Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Letters to Burcher De Volder' and 'Matters of Mind'

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4 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
19383 A man's distant wife dying is a real change in him [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: No one can become a widower in India because of the death of his wife in Europe unless a real change occurs in him.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], GP ii 240), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist'
     A reaction: This is Leibniz heroically denying so-called 'Cambridge Change'. It is hard to see how a widower is changed if he has not yet heard the bad news. But his situation in life has changed. Compare eudaimonia, which you can lose without realising it.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 1. Powers
13179 A complete monad is a substance with primitive active and passive power [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: What I take to be the indivisible or complete monad is the substance endowed with primitive power, active and passive, like the 'I' or something similar.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20)
     A reaction: I love powers, so I really like this quotation. By this date even Garber thinks that he has more or less arrived at his mature view of monads. I used to think monads were mad, but I now think he is closing in on the right answer - sort of.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
12749 Derivate forces are in phenomena, but primitive forces are in the internal strivings of substances [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: I relegate derivative forces to the phenomena, but I think that it is clear that primitive forces can be nothing other than the internal strivings of simple substances.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1705.01), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
     A reaction: I like 'internal strivings', which sounds to me like the Will to Power (Idea 7140). There seems to be an epistemological challenge in trying to disentangle the derivative forces from the primitive ones.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence
12722 Thought terminates in force, rather than extension [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: I believe that our thought is completed and terminated more in the notion of the dynamic [i.e. force] than in that of extension.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], G II 170), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
     A reaction: Presenting this as the place where 'our thought' is 'terminated' seems to place it as mainly having a role in explanation, rather than in speculative metaphysics.