Gueroult, M. - Substance and The Primitive Simple Notion in The Philosophy of Leibniz

International Phenomenological Society
Substance and the Primitive Simple Notion in the Philosophy of Leibniz

Author(s): M. Guroult
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Dec., 1946), pp. 293-315
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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SUBSTANCE AND TI1E PRIMITIVE SIMPLE NOTION IN THE
PHIILOSOPh-IYOF LEI13NIZ1
Whereas with Descartes substantiality is defined by the absolute in-

dependence of a notion, called concreteor completebecause it needs nothing
outside itself to be conceived, substantiality with Leibniz is defined by the
power which a notion has of accounting for the infinity of predicates of a
being. It is the positing of the predicates and not their possible abstrac-
tion which confers upon the notion its concrete, that is to say, substantial
character. The substance, being established by the consideration of the
infinity of predicates of existence, by virtue of the function it assumes to-
wards them, is ultimately conceived much more in relation to existence than
to essence, on which however it leans, so much so that it seems even to enter
into a conflict with the notion of essence.
But the originality of the Leibnizian concept of substance may be per-
ceived from another angle.
It does not suffice for Leibniz to perceive in a general way that a certain
mode is linked to the substance and necessarily posited by it; he also needs
to conceive why a certain mode must occur at a certain determined moment
in time. For a state receives the full determination of its content only
through its complete connexion with all the other parts of the whole,
therefore through the place which is its own in space and in time. Thus
the fundamental requirement of rationalism, to reduce individual reality
to a system of conceived relations, can no longer be realized simply by
conceiving how the particular predicates are, in a general way, the con-
sequences of the subject to which they belong. That was what rational-
ism had been content with heretofore, when it tried to establish the funda-
mental logical connection of things, and that is why it took geometry for its
model: just as it is included within the concept of the triangle that the
sum of -its angles equals two right angles, so the foundation of realitywhich
embraces everything, engenders necessarily all the particular determi-
nations. What had thus been considered (especially by Spinoza) was the
relation of conceptual dependence of the parts of the being, not the suc-
cession nor the appearance in time of the parts: thus, for Spinoza, time is
a mere fiction of the imagination. For Descartes, time, by the theory of
1 Excerpt from a chapter of a book to be published on: The analysis of Leibniz

struggling with the problems of God, substance, extension and space, translated
from the French by Professor Charles J. Beyer, of the Universitv of Buffalo.
293
294 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
the instantaneous character of movement, is in a way banished from move-

ment and from physics. For Leibniz on the contrary, the succession and
the order in time are not anything accessory and exterior, but are the
necessary and appropriate form under which the particular things must
present themselves. Every concrete reality, every real living being is
subject to the conditions of time, it is only inasmuch as it displays itself
in a succession of successive determinations, and the complete being or
substance is the one which contains in itself the sufficient reason of this
display according to the order of its succession. Rationalism therefore can
fulfil its fundamental requirement only when it permits us to understand as
necessary the order and series of the particular moments. Thus the
temporal predicates must be converted into logical predicates. But if
time is thus made logical, in exchange, traditional logic must in turn be
transformed, for it can not absorb time without undergoing itself an ex-
tension. The logic of the school considered concepts as immobile entities
given once and for all: the qualifications which belong to a concept are
its own in abstracto,in itself and by itself. There is no question of a de-
velopment in which they would participate, nor of their changing and
progressive production. Thus, what follows from the nature of a thing
belongs to it in an unchangeable fashion and for all times. Leibniz on the
contrary has taken hold of the problem of change and has conceived it as a
logical problem, and the concept of subject assumes then a new meaning.
It can no longer be, as it had been for formal logic, the passive and inert
support of multiple determinations, but it is conceived as the active prin-
ciple which positively creates them. It is only thus that the logical sub-
ject is transformed into a metaphysical substance, that it is thought of as
the source and original foundation of the determinations which are to
procede from it in the future according to a preestablished law. Thus the
idea of vital developmentrenews the logical concept. On the other hand,
logic becomes more profound so as to account for this vital development and
submit it to a rational norm. The notion of vital development is united
with the adage: praedicatus inest in subject; differential calculus, by pro-
viding the concept of the law of the series, which accounts for all details
through time, makes the rational coextensive with the becoming.
Thus, the frame of substantiality as outlined by Leibnizian logic, by
including the change in the logical, modifies both the logical and the notion
of substance, while also rationalizing that change. But as for this rational'
change itself, this active principle perceived in its efficient reality, only
dynamics permits us to grasp it: it authenticates the logical conception, by
giving it its final depth, by permitting us to push the analysis far beyond
where logic left to itself had been able to; for logic had barely succeeded in
deducting from the definition of the substance the activity which must
belong to it.
OF LEIBNIZ
PHILOSOPHY 295
Let us examine now the difficulties of this new concept.

1) The first essential difficulty is that of the relation between the sub-
stance and the notio primitive simplex.
First, we notice that Leibniz often gives his refutation of the substan-
tiality of space (Descartes' thesis) an appearance which is bound to dis-
concert. In the Animadversiones (1, art. 52), in certain passages of his
letters to Arnauld and de Volder, he presents it thus: extension is not a
substance for it is not, as Descartes thought, a simple and irreductible
notion. Moreover, he adds that he agrees with Descartes in thinking that
a substance has only one principal attribute expressing its essence. Under
those circumstances one understands that some interpreters have been led
to identify the substance and the simple notion and to indentify the ref-
utation of the substantiality of extension with the demonstration that the
extension is not a primitive simplex. It is important therefore to insist on
this point: the demonstration of the non-simplicity of extension can not
suffice to demonstrate its non-substantiality, because for Leibniz the
substance is not a simple notion. The true demonstration can therefore be
administered only by the proof that extension, although it too be a com-
plex notion, just like the substance, but in a different way, is not the sub-
stance because it does not meet the Leibnizian criterium of the substance,
a criterium which must be sought elsewhere than in the notional simplicity.
But the opposition thus found between the substance and the primitive
simplex does not fail to offer some difficulties.
On the one hand, several considerations lead us to accept this complex
nature of the substance. For, if we examine its general definition, we see
that the monad is a union of two elements: passivity, activity; irp(orov
ira@vr7tx6v,entelechy; first matter and form; we see that matter itself is
double: inert first matter, and second matter which is active and passive.
The substance therefore is indeed like all the other things, endowed with
attributes common to other substances; for the substances or monads
possess at least these attributes in common of having all a passivity, an
antitypy, a second matter, an activity, a position, a viewpoint etc...
Thus the notion of created substance appears to us as a complex notion,
definable a priori by a sufficient essential character through the complete
notion (real definition), or susceptible of being decomposed into a certain
number of determining predicates permitting us to provide in a few words a
nominal definition of it: e.g. the substance is the union of an entelechy
with a passive force (this definition is nominal, for it does not inform us as to
the possibility of the notion). It is the same with the kind of the
substances: soul-monads, spirit-monads, of which the name itself indicates
the "principalattribute", to use the terms of Descartes accepted by Leibniz
(Anim. 1, art. 52); but this expression receives here another meaning, for
neither the principal attribute soul nor the principal attribute spirit ex-
hausts the full nature of the soul substance or of the spirit substance. On
the other hand, if wveexamine no longer the notion of the individual sub-
stance in general, but the notion of a singular substance considered in its
individual singularity, we shall also have to agree that, in spite of this
singularity, it is not a simple, irreductible notion, but a complex notion.
For it is a real concretum, which has its place in the universe of existing
compossibles. It is the shortened image of the universe (as a spirit-monad,
it is even a mirror of divinity); it must therefore involve, in an abridged
form, that is to say in a confused way, the totality of realities or monads
which constitute that universe, the totality of relations which link them
to one another and which links it itself to the others. The viewpoint
which defines it may be grasped only through this relationship to the whole
which it reflects in its own way. It is therefore not only a complex notion,
but an infinitely complex notion. This infinite complexity is precisely-
what constitutes its infinite reality: in each substance, all the realities of
the universe are, in a way, gathered. Since the substance possesses an
infinity of predicates, since each of these predicates represents a reality, an
intrinsic difference of this universe, the substance possesses indeed an in-
finity of realities, and we understand that Leibniz could tell de Volder that
it is not only real, but the most real thing there is. While the individual
substance is the richest of all realities, since it comprises them all, the
notio primitive simplex is the poorest, since it is the only nota of an only
elementary reality conceived in its nakedness.
The notion of the individual substance in general and that of the kinds
of substance have a simply relative complexity and can therefore be de-
fined. But one individual substance considered in itself is of infinite
complexity which excludes the possibility of its definition being given.
This infinity of predicates, inexhaustible by analysis, this nexus of re-
lations indefinite in number, involved in each substance, justifies therefore
fully the statement that the individual substance is not a simple notion,
that we can never grasp anything isolated, anything which does not possess
some attribute common to other things, and that thus "there are no terms
so absolute or so detached that they do not include relations, and the
perfect analysis of which does not lead to some other thing and even to all
other things". (New Ess. II, ch. XXV, ? 10, P.' V, p. 209).
But, on the other hand, this statement of the infinite complexity of the
substance seems to contradict several capital theses. The substance is
complex because it is related to the entire universe. But has not the
substance and what is real been defined as an absolute, and is not the ab-
2P. refers to Gerhardt's edition, Berlin 1875 Die Philosophischen Schriften von
GottfriedWilhelmLeibniz, 7 vol.
PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ 297
solute the negation of the relative? This first objection, under this form
at least, is not diriment. For Leibniz has posited the absolute only in
relation to a relative; this is why he has distinguished degrees of absolute-
ness: force is more absolute than movement, alive force is more absolute
than dead force, primitive force is more absolute than derivative force.
This absoluteness therefore is not of such a kind as to exclude radically all
relation. It'is so far from excluding it that it is always defined by a re-
lation, if only by its relation to what is relative.
A second, more grave objection is the following: the substance is
said not to be a simple notion, but at the same time the monad is defined as
being the simple; its simplicity is made the distinctive character of its
substantiality with regard to the phenomenality of the aggregate, of the
composed. Of course, a distinction is made between composed substances
(aggregates of substances) and simple substances, but in his correspondence
with de Volder, it is precisely the complexity of the individual substance or
monad, in brief of the substance which he is to call simple, that Leibniz
emphasizes. As for this second objection, it is true, Leibniz anticipates it,
and, it seems, refutes it (P. II, p. 233) when he warns us that he admits the
simplicity of the substance certointellect, "in a certain sense", i.e. in that
sense that it is without parts, in brief that it is inextensive: "Cum omnem
substantiam simplicem dico, hoc ita intelligo ut partibus careat" (P. II,
p. 239). This indivisibility constitutes the principle of its indestructi-
bility, for what is not composed cannot be decomposed. Thus a distinc-
tion must be made between simplicity with regard to extension and sim-
plicity with regard to the notion. This is a very important distinction, a
favorite of Leibniz, and it is found again when, considering the problems of
unity, of the point, of the labyrinth of the continuum, he opposes carefully
the resolution into parts to the resolution into notions. (P. III, p. 583)
Nevertheless this answer does not satisfy us. For we cannot admit
that the monad should not be also a simplex from the notional viewpoint.
It is true that it implies a relation to all the rest, but the monad being en-
closed within itself, having no window on the outside, contains this world of
relations inside itself, without any action being exerted upon it from out-
side; this quite particular universe, taken in a perspective which is strictly
its own, has absolutely nothing in common in its specificity with the uni-
verse of the other monads and finds itself marked with an irreductible
tonality. Thus, at the heart of this system of relations, there is a center
of convergence, an undefinable point which makes the whole system possible
without being made possible by it. This special mark constitutes the
intrinsic and irreductible difference, the unique quality sui generis of the
monad, something irresolvable which constitutes indeed an absolute, a
simplex from the notional viewpoint. This absolute, both qualitative and
logical, which cannot vanish into relations, is moreover required by the

