Abstract
Anne-Lise Rey argues that the novelty of Leibniz’s introduction of his science of dynamics lies in the fact that he conceives of the action of a body as a motive action that is also, at bottom, an action directed toward itself. In pursuit of the animal hidden in the machine, the explanatory frame that the dynamics puts in place to account for action, in such a way that the action within the body as well as the relation between bodies and simple substances are simultaneously comprehended, can serve, Rey believes, as a foundation for thinking about the status of organic bodies and their relationship to the notion of substantiality.
I would like to thank Justin Smith for his decisive help with the English version of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
One thinks for example of the undated letter, composed between the letter of August, 1699, and that of November, 1699, in which Leibniz, in the course of explaining the relationship of the active principle to extension, invokes the entelechy of the animated body in order to make the action of the dominant soul in the totality of the animated body comprehensible by analogy to the soul, “en raison de la structure du tout.” (GP II, 194: “[…]respondeo corpus tale [corpus animatum] aliam Entelechiam praeter animam et entelechias partium privatim actuatarum non habere; quin ipsa anima totius non foret nisi anima partis privatim animatae, nisi ob structuram totius ipsa dominans in toto anima esset”).
- 2.
Dutens (1770), s.l., s.n.
- 3.
In order to justify this claim, we may refer back for example to that passage addressed to De Volder in a letter of June 30, 1704, where Leibniz writes: “There is thus in reality something internal to every simple substance, since there is no reason why this should be in the one rather than in another, and this internal principle consists in the progress of the perception of each monad, and the entire nature of things involves nothing more than this.” (“Revera igitur est internum omnibus substantiis simplicibus, cum ratio non sit cur uni magis quam alteri, consistitque in progressu perceptionum Monadis cujusque, nec quicquam ultra habet tota rerum natura.” (cf GP II, 271)).
- 4.
In the Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances (1695) Leibniz writes: “il n’y a qu’une transformation d’un même animal, selon que les organes sont pliés différemment, et plus ou moins développés.” (GP IV, 481)
- 5.
Here we are referring to the formula presented in the 12th of Leibniz’s Doubts concerning the True Medical Theory of Stahl: “All bodies come under the scope of chemistry to the extent that they are treated not as structures but as masses, and to the extent that one applies to them physical operations that consist in an imperceptible process.” See Stahl-Leibniz, Controverse sur la vie, l’organisme et le mixte, introduit, édité et annoté par S. Carvallo, Paris, Vrin, 2004, 90–91: “Imo corpora omnia ad Chymia pertinent, quando secundum operationes physicas, insensibili processu constantes, non ut structurae, sed ut massae tractantur.”
- 6.
Fichant, “Leibniz et les machines de la nature”, Studia leibnitiana XXXV/1 (2003), p. 27: “Ainsi s’esquisse comme une des possibilités pour la thèse monadologique de rejoindre la description la plus rigoureuse des régions de la réalité, une ontologie à trois niveaux: ceux de la monade, du pur agrégat ou substantié sans unité réelle, et, entre les deux, de la substance corporelle, ou machine de la nature” citant un texte de l’éd. Couturat et un fragment « De substantia simplex ac composita » cité par Pasini dans son Corpo e funzioni cognitive in Leibniz (Milan, F. Angeli, 1996).
- 7.
GP II, p. 270: “Et scis ex meo calculo quo veram virium (derivatarum) aestimationem a priori demonstravi, vim (quam dixi) ductam in tempus quo exercetur facere actionem esseque adeo quod in actione momentaneum est, sed cum relatione ad statum sequentem.”
- 8.
GP II, 256: “Monades per se activas agnosco, in quibus etiam praeter perceptionem quae actionem utique involvit, intelligi nihil potest.”
- 9.
GP II, 183: “[…]et extensione perceptionem involvi arbitror.”
- 10.
Cited by Duchesneau (1998), 350: see LH, IV, 1, 2a, f 15, in E. Bodenmann Die Leibniz-Handschriften, 51–52: “Duplices naturae leges dynamicae et plasticae seu organicae. Est tamen et in dynamicis hoc velut organicum, quod obtineri non possint nisi materia ubique elastica esset, neque elasticum ubique in materia, nisi systemata in systematibus collocarentur. In quo dynamica respondent plasticis, quae semper organa in organis habent.”
- 11.
