The integration of knowledge in Leibniz's ‘monadology’

Abstract

In the first paragraphs of the Monadology, Leibniz investigates what constitutes the internal principle of both the unity and diversity of monads, as well as the unity in diversity that is expressed in change, the distinctive feature of the created monad. A confrontation of Leibniz's doctrine with that of Cartes, as expressed in The World and in The Principles of Philosophy, is required. In contrast to the Frenchman's claim to carry out a rigorous and exclusively extensional physics, what the German is going to propose is nothing less than an intensional physics. The only form of unity that the former contemplates is that of aggregation by spatio-temporal contiguity, completed by the reciprocal rest of the parts. To this, the latter opposes perceptual unity, in which unity and diversity coexist without opposition in the act of objectification. This allows the law of continuity to be reestablished in what concerns the realm of life, and between it and that of (at first sight) inorganic nature. He also introduces an internal principle of dynamism that transfers the change from the tangential-accidental to the profound-essential. Physics merges—without being confused—with psychology, the Cartesian notion of the animal-machine and even the machine-soul opposition are overcome. The idea of unconscious perception appears as a corollary of these daring interdisciplinary transgressions, and Leibniz's philosophy is equally worthy of the label of "panpsychism", as well as that of "panmachinism" or "pandynamicism". The trade of ideas even overflows the closure of categorical spheres, so that his physics is transmuted without violence into a metaphysics, which pursues the principles of corporeal nature on a proto-spatial and proto-temporal plane.