On Nature Itself

Against the Altdorf professor Johann Christoph Sturm, who held that God alone acts, Leibniz argues that created things carry forces of their own.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz27 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: De ipsa natura
First published: 1698(aged 52)
Original language: Latin

Report a rights issue

Overview

Johann Christoph Sturm, professor of mathematics and physics at Altdorf, near Nuremberg, had argued in Idolum naturae (1692) that the nature philosophers and physicians appealed to, a power inside things that makes them act, was an idol: God alone acts, and bodies only receive. When the Kiel medical professor Schelhammer defended nature against him in 1697 and Sturm replied the next year, Leibniz joined the quarrel with this essay in the Leipzig Acta Eruditorum for September 1698. Leibniz and Sturm had known of each other since the 1660s, as pupils of the mathematician Erhard Weigel. Leibniz grants Sturm that everything comes from God, then asks what God's command at the creation left behind in things. If it left nothing, it has no effect now, and God would have to act anew at every instant, which leads, Leibniz warned, toward Spinoza's single substance. A world of purely passive matter could not even keep one body distinct from another. Created things must therefore carry a force of their own, the force his dynamics measures, and that force is what makes them substances. Leibniz cast Sturm as a follower of Malebranche's occasionalism, the view that God is the only true cause, and historians now judge the label only partly fair. Sturm denied the very premise that to be a substance is to act, and the two positions never met.

Key concepts

What did Sturm mean by calling nature an idol?

That the nature philosophers and physicians appealed to, a power inside things that makes them act, did not exist: God alone acts, and bodies only receive. Johann Christoph Sturm, professor of mathematics and physics at Altdorf, argued this in Idolum naturae in 1692. Leibniz’s essay defends the opposite, that created things carry forces of their own.

What is occasionalism, and was Sturm really an occasionalist?

Occasionalism is Malebranche’s view that God is the only true cause, created things being mere occasions for his action. Leibniz cast Sturm as a follower of it, and historians now judge the label only partly fair. The deeper disagreement was elsewhere: Sturm denied the very premise that to be a substance is to act, so the two positions never met.

What is the ‘force’ that Leibniz places in created things?

The force his dynamics measures, which God’s command at the creation left behind in things and which makes them substances. Without it, a world of purely passive matter could not even keep one body distinct from another. The essay ties Leibniz’s physics to his metaphysics: the same force that enters the laws of motion is what makes a thing a substance.

Why does Leibniz say Sturm’s view leads toward Spinoza?

Because if God’s command at the creation left nothing in things, it has no effect now, and God would have to act anew at every instant. Then created things would have no activity or standing of their own, and the only real agent, and so the only real substance, would be God, which is Spinoza’s single substance.

How did Leibniz come into the quarrel over nature?

Through the Acta Eruditorum of September 1698. Schelhammer, a Kiel medical professor, had defended nature against Sturm in 1697, and Sturm replied the next year. Leibniz and Sturm had known of each other since the 1660s, as pupils of the mathematician Erhard Weigel, so the essay is also an argument between two students of the same teacher.

Themes of the book

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

Does God Alone Act?

When a body moves, is it acting, or is God acting through it? Against Sturm, who held that God alone acts, Leibniz argues that created things carry forces of their own.

Leibniz grants Sturm that everything comes from God, then asks what God’s command at the creation left behind in things. If it left nothing, it has no effect now, and God would have to act anew at every instant, a road Leibniz warned leads toward Spinoza’s single substance. A world of purely passive matter could not even keep one body distinct from another. Created things must carry a force of their own, the force his dynamics measures, and that force is what makes them substances. Sturm denied the premise that to be a substance is to act, and the two positions never met.

active force
force
causal powers
causation
substance
occasionalism
divine action
dynamics
natural philosophy
matter
laws of nature
monism
agency
philosophical disagreement

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 27
distinct concepts: 64
by passages held, corpus-wide: #749

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: “active force” and “causation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 24 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
active force	causation	3
causation	motion	3
metaphysics	substance	3
active force	motion	2
active force	substance	2
causation	metaphysics	2
matter	metaphysics	2
active force	matter	1
causation	substance	1
matter	motion	1
matter	substance	1
metaphysics	motion	1

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.

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
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
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
1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura) you are here LA
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
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
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
1720 Monadology (Monadologie)
Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.
FR
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

— or open another of their works