The Relevance of Leibniz: Ward’s Theory of Monads

Abstract

In his book on Leibniz, Russell offered a sustained critique of the traditional notion of substance. Russell came to think that the traditional understanding of substance was grounded upon an erroneous logical theory and that it was empirically inadequate. The overall conclusion of Russell’s argument is that some main ideas traditionally associated with the metaphysics of substance are of no use in metaphysics and have to be abandoned. Since Whitehead appears to have been persuaded by Russell’s arguments, this explains why he will try to develop a system of revisionary metaphysics in which the notion of substance as the underling holder of properties is replaced by the notion of the actual entity as an occasion of experience organically related to all other occasions. What remains to be explained is why Whitehead could have come to see in Leibniz’s metaphysics an anticipation of his own philosophy – going even so far as to claim that the philosophy of organism ‘is a theory of monads’.