The Monadology (Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz’s works that best define his philosophy, monadism. Written toward the end of his life in order to support a metaphysics of simple substances, the Monadology is thus about formal atoms which are not physical but metaphysical. It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ...

Ground

The rational ground given by Leibniz to the monads in his works is quintuple: Look up Monad in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

1. Mathematical, through infinitesimal calculus and its antiatomistic conclusions (against materialists like Epicurus, Lucretius and Gassendi).
2. Physical, through the living forces theory and its implicit criticism to Cartesian dynamics, whose experimental errors were shown by Leibniz himself.
3. Metaphysical, through the principle of sufficient reason, which, like Ockham’s Razor, cannot be infinitely multiplied and needs a start in every action.
4. Psychological, through postulation of innate ideas, especially in the New Essays on Human Understanding, which inspired Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
5. Biological, through the theory of preformation or encasement of the bodies and its functional subdivision in its organic development.

Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... Roman marble bust of Epicurus Epicurus (Epikouros or in Greek) (341 BC, Samos – 270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of thought in Hellenistic Philosophy. ... Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus (c. ... Pierre Gassendi (January 22, 1592 – October 24, 1655) was a French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, best known for attempting to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity. ... Antonym of psychical. ... Plato (Left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. ... The principle of sufficient reason states that anything that happens does so for a definite reason. ... William of Ockham Occams Razor (also spelled Ockhams Razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. ... Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul and logos = word) is the study of mind, thought, and behaviour. ... Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as one of Europes most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. ... Title page of the 1781 edition. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Text

The Monadology is written in short logical paragraphs, generally following each one from the previous, completing a number of ninety. Its name is due to the fact that Leibniz, imitating Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno and Anne Conway, wanted to keep together the meanings of “monas” (in Greek, “unity”) and “logos” (“treatise” or “science”, literally "word" or "speech"). Therefore, the Monadology came to be the monad’s treatise or the science of the unity. Domenico Ghirlandaio. ... Giordano Bruno. ... Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh (14 December 1631–1679) was an English philosopher whose work, in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists, was an influence on Leibniz. ...

The text is reasoned in a dialectical way, facing questions and problems that help the reader to advance in his learning. Thus, for instance, it can be accepted that composed bodies are something derived, extended, phenomenical or repeated according to simple substances (which will be later expressed by Kant in his dichotomy phenomena-noumena). Is the soul a monad? If the answer is affirmative, then the soul is a simple substance. If it is an aggregate of matter, then it cannot be a monad. Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as one of Europes most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. ...

What is a monad?

See Monad for uses outside of Monadology.

Monads are non-extended, soul-like, metaphysical simples. Every material that exists, according to Leibniz, is composed entirely of monads. These monads have no causal relationship to one another, or to any other monads, and are moved about (and appear to affect each other) through what Leibniz called pre-established harmony. In other words, without God overseeing and directing every action of every monad, the entire universe would fall apart. Look up Monad in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Our souls are of a special kind of monad, termed dominant, or rational, monads. These dominant monads give us consciousness, which is a reflection on what happens to us, and which Leibniz terms apperception. All other simple monads have two basic qualities, appetite and perception, while some monads also have memory.

Monads are eternal, having existed since God created each one, indestructible, and immutable.

Controversy in Rationalism

When it was written, the Monadology tried to put an end from a monist point of view to the main question of what is reality, and particularly to the problem of communication of substances, both studied by Descartes. Thus, Leibniz offered a new solution to mind and matter interaction by means of a pre-established harmony; in other words, he drew the relationship between “the kingdom of final causes”, or teleological ones, and “the kingdom of efficient causes”, or mechanical ones, which was not causal, but synchronous. So, monads and matter are only apparently linked, and there is not even any communication between different monads, as far as they act according to their degree of distinction only, as they were influenced by bodies, and vice versa. René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally inexplicable to the person or persons experiencing them. ...

Leibniz fought against the Cartesian dualist system in his Monadology and tried to surpass it through a metaphysical system considered at the same time monist (since only the unextended is substantial) and pluralist (as far as substances are disseminated in the world in an infinite number). For that reason the monad is an irreducible force, which makes it possible for the bodies to have the characteristics of inertia and impenetrability, and which contains in itself the source of all its actions. Monads are the first elements of every composed thing. Cartesian dualism was Descartess principle of the separation of mind and matter and mind and body. ...

Paradoxes

Monads are matter, since they are everywhere, and there is no extension without monads. They are, then, the plenum, that is to say, the condition of an infinitely dense universe, but nevertheless they are unextended. However, this doesn’t mean that they lack of any function (as far as they project and reflect force), matter (since they come with it) or that they are extended (considering that they don’t interact with anything in the world).

Extended matter would be the impenetrable quality of the unextended—the monad, without any doors or windows—as passively transmitted according to movements which, together with perception and apperception, compose action. In spite of that, monad cannot remain placed in matter, which follows the monad itself, previously to the generation of matter in time. So, extension and monads coexist acausally by the means of a timeless creation, although they are reciprocally bound according to the appearances.

In brief, Leibniz states that matter is extended, but not only extended. It is, in addition, formed by unextended monads. Then, is matter both extended and unextended? No, accepting that, as far as monad constitutes matter, matter is nothing in itself, as an isolated being.

Philosophical conclusions

This theory leads to:

1. Idealism, since it denies things in themselves (besides monads) and multiplies them in different points of view. Monads are “perpetual living mirrors of the universe”.

2. Metaphysical optimism, through the principle of sufficient reason, developed as follows: The principle of sufficient reason states that anything that happens does so for a definite reason. ...

a) Everything exists according to a reason (by the axiom "Nothing arises from nothing");

b) Everything which exists has a sufficient reason to exist;

c) Everything which exists is better than anything non-existent (by the first point: since it is more rational, it also has more reality), and, consequently, it is the best possible being in the best of all possible worlds (by the axiom: "That which contains more reality is better than that which contains less reality"). The phrase the best of all possible worlds (French:le meilleur des mondes possibles) was coined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de lhomme et lorigine du mal (Theodicy). ...

The “best of possible worlds”, then, is that “containing the greatest variety of phenomena from the smallest amount of principles”.

External links

• English translation (1898), by Robert Latta
• English translation and commentary (1999), by George MacDonald Ross
• A Computational Model of Monadology, by Eric Steinhart
• Monism Art Videopublic service