Refutation of Spinoza

Leibniz's private notes against Spinoza: a God who understands the possibles and chooses among them, against one from whom everything unfolds by necessity.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz34 passages held

French, a translation held here

Original title: Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia
First published: 1854(published posthumously)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

Elucidarius cabalisticus (1706), by Johann Georg Wachter, a German scholar much accused of Spinozism, claimed that Spinoza had only put the Kabbalah, the secret philosophy of the Hebrews, into modern dress: the Jewish mystical tradition already held his single substance. Leibniz filled pages of Latin notes on the book. In them he goes through nine propositions from the first part of Spinoza's Ethics and argues that each is false, notes that Spinoza denies God an intellect while granting him thought, and sets against Spinoza's necessary unfolding of everything from God a God who understands the possibles and chooses among them. The notes were never prepared for readers. Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil, a French scholar still in his twenties and later a diplomat, found them in the Hanover library in a bundle of papers under Wachter's name, and in 1854 published them in Paris with a French translation, a long memoir and a title of his own: Réfutation inédite de Spinoza par Leibniz, the unpublished refutation of Spinoza. The title carried an argument: Foucher de Careil held that Leibniz's whole system was a reaction against Spinoza and owed him nothing, a verdict later scholars have contested. An English translation followed at Edinburgh in 1855.

Key concepts

What was Wachter’s Elucidarius cabalisticus?

A book of 1706 by Johann Georg Wachter, a German scholar much accused of Spinozism, claiming that Spinoza had only put the Kabbalah, the secret philosophy of the Hebrews, into modern dress: the Jewish mystical tradition already held his single substance. Leibniz filled pages of Latin notes on it, and those notes are this text.

What do the notes argue against in Spinoza’s Ethics?

Nine propositions from the first part, each of which Leibniz argues is false. Against Spinoza’s necessary unfolding of everything from God, he sets a God who understands the possibles and chooses among them. The notes are working notes, never prepared for readers, so the argument comes in short objections rather than a continuous treatise.

What does it mean for God to ‘understand the possibles’?

That the possibles are present to God’s understanding before any of them exists, so that creation is a choice among alternatives rather than a necessary unfolding. That is the whole difference between the two Gods of the notes: Spinoza’s produces everything that follows from its nature, while Leibniz’s surveys what could be and chooses what shall be.

Why is it called the ‘unpublished refutation’ of Spinoza?

Because that was the title Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil gave it when he found the notes in the Hanover library, bundled under Wachter’s name, and published them in Paris in 1854. The title carried his argument that Leibniz’s whole system was a reaction against Spinoza and owed him nothing, a verdict later scholars have contested.

Themes of the book

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

A God Who Chooses, Against a God Who Unfolds

Does everything unfold from God by necessity, or does God understand the possibles and choose among them? In private notes, Leibniz set the second God against Spinoza’s.

The occasion was Johann Georg Wachter’s Elucidarius cabalisticus of 1706, which claimed that Spinoza had only put the Kabbalah into modern dress, since the Jewish mystical tradition already held his single substance. Leibniz’s notes go through nine propositions from the first part of the Ethics and argue that each is false. He remarks that Spinoza denies God an intellect while granting him thought, and against a necessary unfolding of everything from God he sets a God whose understanding holds the possibles and whose choice decides among them. The notes were never prepared for readers; their title came from the scholar who published them in 1854.

necessity
contingency
creation
emanation
freedom
free will
will
volition
divine causation
substance
spinozism
thought
kabbalah
ideas

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 34
distinct concepts: 96
by passages held, corpus-wide: #708

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: “metaphysics” and “necessity”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 5 concepts, joined by 5 pairings. 25 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
metaphysics	necessity	2
necessity	substance	2
kabbalah	substance	1
metaphysics	substance	1
soul	substance	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)
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
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) you are here 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

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