The Discourse on Metaphysics of 1686 is generally regarded as the first complete presentation of Leibniz's mature metaphysics. In this chapter, we trace the development of that philosophy from Leibniz's youth, through his years in Paris, to his time in Hanover. Because the metaphysics of the 1680s has lately received so much attention and because the importance of the earlier philosophy has generally not been recognized, we concentrate on Leibniz's thought prior to 1680. In section I, we present the intellectual context in which his youthful metaphysics is most easily understood and summarize both his original metaphysical principles and his first conception of substance. We claim that these metaphysical principles, all of which concern substance, form the bedrock of Leibniz's philosophy for years to come. In section 2, we unearth an inconsistency that Leibniz discovered between his first account of substance and the principles, and trace the steps he took in revising the former. In section 3, we argue that this concept of substance, combined with certain theological commitments, led Leibniz to develop most of the central doctrines of his mature thought. For example, we claim that by April, 1676, Leibniz has arrived at his doctrine of preestablished harmony. In section 4, we discuss the relationship between his concept containment theory of truth, which grew out of intensive work on logic in 1679, and his theory of substance. We finally give a brief summary of the central doctrines of the metaphysics of the Discourse.

Leibniz's views on language, and on the relationship of language to philosophy, constitute a rich and, until recently, little explored area of his thought. Unlike some of his seventeenth-century contemporaries, Leibniz was conscious of a deep connection between the human capacity for language and the capacity to comprehend reality. Language is less a barrier between the mind and the world that must so far as possible be overcome than a lens that necessarily intervenes between mind and world and that can, depending on the skill of the optician, either distort or magnify our apprehension of the world. Accordingly, a careful study of language forms an essential part of the method of philosophy.

It is helpful at the outset to distinguish two primary focal points of Leibniz's interest in language. Within his writings these are represented, on the one hand, by the many sketches and plans associated with the notion of an ideal, artificial language - the “universal characteristic”; and, on the other, by numerous historical and philological investigations of natural languages, many of them directed towards uncovering the common roots of a multitude of human languages. On the face of it, there seems to be a tension between the aims and assumptions of these two very different approaches to the subject of language.

Many of the Modern philosophers, most conspicuously Descartes and his followers, seem to have played down their debt to previous philosophy and left little hint as to their background and influences. Leibniz was not in step with this trend towards setting past philosophy aside. He not only regretted the tendency in others but made a practice of locating his own discussions within a broad tradition of philosophical debate. Although he was in his own eyes a Modern philosopher, Leibniz encouraged the revival of the philosophy of the ancients and the selection from it of what was relevant to contemporary problems.' Both in his respect for past philosophers and in his willingness to draw on them in an eclectic manner, Leibniz belonged within the tradition of Renaissance humanism.

Renaissance humanism derived from the fifteenth century but continued right through the seventeenth. It had been stimulated by the discovery of manuscripts and a revival of interest in ancient writings that had long been neglected. The Renaissance philosophers had initially been in reaction against the prevailing academic (Scholastic) philosophy. The Scholastics acknowledged Aristotle simply as “the Philosopher” but, while preserving some Aristotelian terminology, they developed a style of philosophizing that was found to be obscure and unfruitful. Partly in response to Humanist critics, Scholasticism was modified and enjoyed a new lease on life in the late sixteenth century. It continued to be the dominant form of philosophy in the universities of Europe for almost the whole of the seventeenth century.