system of relations, which are not infinitely- relations of relations, but re-
lations of termsirresolvable themselves into relations. On the other hand,
this mark sui generis which contains the principle of all the predicates
belonging to the substance, must be precisely the foundation, from the
notional viewpoint, of the indivisibility of the substance; it is because this
notion explains all the predicates of the substance that they are the pred-
icates of one substance only and cannot be divided into two or several
separate logical spheres having different subjects for center. This is why
we see Leibniz, in ? IX of the Disc. de Mgt., draw the following consequence
from the definition of the substance as a complete notion accounting for all
its predicates: "that one divides not a substance in two, nor does one make
one out of two"; hence it follows that "the substances cannot perish by
disaggregation, nor be created by composition, but perish by annihilation
and begin by creation". This indivisibility and this indestructibility of
the substance are not, in this quotation, deducted from its inextensive
character, but from its notional unity; they express its simplicity not with
regard to the composition of parts, but its notional simplicity (indivisibility
of the logical subject as a logical subject endowned with identity).
It follows hence that, whereas one can state that there cannot be given
any thing in the universe without common attributes, one must state on the
other hand that the essential of each monad, i.e. the particular difference
which constitutes it as such, is without any attribute common to the other
particular differences constituting the other monads. Now this simple
element, indestructible and absolutely heterogeneous to any other, which
we find at the bottom of each monad, is precisely this "disparate" simplex
which, added to the others, constitutes the very reality of God. Does not
Leibniz demonstrate the non-contradiction of God, and, therefore, the
possibility of the notion of God, by the impossibility for these simple
elements to contradict themselves, for the reason that, being absolutely
simple, they have no common feature permitting to compare them among
themselves and thus to enter into contradiction? Does not this reasoning
suppose the fundamental simplicity of the essences, their simplicity not with
regard to extension, but to their notion, i.e. the impossibility of having
common attributes? In this respect, does not each monad or each in-
trinsic difference appear as though it had to be identified fundamentally
with a notio primitive simplex? How then can this statement be reconciled
with the apparently opposite thesis upheld by Leibniz, particularly against
de Older?
No solution can be conceived unless a profound difference be admitted
between the substances and the essences. For the substances suppose
existence, and they are substances only in relation to existence, real or
possible: the predicates of which they are the subjects and for which they
account are the moments of an existence which unfolds in time, and the
substance contains the reason and the law of these temporal determinations,
of its predicates past, present and future, as well as containing also the
reason for the different local situations. The essences on the contrary are
related, not to the existences, but to the possibles, considered in them-
selves, apart from their existence, real or possible, and from the conditions
of this existence, without any reference to predicates which, as they occupy
situations of space and time, can occur only on the plane of existence. The
essences then are in pure eternity; they are without predicates as they are
without duration; they are not subjects; they are absolute, irreductible, in-
comparable posita. So we understand that they are disparate, which the
substances cannot be, as they involve a multiplicity and have therefore
necessarily common characters. It is true that each substance involves an
essence, that is to say an absolute positum, an irreductible quality absolutely
simple, without relation and without possible comparison with any thing;
but through the passage to existence, this indivisible point has been trans-
formed into a viewpoint, i.e. into a point of convergence, where the mul-
tiplicity of the diverse universe gathers and becomes the object of its
representation: thus we no longer have here an absolute positum without
predicate, but the absolute unity of an infinity of predicates. This ab-
solute unity in itself, i.e. apart from its predicates, can not be grasped,
because of its very absoluteness, but it expresses itself every instant through
the unity of the law according to which the diverse is reduced to unity.
Thus the notio primitive simplex is always out of our reach, whereas the
substance can always be known.
From the world of the essence where the absoluteness of the bare posita
excludes any predication, we have passed to the world of the substances,
which are the foundation for infinite predication in an incomparable ab-
solute unity; from the world of the essence, where the absoluteness of the
bare posita makes everything compatible, and incapable of contradicting
itself, we have passed to the world of existence; and in relation to that
existence, the essences, which had been mere possibles, have become com-
possibles, subject to conditions of compatibility or incompatibility, in
brief, subject to relationship. Thus they no longer have, in this respect,
the disparity which in God saved them from reciprocal contradiction; for
by becoming substances they have ceased to be simples, in order to become
complex notions, comprising an infinity of predicates connected by the
unity of a reason.
But can we elucidate that mystery of the passage to existence, which
causes the simples as isolated unrelated absolute posita to be transformed
into substances implying a relativity and an infinite complexity-?
The passage from essence to existence being the passage from eternity to
duration, from immutability to change, the absolute and immutable
positum, without ceasing to be absolute and immutable in itself, as it is
related to this change as its foundation and its law, ceases to be a pure and
simple absolute to become the absoluteof a relative (we have seen that the
absolutes discerned by dynamics are always only the absolutes of a rela-
tive). The essences then are no longer mere undefinable unities of in-
comparable quality, but as substances they are the unities of a diversity.
Let us examine the question from an other viewpoint: as long as we re-
main in "that country of the possibles", to use again the Leibnizian ex-
pression, there is no real consciousness,8no real relation of a representation
to its content (each essence is a possible form or possible consciousness of
a universe, not the consciousness of the universe) there is no real relation of
a unity to a diversity, of a formal law to a matter really governed by it.
On the contrary, in the existing universe, the absolute posita which were
the foundation of the simple possibility of consciousness, without con-
sciousness, of the possibility of relations, without relations, which were mere
unities, without diversity, become real consciousnesses, real relations, actual
unification of a diversity;then the infinite nexus of the relations is substituted
to the infinity of absolute posita. Thus the totality of viewpoints of this
universe chosen by God becomes the actual content of each conscious being
of this universe; there is an infinity of real conscious beings, or of unities of a
diversity. This infinity of real conscious beings or of viewpoints constitutes
the diversity of each consciousness. There are therefore infinite relations,
all multiplied one by the others, an infinity of mirrors indefinitely reflecting
each other's reflections. Thus are born complexity and relativity, which
make conceivable the possibility of reciprocal contradictions. But whereas
at each moment, within this universal intrication of relations, we can grasp
the substance in the unity of the law which it imposes upon its predicates
(unity of viewpoint), the essence, in the isolation of its absolute position,
although it is at the basis of this unity and of this law, recedes as the un-
seizable point of final convergence, in the inaccessible infinite of vanishing
perspectives. We understand then that Leibniz is able to tell us: "No-
where does one find, in the notions, absolutely absolute predicates implying
no connection with any thing else." (II, p. 249) "There are no terms so
absolute nor so unrelated as not to involve relations, and the perfect
analysis of which does not lead to something else and even to all other things."
(Nouv. Ess. L. II, ch. XXV, ?10, P. V, p. 209) "It is very difficult to
succeed in giving examples of primitive simple notions, for never can we
grasp anything isolated... .There cannot be given things having no common
attribute" (II, p. 183; 227). For none of these statements involves the
3"Conscience"(Translator's note.)
radical negation of the essence or of the primitive simplex, but only the
denial that we might ever seize it: "Latent primitivae notiones in deri-
vatis, sed aegre distinguuntur" (II, p. 227). Indeed, the absoluteness of
the simple is always latent in the law of the substance which accounts for
the connection of the predicate with this simple conceived as a subject.
But the reason for this connection is something derived with regard to that
original absoluteness, which is beyond any relation of predicate to subject.
This statement of our inability to seize this simple should not disconcert
us, for it is familiar to Leibniz. While studying the principles of analysis
(Meditationesof 1684, Discours de Metaphysique) Leibniz testifies repeatedly
his incredulity concerning our power of grasping the simple notions. But
that which could disconcert us is the denial of the existence of such notions
in the universe. We understand however that indeed there can not be a
simple in the universe which has passed into existence, although the simple
is not a myth, since it resides in the "country of the possibles" outside the
existence of time, of the succession of predicates. Leibniz therefore is able
to deny that the simple may ever be given, and simultaneously continue to
prescribe as an ideal goal for science the search for the simple. Thus, to
the question of de Volder: "Primitivae notiones utut a derivatis aegre
distinguuntur, putem tamen scientiae munus esse distinguere et ex primi-
tivis derivatas deducere" (P. II, p. 231), Lebniz gives this answer:
"Hoc ipsum est quod optes inquiri in primitives notiones vel saltem his
utcumque accedi" (ibid. p. 233): "The inquiry into the substance and the
cause of the modes is precisely the search you wish for concerning the
primitive notions, or very nearly."
But we must examine more deeply and precisely this manner in which we
characterized the substance as related to the world of existence (real or
possible), and the essence as unrelated to it. For the essences are the
possibles considered in themselves, apart from any consideration of their
existence; but on the other hand, are not the substances possibles, and is
there not a world of the possible substances, comprising both those which
really pass into existence and those which will never pass into it? All these
possible substances reside of all eternity within the mind of God (cf. letter
to Arnauld, P. II, pp. 54-55). How do the possible substances which
never pass into existence distinguish themselves from the essences, since
we have characterized the latter as being the possibles viewed apart from
any relation to existence?
This is the solution: the essences constitute the pure and simple possibles;
the substances are those same essences or possibles conceived as sustaining
among themselves relations of compossibility or incompossibility. Now
these relations concern only the possible existences of these essences, since
the essences taken in themselves are disparate samples excluding the pos-
iting of such relations. These relations can intervene only with regard to
the possible existence of these essences, or else under the idea of their pos-
sible existence; whether this existence be realized or never be realized is
irrelevant.
In this way we shall be able to determine precisely the respective spheres
of the essences and of the substances.
The existence of the essences (the existence in relation to which they be-
come substances) depends upon the free will of God who has deliberately
pursued the accomplishment of certain designs in preference to certain
others, in brief: who has freely taken certain decrees. If we conceive that
God freely decides to make this possible pass into existence, e.g. the Adam
known to us, we conceive that he will be able to do so only by excluding by
this very act the existence of certain other possibles, which are incompatible
with this one, and by positing the existence of other possibles which are
compatible with it, and so forth ad infinitum. Thus, in order to call a
certain notion into existence, God must consider the totality of the deci-
sions which he makes with respect to all the others, in order to organize
these decisions according to a perfect connection.' Now it is quite obvious
that this interlocking mechanism of connections would never work, if
God did not make the decision to create a certain existence, i.e. to create
a certain universe. Therefore the relationship according to compossibility
and incompossibility (whence all the so-called contingent predicates of the
notion originate) works only under the condition of God's exercising his
free creative will: no free decrees of creation, and there will be no actual
interlocking of reciprocal relationships-not even a conceivable one.5
4 "This universe has a certain principal or primitive notion of which the particular
events are only consequences, except however for freedom and contingency, which
certitude does not hinder.... Now each individual substance of this universe
expresses in its notion the universe into which it enters. And the supposition that
God has decided to create not only this Adam, but any other substance, involves
decisions for all the rest, because it is the nature of an individual substance to have
such a complete notion from which it is possible to deduct everything that can be
attributed to it and even the whole universe, because of the connexion of things.
Nevertheless, to procede exactly, one must say that it is not so much becauseGod has
resolvedto createAdamthat he has resolvedall the rest, but thatboth,the decision he makes
concerning Adam as well as the one he makes concerning other particular things, are a
consequenceof the decision he makes concerningthe entire universe and of the main de-
signs which determineits primitive notion and establish that general and inviolable
order to which everything conforms, the miracles not excepted, which no doubt con-
form to the main designs of God, although the particular maxims called law of nature
are not always observed in them." (ibid. p. 41)
b"i conceive that there were an infinity of possible ways of creating the world
according to the different designs which God could form, and that each possible
world depends on some main designs or ends of God which are particular to it, i.e.
on some free primitive decrees (conceived sub ratione possibilitatis) or laws of the
general order of this possible world, which they fit and whose notion they determine,
Now, since the relations of compossibility and incompossibility depend

