PhilosophyIdeas.com Database     |     Current Total Ideas: 22,967     |     home     |     back

Ideas from 'Letters to Jacques Lenfant' by Gottfried Leibniz [1693], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Leibniz Akademie Edition' by Leibniz,Gottfried (ed/tr [Berlin Akademie]) [Berline Akademie 1999,]].

green numbers give full details    |     back to texts     |     unexpand this idea

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
12723 The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions
                        Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force.
                        From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
                        A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of.