Pre-established Harmony Research Articles

Damaris Masham, jej związki z Johnem Lockiem i dyskusja z Gottfriedem Wilhelmem Leibnizem

This article attempts to present Lady Damaris Masham as an individualistic thinker in the context of her own works and the correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Damaris Masham (1659–1708) was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, one of the Cambridge Platonists. She was a friend of John Locke, who spent last years of his life at her home at Oates in Essex, England. She wrote two published works: A Discourse Concerning the Love of God (1696) and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705). She is particularly noted for being one of the earliest advocates for women’s education. Masham regularly corresponded with Leibniz in the years between 1704 and 1706. In these letters, mostly metaphysical problems were presented: the nature of substance and pre-established harmony

The "Fourth Hypothesis" on the Early Modern Mind-Body Problem

One of the most pressing philosophical problems in early modern Europe concerned how the soul and body could form a unity, or, as many understood it, how these two substances could act upon each other. It was widely believed that there were three (and only three) hypotheses regarding the union of soul and body: (1) physical influence, (2) occasionalism, and (3) pre-established harmony. However, in 1763, a fourth hypothesis was put forward by the French thinker Andre Pierre Le Guay de Premontval (1716-1764). Premontval’s hypothesis, given the grand name of “psychocracy” (i.e. the dominion or the rule of the soul), held that there was a real influence between soul and body, but that this was an immaterial kind of influence as opposed to the physical kind that had been entertained heretofore. Premontval’s hypothesis is the focus of this paper. I shall begin by sketching out the details of Premontval’s hypothesis (section 1), then proceed to consider its claims to constitute a true fourth hypothesis distinct from the other three (section 2), before closing by briefly considering two objections and the responses either that Premontval himself made or that may be made on his behalf (section 3).

Simples, Representational Activity, and the Communication among Substances: Leibniz and Wolff on pre-established Harmony

This article aims to make further progress in revising the standard account of Wolff’s philosophy as a popularisation and systematisation of Leibniz’s doctrines. It focuses on the topic of the communication among substances and the metaphysics of simples and activity underlying it. It is argued that Wolff does not accept the pre-established harmony (PEH) in its orthodox Leibnizian version. The article explains Wolff’s departure from Leibniz’s PEH as stemming from his rejection of Leibniz’s construal of the activity of every simple as representational power and of the metaphysics of unity and activity in which that construal is rooted.

The mind–body problem and the role of pain: cross-fire between Leibniz and his Cartesian readers

ABSTRACTThis article is about the exchanges between Leibniz, Arnauld, Bayle and Lamy on the subject of pain. The inability of Leibniz’s system to account for the phenomenon of pain is a recurring objection of Leibniz’s seventeenth-century Cartesian readers to his hypothesis of pre-established harmony: according to them, the spontaneity of the soul and its representative nature cannot account for the affective component of pain. Strikingly enough, this problem has almost never been addressed in Leibniz studies, or only incidentally, through the more general problem of evil. My purpose in this article is to clarify Leibniz’s psychophysical parallelism by opposing his representationist account of pain to the functionalist account endorsed by Arnauld, Bayle, Lamy and Malebranche.

Ernst Jünger e o demônio da técnica: modernidade e reacionarismo

ABSTRACT The theme of this article is Ernst Jünger’s work in the interwar period, especially the essay The Worker (1932). Our focus is to point out, in the Jüngerian appropriation of technique, its character of anti-liberal political mythology. We dialogue with the political and intellectual horizon of the time (including authors such as Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin), seeking to establish a problematization framework about the technique in Germany, where also emerges the so-called “Conservative Revolutionary Movement.” We point out in Jünger’s work the relationship between the “type” or “figure of the worker” and the notion of the sacrifice of individuality in favor of the total mobilization of technique, in the terms of reactionary modernism. Finally, as there are no references to authors and works in The Worker, we raise the hypothesis of an underlying dialogue with the intellectual tradition of Romanticism by confronting Jünger’s work with the theme of “asymptotic completion” (Lacoue-Labarthe) -the impossibility, in modern times, of sustaining a pre-established harmony.