on the will of God, they do not depend on his simple understanding. There-
as well as the notions of all the individual substances which are to enter this same
universe, everything following this order, even the miracles, although the latter be
contrary to some secondary maxims or laws of nature. Thus all human events could
not help happening as they did happen in fact, supposing the choice of Adam has been
made (by God)a;but not so much because of the individual notion of Adam, although
this notion contains them, but because of the designs of God which enter also into
this individual notion of Adameand which determine that of all this universe and then
both that of Adam and those of all the other individual substances of this universe,
each individual substance expressing the entire universe, of which it is a part ac-
cording to a certain relationship, through the connexion that exists between all
things, becauseof the connexion of the decisions of Godd(Cf. ibid. p. 51).
a Necessity ex hypothesi: if God creates x (contingent hypothesis) then it will
necessarily follow that...
b for, the notiontof Adam being given, it must, if it is evercreated,involve neces-
sarily certainnrelationships to all the others, therefore the possibility of such neces-
sary relationships is already involved in its notion, since the possibility of being
created is involved in its notion by virtue of the very definition of a possible; (for it
is the characteristic feature of a possible to be able to be created); but whether these
relationships ever be realized, that is possible only if God actually creates the notion.
Thus the act of relating, which makes the necessity of the system of relations become
apparent, and the system itself is possible only in function of the possible idea of a
creation of God.
e for this notion is entirely determined in function of the connexions it is to receive
by virtue of its entry into the universe where it is compossible and which God con-
siders creating.
d'Thus one sees that all the series of connexions (and therefore all the so-called
contingent predicates of the substances) depend upon the will of God, and are con-
ceived as possible only in relation with the possibility of the decree of creation by
God; on the contrary, the reality of each notion considered in its pure essence is in-
dependent of the consideration of this possibility of divine creation. Thus the
notion gets out of what it is in its absolute and absolutely intrinsic self (in the or-
dinary sense), to enter relativity, only under-the condition of the idea of the possible
passage to existence. Before this passage, the relations which it will be able to sus-
tain after the creation are already involved in what it is; but the simple possibility
of those necessary relations is itself simply conceivable, i.e. possible for the mind,
only under the idea of the possible, contingent creation of these essences.
Here is another text: "I am not asking here for any more of a connexion than
that which is found a parte rei between the terms of a true proposition, and it is only
in that sense that I say that the notion of the individual substance contains all its
events and all its denominations, even those commonly called extrinsic" (i.e. those
which belong to it only by virtue of the general connexion of things and of the fact
that it expresses the whole universe in its own fashion) "since it is always necessary
that there be some foundation for the connexion of the terms of a proposition, which
must be found in their notions." (ibid. p. 56). Thus all the extrinsic (in the vulgar
sense) is contained in the notion only under the condition of the decisions or decrees
of God; that is what Leibniz banishes from pure reason as not being absolutelyneces-
sary.
304 RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICAL
fore the sphere of these relations required for the constitution of the sub-
stances is not the sphere of pure understanding, which is that of the es-
sences, but a sphere where the divine will is united with the understanding.
But, it will be argued, if the relations of compossibility and incompos-
sibility are actually realized by God's decree concerning the creation of the
universe, are they not independent of these decrees when they are con-
sidered simply in their possibility? Even if God should never create the
notion of Adam, it remains nevertheless true, now and forever, that if he
created it, this notion would sustain such and such relations of compos-
sibility with the rest, and that, therefore, this notion contains in itself,
even now and forever, as possible, all the predicates which would be its
own in an existence. So the creation of God and the will of God need not
intervene for the system of connections and predicates particular to the
notion to be present in it as possible. Therefore the complete notion or
possible- substance would belong entirely to the simple understanding of
God.
Answer: this connection of all the possible predicates in the notion con-
sidered simply as possible, before its creation and apart from any actual
creation, is itself possible only under the idea of its possible creation, i.e.
only if we make the idea of the possible exercise of God's will intervene.
For it is under this condition only that the compatibilities and incompat-
ibilities can work, since they are established only among existences and
since there is no idea of existence without that of a creation, even a simply
possible one. The relations of compossibility and incompossibility can
therefore be conceived of all eternity as possible apart from any actual de-
cree of God's will and of any actual existence of the essences considered, but
under the condition that a possible divine decree concerning their existence
be invoked. Thus the notion of Adam, involving as it does, apart from
any actual creation, the idea of a possible decree concerning its creation,
involves a priori the idea of all the possible connections as a consequence of
6 "I claim that the individual possible notions involve some free possible decrees.
For example, if this world were only possible, the individual notion of some body in
this world, which contains certain movements as possible, would contain also our
laws of movement, which are free decrees of God-but only as possible. For, as there
is an infinity of worlds possible, there is also an infinity of laws, some particular to
one, others to another, and each possible individual of one world contains in his
notion the laws of his world.
The same can be said about the miracles or extraordinary operations of God,
which do not cease to be in the general order, to be in conformity with the main de-
signs of God and therefore to be contained in the notion of this universe, which is a
result of these desings, as a building results from the ends or designs of him who un-
dertakes it, and the idea or notion of this world is a result of these designs of God
considered as possible." (Ibid. p. 40)
OF LEIBNIZ
PHILOSOPHY 305
this notion, under the assumption of its creation. It is the same with all
the notions (including those which never exist); as they imply, metaphys-
ically speaking, a possibility of existing, they imply possible decrees.
Conclusion: one cannot conceive a notion of compossibility and in-
compossibility apart from the will of God, the creation, the passage to
existence. Thus the world of compossibility and of substances is situated
in a sphere distinct from that of the absolute essences, which are in ab-
solutely no way related to the will of God, and constitute realities which
God finds ready made in his absolute mind. This world is that of the
disparate simples, where no relation is in effect. At the most, one can say
that these simples, by their being posited, engender an order in relation to
which they are anterior: the absolute order of the possibles, which con-
stitutes a sort of absolute metaphysical space.
Nevertheless, the region of the compossibles and incompossibles, or
substances, although it can not be posited apart from a reference to the will
of God or to his possible decrees, has however its root in the understanding.
For, if it depends upon the will of God that the existences be inter-con-
nected, and if the idea of this connexion, simply a possible connexion be-
tween the essences from the viewpoint of their existence, is subordinated to
the idea of a possible creation of the existences by the divine will, it depends
in no way on that will that these connexions, should they ever be instituted,
be what they are. One can therefore say that the will of God, by its decree
(real or possible) effects the instituting of the (real or possible) relation be-
tween the essences, which by themselves are incapable of any relation
(real or possible), but that the nature of the relation and the mode of the
connexion are independent of the will of God. Nevertheless, the whole
region of the relations of compossibility and incompossibility is considered
as pertaining to the sphere of the necessity ex hypothesi.
Consequences:1) this duplicity of appearance which belongs to the
region of the relations of compossibility accounts for an apparent indeci-
sion in the way in which Leibniz characterizes it. In certain passages he
considers the substance or complete notion as residing all formed in the
mind of God: "There is no reason to doubt", he writes, "that God can form
such a (complete) notion of him (Adam), or rather that he finds it all formed
in the region of the possibles, that is to say in his understanding." (to
Arnauld, P. II, p. 42). And again: "Since, ever since I began to be, one
was able to say of me that this or that would happen, it is necessary to
submit that these predicates were laws contained in the subject or in my
complete notion, which constitutes what is called me, which is the foun-
dation of the connexion of all my different states and which God knew
perfectly of all eternity." (P. II, p. 43; cf. also Disc. de Mftaphysique,
? IX).
In other texts, he leaves in the absolute understanding of God only the

