lie outside of the causal chain. It must be something that exists necessarily and without cause.
   3. This is called God.
9. God’s Perfection
   1. This simple, primal substance must have in a higher form the perfections of those things derivative from it.
   2. Directly this means that God has perfect power (omnipotence), knowledge (omniscience), and will (is supremely good). From this follows perfect justice (goodness + omniscience).
   3. Whatever imperfections earthly stuff has, they don’t derive from God, but rather from their own limits as created things.
10. The Most Perfect Universe
    1. Since God is perfect, it follows that he chose the best design for the universe. One with:
       1. The greatest variety and orderliness.
       2. The best arranged time and place (and terrain).
       3. The maximum effect produced by the simplest means.
       4. The highest levels of power, knowledge, happiness and goodness in created things that the universe allowed.
    2. This all follows since things must lay claim to existence where their claim is in direct proportion to their perfections.
11. The Most Perfect Physics
    1. God’s perfection is also exemplified in the laws of motion, which hang together the best and are the most comprehensible to metaphysical reasoning.
    2. Leibniz, who himself discovered some laws of nature, notes that these cannot be justified merely by means of (efficient) causality, and rather require appeal to final causes, a fact which provides yet another evident proof of God.
12. The Harmony of the Monads
    1. From the perfection of the universe (by way of the perfection of its author) it follows that every living mirror (monad/substantial center) must have its perceptions and appetitions ordered in the most perfect way qua compatibility with the rest of the monads.
13. The Fold
    1. So monads are ordered in perfect harmony with one another. This implies a serious kind of determinism (Leibniz nicely says “The present is big with the future, the future could have been read in the past, and distant things are expressed in what is nearby.”)
    2. If we could unfold any individual soul, we could see the beauty of the entire universe.
    3. But, since most of a soul’s perceptions are confused, and since the soul can only know its clear and distinct perceptions, which are /much/ fewer, individual souls know very little of the universe at a given time. Only God can have distinct perceptions of everything.
    4. Leibniz is obviously getting romantic here. He waxes poetical that in the roar of the ocean, he has many confused perceptions of distinct waves.
14. Imperfect Works and the Mirror of the Creator
    1. A rational soul is not merely a mirror of the universe, but also a likeness of its creator.
    2. It not only perceives God’s works, it can reproduce something like them on a smaller scale.
15. The City of God
    1. This means that all minds, entering into a kind of harmony with God, are members of the City of God - the most perfect and judicious state, with many fine characteristics:
       1. no crime without punishment
       2. no good deed goes unrewarded
       3. “as much virtue and goodness as possible”
    2. God achieves this City by means of a pre-established harmony between the kingdoms of nature and of grace, between God as the architect and God as the monarch.
    3. Nature leads on to grace, while grace perfects nature while at the same time making use of it.
16. Love of God
    1. Reason can’t tell us about the next life, but it can assure us that things have been done in a perfect way.
    2. In loving God, we can take pleasure in his perfections, which are … perfect … and so love for God must give us the most pleasure of which we are capable.
17. Pleasure without Sensory Input
    1. It is easy to love this God. There is nothing mysterious about taking pleasure from something imperceivable. Supporting arguments:
       1. People get pleasure from honors.
       2. Martyrs show the power of the pleasures of the mind in going happily to their deaths.
       3. The pleasures of the senses, in the end, are intellectual pleasures. Their sensory character is just our confusion (the real pleasure of music is in the numbers, e.g.).
       4. Again, very poetic Leibniz: “We are not aware of the numbers of these beats, but our soul counts them all the same!”)
18. The Pursuit of Happiness
    1. Loving God is its own reward, and gives us a foretaste of our future happiness.
    2. Finally, since God is infinite, and thus never knowable in its entirety, our happiness in loving it won’t ever consist in a mind-numbing complete enjoyment with nothing left to desire, but rather in “a perpetual progression towards new pleasures and new perfections.”

Overview

Socrates, on his deathbed, lays down four arguments for the immortality of the soul to his group of disciples and friends.

The Setup

Phaedo recounts the story of Socrates’ death. Socrates’ death took place so long after his trial because of an Athenian holy season, in which the city was not allowed to be “polluted by executions.” Many friends were present at Socrates’ deathbed, but Plato, apparently, was ill.

1. RHAPSODIZING

   1. The discussion starts with Socrates casually remarking on light things - the apparent attachment of pleasure to pain and why he’s suddenly taken to writing verse since he’s been in jail (he was told to in a dream!).
   2. Socrates then sends an envoy to the philosopher Evenus: Come along! Cebes, befuddled, asks Socrates why “a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying”. Socrates claims that
      1. Our lives are the possessions of the Gods, and therefore we have no right to take them ourselves.
      2. However, a philosopher should not grieve at his death, as the rewards of the afterlife certainly make the experience of death a “far better thing for the good than for the evil.” He goes on to explain (c):
   3. Death is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body. Now, the philosopher should care not for the pleasures of the body, and hence, the wise man desires nothing more than to enact this very separation of the soul from the body.
      1. The senses deceive us when it comes to the quest for knowledge. The body is a hindrance, not a help.
      2. The philosopher gets the work of knowledge done best with the mind alone; the soul can attain truth best as revealed to her in thought.
      3. Further, our eyes cannot behold absolute (justice|truth|beauty|etc.) Again, our bodies hinder our souls’ progress toward truth. Thus, “either [absolute] knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.”
      4. Hence, he who repines at death is hardly a philosopher. For at the end, all the vagaries of courage and temperance in the face of death (especially for the philosopher!) should be subsumed by the promises of wisdom in the afterlife.
   4. Cebes, thus, poses the question: “many arguments are required in order to prove that when the man is dead the soul yet exists, and has any force of intelligence.” Socrates is ready to respond.

2. THE FIRST ARGUMENT (THE CYCLICAL ARGUMENT)

   1. Socrates starts with an appeal to a Greek belief in reincarnation. However, in the same breath, he admits that there is no verification of this. So, he suggests starting with a broader appeal. Aren’t all opposites generated reciprocally? (aka. no good without evil).
      1. And this generation is actually “a passing from one to the other” - aka. heating and cooling, division and composition - that is, any opposites require an intermediate process.
   2. So, by analogy to sleep:waking, we are to understand death:life. The process of generation of sleep is falling asleep, and of waking is waking up.
   3. If this is true, by inference (and extension), we can believe in the birth of the dead to the world of the living. And hence the souls of the dead must continue to exist.

3. THE SECOND ARGUMENT (THE RECOLLECTIVE ARGUMENT)

   1. Cebes now offers that Socrates’ favorite doctrine of recollection seems to presuppose a previous time in which we learned what we can come to recollect. Cebes reminds us of the proof of this doctrine (from the Meno) of Meno’s slave remembering geometry.
   2. Socrates offers a second proof of this argument:
      1. If the image of one thing can bring to mind another (your lover’s garment, i.e.), and thus if recollection can be triggered either by things like or unlike.
      2. Extrapolating from here, if seeing particular pieces of wood and stone, and in identifying them as in some way equal, we are recollecting absolute equality, which we have never seen.
      3. Further, if things can only be understood sensually, we must have known about things like absolute equality before we were born, because we certainly haven’t seen/touched/smelled it in this lifetime. This implies absolutely that all knowledge is recollection.
      4. And the ability to access this knowledge implies an uninterrupted medium in which it was stored. This leads to only two possible conclusions. Either we had this knowledge since birth, and continued to know it throughout life, or else we received it after birth, and then lost it immediately, which doesn’t make any sense.

