Delivered at a joint conference of the British Societies of the History of Science and of the History of Philosophy, Cambridge, 12 April 1986. One of a set of three papers by the authors of recently published synoptic treatments of Leibniz: Stuart Brown’s Philosophers in Context: Leibniz (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984); George MacDonald Ross’s Past Masters: Leibniz (Oxford: OUP, 1984); and Eric Aiton’s Leibniz: A Biography (Bristol: Hilger, 1985).

I apologise for opening my paper with an apology, but the title is rather a mouthful. In the body of the paper, I shall keep to short Anglo-Saxon words as far as I can. My reason for coining the term ‘Leibnizography’ is that the books which the three of us have written all try to connect Leibniz’s life with his thought. The word ‘biography’, as in ‘the biography of Leibniz’, implies only the story of his life; and I know of no word in the English language which does equal justice to life and thought. Perhaps this gap in our language is one of the reasons why it is hard to write a book which brings together, in meaningful way, both these aspects of the history of a great thinker. A proper ‘Leibnizography’ should deal with both, without giving authors any qualms about being too biographical, or not being biographical enough, simply because they have advertised themselves as writing a different category of book.

The distinction between writing about a person’s life and writing about their thoughts is closely connected with the distinction between writing synchronically and diachronically. A synchronic treatment takes successive slices of the subject’s life history, and considers a spread of their activities during each period. It is possible to do this in an internalist way - showing how the subject’s ideas in different spheres relate to each other, but without relating them to anything outside their internal connections and development. However, an internalist synchronic treatment fails to capitalise on the great advantage of a synchronic approach, namely that it enables one to show how a thinker’s work is related to facts about their life and character, about contemporary society and politics, and about the current climate of ideas. The relationship is only partly one of dependence. People’s ideas do indeed develop as they do because they are the people they are, and because they are operating in a particular socio-political context. On the other hand, the course of anyone’s life is determined in part by the ideas they have; and the major thinkers have generally exerted more or less influence on the wider contemporary scene. A synchronic treatment is ideally suited to bringing out such external influences in both directions.

The main disadvantage with a synchronic treatment is that it obscures the internal development of the subject’s thought on particular topics. While it is often true that their ideas are modified through interaction with ideas in other spheres, or as a result of more purely external influences, it is no less often the case that their ideas have their own internal momentum. Philosophers do modify their positions by clarifying and developing insights which were only dimly grasped during an earlier stage of their career; by sharpening contrasts; by making unnoticed assumptions explicit; or by eliminating theses which led to contradictions. But it is almost impossible to do justice to internal factors such as these, if the treatment of a particular topic is scattered over a number of chapters corresponding to different chronological periods.

Even in cases where external factors are integral, the same problem arises over areas in which the subject was active over lengthy periods of time - for example, political involvements, or long-running disputes with other thinkers. The flow of the narrative is destroyed if it is broken up into separate episodes, so as to fit into a chronological structure determined by extrinsic factors, such as who the subject was employed by, or where they happened to live. In order to preserve any sense of the internal development of the various spheres of the subject’s activities and ideas, it is essential to adopt a diachronic approach. This means dividing the book thematically rather than chronologically, and following each theme through from beginning to end. Unfortunately, such an approach makes it difficult to do justice to the cross-fertilisation of ideas in different spheres, or to the extent to which ideas interact with biographical or other external factors.

The dilemma is especially acute in the case of Leibniz. The very diversity of his activities militates against a synchronic approach. There is so much to be covered in an account of any period of his life, that there will be many intervening pages before the threads of any given theme are picked up once more in the succeeding period. This is much less of a problem when writing about someone with a relatively narrow range of interests, unlike Leibniz.

On the other hand, both Leibniz’s ideas on different issues, and his practical activities were interconnected to an exceptional degree. He took his motto theoria cum praxi extremely seriously, and his individual theories are almost like monads, in the extent to which they reflect and harmonise with all his other theories. So, his political activities, religious as well as secular, cannot be properly understood apart from his theological and political theories; and these in turn are bound up with his overall metaphysical approach. Again, within the theoretical dimension, the development of Leibniz’s metaphysics was heavily influenced by his ideas on logic, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, biology, and so on; and conversely, his work on particular sciences was more or less coloured by his metaphysics. Such interconnections cry out for a synchronic treatment.

In their Leibnizographies, both Eric Aiton and Stuart Brown understandably opt for a synchronic treatment. Equally understandably, given that Eric’s book lays more emphasis on Leibniz’s biography, its structure is more sharply divided into chronological periods than Stuart ‘s. As a consequence, it suffers more from the inevitable scattering of the exposition of single topics among different chapters. To give just one example, his book contains all the elements of a first-class chapter on the life-long dispute between Leibniz and Newton over the invention of the calculus. However, the only way readers can fit the whole story together is by looking up ‘priority dispute’ in the index, where they will find ten separate entries spread over nearly 300 pages.

The structure of Stuart’s book is less consistently synchronic, presumably because of the difficulty of maintaining a synchronic approach without the supporting framework of a predominantly biographical narrative. Stuart, after all, is mainly concerned with Leibniz’s philosophy. He starts out with an explicitly chronological structure: Part 1:1646–75; Part II: 1675–85; Part III: 1685–95 — though even here many of the constituent chapters range well outside these periods. But the fourth and final part is not even advertised as covering the period 1695–1716, as one would expect, but merely picks up a number of themes not already discussed. In practice, the last two parts taken together constitute a thematic and diachronic exposition of the main topics of Leibniz’s mature philosophy, and the first two a more synchronic account of his early philosophy and its intellectual background. I believe that the breakdown in the synchronic structure of Stuart’s book is symptomatic, not of any incompetence on his part, but of the impossibility of bringing out the internal development of Leibniz’s thoughts (as he does so well), within a strictly chronological structure.