WHAT LEIBNIZ MISSED – OR KANT MISREAD? KANT’S CRITIQUE OF LEIBNIZIAN METAPHYSICS IN LIGHT OF TWO RECENT INTERPRETATIONS

Kant famously criticizes Leibniz for his apparent neglect to observe the difference between two sources of cognition: understanding and intuition. This is the reason that Leibniz supposedly intellectualized the phenomena by identifying them with things in themselves. In Kantian terms, Leibniz fell prey to an amphiboly of concepts which, in the case of his understanding of substance, has led him to assume monads—that is to say, ideal unities which exist in a state of pre-established harmony; for this is the only possible form of community between ideal substances. Distinct versions of this argument can be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, notably in the notoriously difficult passage entitled “On the amphiboly of concepts of reflections”, and in some later writings, such as the Kantian reply to the self-declared Leibnizian Johann August Eberhard (On a Discovery whereby any New Critique of Pure Reason is to be made Superfluous by an Older One, from 1790) or the late fragment What Real Progress has Metaphysics made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? (originally from 1793, but published post mortem in 1804).

Recovering the ‘True Meaning’ of the Pre-Established Harmony: On a Neglected Key to Kant’s Theory of Intuition

Abstract:The paper discusses Kant’s enigmatic claim that his critical philosophy succeeds in articulating a philosophical insight at which Leibniz’s pre-established harmony was ‘truly’ aimed. Kant makes the claim in response to Salomon Maimon’s (mis)reading of his Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, which involves, in Kant’s words, the untenable assumption of a capacity of divine (intuitive) understanding in humans. The paper argues that Maimon’s misreading of Kant’s account of human intuition has found influential followers in contemporary Kant scholarship and that it is based on a failure to distinguish between what Kant calls “mere sensible appearances” and real phenomena of nature. While the former are entirely sensible singularities without unity, the latter are units composed of infinitely many sensible appearances, and their unity requires understanding. Kant thus appeals to a refurbished version of Leibniz’s pre-established harmony of mind and world, which takes the form of an immanent, indubitable, but ultimately inexplicable harmony of the faculties of sensibility and understanding. The paper includes a reconstruction of both the B-Deduction’s argument and the role of transcendental imagination in the proof.

Leibniz et Bayle: Confrontation et dialogue ed. by Christian Leduc, Paul Rateau, and Jean-Luc Solère