4. THE THIRD ARGUMENT (THE AFFINITY ARGUMENT)

   1. Now, everyone is sufficiently convinced that we’re born from the dead, but apparently not that when we die our souls don’t blow away in the wind and scatter. Socrates suggests here that it might be instructive to know something about the nature of the soul.
   2. Namely, Socrates wants to show that the soul is “uncompounded” and hence “indissoluble.”
      1. The aforementioned essences (Forms), it is agreed, must always be the same (unchanging). And the particulars that partake of Form F are contrawise always changing. Further, you can see and touch the particulars but not F.
      2. So, let’s assume that there are two sorts of existences, the seen and the unseen; these correspond to the changing and the unchanging.
      3. Now, if we are two parts, body and soul, and the body has a clear affinity to the changing/visible realm, meanwhile the soul is obviously unseen. The soul, we have argued, trapped by the body, only finds her home realm of the unchanging in wisdom. Hence, it seems that the soul has an affinity with the unchanging.
      4. Nature orders the soul to rule over the body, a nice analogy to the divine ruling over the mortal. Now, if all this is true, it must be admitted that the soul is “almost or altogether indissoluble.”
   3. This discussion now degrades into some crazy speculation about what kinds of animals the souls of the wicked will be reincarnated as. (Proportional justice: Drunkards as asses and pigs, etc.) Additionally, only philosophers are allowed to attain nirvana, with the Gods, and not be passed back into a new body.
   4. Cebes and Simmias both have some concerns with this line of argument, but are reticent to put them to Socrates. Socrates assures them that it’s cool. Simmias goes first. He poses the possibility that soul:body may be more like harmony:lyre. It seems to Simmias that if somebody cuts the lyre’s strings, it pretty much kills the harmony at the same time.
   5. Cebes then poses the problem that soul:body may be something like weaver:coat: That is, the soul may weave many bodies, and outlast them, but still it will die. He needs Socrates to prove that the soul is absolutely immortal to have any confidence.

5. THE FOURTH ARGUMENT: THE ARGUMENT FROM THE FORMS

   1. Socrates begins with Simmias: He takes umbrage starting with the idea that harmony is a compound. If “the soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the body,” it cannot be prior to the elements that compose it. But, granting (3) above, the soul must be prior to the body. Thus the analogy is false (harmony is made last and vanishes first).
      1. Additionally, harmony is absolute (not measured by degrees). So, if the analogy were true, souls would all be equally good (harmonious), as opposed to some being good, some being bad, etc.
      2. Finally, if the soul were a harmony generated by the physical, it wouldn’t caution us against the lusts of the bodily.
   2. So much for Simmias and Harmonia. Now on to Cebes and Cadmus. Socrates will argue from generation and decay. He will premise his argument on the existence of absolute beauty, goodness, etc. The Forms. He first attempts to set up his premises:
      1. He introduces the argument of Causality: Things that are F (other than the F) are F by virtue of partaking of the F. [Clearly stated, 100]
      2. He introduces the argument of Separation: The F is itself by itself, at least in the sense of being separate from, and hence not identical with, the things that partake of it. [end of 102]
      3. He introduces Impurity-S: Sensible things are impure inasmuch as they can (and, in fact, often do) have contrary properties. (Simmias is both tall and short.) This is also the corrolary to:
      4. Purity-F: Forms cannot have contrary properties. [74] (Whereas sensible things that are equal are also unequal, the equal is not unequal, and hence the equal is not identical to any equal sensible thing.)
      5. Also, Self-Predication: For any property F, the F is F. [100, 102] (Largeness)
   3. So, if all this is true, and things can reject a form completely, but not oppose it as such (3 rejects oddness), then G’s simple participation in F doesn’t necessarily mean that F is that whose inherence is essential to the being of G. So, since the soul brings life, as established above, it must participate in the Form of Life. And by Purity-F, this means that the Soul cannot participate in death. Now, the opposite of death is immortality, and if the soul does not admit death, then the soul is immortal.
      1. “The preceding argument shows that the soul will not admit of death…any more than three or the odd number will admit of the even, or fire…of the cold.”

6. CRAZY UNCLE SOCRATES’ GEOGRAPHY LESSONS

   1. Everyone is pretty happy with that, so now Socrates goes off on a wistful rant about the nature of heaven and earth. This includes:
      1. The earth is a round body in the center of the heavens.
      2. The earth is actually at the bottom of a sea of aether (the heavens), and we are deceived that we dwell atop the earth. If we could fly we could see the true earth/heaven.
      3. Rivers circle this true earth, going underground under the deserts, and this is purgatory.
   2. It is basically a charming overture to purity. After which, he goes to take a bath. Crito is sad. Socrates drinks the poison with good cheer. Everyone is sad.