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WorkGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence

Arnauld saw only the headings of Leibniz's metaphysics and objected that they meant fatalism; a year and a half of argument followed.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz253 passages held

  • French, the original language
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Original title
Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld
First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
French

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Overview

Early in 1686 a list of propositions from Leibniz reached Antoine Arnauld, the Jansenist theologian, in exile in the Netherlands since 1679 and in the middle of his quarrel with Nicolas Malebranche. It came through Ernst, Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels, who carried every letter between the two men. The propositions were the headings of the Discourse on Metaphysics; the text itself stayed in Hanover. Arnauld's first reaction, sent to the Landgrave in March, was alarm. His first letter to Leibniz, in May, fixed on the thirteenth heading: that the notion of each person contains once and for all everything that will ever happen to him. In that case, Arnauld objected, once God had decided to create Adam, everything that would ever happen to the human race followed with a necessity worse than fate. Leibniz spent the summer distinguishing what is certain from what is necessary, and on 28 September 1686 Arnauld withdrew the charge of fatalism. The exchange then moved to harder ground: how soul and body agree if neither acts on the other, and why a body needs a substantial form to be one thing rather than a heap, like a pile of stones. Arnauld admitted he had no clear notion of what Leibniz meant by expression. His last letter is dated 28 August 1687, and three days later he told the Landgrave that Leibniz would do better to drop such speculation and attend to choosing the true religion. Leibniz wrote to him once more, from Venice, in March 1690. The letters were first printed in 1846, together with the Discourse, from copies Leibniz had revised, meaning to publish them himself.

Key concepts

What did the thirteenth heading say about each person’s notion?

That the notion of each person contains once and for all everything that will ever happen to him. It was one of the headings of the Discourse on Metaphysics sent to Arnauld in 1686, and his first letter to Leibniz fixed on it at once. Most of the first summer of the correspondence was spent on this one sentence.

What did Arnauld mean by ‘a necessity worse than fate’?

His charge against the thirteenth heading. If each person’s notion contains everything that will happen to him, then once God decided to create Adam, everything that would ever happen to the human race followed necessarily, leaving no room for freedom, human or divine. Leibniz answered by separating the certain from the necessary, and on 28 September 1686 Arnauld withdrew the charge of fatalism.

What does Leibniz mean by ‘expression’ in these letters?

The relation by which one thing represents another in its own states, without acting on it. Leibniz used it to explain how soul and body agree although neither acts on the other: each expresses what happens in the other. It was the notion Arnauld found hardest, and he admitted he had no clear idea of what Leibniz meant by it.

What is a substantial form, and why does a body need one?

A principle of unity that makes a body one thing rather than a heap. Leibniz’s example is a pile of stones: many things lying together, with nothing that makes them a single being. A body made only of extended parts would be no better off, so a true bodily substance needs a form that its parts alone cannot supply.

Who carried the letters between Leibniz and Arnauld?

Ernst, Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels, who passed on every letter and first sent Arnauld the headings of the Discourse. Arnauld, in exile in the Netherlands since 1679, wrote his last letter on 28 August 1687; three days later he told the Landgrave that Leibniz would do better to drop such speculation and attend to choosing the true religion.

Themes of the book

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

Certain, but Not Necessary

If the notion of each person already contains everything that will ever happen to them, is anyone free? Arnauld called it a necessity worse than fate, and Leibniz spent a summer answering him.

The thirteenth heading Arnauld received said that each person’s notion contains once and for all everything that will ever happen to him. Arnauld drew the consequence at once: once God decided to create Adam, the whole history of the human race followed with a necessity worse than fate. Leibniz’s reply turned on the difference between what is certain and what is necessary. That something will happen can be settled without its opposite becoming impossible. The distinction did its work: on 28 September 1686 Arnauld withdrew the charge of fatalism.

  • individual concepts
  • contingency
  • necessity
  • free will
  • divine decrees
  • divine freedom
  • divine knowledge
  • possible worlds
  • possibility
  • personal identity

Enter a dialogue

Soul and Body Without Interaction

How do soul and body agree, if neither acts on the other? Once fatalism was settled the letters moved to this harder ground, and to a word Arnauld admitted he could not grasp.

Leibniz held that neither soul nor body acts on the other. Then their agreement between a mind and its body cannot be one pushing the other, and Leibniz explained it through expression, each substance representing the others in its own states. Arnauld, then in the middle of his own quarrel with Malebranche, pressed the point and admitted he had no clear notion of what Leibniz meant by the word. In these private letters Leibniz first had to defend his answer to the mind-body problem against a formidable reader.

  • mind-body problem
  • pre-established harmony
  • causation
  • occasionalism
  • soul
  • perception
  • substance
  • metaphysics

Enter a dialogue

One Thing, or a Pile of Stones?

What makes a body one thing rather than a heap? Leibniz’s answer was a substantial form, and Arnauld was not persuaded that a body needs one.

A pile of stones is many things lying together, and nothing in it makes it a single being. Leibniz argued that a body made only of extended parts would be no better off: an aggregate, not a substance. To be one thing, a body needs a substantial form, a principle of unity that the parts alone cannot supply. This was the harder ground the exchange reached once fatalism was off the table. Three days after his last letter, Arnauld told the Landgrave that Leibniz would do better to drop such speculation and attend to choosing the true religion.

  • substantial forms
  • unity
  • substance
  • matter
  • animal souls
  • soul
  • phenomena

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
253
distinct concepts
343
by passages held, corpus-wide
#296

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: “causation” and “mind-body problem”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 20 pairings. 86 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
causationmind-body problem16
mind-body problempre-established harmony15
contingencyindividual concepts13
causationpre-established harmony12
metaphysicssubstance9
metaphysicssubstantial forms8
pre-established harmonysubstance7
causationsubstance6
mind-body problemsubstance5
causationsubstantial forms4
mind-body problemsubstantial forms4
substancesubstantial forms4
causationindividual concepts3
causationmetaphysics3
individual conceptssubstance2
pre-established harmonysubstantial forms2
contingencysubstance1
individual conceptsmind-body problem1
individual conceptspre-established harmony1
metaphysicspre-established harmony1

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)

    Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.

     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) you are here 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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