This document is approximately 5 sides of A4.
Immediately below, there are links to individual Leibniz texts in the Quick Index. Clicking on the name of the text in the left-hand column will take you to the text itself (in the top frame); clicking on ‘Introduction’ in the right-hand column will take you to a brief explanation of the context of the text (also in the top frame), which you should read at least once, before working on the text itself. You can go directly to each text from its introduction.
After the list of links, there is a general account of Leibniz’s writings, which you should also read at least once.
QUICK INDEX OF LEIBNIZ EXTRACTS
LEIBNIZ’S WRITINGS
These texts are intended to supplement selections such as those in Richard Francks and R.S. Woolhouse, G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical Texts (Oxford, 1998), or G.H.R. Parkinson, Leibniz: Philosophical Writings (London: Dent, 1973). In a few cases (e.g. the Monadology), I have made my own translations, if only so that I can make them available in digital form with a running commentary, without running into problems over copyright.
Any selection from the vast corpus of Leibniz’s writings (much of which is still unpublished) is bound to be partial. Although Leibniz had a huge influence in Germany (especially through his disciple Christian Wolff), his writings were almost unknown in Britain until the very end of the 19th century. In 1898, Robert Latta published Leibniz: The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings (Oxford). This work consists of about 200 pages of analysis of Leibniz’s philosophy, followed by another 200 pages of translations (much in common with the Parkinson edition).
It was shortly followed by Bertrand Russell’s A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (London: Unwin, 1900), consisting again of about 200 pages of exposition and criticism, followed by 100 pages of translations of short extracts from C.I. Gerhardt’s 7-volume edition of Leibniz’s philosophical writings (Berlin, 1875–90), abbreviated as GP. As one might expect, Russell was particularly interested in Leibniz’s logic, and this bias has tended to persist in the English-speaking world. Russell felt that his approach was vindicated by the subsequent publication of a large volume of logical (and other) manuscripts by the French logician, Louis Couturat (Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, Paris, 1903).
The two main themes of my supplementary texts are (1) Leibniz’s criticisms of Cartesianism (especially Descartes’ identification of material substance with extension), and (2) Leibniz’s phenomenalism. I personally believe that Leibniz’s early criticisms of Descartes were crucial for the development of his own philosophy, especially for the fundamental principle that every part of the universe must be different from every other part. I also happen to believe that Leibniz was a consistent phenomenalist at least from 1686 to the end of his life (though many commentators would dispute this).
It is universally agreed that Leibniz’s philosophy didn’t finally gel into his mature system until around 1686, when he was 40. This doesn’t mean that he had a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus, but rather that he brought together disparate principles into a single, systematic whole, as expounded in the Discourse on Metaphysics (Francks and Woolhouse, pp.53–89).
Later in life, he wrote two other brief summaries of the whole system, in the New System of 1695 (Francks and Woolhouse, pp.187–190 [extracts only]; Parkinson, pp.115–132), and the Monadology of 1714, two years before his death (Francks and Woolhouse, 267–281). Of these, only the New System was published in his lifetime, in a journal called the Journal des Savants.
There are indeed differences between these summaries, and much advanced Leibniz scholarship is devoted to the question of (a) how far these documents are truly representative of his system at the time, and (b) how far the differences represent significant changes to his system over the last 30 years of his life. In my view, his system remained pretty stable, and the differences are largely presentational.
In studying Leibniz’s writings, we need to distinguish between four main kinds of text: books, letters, journal articles, and private notes. (There are others, such as student dissertations, marginal comments on books in his library, and memoranda written in the course of his employment; but they need not concern us here.)
Books
Unlike other major philosophers, Leibniz never expounded his system as a whole in a book. His only philosophical books were the Nouveaux Essais of about 1704 (a long, rambling critique of Locke’s Essay in dialogue form, which he decided not to publish), and the Theodicy of 1710, which was primarily concerned with the reconciliation of God’s goodness with the existence of evil.
Letters
Until the 18th century, the normal vehicle of philosophical debate was the letter. They were usually considered to be semi-public texts, and were passed around friends and acquaintances. In some cases, the writer would attach a self-standing document, which might be thought of as a draft possible publication for comment. Both the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology are documents of this nature.
Letters were usually carefully preserved, and were sometimes published as they stood. For example, Samuel Clarke published his correspondence with Leibniz in 1717, a year after Leibniz’s death. Leibniz himself hardly ever threw anything away (though I suspect he deliberately destroyed some early writings to do with alchemy), and he systematically filed his correspondence.
The way he wrote was as follows: He used folio paper, which was a little shorter and wider than the modern A3, folded in two to make four sides of foolscap, which is a bit narrower and longer than the modern A4. He wrote in the left-hand half of each side, leaving the right-hand half for corrections and additions, of which there were many. He then gave his almost illegible draft to his copyist, to write out a fair copy — usually beautifully written, with plenty of space between the lines. Leibniz would then correct the copy, and either have it sent off; or, if there were too many corrections, get the copyist to write it out again. Leibniz would keep the draft for his records; but this draft wouldn’t include any last-minute alterations, and we only have the final version in cases where the recipient’s copy has also been preserved. Needless to say, the final version is not necessarily the definitive version, since it may include transcription errors not spotted by Leibniz.
