Debilissimae Entitates?

Abstract

Over the past decades a number of scholars have identified Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld as one of the most decisive early influences on Leibniz. In particular, the impressive similarity between their conceptions of universal harmony has been stressed. Since the issue of relations is at the heart of both Bisterfeld and Leibniz's doctrines of universal harmony, the extent of the similarity between their doctrines will depend, however, on Bisterfeld and Leibniz's respective theories of relations, and especially on their ontolo­ gies of relations. This paper attempts to determine in more detail whether Bisterfeld's ontology of relations contains at least the germ of the defining features of the ontology of relations later developed by Leibniz. It comes to the conclusion that, although Bisterfeld's theory of relations is not as fully developed and explicit as that of Leibniz, it does contain all the key ingredients of it. T here is agreement amongst Leibniz's scholars on the fact that there are strikingly similarities between Leibniz's thought and that of the German philosopher and theologian Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld (c. 1605-1655).2 After the groundbreaking studies of Willy Kabitz, Paolo Rossi, and Leroy E. Loemker, and the milestone article by Massimo Mugnai published in Studia Leibnitiana in 1973,3 many scholars have pointed out Bisterfeld as one of the most decisive early int1uences on Leibniz,4 Between 1663 and 1666 the young Leibniz read with great enthusiasm and annotated with care three posthumously published works by Bisterfeld. 5 On the basis of the analysis of these and other works by Bisterfeld,6 the impressive similarity between two fundamental features of both Bisterfeld and Leibniz's philosophy has been emphasised: their conception of universal harmony and the thesis ~ central to Leibniz's monadology - that all beings are endowed with perception and appetite. 7 These two doctrines are, so to speak, two sides of the same coin. As Donald Rutherford insightfully summarises, both Bisterfeld and Leibniz see universal harmony as involving three main claims: 1) Within the world, there is a primitive connection between the states of any one substance and those of every other substance. 2) This connection is grounded in a substance's capacity to perceive everything that happens within the world. 3) It is a necessary condition for the maintenance of the world's harmony that every substance be endowed with an intrinsic activity.~ According to Leibniz's own interpretation in his Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria (1666), the central tenet of Bisterfeld's philosophy is the thesis of the universal