{169} (cont’d)


3. The transcendental unity of entity. The monad.

We still have to discuss created things. Here Leibniz will also be inflexible with his thought, Omne ens est unum, a phrase that {170} has made the rounds of the history of metaphysics from the days of Parmenides, “entity is one” (hén tò ón). The theme of unity appears among the transcendentals of classical metaphysics.

Leibniz, a great mathematician, has a very precise concept of the unum. The unum is so radical that it is not only indivisible in the sense of classical philosophy, but also consists in a primary unity that expands to its internal detail. As Leibniz would say, it is a metaphysical point, it is monás, monad. The transcendental unity of being is monad, and reciprocally, monadism is the theory of the transcendental unity of being as such. This metaphysical point that the monad is, realizes in its reality what was thought in the divine mind. The attempt for existence that was in the divine mind is, in the real and actual monad a nisus, an appetite towards its own internal deployment.

This appetite is essential in the transcendental philosophy of Leibniz, since it is a “transcendental appetite”. “Transcendental” because here it is not the case of something consecutive to the structure of entity, as it happened in the philosophy of Aristotle, in the Middle Ages, and in the very Cartesian philosophy; it is something that precisely constitutes entity as such. But it is an appetite and a tendency.

However, upon reflection we may ask, is an activity the same as an appetite? Leibniz mentioned it rather quickly, but it was worth thinking about the problem.

Be that as it may, this impulse and internal appetite is the appetite for a deployment of something that already is radically and previously a monad; in other words, what that nisus produces is the internal deployment of details. From this follows that each monad, regardless how much activity and appetite it may have, never acts upon the rest of the others. Each one of the monads, for Leibniz, is obturated upon itself; it is a transcendental obturation. {171} Obturated upon itself does not mean that it may not have any relationship with the other monads. But it is a very curious relationship. Each monad in its internal detail is a little like the other monads in the universe; God has placed them in accordance with a preestablished harmony in such fashion that each monad, without stepping outside itself and only producing its internal detail, is in a certain way a “mirror” of the other monads. As Leibniz says, it is a representation of the universe from his point of view. The expression has been fortunate, but not all things with fortune are always the most accurate.

Leibniz has had a decisive influence in history; but curiously he has not had influence in history because of this transcendental philosophy, but for something different, for the application of this transcendental philosophy to scientific applications. Leibniz is the genial gigantic creator, not of one science, but of several, precisely because of this idea of the metaphysical point, and the precision in constructing the internal display of a monad starting from its intrinsic unity. This is how he discovered infinitesimal calculus. Through a different way, by way of fluxions, Newton had also discovered it; nevertheless, Leibniz is one of the discoverers of infinitesimal calculus.

Furthermore, for Descartes the science of the physical world was mechanical, but that mechanic was purely kinematic, it was geometry of motion. On the other hand, for Leibniz it turns into something different, it turns into dynamics. He introduces the notion of mechanical force, thus creating analytical dynamics that passing through Lagrange and reaching Hamilton constitutes the climax of analytical dynamics during the XIX and XX centuries.

Leibniz also created other things. In his polemic concerning {172} space —that we will not cover here— Leibniz understands that space is the relation between monads. It resembles the idea that later will surface in mathematics as the set theory. It is certain that Leibniz never thought about set theory, however, he did think it was fitting to make a non-metric analysis of space with what he called topology. Probably, he did not go further than giving it a name, but that was decisive. Kant, who did not understand what this term could mean, thought that topology was something like the problem posed by a glove of the right hand and a glove of the left hand, which although being identical cannot be superimposed. This was a limitation of the thought of Kant because, almost at the same time, the great Swiss mathematician Euler had resolved the first strictly rigorous problem of topology, not of the topology of sets, but of combinatory topology. The famous problem of the bridges of Könisberg consisted in knowing if one could go from one side of the city to the other by going over all the bridges (only once over each) and then returning to the point of departure. A lot of prizes were offered, but no one could solve the problem until Euler demonstrated it was impossible, and in addition under what conditions this problem is insolvable, but solvable under others. It was one of the first great creations of combinatory topology.

Still further, Leibniz created other sciences, for example, the idea of logical mathematics. He discovered the fourth figure of the syllogism, which until then had not had a place in logic, and created the idea of the ars combinatoria; perhaps the erudite will say that the idea had been making the rounds since Raymond Lully (Raimundo Lulio), but only acquired relevance with Leibniz.

