Leibnizian Chronadology

Abstract

I argue that we can learn quite a lot about Leibniz's metaphysics, in particular about monads and their relationship to time, by viewing Leibniz through a McTaggartian lens. After presenting McTaggart's highly influential two basic conceptions of time, the A- (or tensed) and B- (or tenseless) conceptions, I distinguish four possible models of the relationship between monads and time: the first two invoke tenses, differing in whether they treat non-present states as real, while the latter two are tenseless, differing in whether we construe the monad as (tenselessly) manifesting distinguishable perceptual states or as being in one indivisible but complex perceptual state representing the world as varying over time. A detailed study of the relative merits and demerits of the four models supports, I argue, the last model. Along the way I provide a Leibnizian account of the conscious illusion of temporal flow.