Reviewed by: Leibniz et Bayle: Confrontation et dialogue ed. by Christian Leduc, Paul Rateau, and Jean-Luc Solère Mara van der Lugt Christian Leduc, Paul Rateau, and Jean-Luc Solère, editors. Leibniz et Bayle: Confrontation et dialogue. Studia Leibnitiana 43. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015. Pp. 452 €64.00. Central to this volume are two philosophical powerhouses of the early modern period: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Pierre Bayle. Born in, respectively, 1646 and 1647, both made for an astonishing career in a variety of scholarly disciplines and reached, if not equal, then certainly comparable fame in the course of their lives. Nowadays, Bayle's reputation is eclipsed by that of Leibniz, who is the focus of yearly conferences and libraries of scholarship, while Bayle had to await the later twentieth century to be rediscovered. He has since been at the center of a quickly expanding body of scholarship, which continues to be sharply divided over the vexed question how to interpret his religious stance. This imbalance in the amount of scholarship devoted to the two thinkers partly has to do with their respective modes of philosophizing. Though it is an exaggeration to say that Leibniz was systematic where Bayle was critical, it is the case that Leibniz was more intent on building his own systems, Bayle on exposing the inherent weaknesses of others'. Leibniz left a corpus of philosophical treatises, monographs and essays, while Bayle left his arguments scattered in a variety of textual curiosity cabinets, combining philosophical argument with generous helpings of historical and literary digressions. But if this diverse treatment of Leibniz and Bayle seems warranted by the character of their philosophical oeuvres, it becomes questionable when one takes into account their intellectual itineraries, which crossed in various debates. As intellectual sparring partners, they engaged with each other's arguments with the highest degree of dedication, to such an extent that Leibniz's philosophical legacy would be unthinkable without Bayle. One of the major strengths of this collection of articles is to bring out Leibniz and Bayle in "confrontation and dialogue" and emphasize the dialectical and interactive component of their philosophical sparring sessions, which spanned decades and a wide variety of texts. The twenty-one articles collected in this bilingual volume (French-English) are grouped thematically into four categories. The articles in the first section, "Methods, Hypotheses and Truth," discuss both philosophers' views on epistemology, skepticism, truth and belief, and trace the evolution of their debate in these areas; a valuable contribution by Michael Hickson questions the common dichotomy that associates Leibniz with rationalism, Bayle with skepticism. The second section, "Pre-established Harmony and Plastic Natures," is oriented more towards the various stages within the development of Leibniz's system, and the role played by Bayle's criticism throughout this process. A crucial part in this is the debate on animal sensation and Bayle's attempt to disprove the logic of Leibniz's pre-established harmony via the thought-experiment of a dog that suddenly passes from a state of pleasure to a state of pain; and Bayle and Leibniz's differing views on Ralph Cudworth and plastic natures, which Bayle connects to the philosophical specter of Stratonism. [End Page 353] The third section, "Faith and Reason," focuses on Bayle and Leibniz's views on religion, theology, rationalism and fideism, sometimes questioning the assumption that Leibniz and Bayle were diametrically opposed with regard to reason and religious belief (Kristen Irwin). Other articles examine their respective views on quietism (Thomas Lennon) and the apocalypse (Hartmut Rudolph): this last article contains some unfortunate inaccuracies (e.g. the misattribution of Bayle's Critique Générale to Louis Maimbourg, 337). An especially insightful contribution by Paul Rateau discusses the figure of the virtuous atheist in Leibniz and Bayle. The fourth section, "Evil and Theodicy," is centered on one of the most influential interactions between Bayle and Leibniz, which would leave a huge impact on the eighteenth century: their debate on the problem of evil, various aspects of which are discussed by the articles in this section. Especially noteworthy is Gianni Paganini's contribution, which raises an important question with regard to the eclipse of the Book of Job from the...

Quine, Publicity, and Pre-Established Harmony

Quine, Publicity, and Pre-Established Harmony

La solución leibniziana al problema de la relación cuerpo-alma desde una perspectiva actual

Rudolf Carnap había publicado en el año 1928 su obra Pseudoproblemas en la filosofía, donde intentaba mostrar que la lucha entre idealismo y realismo carecía de sentido, al no ser posible de ninguna manera demostrar o refutar una de las dos posiciones. Poco después, en los años cincuenta del pasado siglo XX Ludwig Wittgenstein tuvo una gran repercusión al proponer como “solución” la idea de que los problemas de este tipo descansan sobre un hechizo de la mente, el cual se origina por una mezcolanza de diferentes juegos lingüísticos –descansando el uno sobre objetos físicos, el otro sobre sensaciones y estados anímicos.

FISIOLOGÍA Y PERSPECTIVISMO EN LA CONCEPCIÓN LEIBNIZIANA DE LA SUSTANCIA CORPÓREA

The present work aims to analyze Leibniz’ perspectivism in a biological note. Following this idea, the activity of the bodily substance will be interpreted as based on the relationship between the individual and the environment. Against this background, the analysis of the organism’s functionality leads us to a characterisation which we have dubbed transcendental vitalism . Each living organism belonging to any biological species comprehends the physical environment as a world-of-perception. One of the advantages of such an interpretation is that it contributes to a better understanding of the idea of the pre-established harmony. To this end, we will focus primarily on those texts of the mature Leibniz.