Before I move on to proposing a synthesis of the synchronic and diachronic approaches, I should like to mention a further problem which affects synchronic treatments — in this case more of a psychological than a logical problem. If a Leibnizography is divided into chronological periods, it is natural to say something about every major area in which Leibniz was active during each period. But what if there was no significant change in his views between the two given dates? To summarise the contents of his major writings of the period, as Eric generally does, involves repetition of ideas already expounded in earlier chapters. The alternative is to focus on such differences as there are, or perhaps even to see differences where there are none. The result is at best an unbalanced treatment, and at worst falsification.

Having said this, I readily concede that it is difficult to establish whether and when Leibniz changed his mind on matters of importance. For example, Stuart Brown detects major changes in Leibniz’s attitude to phenomenalism, and to the ideality of space. This is not the place for a detailed and scholarly examination of the questions at issue. Suffice it to say that I myself tend to see Leibniz’s mature system as relatively stable, and I am generally sceptical about attempts to portray it as undergoing periodic shifts. Where it is reasonable to do so, I would attribute apparent changes in Leibniz’s position to his dissimulation, and to his habit of saying different things to different people. I am glad to see that Stuart and I are in complete agreement on this last point; and I am sure that he will acknowledge that it adds to the difficulty of establishing and dating changes in Leibniz’s viewpoint, so as to fit them into neat chronological periods. Whether or not Stuart might have been influenced by the structural need to find changes in Leibniz’s mature philosophy is not for me to say. And even if he was so influenced, this has no direct bearing on the substantive question of whether Leibniz’s views did in fact undergo a significant change.

I come now to the problem of finding a synthesis, or at least some sort of a compromise, between a synchronic and a diachronic structure. As we have seen, the disadvantage of a diachronic or thematic structure lies in the difficulty of bringing out connections between one theme and another at any given stage. However, the reason why there is a difficulty is not primarily because of the need to refer to material in another chapter or section, but because of the need to refer, as often as not, to material in a later chapter, with which the reader is not yet familiar. It is, of course, absurd to expect readers to understand what is being said, if it depends on a grasp of ideas which are explained only later. This distinction needs to be emphasised, since a synchronic treatment can fall foul of the same problem. Merely putting different themes into the same chapter does not of itself put them into relation with each other; and any attempt to relate them gives rise to the same difficulty over the need to refer to material not yet presented, as well as to earlier material. Indeed, the only advantage of a synchronic treatment is not that it abolishes the need to refer back or forward, but that back references will be fresher in readers’ minds, and they will have less long to wait for forward references. I do not believe that this advantage is very significant. What matters is that there should be explicit cross references, and that, ideally, all these references should be references backwards, except when they are not essential for a basic understanding.

In Leibniz’s case, such an ideal seems impossible to achieve, because of the extent to which his ideas are mutually connected. However, the position is not as hopeless as at first appears. In fact, most of the influences are one-way. The circumstances of his life had more influence on his ideas, than his ideas had on the course of his life; his logical, mathematical, and scientific ideas provide the background to his metaphysics rather than the other way round; and his ethical position was largely determined by his metaphysics. It is therefore possible to put the various themes in an order of logical priority. Those which should be treated first are the ones which have the least dependence on the others. His biography can be written without going into the details of his ideas; his logic, mathematics, and science can be explained in connection with certain events and situations in his life and his intellectual milieu, but without reference to his metaphysics; his metaphysics can be expounded in the context of themes already covered, but without appealing to his ethical or religious ideas; and, finally, these last can be treated as bringing everything else together into a unified picture of the relations between God, humanity, and the rest of the universe. Within such a structure, each theme can be treated diachronically; and the synchronic element can be retained by frequent references to material already presented.

However, like the pure synchronic and diachronic approaches, this synthesis of the two carries with it its own psychological dangers. Once one has settled on an order of logical priority among themes, it is tempting to ignore influences of later themes on earlier ones, since to bring them in would damage the coherence of the structure.

I am surprised that no-one who has reviewed my book on Leibniz has levelled this criticism against it. I must admit that I was tempted to abuse my position as Editor of the Leibniz Newsletter, and publish a pseudonymous, hostile review of it, taking advantage of my inside knowledge of what I was doing while forcing recalcitrant material into a coherent structure. By contrast, most reviewers have confined themselves to grumbling at my not having paid sufficient attention to their own hobby horses — Lockeans complain that I say too little about Leibniz’s relations to Locke; political philosophers complain that I say too little about Leibniz’s political philosophy; semanticists complain that I say too little about his semantics; and so on. If I were reviewing my book (as in a way I am now doing), I would complain that I had allowed my interpretation to be dominated by the artificial structure of the book. What I say too little about is how Leibniz’s ideas determined the course of his life; how his metaphysical views affected his logic, mathematics, and science; and how his religious and ethical attitudes had repercussions on everything else. Perhaps the only remedy would be the addition of a postscript in which all the earlier themes would be run through from the opposite perspective.

In the light of what Stuart Brown has just said, I feel somewhat diffident about reiterating my perspectivist approach to the interpretation of Leibniz. However, I do believe that it is not only truly Leibnizian, but also true that his philosophy can be adequately appreciated only if approached from a number of different perspectives.

Unlike paintings, books have to unfold their contents successively; and there is no perfect solution to the problem of how to present the multifarious interconnections of Leibniz’s ideas. On the other hand, some solutions are better than others; and I firmly believe that it is best to structure a book around a diachronic treatment of individual themes, and to incorporate the requirements of synchronicity through the careful ordering of the themes, and adequate cross references.

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