See Pasini, op. cit., 122: “La sua interpretazione della funzione degli spiriti serve infatti a introdurre nella fisiologia della sensazione il rapporto tra metafisica e dynamica.”
- 12.
This transposition, moreover, does not pose any problem for De Volder, who even considers that these domains are capable of having reciprocal relations. Thus in the letter of De Volder to Leibniz of November 12, 1699 (GP II, 198), De Volder writes: “Si igitur entelechiae tuae genere non differant ab anima, nonne sequitur ut anima nihil potest in corpus nec corpus in animam, ita nec entelechias quidquam posse in materiam, nec materiam in illas ? Unde sicut in corpore vis quaedam ponenda est, distincta ab Anima, qua corporis functiones peraguntur, ita in materia vis quaedam erit mutationis ab ipsa entelechia distincta.”
- 13.
GP II, 250: “Cum dico substantiam, quamvis corpoream continere infinitas machinas […]”
- 14.
GP II, 250: “nempe phaenomena aggregatorum ex realitate Monadum.”
- 15.
Ibid: “Cum dico substantiam, quamvis corpoream continere infinitas machinas, simul addendum puto ipsam complecti unam machinam ex ipsis compositam et praeterea esse una Entelechia actuatam, sine qua nullum esset in ea principium verae Unitatis.”
- 16.
GP II, 251: “Meo judicio nunquam oritur machina organica nova naturae, quia semper infinitorum organorum est, ut totum universum suo modo exprimat, imo semper omnia praeterita et praesentia tempora involvit, quae certissima est omnis substantiae natura; ratumque estquod in anima, idem et in corpore exprimi; unde et anima et machina per eam animata, et ipsum animal tam indestructibilia sunt quam ipsum universum.”
- 17.
This will lead us to deepen our understanding of perception, understood, for example, as in the seventh point of Leibniz’s twenty-first Response to Stahl’s Observations, as “a certain figuration, so to speak, or indeed a representation of a composed multitude within the monad,” (Carvallo 130–131): “Et perceptio quidem figuratio, ut sic dicam, seu repraesentatio est compositi in simplice multitudinis in monade.”
- 18.
GP VI, 544.
- 19.
GP IV, 522.
- 20.
GP II, p. 253.
- 21.
Ibid.:“Monades enim etsi extensae non sint, tamen in extensione quoddam situs genus, id est quandam ad alia coexistentiae relationem habent ordinatam, per Machinam scilicet cui praesunt.”
- 22.
One might also see here a sort of anticipatory response to the problem, raised by Dutens in the letters, of the chess-playing automaton.
- 23.
See GP II, 277: “La diffusion que je conçois dans l’étendue et qui semble avoir jeté en vous le soupçon de je ne sais quel paradoxe implicite, je souhaite qu’elle ne soit rien d’autre que la continuation par laquelle une partie est semblable au tout, comme nous concevons dans le lait la blancheur diffuse […],” “Diffusionem quam in extensione concipio et quae Tibi suspicionem nescio cujus paradoxi latentis injecisse videtur, nihil aliud esse volo quam continuationem qua pars est similis toti, ut albedinem concipimus in lacte diffusam […]”
- 24.
See GP II, 278: “[…] etsi quisquis scripsit, insolutam reliquerit difficultatem, dum Geometrae ostendunt extensionem non constare ex punctis, at Metaphysici contra Materiam ex unitatibus seu simplicibus substantiis resultare debere.”
- 25.
This passage is also found in the letter of 11 October, 1705.
- 26.
See GP II, 278: “… vous voyez facilement en effet que les substances simples ne peuvent être autre chose que des sources ou principes (en même temps les sujets) de tout autant de séries de la perception se développant elles-mêmes en ordre, exprimant la même totalité des phénomènes avec une variété maximale et très ordonnée, par lesquelles la substance suprême diffuse sa propre perfection autant qu’il lui est permis dans les nombreuses substances qui dépendent d’elle, qu’il faut concevoir chacune comme des concentrations singulières de l’univers et (les unes en comparaison des autres) comme des imitations de la divinité. Et je pense qu’on ne peut comprendre ni (en un mot) souhaiter d’autres raisons des choses et que les choses ont du exister de cette manière ou ne pas exister du tout. » « Facile enim vides simplices substantias nihil aliud esse posse quam fontes seu principia (simul et subjecta) totidem perceptionis serierum sese ordine evolventium, eandem phaenomenorum universitatem maxima ordinatissimaque varietate exprimentium, quibus suam perfectionem quantum fas fuit suprema substantia in substantias multas ab ipsa pendentes diffudit, quas singulas tanquam concentrationes universi et (alias prae aliis) tanquam divinitatis imitamenta concipere oportet. Neque alias rerum rationes puto intelligi et (summatim) vel optari posse, et vel nullo vel hoc modo res existere debuisse.”
