Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Friedrich Schlegel, Gottfried Leibniz and Alfred North Whitehead

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15 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 1. Knowledge

19424	Knowledge needs clarity, distinctness, and adequacy, and it should be intuitive [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Knowledge is either obscure or clear; clear ideas are either indistinct or distinct; distinct ideas are either adequate or inadequate, symbolic or intuitive; perfect knowledge is that which is both adequate and intuitive.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas [1684], p.283)
	A reaction: This is Leibniz's expansion of Descartes's idea that knowledge rests on 'clear and distinct conceptions'. The ultimate target seems to be close to an Aristotelian 'real definition', which is comprehensive and precise. Does 'intuitive' mean coherent?

19397	Perfect knowledge implies complete explanations and perfect prediction [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The mark of perfect knowledge is that nothing appears in the thing under consideration which cannot be accounted for, and that nothing is encountered whose occurrence cannot be predicted in advance.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Wisdom [1693], 1)
	A reaction: I would track both of these back to the concept of perfect understanding, which is admittedly a bit vague. Does a finite mind need to predict every speck of dust to have perfect knowledge? Do we have perfect knowledge of triangles?

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding

19332	For Leibniz, divine understanding grasps every conceivable possibility [Leibniz, by Perkins]
	Full Idea: For Leibniz, what is this understanding which God has? What does it contain? All possibilities in all possible combinations, that is, everything which can be conceived.
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.III
	A reaction: I like this, because it strikes me as essential that understanding should embrace possibilities as well as actualities. Perkins points out that the possibilities are restricted by an awareness of the limitations imposed by combination.

12960	We understand things when they are distinct, and we can derive necessities from them [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: We understand the things of which we are aware only when we have distinct ideas of them accompanied by the power to reflect and to derive necessary truths from those ideas.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21)
	A reaction: A rather startling way of putting it, but we also say that good understanding brings the power to predict. What must you understand in order to predict? What has to happen next!

12998	Understanding grasps the agreements and disagreements of ideas [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Ordinarily, when ideas are thoroughly understood, their agreements and disagreements are apparent.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.02)
	A reaction: In other words, there is a holistic aspect of understanding, which makes us ask how understanding ever gets off the ground. Is it not possible to understand a single idea in isolation?

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

13006	Certainty is where practical doubt is insane, or at least blameworthy [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Certainty might be knowledge of a truth such that to doubt it in a practical way would be insane; and sometimes it is taken more broadly, to cover cases where doubt would be very blameworthy.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.11)
	A reaction: The normative aspect of the second half of this touches on a trend in recent epistemology. You have rights to believe, and duties to believe, and virtues for the justifying process. I prefer more neutral, value-free epistemology.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito

12905	I cannot think my non-existence, nor exist without being myself [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I am assured that as long as I think, I am myself. For I cannot think that I do not exist, nor exist so that I be not myself.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.05.13)
	A reaction: Elsewhere he qualifies the Cogito, but here he seems to straighforwardly endorse it.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 5. Cogito Critique

19334	I can't just know myself to be a substance; I must distinguish myself from others, which is hard [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: It is not enough for understanding the nature of myself, that I feel myself to be a thinking substance, one would have to form a distinct idea of what distinguishes me from all other possible minds; but of that I have only a confused experience.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.07.4/14)
	A reaction: Not a criticism I have encountered before. Does he mean that I might be two minds, or might be a multitude of minds? It seems to be Hume's problem, that you are aware of experiences, but not of the substance that unites them.

12996	I know more than I think, since I know I think A then B then C [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Not only is it immediately evident to me that I think, but it is just as evident that I think various thoughts: at one time I think about A and at another about B and so on. Thus the Cartesian principle is sound, but it is not the only one of its kind.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.02)
	A reaction: I don't suppose that Descartes would object to this, but he was aware that there didn't seem to be any actual introspective experience that united the various thoughts into a single thinker. Only logical connections between the thoughts does that.

13003	The Cogito doesn't prove existence, because 'I am thinking' already includes 'I am' [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: To say 'I think therefore I am' is not really to prove existence from thought, since 'to think' and 'to be thinking' are one and the same, and to say 'I am thinking' [je suis pensant] is already to say 'I am' [je suis].
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.07)
	A reaction: This is the objection which was offered by A.J. Ayer, and I take it to the one of the two principle objections to the Cogito (i.e. that it may be a tautology), along with the objection about the assumption of the continuity of the same thinker.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 2. Phenomenalism

12739	If we are dreaming, it is sufficient that the events are coherent, and obey laws [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Skeptics may doubt the truth of things, and if it pleases them to call the things that occur to us dreams, it suffices for these dreams to be in agreement with each other, and to obey certain laws.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Perceptions [1680], A6.4.1398), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
	A reaction: Leibniz flirted a great deal with phenomenalism throughout the middle of his career, as charted by Garber. Descartes made similar points. It is really only Berkeley who took this idea seriously.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism

12742	A whole is just its parts, but there are no smallest parts, so only minds and perceptions exist [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The whole, if it is assumed to be body or matter, is nothing other than all of its parts; but this is absurd, since there aren't any smallest parts. Therefore there really exist only minds and their perceptions.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Calculus Ratiocinator [1679], A6.4.279), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
	A reaction: Leibniz is sometimes labelled as an 'idealist', but this text is unusual in being so explicit, and he was mainly concerned to explain the reality of individual bodies. Monads were his final attempt to do this, not an attempt to escape into pure minds.

5509	Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
	Full Idea: Leibniz held that dualism of mind and body is an illusion and that both are really the same thing, and that this thing is mind.
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.22
	A reaction: I am puzzled by this, as Leibniz is famous for the view that mind and body are parallel. See idea 5038, and also 2109 and 2596. Monads are, of course, entirely mental, and are the building blocks of reality. Clearly I (and you) must read more Leibniz.

7568	Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley]
	Full Idea: To say that Leibniz is an idealist is to say that simple substances, the basic building-blocks of the universe, are all mental or at least quasi-mental in nature
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.3
	A reaction: This is a bit different from the Berkelian type of idealism, which says that reality consists entirely of events within thinking minds. Is a monad the thinker or the thought?

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism

22068	Poetry is transcendental when it connects the ideal to the real [Schlegel,F]
	Full Idea: There is a kind of poetry whose essence lies in the relation between the ideal and the real, and which therefore, by analogy with philosophical jargon, should be called transcendental poetry.
	From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol 2 p.204), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism p.78
	A reaction: I think the basic idea is that the imaginative creation of poetry has the power to bridge the gap between the transcendental (presupposed) ideal in Fichte, and nature (which Fichte seems to have excluded from his system).