Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-08T15:16:03.501Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Leibniz' Theory of Matter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

J. A. Irving*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.

Extract

The historic task of Leibniz was to furnish a philosophy of personality, and at the same time, and in harmony with it, a general interpretation of the physical world. He conceives therefore of a plurality of Real Beings which in their most developed form he proposes to call individuals, defining individuality in terms of unique experience. Further, he finds the monads, or so-called metaphysical points, to be centres of life, held together by their own inner or intensive force and therefore impenetrable. Consequently, when we enquire whether the Real Beings are parts of the universe, we find that since the universe is the aggregate of monadic forces, all Real Being is finite, and so in order to deal with the problem of Theism we have to reconcile the concept of divine personality with what we may define as personality in the case of human beings.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1936

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Read at the Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), New York University, December 29th, 1934.