Why the Glove of Mathematics Fits the Hand of the Natural Sciences So Well :How Far Down the (Fibonacci) Rabbit Hole Goes

Why does the glove of mathematics fit the hand of the natural sciences so well? Is there a good reason for the good fit? Does it have anything to do with the mystery number of physics or the Fibonacci sequence and the golden proportion? Is there a connection between this mystery (golden) number and Leibniz’s general question, why is there something (one) rather than nothing (zero)? The acclaimed mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) once observed: “In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.” Is this also true of great physics? If so, is there a simple “preestablished harmony” or linchpin between their respective ultimate foundations? The philosopher-mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, who coined this phrase, believed that he had found that common foundation in calculus, a methodology he independently discovered along with Isaac Newton. But what is the source of the harmonic series of the natural log that is the basis of calculus and also Bernhard Riemann’s harmonic zeta function for prime numbers? On the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of Leibniz’s death and the one hundredth-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bernhard Riemann, this essay is a tribute to Leibniz’s quest and questions in view of subsequent discoveries in mathematics and physics. (In the Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Dec. 2008 and Oct. 2010, I have already sympathetically discussed in detail Riemann’s hypothesis and the zeta function in relation to primes and the zeta zeros. Both papers were republished online in 2013 by Taylor and Francis Scientific Publishers Group.)

LEIBNIZ Y LA FILOSOFÍA DE LA RELIGIÓN EN NISHIDA KITARÔ

ABSTRACT This paper is an analysis of the manner Nishida Kitarô (1870-1945), in the process of construction of his own philosophy of religion, enters into dialogue with Leibniz's thought concerning Pre-established Harmony. Although the philosophy of religion is an important theme and Nishida goes back to Leibniz at some points in his textual career, there are relatively few studies that touch on the relationship between these two thinkers. I study Nishida's approach under three headings. The first section concerns ten main aspects of the world of pre-established harmony. The second tries to show the manner in which such a world becomes a guide towards a philosophy of religion, placing the emphasis on three characteristically Christian aspects: a created, fallen, and Trinitarian world. The third section includes some elements such as the entrance into religion, metanoia, satori and a comparison between Christian agape and Buddhist maha-kruna. These are themes on which Nishida elaborates in his 1945 masterpiece, The Logic of Basho and a Religious Worldview.

La armonía de facultades en la gnoseología de Francisco Suárez

The problem of communication between the body and the soul is a topic of rationalist psychology, but is already present in Francisco Suarez. The Doctor Eximio criticizes the notion that the image is the instrumental cause, which produces the intelligible species, because a material reality cannot be the efficient cause of anything in a reality of a higher order, as is the spiritual soul. Suarez considers the types of causality that are proper to images, and concludes that the various denominations are inappropriate: instrumental, material and exemplary. This leads him to adopt the doctrine of sympathy or natural harmony of the faculties proposed by the physician Francisco Valles. On the other hand, he underlines the active role of the intelligence, but certain expressions invite the reader to conceive a duality of operations (sensitive and intellectual), thus giving grounds to accept a pre-established harmony or cognitive occasionalism. In any case, the texts of Suarez are an invitation to continue thinking about the specific nature of human thought.

INTERFACES DA NATUREZA E DA SOCIEDADE NA OBRA DE GABRIEL TARDE

This article presents the Gabriel Tarde’s monadology and imitation philosophy to show its complementarity in the constitution of a “universal sociological point of view”, the sociological interpretation of all phenomena, material (vibratory), biological (hereditary) and human (imitative). On the one hand Tarde establishes a neo-monadology by opening Leibniz's closed monads. The open monads constitutes, through their mutual possessions, the agreements and harmonies that Leibniz explained by the system of pre-established harmony. These agreements are monadic societies of many types who explain the constitution of any phenomenon. On the other hand Tarde tries, through its imitation philosophy, to provide a scientific substrate to an emerging sociology, taking the imitation as the anthropological aspect of an associative activity that is present in the entire cosmos. Thus, trying to purify to depurate the social science’s own subject, Tarde find a kind of causality that, for the clarity by which she offers itself to the observer on the human societies, is extended to the entire nature, illuminating the obscure and inaccessible background in which the monadic associations take place.