However, his transcendental idea of the monads had no philosophical consequence whatever except in the case of {173} two Jesuits. One of them, Palmieri¹, about a century ago gave a different metaphysical interpretation of Transubstantiation using the idea of monads, a perfectly orthodox idea, as Franzelin² defended, certainly one without any suspicion of not being scholastic. The other repercussion is presented in our times by Teilhard de Chardin³. In the end, his idea that the elementary particles of the universe have a kind of germinal psychism that through a wrapping (Fr. enroulement) of particles —as he says— proceeds to appear through evolution, is simply monadism. Of course, it is difficult to admit that at the bosom of an electron there may be a germinal psychism.

Leibniz, indeed, has had much more scientific influence than philosophical. However, with respect to man, this transcendental conception that man is an image of God has an enormous importance. Leibniz, standing on the point of view of the anterior possibility to reality, had said that when thinking of myself, I think about being and about all the necessary truths. The human monad is just as obturated as the other monads, but since this necessary order of eternal truths is the very content of the divine mind, with this, man is an image of God. God is the same for all; consequently, when thinking about myself and discovering my own transcendental apperception of the order of being, I am discovering an order of truths, which is identically thought by all the other thinking reasons. Precisely because of this, the human monad is not only a mirror, but is an “image” of God. As Leibniz would say, the intellectual monads are de petits dieux, small gods. With this Leibniz eventually tells us that we see all things in God, an affirmation also made by Malebranche in a different sense. This kind of vision of all things in God is enormously problematic; perhaps in the other world it may be true, but is it in this one?

{174} Nevertheless, the unity of the transcendental order is in Leibniz the unity and identity of the transcendental order, included precisely in the order of reason.

We now understand that,
1) The transcendental order is not contingent, but necessary,
2) The transcendental order is the order of entity insofar as objectively possible,
3) This order of entity insofar as objectively possible, is an order of rationality,
4) This order of rationality is formally constituted by the unity in which rational truth consists.


IV. Philosophy as science of the principles of reason

Because of the above the disciples of Leibniz —disciples are always a terrible thing in philosophy— were able to say, together with Wolff, that philosophy is sciencia prima cognitionis humanae principio continens. In other words, that general metaphysics —”ontology” as Wolff called it— is the science that incorporates the first principles of human reason. We should understand that it is the case of this principle of identity, of the principle of sufficient reason, and everything that can be derived analytically from both of them. On this point, Wolff through Leibniz probably suffered a decisive influence from Suárez.

Suárez has the merit of being a great debater. When the Suarezians are told something they do not agree with, they not only say they do not agree, but articulate a syllogism. This comes from Suárez and Leibniz acquired much from Suárez with no irony intended since I greatly admire Suárez, but each one of us has his own style.

That philosophy has, in addition, a few especial sections. It has {175} a science about the cosmos, a “cosmology”, which consequently will be called natural. There is also a psychology, which is also natural and deals with man. And there is also a science about God, which is a natural theology. Of course, here the term “natural” means it does not proceed from supernatural reasons and from faith, but only from the order of reason. Because of that, natural cosmology, natural psychology, and natural theology will also be called rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology. The “rationalist” rationality of Leibniz, followed by Wolff and Baumgartner, has been decisive in all the philosophy of the XVIII century.

At first glance, it appears as if this philosophy has nothing to do with what we were saying about Descartes. The philosophy of Descartes was anthropology open to theology, but it rapidly became a transcendental anthropology. Is this the case with Leibniz?

Apparently, it seems to be quite the opposite. Leibniz tells us that man is an image of God, that human reason is an image of the divine one. But let us think for a moment on what he says about divine reason, just to be sure that Leibniz, fundamentally, has not merely conceptivized divine reason as human reason raised to the infinite. Leibniz presents divine reason as calculating with the possibles, as one who knows the complete infinite analysis of the mechanical forces that compose the universe would calculate. However, is this a calculation that can be attributed to divine reason? Only by hypostatizing with the adjective “infinite” that which constitutes the peculiar condition of the human reason. According to Leibniz God calculates with the possibles as a poor mathematician on this Earth might calculate with the available data in order to solve a problem.