essences, and relegates the individual substances to a region where the
will of God intervenes: "The notion of an individual contains sub rationed
possibilitatis what pertains to the fact or the existence of things, or to time,
and depends therefore on some free decrees of God considered as possible;
for the truths of fact or of existence depend upon the decrees of God."
(P. II, p. 39). And' again: "The notions 'of the individual substances,
'which are complete and capable of distinguishing entirely their subject,
and which therefore involve the contingent truths or truths of fact, the
individual circumstances of time and space and others, must also comprise
in their notion, taken as possible, the free decrees of God, also taken as
possible, because these free decrees are the main sources of the existences or
facts; whereas the essences are within the understanding of God, prior to
the consideration of his will (P. II, p. 51)
These two ways of considering the substance are equally legitimate if one
considers in this substance the two elements of which it is made, i.e. the
nucleus of irresolvable essence, commonly called the intrinsic, which resides
in the absolute understanding, and all the contingent predicates, which the
substance submits to its law (commonly called the extrinsic), and which are
conferred on it only under the condition of (real or possible) existence in a
(real or possible) universe, that is to say only through reference to possible
creation or to the will of God, which presides over the passage into ex-
istence. To the extent that the connexions are by their nature independent
of the act of will which institutes them, they may be reintegrated in the
understanding with the whole sphere of the extrinsic which they con-
stitute; and to the extent that God, considering what will happen to the
notion when he will implicate it in a universe of existences, perceives in it
the necessity of the connexions and predicates which will belong to it in
case it be created (contingency of the hypothesis), through its intrinsic
virtue (which implies the compatibilities and incompatibilities that'are
its own in relation to all others), one can say that, before creating it, God
possesses it with all its predicates as a ready made notion. But this totality
of predicates nevertheless remains attributable to the notion only under the
condition of a possible creation. If one should absolutely disregard any
eventual interrelating, one would thus abolish the whole system of possible
connexions and the sphere of the extrinsic, to keep only what is commonly
called the intrinsic, that is to say the essence in its nakedness, the absolute,
incomparable and disparate quality.
This is why Leibniz can easily escape the dilemma in which Arnauld tries
to catch him. This dilemma was the following: either the complete notion
is entirely formed prior to the'free decree of God which will make it pass
into existence; then the connexion of the predicates is absolutely necessary
and intrinsic in it, but then all these predicates are in it independently of
the free will of God. Or else these predicates are attributed to it by the
will of God which has created it, and therefore they are not founded within
the notion prior to the free act of this will, and then the connexion of these
predicates with this notion is neither necessary nor intrinsic (to Arnauld,
P. II, pp. 49-50). Now, Leibniz replies; this connexion is intrinsic without
being necessary. It is not necessary, for it depends upon the free decree of
God whether Adam pass into existence and receive in consequence such and
such a predicate; but on the other hand, prior to this decree of existence,
the compatibility of Adam with all the other notions and, in consequence,
all the contingent predicates which are to be his under the condition of a pos-
sible decreeimplicating him in existence,is knowable a priori by virtue of the
constitutive quality of the Adam in question: therefore the connexion of
the predicates is intrinsic,7 they are all contained a priori in the notion.
However, it is necessary, let us remember, to suppose the possibility of
creation for the aforementioned predicates to be attributable to the sub-
stance, and since this creation is contingent, the attribution is too: the
intrinsic nature of the connexion therefore does not deprive it of its con-
tingent character. "There must be a full notion of Adam, accompanied
by all its predicates and conceived as possible, known by God before he
resolves to create it ... the connexion between Adam and human events
is intrinsic, but it is not necessary independently of the free decrees of God,
because the free decrees of God consideredas possible enter into the notion
of the possible Adam; these same decrees, having become actual, being the
cause of the actual Adam. I grant that the possibles are possible prior to
all the actual decrees of God, but not without supposing sometimes' these
same decrees taken as possible. For the possibilities of the individuals or
of the contingent truths contain within their notion the possibility of their
causes, i.e. of the free decrees of God, in which respect they differ from the
possibilities of the species or eternal truths, which depend upon the under-
standing of God exclusively, without supposing his will." (P. II, pp.
50-51)
7 "Everything actual can be conceived as possible, and if the actual Adam will
have such a posterity with the passing of time, one can not deny this same predicate
to that Adam conceived as possible, all the more so as you grant that God considers
in him all these predicates when he decides to create him. They belong therefore to
him, and I fail to see that your statements about the reality of the possibles is op-
posed to it." (P. II, p. 55).
8 "Sometimes": When it is a question, in these possibles, of the possibility of the
contingent determinations (called extrinsic), which is thinkable a priori only under

