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WorkGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Monadology

Leibniz's whole late metaphysics in ninety numbered paragraphs, beginning from substances without parts or windows.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz89 passages held

  • French, the original language
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Original title
Monadologie
First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
French

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Overview

Heinrich Köhler, who translated it into German in 1720, gave the text the name it has kept; Leibniz had begun it in French in Vienna in 1714 and probably finished it after his return to Hanover that September. In ninety numbered paragraphs it rebuilds his late metaphysics from the smallest unit up. Whatever is composite must be made of simple substances, monads, which have no parts, no shape and no windows through which anything could enter or leave; each changes only from within, through perceptions and the striving that carries it from one perception to the next. Perception cannot be mechanical: walk through a thinking machine enlarged to the size of a mill and you find only parts pushing one another, never a thought. Every monad mirrors the whole universe from its own point of view, as one town looks different from each side, and God has set all of them in agreement from the start. Reasoning rests on two principles, contradiction and sufficient reason, and the second leads to God, who chose the best of all possible worlds; minds, able to know him, form a moral city under him. Leibniz added references to paragraphs of his Theodicy for readers who wanted the argument at length. A Latin version followed in 1721 in the Acta Eruditorum; Denis Diderot later paraphrased the Latin for the Encyclopédie. Another text of the same year, the Principles of Nature and Grace, runs so close to it that the two were long confused. Leibniz's French was not printed until 1840.

Key concepts

What is a monad?

A simple substance: something with no parts and no shape, of which everything composite is made. Each monad changes only from within, through its perceptions and the striving that carries it from one perception to the next. Monads are the smallest units from which the Monadology rebuilds Leibniz’s whole late metaphysics.

What does it mean that monads have ‘no windows’?

That nothing can enter a monad or leave it. No outside cause alters a monad’s inner states, and a monad passes nothing on to another; whatever changes in it changes from within. The agreement among monads therefore cannot come from interaction, and Leibniz ascribes it to God, who set all of them in agreement from the start.

What is the mill argument?

Leibniz’s argument that perception cannot be mechanical. Imagine a thinking machine enlarged to the size of a mill and walk through it: you find only parts pushing one another, never a thought. Since no inspection of the machinery meets the perception, perception must belong to simple substances, not to composites and their workings.

What are the two principles on which all reasoning rests?

Contradiction and sufficient reason. By the first, whatever involves a contradiction is false. By the second, nothing is so without a reason why it is so and not otherwise. In the Monadology the second leads to God, who chose the best of all possible worlds.

What is the moral city of minds?

The community that minds form under God. Every monad mirrors the universe, but minds can also know God, and this makes them members of a moral order with God as its ruler. It is the point where the Monadology passes from the structure of the universe to the relation between minds and their maker.

Why is the text known by a name Leibniz did not give it?

Heinrich Köhler, who translated it into German in 1720, called it the Monadology, and the name stuck. Leibniz had begun it in French in Vienna in 1714. A Latin version followed in 1721 in the Acta Eruditorum, but the French original was not printed until 1840, and for over a century readers knew it only in translation.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Substances Without Windows

If whatever is composite is made of simples, what can a simple thing be like? Leibniz answers with monads: no parts, no shape, and no windows through which anything enters or leaves.

Whatever is composite must be made of simple substances, and the simple substances, monads, have no parts and no shape. Nor have they windows: nothing can enter a monad or leave it, so whatever changes in it changes from within. That inner life has two features, perceptions and the striving that carries a monad from one perception to the next. The picture is severe on purpose: a universe of beings never acted on from outside, each unfolding its own states. The ninety numbered paragraphs build everything else on this foundation.

  • monads
  • monadology
  • substance
  • change
  • perception
  • action and passion
  • agency
  • continuity

Enter a dialogue

Walking Through a Thinking Mill

Could a machine think, if it were built finely enough? Leibniz asks the reader to walk inside one enlarged to the size of a mill, and look for the thought.

Perception, Leibniz argues, cannot be mechanical. Imagine a thinking machine, enlarge it to the size of a mill and walk through it: you find only parts pushing one another, never a thought. However complete the inspection of the machinery, it never meets the thing it was supposed to explain. So perception has to be sought in simple substances rather than in composites and their workings, which is why the argument sits among the paragraphs about monads and not among those about bodies.

  • perception
  • consciousness
  • mechanism
  • soul
  • rational soul
  • memory
  • organisms
  • body

Enter a dialogue

Mirrors of the Universe, Citizens of a City

How do beings that never act on each other make up one world? Each mirrors the whole from its own point of view, and minds, which can know God, form a moral city under him.

