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Single Idea 12742

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism ]

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.

Gist of Idea

A whole is just its parts, but there are no smallest parts, so only minds and perceptions exist

Source

Gottfried Leibniz (Calculus Ratiocinator [1679], A6.4.279), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7

Book Ref

Garber,Daniel: 'Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad' [OUP 2009], p.288

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.

The 19 ideas with the same theme [general thoughs about reality as ideas]:

7898 The world is just the illusion of an appearance [Anon (Dham)]
5958 The sun is always bright; it doesn't become bright when it emerges [Plutarch]
12742 A whole is just its parts, but there are no smallest parts, so only minds and perceptions exist [Leibniz]
5509 Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
7568 Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley]
22003 We have no sensual experience of time and space, so they must be 'ideal' [Kant, by Pinkard]
21456 Objects having to be experiencable is not the same as full idealism [Gardner on Kant]
21446 If we disappeared, then all relations of objects, and time and space themselves, disappear too [Kant]
22062 Mental presentation are not empirical, but concern the strivings of the self [Fichte]
21361 For Schopenhauer, material things would not exist without the mind [Schopenhauer, by Janaway]
21923 Schopenhauer can't use force/energy instead of 'will', because he is not a materialist [Lewis,PB on Schopenhauer]
4162 The world only exists in relation to something else, as an idea of the one who conceives it [Schopenhauer]
21922 We know reality because we know our own bodies and actions [Schopenhauer]
5373 'Idealism' says that everything which exists is in some sense mental [Russell]
5684 Eliminative idealists say there are no objects; reductive idealists say objects exist as complex experiences [Dancy,J]
4591 Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality [Heil]
8280 While space may just be appearance, time and change can't be, because the appearances change [Lowe]
22048 Idealism is the link between reason and freedom [Pinkard]
6159 Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands]