Two interpretations of the pre-established harmony in the philosophy of Leibniz

Abstract

Leibniz's doctrine of the pre-established harmony is among the most familiar of his philosophical views. But it is not as well understood as its familiarity may suggest. To mention just two problems: (i) metaphor and analogy bear considerable weight in many of Leibniz's prominent statements of the doctrine for example, the metaphor of harmony between or among substances, and the analogy of the two clocks; and (ii) a key example for explaining the pre-established harmony among all substances, namely the example of the pre-established harmony of mind and body, is defective in the way a number of Leibniz's examples are defective: they appeal to popular, but not necessarily Leibnizian, conceptions.1 All this is not to say that one cannot gain a reasonably deep understanding of Leibniz's pre-established harmony. But it is to introduce a word of caution the task may not be as simple as the familiarity of the doctrine suggests. An example of the unclarity associated with the pre-established har mony is provided by the central question of this paper, a question that one might have supposed would have a fairly straightforward, long-accepted answer. A rough and ready formulation of it is this: Does the pre-established harmony, as Leibniz states it, presuppose that each individual substance is an internally determined system, in which each of its non-initial states is determined by prior states of the same sub stance? Let me confess at the outset that I previously thought the answer to this question was yes. I think many others view or viewed the matter similarly. Briefly put, the idea is that a world of finite substances is created so skillfully by God that each created substance, although operating entirely independently from all the others, runs its internally determined course in perfect correspondence with the others, without need of any divine alterations or adjustments after the moment of creation.2