Leibniz's Phenomenalisms

Abstract

ocke's Essay is like a mail-order catalogue, writes P. T. Geach, you buy what suits you. To switch to a communicationtheory metaphor, the trouble is to make out which part is message and which is noise.' Something similar might be said of the Leibnizian corpus. It is large and diverse and rich-so rich that there are within it tensions or outright contradictions. These force the commentator to choose which items to purchase and which to let well alone. Message and noise are alarmingly often set side by side in texts from the same or closely neighboring periods of time, in different drafts of the same essay, and sometimes in the very same draft. When one turns to Leibniz's views of matter, one is confronted with an astonishing collection of distinct accounts. One must adopt either (i) the so-called Athenian approach, drumming out all of the incompatibility and presenting a single overarching inclusive account, or else (ii) the Darwinian strategy, saying his views of

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