Every monad mirrors the whole universe from its own point of view, as one town looks different from each side, and God has set all of them in agreement from the start. Reasoning rests on two principles, contradiction and sufficient reason, and the second leads to God, who chose the best of all possible worlds. Minds hold a special place in it: able to know God, they form a moral city under him. Leibniz added references to his Theodicy for readers who wanted the argument at length, so the ninety paragraphs are also a map of the longer book.

  • perspective
  • preestablished harmony
  • sufficient reason
  • necessary truth
  • reason
  • divine understanding
  • divine providence
  • grace
  • theodicy
  • contingency
  • god
  • knowledge

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
89
distinct concepts
169
by passages held, corpus-wide
#532

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “change” and “monads”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 63 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
changemonads5
godmetaphysics5
monadsperception5
causationmonads4
metaphysicsmonads4
perceptionsoul4
monadsrepresentation3
monadssoul2
causationchange1
causationmetaphysics1
causationperception1
changeperception1
changesoul1
perceptionrepresentation1
representationsoul1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1684 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis)

    A journal article of 1684, written into the Arnauld–Malebranche quarrel over ideas; its grades of knowledge return in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New Essays.

     LA
  2. 1691 Whether the Essence of a Body Consists in Extension (Lettre sur la question si l'essence du corps consiste dans l'étendue)

    Against the Cartesian view that body is nothing but extension: a letter to the Paris Journal des Sçavans in 1691, followed by a second in 1693.

     FR
  3. 1695 New System of Nature (Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances)

    Leibniz's first public statement of his system, printed in Paris in 1695; his replies to Foucher and Bayle kept it in the journals until 1698.

     FR
  4. 1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura)

    An answer to Johann Christoph Sturm in the Acta Eruditorum of 1698, defending forces inside created things and tying the dynamics to the metaphysics of substance.

     LA
  5. 1710 Theodicy (Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal)

    Published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1710, it was the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, and the one Voltaire answered with Candide.

     FR
  6. 1717 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Recueil des lettres entre Leibniz et Clarke)

    Ten papers exchanged through the Princess of Wales in 1715–16, cut off by Leibniz's death and published by Clarke in 1717.

     FR
  7. 1718 Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison)

    A companion summary from the same Vienna months as the Monadology, long mistaken for it and printed before it, in 1718.

     FR
  8. 1720 Monadology (Monadologie) you are here FR
  9. 1765 New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain)

    The book-length reply to Locke, written as a dialogue in 1703–04, withheld after Locke's death and first printed in 1765.

     FR
  10. 1840 Discourse Touching the Method of Certitude and the Art of Discovery (Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l'art d'inventer)

    A plea for royal patronage of the sciences, addressed to an unnamed king, apparently Louis XIV, setting out the method of certainty and art of discovery Leibniz pursued for decades.

     FR
  11. 1840 On the Ultimate Origination of Things (De rerum originatione radicali)

    A short Latin essay of 1697 on why there is a world at all, left in manuscript until 1840.

     LA
  12. 1840 Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit (Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique)

    A French essay written in 1702 at the Prussian queen's palace outside Berlin, and left unprinted until 1840.

     FR
  13. 1846 Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de métaphysique)

    The opening statement of Leibniz's mature metaphysics, written early in 1686 and left unprinted until 1846.

     FR
  14. 1846 The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld)

    The exchange of 1686 to 1690 between Leibniz and Arnauld over the Discourse on Metaphysics, every letter carried by the Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels.

     FR
  15. 1854 Refutation of Spinoza (Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia)

    Private Latin notes on Wachter's book about Spinoza and the Kabbalah, given their title by the French scholar who published them in 1854.

     FR
  16. 1890 Tentamen Anagogicum: An Anagogical Essay in the Investigation of Causes (Essai anagogique dans la recherche des causes)

    A French essay of about 1696, from the years of Leibniz's dynamics, defending final causes against the mechanical philosophers.

     FR
  17. 1903 New Openings (Nouvelles Ouvertures)

    Written in French in 1686, by the Academy edition's dating, and left in manuscript until Couturat printed it in 1903.

     FR
  18. 1903 Preface to the General Science (Préface de la Science générale)

    Probably from 1677, an unfinished preface to the universal language of reasoning, unprinted until 1903.

     FR
  19. 1915 Confessio Philosophi (Confessio philosophi)

    Leibniz's first developed theodicy, a Latin dialogue from his Paris years; revised after Steno's objections, its account of sin returns much changed in the Theodicy of 1710.

     LA
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