Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical ExpositionDewey, John
Philosophy
Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition
Dewey, John
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
We are thus introduced naturally to the conception which plays so
large a part in the Leibnizian philosophy, that of pre-established
harmony. This term simply names the fact, which we see to be
fundamental with Leibniz,--the fact that, while the form of every
monad is individuality, a unique principle of action, its content
is universal, the very being and laws of the world. For we must
now notice more explicitly what has been wrapped up in the idea all
along. There is no direct influence of monads upon each other. One
cannot affect another causally. There is no actual interaction of one
upon another. Expressed in that figurative language which was ever
natural to Leibniz, the monads have no windows by which anything can
get in or out. This follows, of course, from the mutual independence
and individuality of the monads. They are a true democracy, in
which each citizen has sovereignty. To admit external influences
acting upon them is to surrender their independence, to deny their
sovereignty. But we must remember the other half. This democracy is not
after the Platonic conception of democracy, in which each does as it
pleases, and in which there is neither order nor law, but the extremest
assertion of individuality. What each sovereign citizen of the realm
of reality expresses is precisely law. Each is an embodiment in its own
way of the harmony, the order, of the whole kingdom. Each is sovereign
because it is dynamic law,--law which is no longer abstract, but has
realized itself in life. Thus another way of stating the doctrine of
pre-established harmony is the unity of freedom and necessity. Each
monad is free because it is individual, because it follows the
law of its own activity unhindered, unretarded, by others; it is
self-determined. But it is self-determined to show forth the order, the
harmony, of the universe. There is nothing of caprice, of peculiarity,
in the content of the monad. It shows forth order; it is organized
by law; it reveals the necessary connections which constitute the
universe. The pre-established harmony is the unity of the individual
and the universe; it is the organic oneness of freedom and necessity.
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