Natureza do espaço em Leibniz e a correspondência Leibniz-Clarke

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2015v19n2p297We study the Leibnizian conception of space based upon a critical analysis of the arguments developed throughout the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence. This study is done upon the content of the correspondence originally published by Clarke in 1717 and wholly republished by H. G. Alexander in 1956. Our main goal is to show how it is possible to unfold the Leibnizian concept of space in three distinct ontological structures, each one interconnected and strongly based in the principle of preestablished harmony. These three structures anticipate ideas that were partially, at least, retaken inside some modern perspectives in physics and its philosophy. The main points discussed are: (i) the contention against the newtonian atomism and absolute space; (ii) the ontological and physical implications of the Leibnizian metaphysical principles; (iii) the problem of the symmetry; (iv) the identification of a real property of spatial extension; (v) the conception of relative space as ideal structure and (vi) the emergency of a structure of relational space founded in the real structure of spatial extension.

Why history matters to philosophy of physics

Naturalized metaphysics remains the default presupposition of much contemporary philosophy of physics. As metaphysics is supposed to concern the general structure of reality, so scientific naturalism draws upon our best physical theories to attempt to answer the foundational question “par excellence ” viz., “how could the world possibly be the way this theory says it is?” A particular case study, Hilbert's attempt to analyze and explain a seeming “pre-established harmony” between mind and nature, is offered as a salutary reminder that naturalism's ready inference from physical theory to ontology may be too quick.

Mathematics and Physics: The Idea of a Pre-Established Harmony

For more than a century the notion of a pre-established harmony between the mathematical and physical sciences has played an important role not only in the rhetoric of mathematicians and theoretical physicists, but also as a doctrine guiding much of their research. Strongly mathematized branches of physics, such as the vortex theory of atoms popular in Victorian Britain, were not unknown in the nineteenth century, but it was only in the environment of fin-de-siecle Germany that the idea of a pre-established harmony really took off and became part of the mathematicians’ ideology. Important historical figures were in this respect David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski and, somewhat later, Albert Einstein. Roughly similar ideas can be found also among British theorists, among whom Arthur Eddington, Arthur Milne, and Paul Dirac are singled out. Although largely limited to the period 1870–1940, the paper also considers Max Tegmark’s recent hypothesis of the universe (or multiverse) being a one-to-one reflection of mathematical structures.

KANT CONTRA EL LEIBNIZIANISMO: EL PRINCIPIO DE SUCESIÓN Y EL PROBLEMA DEL CAMBIO EN LA NOVA DILUCIDATIO DE 1755

El presente trabajo analiza y discute el principio de Sucesión, formulado por Kant en la Nova Dilucidatio de 1755. El principio, como se verá, demuestra la imposibilidad de dar cuenta satisfactoria de la posibilidad del cambio en un universo de sustancias causalmente aisladas y, en este sentido, constituye una refutación de la doctrina leibniziana de la armonía preestablecida. Luego de analizar con detalle los argumentos específicos que Kant provee en orden a justificar su posición, argumentaré que la crítica kantiana a los leibnizianos se refiere, en definitiva, a la tendencia, característica de los sistemas leibnizianos, a equiparar indiferenciadamente los niveles irreductibles de lo lógico y lo real y, con ello, a confundir los conceptos de fundamento lógico y causa real.

2-328 技術者向けマネジメント教育における創発を促すファシリテーションの実践 : 予定調和や付和雷同をいかに克服するか?(オーガナイズドセッション:プロジェクトマネジメントとPBL-IV)

2-328 技術者向けマネジメント教育における創発を促すファシリテーションの実践 : 予定調和や付和雷同をいかに克服するか?(オーガナイズドセッション:プロジェクトマネジメントとPBL-IV)