- 27.
Belaval (1976).
- 28.
GP II, 262: “Sed ipsum persistens, quatenus involvit casus omnes, primitivam vim habet, ut vis primitiva sit velut lex seriei, vis derivativa velut determinatio quae terminum aliquem in serie designat.”
- 29.
GP II, 283.
- 30.
Phemister (2005), p. 82.
- 31.
Considérations sur la doctrine d’un Esprit universel unique (1702), GP VI, p. 533.
- 32.
This is a passage from the controversy with Stahl, also cited by Pasini (1996, 121): “…facile concedo non admodum magnum hactenus Chymiae usum esse ad explicanda, quae in animalibus insensibiliter fiunt. Sed aucta Chymiae scientia, augebitur etiam ejus applicatio. Nam fiunt in animalibus eruptiones et explosiones pyriis similes, quales nobis multas exhibet Chymia” (Dutens, II, 2, 148–149).
- 33.
See Rey (2011).
- 34.
In the 12th of Leibniz’s doubts in the Negotium otiosum. The complete text of the controversy is found in Stahl, Negotium otiosum seu Skiamachia adversus positiones aliquas fundamentales theoriae verae medicaea Viro quodam celeberrimi intentata sed adversis armis conversis, Halle, Impensis orphanotrophei, 1720 and in Leibniz, Animadversiones circa assertiones aliquas Theoriae Medicae Verae clarii Stahlii, Dutens, 1768, II, 2, pp. 131–161. See also Huneman and Rey (2007)
- 35.
Cf pp. 114–115.
- 36.
Œuvres complètes de Leibniz, Ed. Foucher de Careil, VII, p. 85.
- 37.
See A II, 1, p. 100, cited by Bodéüs, p. 330.
- 38.
See A I 2, 325. This previously unpublished text was translated by Richard Bodéüs, in his edition of the correspondence between Leibniz and Thomasius dans son édition de la Correspondance entre Leibniz et Thomasius (1663–1672) (Paris, Vrin, 1993), 330.
- 39.
See the letter, already cited, to Lambert van Velthuysen of 5 May, 1671, in which Leibniz writes: “Videbis simplicem satis, brevem, claram, phaenomenis explicandis fortasse sufficientem: concordare experimenta vetera novaque, conciliari posse plerorumque hypotheses, rationem redditam reactionum, fermentationum, solutionum, praecipitationum chymicarum; explicatum est, quid sit illud acidum et alcali, quorum reactione et lucta velut animatur natura, quae Chymici nominarunt potius quam explicarunt.” (our italics)
- 40.
See A II, 1, 167.
- 41.
A II, 1, 782.
- 42.
A VI, 2, 413.
- 43.
Our interpretation is similar to Duchesneau’s (1982), p. 90: “Leibniz ajoute que l’intérieur des processus organiques nous étant caché au-delà d’un certain niveau d’observation, l’analogie qui lie les processus phénoménaux suivant les suggestions de l’expérience peut nous permettre d’anticiper sur la raison suffisante mécanique des processus.”
- 44.
It seems to me nevertheless that we are not dealing with the same sort of figure, in the case of the omnipresent usage of the notion of life, as in the apparently more classical case of aquatic metaphors. Thus, as Cristina Marras has shown in her article, “The Role of Metaphor in Leibniz’s Epistemology” (in Marcelo Dascal (Ed.), Leibniz: what Kind of Rationalist? Springer, 2008, pp. 199–212), metaphors play a determinative role in Leibniz’s argumentative strategy, to the extent that his relationship to knowledge is very closely connected to his use of language. It seems however that here the relationship to the living is somewhat different, to the extent that it is at once an object of study in its own right (even if Leibniz very consistently expands the field of its validity), as well as being that which, in the very opening up of it, loses its ontological specificity.
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Rey, AL. (2011). Action, Perception, Organisation. In: Smith, J., Nachtomy, O. (eds) Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 67. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0041-3_11
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