the idea of a possible creation; on the contrary, when it is a question of what is ordi-
narily called the intrinsic, the recourse to the decrees of God is useless.
2) We have thus explained entirely the radical opposition between the

primitivae simplices and the substances. The former reside in the world of
the absolutes without relations, the latter reside in the world of the relations
instituted by the will of God. The will of God manifests itself at the same
time as this new aspect appears of the universal relativity of terms in-
capable by themselves of relationship. And this relativity manifests itself
with regard to these terms only in relation to the existence which they might
engender, for it is not these terms themselves which enter into relation, but
their effects or existences, which alone are subject to compatibility or in-
compatibility. But since compatibility and incompatibility, the principles
of reason, of the best, of continuity, and even the principle of identity and
of contradiction imply relativity, all these superior principles, even the
latter, which is that of pure logic, seem to be able to work only from the
time when the possibility of relation appears, i.e. in a sphere situated as it
were below the region where the pure essences establish themselves in their
disparate absoluteness.
We may thus try to determine a whole hierarchy of regions. We find
at first the region of the pure essences, in their absolute instrinsic quality
without any relation. They are the absolutely simple notions, the concept
of which one posits by trying to define the idea of the primary elements of
analysis, which constitute the absolute attributes of God, or prima pos-
sibilia which God has not made, and which he discovers in his own
understanding, of which they constitute the very being. In this under-
standing, where all is simple, these essences are undivided within the ab-
solute divine unity, but each attribute, to the extent that, through ab-
straction, we conceive it as distinct, represents an irreductible perfection
and has nothing in common with the others. Being without relation
with the others, it is unlimited in its kind, incapable of contradicting an
other attribute, since contradiction supposes relation: they are disparate
terms. By this very fact they guarantee to us the non-contradiction of
the divine nature, and therefore its possibility.
We find next a second region, characterized by the appearance of relation,
the region of understanding, less pure than the preceding, in as much as any
idea of relation seems to imply, to however small a degree, the intervention
of the divine will. But this second region in turn may be diversified into
several degrees, which establish continuous transitions: first, the positing
of these possibles, or of the absolute essences, engenders, even before the
relation of compatibility and of incompatibility is outlined, a system of
relations of a purely logical nature, referringnot to the existences, but to the
possibles themselves; it is the absolute order of the possibles in the under-
standing of God, a sort of metaphysical absolute space, which is conceived
as resulting from the essences, and not as a frame prior to them. Another
PHILOSOPHY
OF LEIBNIZ 309
region, hardly different, is that of the principles of identity, of non-con-