As for the content of Leibniz’s letters, it’s important to remember that he was a professional diplomat. He spent much of his life trying to bring about reconciliation between the advocates of different philosophical and religious positions, and since his letters were not in the public domain, it was possible for him to say different things to different people. Russell accused Leibniz of hypocrisy, in that he had a secret, logical philosophy which he kept to himself, and an easy, public philosophy to please his political masters. This is rubbish, since his ‘easy’ philosophy (e.g. of the New System) was neither easy, nor calculated to be popular (indeed, that may be why he never published it in book form).
However, he is more open to the charge that he said different things in his letters to different people (e.g. Jesuits, Jansenists, and Protestants). In particular, there is the question of the ‘substantial vinculum’, which appears only in his correspondence with the Jesuit Des Bosses (see below). In my opinion, the charge doesn’t stick. As a diplomat, Leibniz’s policy was to start from where his correspondent was at. That is to say, he would try to find a way of expressing his philosophical position in language his correspondent could accept, and so as to be as consistent as possible with their presuppositions. This would provide the basis for a debate which might lead to an acceptance of Leibniz’s more radical theses. It would be quite dotty to write in the same terms to a scholastic philosopher, a radical Cartesian, and a queen.
Some of Leibniz’s exchanges of letters continued over many years, and cover hundreds of pages. In them Leibniz explains his philosophical theses in much greater detail (though somewhat repetitively) than in any of his published writings.
Journal articles
From the middle of the 17th century, international journals began to replace private correspondence as the standard vehicle of philosophical debate, and most of Leibniz’s actual publications take the form of journal articles. They had the advantage of giving Leibniz a wider audience — though not that much wider, since the readership of the journals was hardly greater than the number of Leibniz’s correspondents. On the other hand, because they were public documents, Leibniz couldn’t slant what he wanted to say towards a particular reader. This meant that he had to be more cautious about expressing his more controversial views.
Although one of the new journals (the Acta Eruditorum) was in Latin, Latin was coming under increasing challenge from French as the lingua franca of European intellectuals. Internationally known writings, such as those of Descartes and Malebranche, and the Port Royal Logic, established French as a language in which philosophy could be written. This wasn’t difficult, since French is a dialect of Latin, and Latin terminology could easily be incorporated into the language. The movement was reinforced by the fact that, throughout Europe, French was the language of the aristocracy and of diplomacy. Leibniz spent some years in Paris, and he wrote fluently in French.
German was not yet used for the writing of philosophy, and Leibniz’s few attempts at it are quite bizarre. The first German philosopher to write philosophy in German successfully was Leibniz’s disciple, Wolff. When corresponding about philosophy with fellow Germans, Leibniz would write in Latin if they were academics, or French if they were not.
The decline in Latin was a mixed blessing. The increased use of vernacular languages (especially Italian, French, English, and then German) was conceptually liberating, since philosophers were no longer bound by a traditional vocabulary, and their thinking could be enriched by concepts more readily expressible in one language than another. Moreover, philosophy was no longer the exclusive preserve of university academics, and people from all walks of life could share in philosophical debate (if they were so inclined). In particular, philosophy was no longer kept hidden from women, and it is remarkable how many aristocratic women took a lively interest in philosophy during the 17th and 18th centuries (some of them even publishing books on the subject).
The downside was that philosophy rapidly became divided into separate linguistic and nationalistic camps, with relatively little mutual interest or understanding — a situation which remains largely unchanged to the present day. There is also a small, but I think significant detail, namely that French was a much more formal language than Latin. Letters had to have pompous beginnings and endings, and were scattered with sanctimonious protestations of humility and respect. Above all, the correspondent had to be addressed in the formal plural (vous rather than tu), whereas in Latin the more intimate second person singular was used. Reading the Latin correspondence of the time, one gets a strong impression of an international community of scholars jointly pursuing the truth in an intimate and honest way, which is lacking in French correspondence.
Private Notes
Leibniz thought on paper, and he even designed a special carriage which rode more smoothly over ruts and bumps, so that he could write while travelling. A large proportion of his surviving papers are just that — pieces of paper with writing on them, but no indication of what they were for or when they were written. A lot of work has gone into dating them on the basis of watermarks on the batches of paper used, style of handwriting, terminology, content, cross-references, and so on — including delightfully circular arguments such as ‘Leibniz first used the word monad in 1696; this paper contains the word monad; therefore this paper wasn’t written before 1696’ (in fact the earliest occurrence is now dated to 1690).
The papers vary from short jottings at one end of the spectrum, to extended and quite polished essays which could be drafts intended for publication. Together, they enormously enrich our understanding of Leibniz, particularly in areas such as symbolic logic, where he didn’t publish anything at all. The one big problem is that we can’t know how far he was merely experimenting with ideas. It is quite natural to try out a line of argument on paper to see if it works — and maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t (it might run into a contradiction, or conflict with something else). We can’t always tell whether a draft is left incomplete because Leibniz saw it was going wrong and abandoned it, or whether he simply ran out of time, and never got back to it.
Leibniz’s private notes were invariably written in Latin. The implication is that he thought in Latin, and was consciously translating out of Latin when he wrote in French.
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