Unit 21: Leibniz's Monadology as Idealistic Atomism

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Unit 21 : The Idealistic Atomism,
Leibniz’s Monadology


1. Leibniz’s monadology as idealistic atomism.

The philosophy of Leibniz arose from the reflexion over Descartes’ philosophy, which proved the absolute certainty of mind(=Thinking-I) and separability of mind from body. And Descartes represented the dualism of two substances, i.e. thinking substance and extending substance.

Descartes provided a clue to the basic insight for Leibniz’s philosophical development: The body is divisible, but the mind can’t be divided. Mind is single unity.

There is a great difference between the mind and the body. Every body is by its nature divisible, but the mind can’t be divided. When I consider the mind i.e. consider myself purely as a thinking thing—I can’t detect any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something single and complete. (Descartes : Meditations on first Philosophy, 6. Meditation)

Basically Leibniz’s contribution consists in that he analyzed and criticized one of the Descartes’ two substances, i.e. matter or body : The matter as extension can not be substance in the strict sense because the notion of extension or body includes the divisibility, infinite divisibility as Descartes already said. Therefore matter or body is not simple thing, substance but a kind of aggregate.

According to Leibniz the so-called atom can’t be unity even if its name means Not-To-Be-Divided because the atom as an extended thing is also to be divided endlessly.
“According to Leibniz, bodies (qua material) are aggregates, and an aggregate, of course, is not a substance on account of its lack of unity”. (cited from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Leibniz’s Philosophy of Mind)

As opposed to the matter or body there exist a simple thing, which Leibniz conceptualized as Monad.

# The source of the concept of the Monad

Furthermore the name and meaning of Monad originated from Plato’s thought which Aristotle transmitted. Plato was said to put his view as follows in his lecture “On Philosophy” :

Mind is the monad, science or knowledge the dyad (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to another), opinion the number of the plane, sensation the number of the solid. (Aristotle, On the Soul, 404 b)

Therefore Leibnizian conception of the Monad is to be understood from the classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle: Leibniz tried to supplement some aspects of Descartes through Greek philosophy.

The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is nothing but a simple substance, which enters into compounds. By ‘simple’ is meant ‘without parts.’ (Leibniz: The Monadology 1714 par. 1)

The notion of Monad is similar to that of atom : “These Monads are the real atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things”. (The Monadology par. 3)