{176} In the second place, Leibniz says that the divine will is ordered by the divine intellect, which is true to a certain extent, at least in almost all theologies and metaphysics, except those of Descartes and some others. However, does this mean that the will is constrained by that which the intellect offers? This only happens in the human will. To conceive that the science of intelligence in God is a kind of order that constrains the divine will for His creative fiat amounts to thinking that the science of vision in God is a kind of vision of a will determined by a science of simple intelligence. But this is pure anthropomorphism.

It is made quite clear when —in the third place— Leibniz emphatically says that God does not create the world without a reason. What does he mean by reason here? This is a pronounced anthropomorphism because for Leibniz, it is a reason determined by possible entity insofar as possible, by virtue of its attempt to exist. Basically, what God would only have done in Creation is to give willful acquiescence to the maximum of possible entity. God would inexorably submit himself to the principle of the best, which is not true even in the case of the human will. Against what is generally said, the human will does not decide for the best, not in the moral sense, but in the sense of the here and now. Actually, the fiat of the human will precisely consists in the fact that it declares to be the best that which in fact is actually being desired; anything else is a rationalism that cannot be applied to man or God.

Leibniz has made of divine intelligence a kind of calculus of the possibles. He has made of divine intelligence something quite intrinsically dependent on this simple intelligence of God. Above all, he considers that it is determined by possible entity insofar as possible. Because of all this, {177} we discover at the bosom of the whole metaphysics of Leibniz a germinal anthropomorphism. This makes the metaphysics of Leibniz a hyper-transcendental anthropology. So “hyper-transcendental” that in the end it has conceived God in the image of man, instead of conceiving man as an image of God.

We can now detect the contrast between the different philosophies we have covered. For St. Thomas, what appears on the horizon of nothingness is the intrinsic finitude of entity. For Descartes, what appears is the uncertainty of truth, uncertain man. In Leibniz, on the horizon of nothingness, the possible appears ahead of the existent. At these great moments of thought we are presented with the curious spectacle that these philosophers are in disagreement and it would be chimerical to try to make them agree. But this is never the most essential because these men who are not in accord, however, are understood and this is what is truly decisive.


* * * * *


On the previous chapters we have tried to somewhat clarify the texture of the metaphysical problem of western metaphysics. We have seen that western metaphysics is ambulating a limine on the horizon of nothingness, no doubt motivated by the idea of Creation, although not limited to it exclusively. Things begin by being “not-nothing”, which have become beings, not only with respect to each other, but that the totality of the universe has become a being.

St. Thomas —we take him as an example of medieval philosophy— places on this horizon of nothingness the ideas of Aristotle. This emplacement, the details of which we would have to discuss, fundamentally consists in introducing the idea of entity {178} of Aristotle into this new horizon of nothingness, and with this horizon and Aristotelian concepts to entifyingly (Sp. entitativamente) interpret the whole of creation and the very creative entity. We saw that for St. Thomas this entity has an entity of its own, otherwise, the act that produces it would not be a creative act. That entity is ex nihilo sui et subjecti or as St. Thomas says, ex non ente quod est nihil; therefore, the very idea of being intrinsically finite and separate constitutes the Aristotelian expression of the creationality of entity as such, of created entity insofar as created. This created entity has some transcendental characteristics: unity, quiddity, something (Sp. aliquidad), the verum and the bonum. These characteristics are founded on the intrinsic entity of entity as such, they express the entity of entity as such, and therefore, are convertible with that entity. This entity with all its characteristics is placed between two intelligences. On the one hand, we have the creative intelligence, which has placed in existence what already was in the divine intelligence. Not only God knows what He creates, but creates what He knows. In other words, reality considered as being is the realization ad extra with respect to God of what the divine intelligence of that entity is. On the other hand, there is the human intelligence with its intrinsic finitude, which also addresses that being, not to produce it, but to understand and comprehend what it is, to know intellectively what that entity may be. Therefore, the created thing —res naturalis, St. Thomas says— is constituted between two intellects, the divine and the human, and in both respects is intrinsically intelligible. With respect to the divine intellect, because created entity is the realization ad extra of what is a previous intellection by God. With respect to the finite intellect, because that intellect is made in such a way that on its own it may understand everything on the line of entity. Consequently, the truth that refers to entity as such is and should be called {179} verum transcendentale, founded, of course, on the intrinsic entity of things.

