Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

CHAPTER 11
Leibniz: truth, knowledge and metaphysics
Nicholas Jolley
Leibniz is in important respects the exception among the great philosophers of
the seventeenth century. The major thinkers of the period characteristically
proclaim the need to reject the philosophical tradition; in their different ways
Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza all insist that new foundations must be laid if
philosophy is to achieve any sure and lasting results. Even Malebranche, who
seeks to revive the teaching of Augustine, joins in the general chorus of
condemnation of Aristotle and his legacy. Leibniz, by contrast, does not share in
this revolutionary fervour. Although he is capable of criticizing the Aristotelian
tradition, he is also careful to remark that much gold is buried in the dross. 1
Leibniz of course is as enthusiastic as any of his contemporaries about the new
mechanistic science; indeed, he is one of its most distinguished advocates and
exponents. But by temperament Leibniz is not a revolutionary but a synthesizer;
in philosophy, as in politics and religion, he deliberately sets out to mediate
between opposing camps. As he himself said, ‘the majority of the sects are right
in a large part of what they assert but not so much in what they deny’. 2
The distinctive character of Leibniz’s reconciling project needs to be made a
little clearer. Other philosophers in the period had of course also tried to show
that the new science was compatible with natural theology. Descartes, for
example, sought to find a place in his philosophy for such orthodox doctrines as
the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul. But in contrast with
Descartes, Leibniz sought to retain as much as possible of the Aristotelian
framework and to combine it with the emerging scientific and philosophical
ideas; we shall see, for example, that Leibniz seeks to fuse Aristotelian and
Cartesian conceptions of the soul. The synthesizing spirit of
Leibniz’s philosophy is one of its fascinations, but it is also a source of
weakness; Leibniz sometimes seems to be trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
The structure of the present chapter is as follows. The first three sections are
devoted to the analysis of Leibniz’s general metaphysics. In the first two sections
we shall see how Leibniz formulates an Aristotelian theory of corporeal
substance in his first mature work, the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), and
how he seemingly attempts to derive a number of metaphysical doctrines from
purely logical considerations concerning truth. In the third section we shall see