Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
3. The Internal and External. In an object of the pure understanding,
only that is internal which has no relation (as regards its existence)
to anything different from itself. On the other hand, the internal
determinations of a substantia phaenomenon in space are nothing but
relations, and it is itself nothing more than a complex of mere
relations. Substance in space we are cognizant of only through forces
operative in it, either drawing others towards itself (attraction), or
preventing others from forcing into itself (repulsion and
impenetrability). We know no other properties that make up the
conception of substance phenomenal in space, and which we term matter.
On the other hand, as an object of the pure understanding, every
substance must have internal determination and forces. But what other
internal attributes of such an object can I think than those which my
internal sense presents to me? That, to wit, which in either itself
thought, or something analogous to it. Hence Leibnitz, who looked upon
things as noumena, after denying them everything like external
relation, and therefore also composition or combination, declared that
all substances, even the component parts of matter, were simple
substances with powers of representation, in one word, monads.
4. Matter and Form. These two conceptions lie at the foundation of all
other reflection, so inseparably are they connected with every mode of
exercising the understanding. The former denotes the determinable in
general, the second its determination, both in a transcendental sense,
abstraction being made of every difference in that which is given, and
of the mode in which it is determined. Logicians formerly termed the
universal, matter, the specific difference of this or that part of the
universal, form. In a judgement one may call the given conceptions
logical matter (for the judgement), the relation of these to each other
(by means of the copula), the form of the judgement. In an object, the
composite parts thereof (essentialia) are the matter; the mode in which
they are connected in the object, the form. In respect to things in
general, unlimited reality was regarded as the matter of all
possibility, the limitation thereof (negation) as the form, by which
one thing is distinguished from another according to transcendental
conceptions. The understanding demands that something be given (at
least in the conception), in order to be able to determine it in a
certain manner. Hence, in a conception of the pure understanding, the
matter precedes the form, and for this reason Leibnitz first assumed
the existence of things (monads) and of an internal power of
representation in them, in order to found upon this their external
relation and the community their state (that is, of their
representations). Hence, with him, space and time were possible—the
former through the relation of substances, the latter through the
connection of their determinations with each other, as causes and
effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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