Understanding the physical world was one of Leibniz's central interests. Earlier chapters of this Companion have explored aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics as they developed, his account of substance in general, and corporeal substance in particular. But Leibniz's interest in the physical world did not stop with metaphysics. Among his writings are numerous letters, notes, essays, and more extended treatments of questions in physics that show his deep engagement with the science of his day. Leibniz was one of the most important physicists of the late seventeenth century; other than Sir Isaac Newton, there is probably no other physicist of his generation who contributed more to the new mathematical physics. Thus, to understand the history of science in this crucial period, we must understand Leibniz's thoughts on physics. For Leibniz, as for many of his contemporaries, there was no clear boundary between philosophy and physics; understanding the world was at issue, and often those involved in what we would call philosophical projects to understand the world were also deeply involved in what we would consider scientific projects as well. Descartes, for example, the great philosopher of the earlier seventeenth century, made important contributions in his writings to mathematics and physics, as did Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, and later, Berkeley. Leibniz's physics and his philosophy were deeply intertwined; to try to study the one without the other is to get only a partial and inadequate picture of his thought.

Few philosophers today would go this far. Even in a period that has witnessed a dramatic rebirth of Anglo-American philosophical theology, the typical strategy has been to embrace a favorite proof while criticizing others or to maintain, more cautiously, that a particular argument has not been refuted. Nevertheless, while most of these philosophers reject the claim that all the classic arguments can be rendered sound, they also dismiss as passé the once prevalent view that proving God's existence is a hopeless task.

Natural theology, then, is on the rise. At such a time, it is reasonable to review the arguments of Gottfried Leibniz, one of its most distinguished proponents. Because he thought deeply about many of the issues that now absorb us, an examination of his ideas is likely to illuminate contemporary concerns.

Leibniz gives his own versions of four traditional proofs of God's existence: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the argument from eternal truths, and the argument from design. According to the ontological argument, God's existence follows a priori from his definition as an absolutely perfect being. Since existence is more perfect than nonexistence, the very idea of God entails that he exists. The cosmological argument, on the other hand, begins with the fact that something exists and derives the existence of God via a causal principle.

Leibniz claimed to be proud of the fact that, during his lifetime, he had no school, no disciples, and no popularizers. He despised, he said, the sectarian spirit which he associated with the Cartesians. Whether this attitude did not hide a kind of disappointment in the end is open to question. Leibniz was widely admired as a diplomat, a man of learning, and as a mathematician. But he was not, during his lifetime and long afterwards, considered a great philosopher, and after the deaths of Sophie Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia, in 1705, and her mother, the Ellectress Sophie, in 1714, no one showed an intense interest in his metaphysical theories. The dispute with Newton and the Royal Society, followed by the increasingly agitated argument with Newton's representative Samuel Clarke, threw a pall over Leibniz's last two years. Newton, never a gracious opponent, is said to have boasted that he killed Leibniz.

More than twenty years ago, Carl J. Friedrich offered this rather deflationary assessment of Leibniz's significance as a legal and political philosopher - that he was not “a thinker of the first rank on law and politics; no basically novel insight can be attributed to him.” Indeed, it must be admitted that Leibniz followed a traditional Christian reading of the divisions of natural law expounded in the Institutes of Justinian's Code (completed in 529 and revised in 534). It is also true that he resisted the trend toward independent sovereign states in favor of a return to a unified respublica christiana, to be achieved by revitalizing that practically defunct offspring of the medieval marriage of church and state, the Holy Roman Empire. But it must also be said that he developed a profound and inventive philosophical underpinning for the conventional legal wisdom.

Many people first came across the name “Leibniz ” when reading Voltaire's Candide, and the encounter is not likely to inspire confidence in Leibniz as a great philosopher. In Voltaire's biting satire, the optimism of Doctor Pangloss - whose character is based either on Leibniz himself or on his disciples - appears as a foolish and almost wickedly complacent response to the evils of our world. The reader cannot help but sympathize with Candide's rhetorical question: “If this is the best of all possible worlds, . . . what can the rest be like?” Even initial exposure to Leibniz's own texts is not always encouraging. Perhaps the most widely read of Leibniz's works is the Monadology, and although, in many respects, a brilliant summary of his final metaphysical views, it is not the best introduction to his philosophy. It is natural to feel, as Bertrand Russell once did, that we are presented with “a kind of metaphysical fairy tale, coherent perhaps, but wholly arbitrary”; ”art of the problem is that the fairy tale metaphysics is presented to us in a “take it or leave it”manner with little in the way of sustained argument. Initially, then, Leibniz's reputation as a philosophical genius of the first rank may strike us as puzzling.