tradiction, of continuity. To this region is attached the region of the
specific essences, which are no longer intrinsic qualities, but eternal notions
of kind and species: e.g. the sphere sub rationedgeneralitatis;man sub ratione
generalitatis. This region is inferior to that of the absolute possibles since
it supposes relation (the difference of the kinds and species etc... ), whereas
the region of the absolute possibles excludes it.
The whole of these regions constitutes the sphere of the understanding
of God in the wider sense; it comprises the eternal truths; of an absolute
logical necessity, distinct from the moral or ex hypothesi necessity. The
relation to the will of God is conceived here as absent, although strictly
speaking any relativity, any relationship between terms incapable of re-
lation by themselves, must imply, at least to an infinitesimal extent, the idea
of an act of relating which does not go by itself, therefore of an intervention
of the divine will.
It is therefore the region of the disparate absolute attributes which rep-
resents the understanding of God in its true purity: the region of the
absolute simple. Besides, the passage to the regions where relation pre-
vails is not effected abruptly. There is an infinity of degrees in simplicity;
there are absolutely absolute simplicities, and relative simplicities where
the difference between the simple and the non simple becomes as small as
one may wish: for disparity, which is the characteristic of the simple,
admits of degrees (Couturat, Op'uscules, p. 53), degrees which are esti-
mated by greater or less distance from the kind by the means of which one
compares the terms. Now all the possibles, in their absolute disparity,
however far one may reject in them the negation of relationship, preserve
nonetheless, at the limit, one relation, for they all belong to one common,
very distant kind': that of the simple beings contained in God's absolute
understanding. Thus is born a first possibility of relation which makes
them leave absolute disparity to enter a common order: the order of pos-
sibles within the absolute understanding or absolute metaphysical space.
Below the sphere comprising the region of the absolute simple and the
regions of 4he first relations, we find regions which, unlike those just enu-
merated, imply an express reference to the will of God. There is first the
region of the relations of compossibility and incompossibility which suppose
the reference to possible divine decrees concerning existence. Finally there
is the region of the existences themselves.
Let us now try to determine more precisely the relation between the will
of God and the appearance of compossibility and incompossibility. On
the one hand, the will of God, in as much as it seems to add itself to- his
understanding, seems to add to the essences strictly speaking some bonds
of relationships of compossibility and incompossibility which in themselves
310 RESEARCH
they do not know. The act of relating seems to depend on a free decision
of the Divinity which posits the sphere of the necessity ex hypothesi: should
God decide to create the universe (contingent hypothesis), then it will
necessarily follow that he will have to compare to one another the possibles
in order to judge their agreement or disagreement as to their existence, and
choose the best combination. Thus the relating act is a result of the act
instituting comparison; it is foreign to the essences and relative to the
envisaged existence. Or else, one may say that, upon raising for himself
freely the problem of creation, God must solve a problem de maximis et
minimis, for he must, as the receptivity of the universe is limited, get into
the frame of space and time available to him the maximum of existences.
He must therefore choose that combination of compatible essences which
realizes the maximum of reality within this sphere. Thus the relations of
compatibility and incompatibility seem to intervene only in correlation
with the rules according to which the free (i.e. contingent) act of the creation
is bound to realize itself.
However, this system is reversible. For compatibility and incompati-
bility, far from appearing as resulting from a rule or a prior limitation, must
be conceived as engendering, on the contrary, this limitation and this rule:
it is because all the essences are not compatible-with regard to the ex-
istences they engender-that God cannot create everything, that a limit is
imparted a priori to what he can create and that he must solve a problem
de minimis et maximis. And it is because there are possibilities and in-
compossibilities that the world does not pass necessarily into existence and
that a place is left for a free will of God, which will be able to intervene so
as to choose a certain combination.
But it follows immediately hence that, at the limit, this free will of God
and this necessity ex hypothesi itself must ultimately unite within the
absolute necessity; for it is ineluctably through an intelligible mechanism
(cf. De primae philosophiae emendationeet notione substantial) that a max-
imum of essence passes into existence. There is not, between the necessity
conditioned by will and absolute necessity, a solution of continuity which
would save the integrity of liberty, by withdrawing it definitely from the
ineluctable determinism of the greatest amount of essence. Between
necessity, which excludes any jump, and liberty, which requires it and
which is essentially initiative, rupture, Leibniz reestablishes, here as else-
where, the continuity, which, at the limit, must suppress entirely this
very liberty.
In any case, even leaving aside this reduction, at the limit, of liberty to
necessity, and considering granted the true reality of liberty at the foun-
dation of the sphere of the moral truths, it remains nevertheless that the
relations of compossibility and incompossibility appear independent from
the will of God, which seems to be a result of them in its manifestation as in

its effect, and which only actualizes them, whether as possibles or as reals.
Thus it is natural that Leibniz places.most often compossibility and in-
compossibility, and also the principle of reason, into the sphere of the
absolute truths of reason, leaving simply in the sphere of the moral truths
the principle of the best.
However, if we want to look for the principle of the passage from the
region of the disparate essences to that of compossibility and incompos-
sibility, we shall be able to discover it only in the still of God. Since these
relations condition the passage to existence, we must suppose that the
transformation of the pure possibles into compossibles and incompossibles
is effected when God embraces in his thought the whole of the possibles, to
compute them in view of their envisaged creation, holding in a single view
the reciprocal connexion of all his decisions: the simple possibles then lose
their original absolute simplicity, to become capable of opposing them-
selves, of agreeing and combining themselves from the viewpoint of ex-
istence. For this reciprocal distinction of the possibles, whence their
opposition and their combination originates, engenders the composed,
which is the characteristic of the created being. Now the foundation for
this distinction can evidently not be discovered, except in a principle of
division which separates the absolute attributes of God, or first possibles,
originally undivided in the supreme divine unity. For this original
undividedness excluded any complexity, composition or combination. It
is to be noted that, with Malebranche as well, the attributes or perfections
of God, originally undivided in him, are afterwards distinguished when
God, taking them as ideas of what he wants to create, represents them to
himself separately one from another in his Word; thus the representation of
the attributes as separate archetypes is relative to the creature (this re-
lation, besides, being established in God himself and not in the creature).
There is therefore a certain analogy with Leibniz, for whom the division
among themselves of the absolute attributes, whence will originate the
possibility of their subsequent combination, takes place in God only in
relation to the idea of the creation of the universe.
But what is the principle of this division, which appears really as the
original condition of the appearance of the relations of compossibility and
incompossibility? Leibniz has not been explicit on this point, and behave
seen that we descended very insensibly from one region to the other.
Nevertheless it is quite evident that, complexity with him being opposed
to the simple like the finite to the infinite, it is in the condition of finitude
that this principlehas to be sought, i.e. in nothingness. For contradiction
cannot take place when there is nothing but simple. It intervenes only in
the composed; now there can be no contradiction between positive realities,
312 RESEARCH
but only, as Descartes had already said, between being and nothingness.
But there is no contradiction possible except in the complex; the complex
exists only thanks to division, thus nothingness appears, in this way also,
as the source of division. Now in the De Organo and in the Animadver-
siones ad Weigelium, Leibniz indicates explicitly that everything must be
reduced to the opposition of these two terms: Being and Nothingness.
Therefore nothingness would be the condition and the result of the division,
thanks to which the relations, from which the creation results, would be
possible. (We find here a sort of presentiment of that Zersplitterung of
Hegel which, through the negation of being, breaks the undividedness of
the simple, to permit the return to unity by the synthesis of complex
beings.) The recombination, as complex beings, of the beings thus dis-
tinguished, by their reunion within a synthetic unity, where they no longer
exist in themselvesbut for themselves,makes of the whole of the elements
that many possible contents for different consciousnesses*. Thus the act
of creation, and the constitution of the substances which that act implies
in its possibility, assume their full meaning. This constitution of the
substances is at bottom the very constitution of the possible and real con-
sciousnesses, the passage from the "in itself" (absolute divine understand-
ing) to the "for itself", i.e. to the thought or consciousness of that which
resides in the pure and simple "in itself". Thus the limitation, which
is at the bottom of creature in general, has its counterpart, since the sepa-
ration and opposition, which it founds between the original elements, is the
principle of the universe of conscious beings*, the principle of the con-
sciousness of this universe in the conscious beings, and of the consciousness
of God himself through the infinity of these conscious beings: "Thus the
universe is multiplied by as many times as there are substances, and the
glory of God is redoubled in the same way by as many representations of
his work. One can even say that any substance bears in some fashion the
character of the infinite wisdom and of the omnipotence of God, and the
unity, as much as it is capable of it." (Disc. Met. IX, sub finem. The
passage to existence supposes therefore the bringing into conflict of the
essences through limitation, as a condition of the total consciousness,-
a viewpoint which will be made explicit with Lessing, Fichte, Hegel.
The passage to existence has brought about the disappearance of the
undividedness of the simple possibles within the original mind of God, in
favor of a distinction and an opposition, which causes the essence to be no
longer linked to all the others by its undividedness, but by infinite re-
lations to what is expressly separated and distinguished. Through this
realization of the universe of 'essences as consciousness and law of the dif-
*See footnote 3.
ferences infinite in number, differences which constitute the content of

