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.”