From Descartes on, matters change aspect. Descartes moves on that same horizon of nothingness; there is no doubt about that and he expresses it clearly, “I am in the middle between God and nothingness”. What happens is that Descartes sees at the forefront that this finite intellect —which St. Thomas quickly handled by saying it was made to intrinsically understand entity as such— is disoriented and uncertain. The uncertainty of finite intellection is what creationality places at the forefront for Descartes. He slowly moves out of that uncertainty by steps we are not going to repeat now. Steps that in the end are reduced to thinking that in the clear and distinct perception of ideas —that intuitus, of which Descartes speaks— we actually have an aliquid, which according to the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals, is convertible with entity. This entity must be called transcendental in some sense from the moment it is convertible with entity, which is transcendental. But to the order of reason the order of things is basically alien, and God could have made things that have nothing to do with that order of my reason, which is a free creature of God, just as things are also creatures of God. From this follows that the adequacy of the transcendental order with respect to things is perforated with an intrinsic contingency. Descartes surmounts the difficulty by saying that God is infinitely truthful. Therefore, it is because of a truth, if not transcendental in the sense we have just explained, at least it is because of a kind of moral transcendentalism —potentia Dei ordinata, the medieval theologians said— that God has created a reality having the same structures my reason has, in its rational and transcendental evidences.

{180} In such fashion, philosophy, which had started by being implanted on an egology, at least has been opened towards God, and in that aperture has found the way to real things. But the inflexion has been consummated. From this moment on, philosophy is going to be founded more and more on this type of ego.

Indeed, Leibniz finds that all the steps of the Cartesian philosophy are problematic because, in the end, Descartes is moving in the antechamber of truth. “Antechamber”, not because for Leibniz it may not be true that ideas must be clear and distinct, but because the clarity and distinctness as they appear in the Cartesian philosophy do not offer a sufficient starting point for the philosophical structure. They do not offer it because, according to Leibniz, Descartes slips on the proper condition for the idea, which is to contain the objective possibility of the thing. Just as for Descartes what the horizon of nothingness presents at the forefront is the uncertainty of the “I”, here what appears at the forefront is that things, prior to being real are actually possible, not only with respect to a concrete thing, but with respect to the entire world. The desire to understand the whole world —Leibniz accepts the inheritance of Descartes— is to understand what exists against the background of the possible.

From my perspective there are three fundamental ideas in Leibniz: possibility, existence, and transcendentality. In the first place, a possibility that is constituted by the compatibility of the notes among themselves, which happens when they are not contradictory; following Suárez, Leibniz affirms that the intrinsic possibility of entity is its internal non-contradiction. In the second place, we have existence. Real things now appear as something that has an existence supported by their own possibility, and this happens first, in the case of God. {181} In the exposition of the ontological argument, this argument has in Leibniz a different form from the one it had in Descartes since it has to prove that the idea of God is an objectively possible idea and then the argument has a different characteristic. If God is possible, eo ipso He exists, and He appears as the reason for his own being based on his own internal possibility, and therefore, the very divine existence is supported on its own intrinsic possibility. The same occurs in one form or another with respect to the spirit of man. If it were only because of the elements that compose his intrinsic spirit, he would be a thing among the many we have in the universe. But the entity man is has reason, and with it he proceeds to think, not only the things he encounters, but also being and all the necessary truths. In that fashion, the “I” appears as the fundament for the possibility of my intellection of being as such. With these prenotions, in the third place, Leibniz will have to tell us what he understands by the transcendental characteristic of things, which for Leibniz is concentrated in two replies. First, the unity of entity, its transcendental unity is monad, and therefore, monadism is the theory of the transcendental unity of entity. In addition, the entire universe as such has an intrinsic unity, which is the maximum compatibility of the possibles, the greatest entity, and with it, the maximum goodness. The metaphysical optimism of Leibniz is the theory of the transcendental unity of the world. This way, we find that man, by being an image of God does have in himself the internal motion towards the comprehension of being. Thinking about himself, he thinks about being because in himself he is discovering the image —finite, but authentic— of what the very divinity is, the very divine reason.

____________________
¹ [Tr. note: Domenico Palmieri, S.J. (1829-1909), born in Piacenza, Italy, philosopher and theologian]
² [Tr. note: Johann Baptist Franzelin, S.J. (1816-1886), born in Aldein, Austria, Cardinal and theologian. Apparently, Zubiri does not count him as a Jesuit since he was raised to be a bishop and Cardinal]
³ [Tr. note: Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), born in Orcines, France, controversial scientist and philosopher]