their representation and become their predicates, the essences are no longer
in themselves anything but the nucleus of infinitely complex substances,
endowed with an infinity of predicates, and one understands that there
remain everywhere only relative terms, common attributes etc... But
this complex of relations, gathered like a microcosm within each substance,
is the image of the simple (where nothing is related, as nothing is divided)
and symbolizes with it: it reproduces, in the form of synthetic combi-
nations of elements, the undivided sum of elements residing in the original
unity. But it is only image or mirror, for:
1) the combination of the elements at a certain viewpoint is not identical
with the original undividedness of these elements in their absolute primitive
simplicity, beyond the diversity of the viewpoints;
2) the combination realized is more narrow than the totality of pos-
sibles, since part of the possible only can exist (although, at the extreme
limit, one perhaps joins the other, since the design realized by God has been
realized in relation to the unrealizable possibles which he has computed;
therefore they are represented confusedly within the chosen combination
as one of its factors);
3) the realized consciousness of each substance is always obscure and
confused to a large extent.
There is in any case, latent at the bottom of each substance, a primitiva
simplex which is its nucleus, the foundation of its viewpoint, of its vinculum,
which no doubt is, as an irreductible notion of first reality, a real; but at
the same time, with regard to the substance, it is an abstractum. For
the substance, a recondensation in a particular focus of all the realities
disconnected, then linked, in the universe, has more reality than each of its
predicates: it is not only a real, but the totality of the reals in one point.
The substance is therefore a concretum: "Substantia late sumpta et ens
concretum est idem." (Couturat, Opuscules, p. 438) It is the most real
of beings, Leibniz tells de Volder. The irreductible nucleus, or simple
indivisible essence, is only an element of the substance, a fundamental
element no doubt, since in relation to it may be effected the synthesis of
the predicates; but without that infinity of predicates we would not have
the substance; and again we would no longer have it if we had only the heap
of predicates. Thus the nucleus on the one hand, the totality of the
accidents on the other, constitute each an abstractum. However, as this
totality of predicates is only the totality of the accidents derived from the
nucleus, or substantial form, which, by uniting them, truly constitutes
them as accidents of the substance, the substantial form is an abstractum
the dignity of which is higher: the form, or entelechy, is the primitive and
constitutive abstractum, the accidents or predicates constitute the de-
rivative abstract which are opposed to it; the synthesis of both gives the
concretum or substance: "Accidens est ens abstractum derivativuln et
opponitur abstraoto primitive, seu constitutive, quod vulgo vocant for-
man substantialem et voce Aristotelis dici potest Xar' czoxt*v Entelecheia."
(Couturat, Opuscules, p. 438) The true concretumtherefore is, as Leibniz
pointed out to Ariste (in the Reflexions sur la philosophic du P. Malebranche)
synonymous with the substance: "Omne accidens est abstractum quoddam,
sola vero substantia est concretum." (to des Bosses, II, p. 458) And it
must be noted that, if every accident is abstract, the form or entelechy
which is not an accident is itself a predicate', for it is not itself the complete
substance. Hence we understand the objection made by Leibniz to de
Older, namely that, when thinking the substance, one cannot separate
the concept of substance from that of its attribute, and he could have added
also-: of its modes. This idea of a complete substance, constituted by the
two incomplete elements: form and accident, form and matter, agrees with
the scholastic concepts. Finally it is to be noted that the abstract here
means something real: a fragment of the real considered separately and
apart from other reals, to which it is essentially linked. The simple notion
is abstract in that sense that it is a reality considered apart from the other
realities or notions, to which it is linked in the substance; this,, in turn, is
a complete synthesis of all the realities, and the richest of them all. But
it is not abstract in the logical sense, as if it were a general idea. The
meaning of Leibniz here is entirely like Hegel's.
It is to be noted finally that the analysis of Leibniz will assume two
aspects:
1) there is an analysis which goes from the concrete to the abstract;
this is the one which tends to ascend indefinitely towards the simple notions
which are at the foundation of the complex notions; this analysis, besides,
may take as starting points entirely concrete beings, such as substances,
or already abstract beings, such as extension: e.g. when I examine the
notion of extension and discover that it is not insoluble, since it implies
other notions, like that of size, of continuity etc.... In principle, this
analysis goes from the more real to the less real.
2) There is an analysis which, on the contrary, goes from the abstract to
the' concrete and, in principle, from the less real to the more real. For
every abstract supposes a concrete of which it is the predicate. Such is the
case, for example, when, from extension which is an abstractum,I ascend to
the concretawhich it presupposes (i.e. towards the substances which are in
the aggregate whence it originated) to explain the possibility of that abstrac-
tum. We notice immediately that this analysis differs from the former,
that indeed the resolvability of the notion in both cases has even nothing
in common. But at the same time we notice that the meaning of the word
abstract,when applied to extension, is no longer entirely the same it posses-

ses when applied, for example, to the simple notion, or to the entelechy as
abstractumconstitutivum,or even to the pure and simple accident. For, in
this latter case, the abstraction is a full reality, and this reality is less rich
than the reality of the substance; this is only because in the substance
other realities are joined with it. On the contrary, when the question is
about extension, the return to the concrete causes the being in question to
vanish, because it is not so much a reality detached from that to which itis
necessarily linked, as ,it is an imaginary fiction, made possible by the de-
taching from the substance's viewpoint of certain properties or real ac-
cidents which are necessarily united with it.
M. GUEROULT.
SORBONNE, PARIS.

Gueroult, M. - Substance and The Primitive Simple Notion in The Philosophy of Leibniz

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International Phenomenological Society

Substance and the Primitive Simple Notion in the Philosophy of Leibniz

Whereas with Descartes substantiality is defined by the absolute in-

1 Excerpt from a chapter of a book to be published on: The analysis of Leibniz

the instantaneous character of movement, is in a way banished from move-

Let us examine now the difficulties of this new concept.

logical, which cannot vanish into relations, is moreover required by the

Now, since the relations of compossibility and incompossibility depend

In other texts, he leaves in the absolute understanding of God only the

contingent determinations (called extrinsic), which is thinkable a priori only under

2) We have thus explained entirely the radical opposition between the

region, hardly different, is that of the principles of identity, of non-con-

the will of God, which seems to be a result of them in its manifestation as in

ferences infinite in number, differences which constitute the content of

abstract,when applied to extension, is no longer entirely the same it posses-

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