Problems about the relations between Leibniz's philosophy and his logic have exercised scholars ever since Bertrand Russell's book on the philosophy of Leibniz, first published in 1900. The thesis of that book, as Russell expressed it later, was that “Leibniz's philosophy was almost entirely derived from his logic.” Russell's argument was that Leibniz derived from his logic his distinctive views about the nature of substance - that each substance is a genuine unity, a “monad”; that each created substance expresses the entire universe, and, strictly speaking, does not act on any other substance; that each substance is a soul, or at any rate soul-like; and that no substance resembles any other substance entirely. Russell also discussed Leibniz's views about contingency, about possible worlds, and about freedom. In this volume, Leibniz's views about logic and substance are discussed by Professor Sleigh in a separate chapter; I shall restrict myself to the topics of contingency, possible worlds, and freedom. This is not a haphazard group; there are close connections between Leibniz's discussions of these topics. Nor are the issues raised merely marginal; on the contrary, they take us to the very heart of Leibniz's philosophy.

THE REACTION TO DECARTES

On the basis of their theories of knowledge, early modern philosophers are customarily divided between rationalists and empiricists, with Leibniz following Descartes among the Rationalists, primarily because of his espousal of innate ideas. Whatever one may think of this division of philosophers, Leibniz asserts something very like it. When confronting Lockets Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he remarks:

Leibniz wrote an extensive commentary on and critique of Parts I and I1 of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, but he has nothing in it to say about innate ideas because in the Principles neither does Descartes. Leibniz, in criticizing the theory of knowledge contained in Part I, of which he is in general highly contemptuous, has no occasion to mention them. Indeed, there is only one thing in the Principles for which he expresses approval: the “I think therefore I am.” This he considers to be “excellent” and relates it to his own distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. Both kinds have their primitive truths. The first truth of reason is the principle of identity or contradiction.

THE ACCESSION, 336–335 B.C.

This and the following chapter are intended to provide an outline survey of the reign of Alexander. The king himself is central to the narrative, for the vast preponderance of the source tradition deals explicitly with his actions. Events, however important, in which he was not the protagonist depend on chance testimonia. The subject of this first chapter is the campaign and court history of the reign, the details of the process of conquest. That provides the thread of continuity for the historical interpretation of the reign and records the imperial expansion of Macedon, the most obvious – and important – aspect of the period, as well as the increasing autocracy and elimination of dissent around the person of Alexander. The next chapter deals more with the effect of Alexander: the impact of the new universal empire upon the traditional world of Greek city states and the organization of the territories and peoples acquired by conquest. The approach is encapsulated in the final section, where I examine Alexander's claims to divine status, possibly the starkest illustration of the gulf which he had created between subject and sovereign. Although the exposition is by necessity centred around Alexander, I have tried to avoid value judgments and psychological speculation. The besetting sin of traditional Alexander scholarship has been an obsession with the person of the king, who becomes less a historical figure and more a symbol of contemporary aspirations. In Droysen's hands he was the embodiment of Prussian imperialism, in Tarn's a liberal humanitarian.

THE CAUSES AND OUTBREAK OF WAR

The outcome of the Peloponnesian War had left many of the victors discontented. Sparta had totally disregarded the wishes and interests of her allies and had pursued a policy of aggressive expansion in the Peloponnese, central and northern Greece and the Aegean which had at times seemed directed specifically against them. Though Lysander had been a prime exponent of this policy, it had not been his alone, and his temporary eclipse in 403 had not led to any softening of Spartan attitudes. Corinth had wanted to see Athens annihilated, but her desire had been thwarted and she had had no share in the spoils of victory (Xen. Hell. II.2.19). Moreover, Spartan intervention in Syracuse had damaged Corinthian interests there (Diod. XIV.110.2ff). Thebes had been even more displeased. She alone of Sparta's allies had ventured to claim her share of the profits, but in vain (Xen. Hell. III.5.5, Plut. Lys. 27.2), and she too had demanded to no avail that Athens be destroyed. Instead Sparta had put ominous pressure on Thebes by strengthening her own position in central Greece and Thessaly, securing control of Heraclea in about 400 (Diod. XIV.38.3f) and garrisoning Pharsalus (Diod. XIV.82). Thebes had responded by making a major contribution to the overthrow of Sparta's puppet government at Athens, the Thirty, only to be somewhat disappointed by the cautious behaviour of the restored democracy, whose subservience to Sparta had led to tension between Athens and Thebes (Lys. XXX.22). Both Thebes and Corinth, with the Thebans taking the lead, had pursued a policy of military non-co-operation with Sparta.

AFTERMATH OF THE PEACE OF PHILOCRATES

Most Athenians had not been privy to the detail of what had happened. Their conviction of Macedonian perfidy had been mitigated somewhat during the two or three months of the middle of 346, but was now redoubled by the settlement of the Third Sacred War. The foreshadowed benefits were not, could not be, delivered: Oropus remained in Theban hands, Euboea under Theban influence, Thespiae and Plataea depopulated. What the Athenians did not see was that their expectations were beyond reach, since Philip must not drive Thebes, already disaffected, into open opposition while Athens’ adherence remained any less than certain. Those like Demosthenes declined to point this out, and their credibility, in the circumstances, stood high. Philip, for his part, if he was serious about a settlement based on Athens, must devote himself more than ever to courting the disenchanted inamorata. Generous diplomacy would have to accomplish, if anything could, what artifice had not. It is not that Philip was without supporters in Athens. Nine of the ten envoys of 346, all but Demosthenes, continued to support the new peace as the vehicle of potential Macedonian benefaction, refusing to repudiate it or its architect. In the current climate that may have seemed foolish, certainly suspect. They believed, so we must infer, what he had told them about his interests and intentions and judged, presumably, that they would eventually be vindicated. Aeschines, who had successfully countercharged Timarchus with immorality, thus temporarily invalidating the charge of parapresbeia against him, was prominent among them. Their opponents, foremost among them Demosthenes, while realizing that for safety's sake the peace must be upheld since the alliance was now a dead letter, were nevertheless determined that any further Philippic overtures must be rejected.

INTRODUCTION

Problems of method and evidence make it particularly difficult to write a history of Persia in the fourth century B.C., or rather, an account of Persia which will fit satisfactorily into a general history of a century whose study has traditionally been dominated by Greek evidence, or evidence perceived as Greek.

There are two main, related, difficulties. The first is the risk of ‘hellenocentricity’ – that is, the adoption of an unduly Greek viewpoint. This fault is easier to identify than to avoid. Nor would it be right to avoid it in all areas, for instance the military: the extensive Persian use of Greek infantry soldiers means that there will always be one Greek dimension to the study of fourth-century Persia. To the general charge of hellenocentricity, the traditionalist might reply that the dominance, in the relevant modern studies, of Greek evidence is the result not of cultural bias, but of a recognition of the quantity and quality of that evidence. In the same way the existence of Thucydides’ text makes it possible to talk about the Peloponnesian War in far greater depth and detail than about the eighth-century Lelantine or the third-century Chremonidean Wars, for neither of which is a text as rich as Thucydides available. This does not prove scholarly ‘bias’ against the eighth century, or the third. Students have tended to fasten on the Greek evidence because the Persian period seems in some respects (for instance, in the archaeological record) curiously invisible. On the other hand, it can be argued that in the relevant areas of study, which include art and iconography, the very distinction between ‘Greek’ and ‘Persian’ evidence needs to be re-assessed, and that the apparently meagre impact of Persia on the culture of the western satrapies was the result of deliberate policy: the Persians deliberately tried to play down their own power.