Part 10 (1/2)

Leibniz's strategy of containment achieved its finest expression in the context of the pair of related succession crises that convulsed European politics at the turn of the eighteenth century. With the approach of the death of the sickly King Charles II of Spain, Louis XIV maneuvered to place his grandson on the Spanish throne. The rest of Europe, not least the Hapsburgs, of course, had very different hopes for the future of Spain. Upon Charles II's death in 1700, Louis XIV and his Bourbon clan nonetheless claimed the Spanish crown, and there ensued a complex series of conflicts involving all the major powers of Europe and leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives across the continent.

At the same time, over in England, Queen Anne (sister-in-law of and successor to William) was having no luck in breeding an heir to the throne. Louis XIV, true to form, plotted to put one of the Catholic Stuarts in charge of England. Many feared that such an outcome would reduce England to a va.s.sal state of France. In what must count as a spectacular piece of genealogical luck, the alternative contender for the throne was none other than Leibniz's friend and patroness, Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, who happened to be the granddaughter of James I, the first Stuart king of England, and the closest Protestant in the line of succession.

For Leibniz, the prospect that France might now rule the two next most powerful countries in Europe represented a tremendous danger to civilization. He leapt into the succession crises on the side of all those who were opposed to Louis XIV. With his Manifesto for the Defense of the Rights of Charles III Manifesto for the Defense of the Rights of Charles III and other writings in favor of the Hapsburg candidate, he hoped to persuade the Spaniards to spurn the Sun King's efforts to claim their throne. With the and other writings in favor of the Hapsburg candidate, he hoped to persuade the Spaniards to spurn the Sun King's efforts to claim their throne. With the Considerations on the Question of the English Succession Considerations on the Question of the English Succession as well as in many of his letters, he struggled to advance the Hanoverian cause in England. as well as in many of his letters, he struggled to advance the Hanoverian cause in England.

Leibniz's animus toward Louis XIV marks an interesting paradox in his political thought. In his theoretical writings, Leibniz champions the idea of a continent-wide Christian republic under a single monarch. Given that Louis XIV was a monarch whose ambition it was to unite Europe under a single church, one might well wonder why the philosopher found him to be such a scourge. It wasn't just a matter of defending Germany from its most powerful neighbor, as it turns out; nor was Leibniz driven solely by the desire to install his employer on the throne of England. (Though he did advertise his willingness to move to London-rather too eagerly, in the view of his fellow courtiers-should the Hanoverians require his services there.) In fact, Leibniz viscerally opposed Louis XIV because he believed that the Sun King's brand of absolute monarchy represented a form of secular decadence: a corruption in which both reason and religion were reduced to mere show of words in the service of a thoroughly irreligious, deceitful, and self-interested ruling elite.

In his polemic against the Bourbon succession in Spain, for example, he paints a chilling picture of life in France: ”The people are trampled upon without mercy and reduced to bread and water by t.i.thes, taxes, imposts...and all of this to serve the insatiability of a Court which cares not at all about the subjects which it already has, and which seeks only to augment the number of miserable people by extending its estates.”

As he works his way up to the catalogue of horrors of the ancien regime ancien regime, Leibniz seems to reach a climax with the declaration that to admit the French to Spain would be ”to open the door to dissoluteness and to libertinage.” At last he reveals the thing that he fears most about Louis XIV: ”The worst thing of all is that atheism walks today with its head up in France, that pretended great wits are in fas.h.i.+on there, and that piety is turned to ridicule.” The atheistic spirit of France, he thunders, is a ”venom” that none can resist. Wherever the Sun King sets foot, the poison spreads. The toxin to which Leibniz refers here, of course, consists of modern, materialistic, and atheistic ideas-ideas to which he himself was exposed during his years in Paris.

There can be little doubt just who, in Leibniz's mind, first manufactured these venomous ideas. In the New Essays New Essays, he at last puts a name to the deed. Spinoza, he acknowledges, led an exemplary life. But his followers are capable of ”setting fire to the four corners of the earth.” Worst of all are those ideas, the horrific ideas emanating from The Hague: ”I find that similar ideas are stealing gradually into the minds of men of high station who rule the rest and on whom affairs depend, and slithering into fas.h.i.+onable books, and are inching everything towards the universal revolution with which Europe is threatened.” In Leibniz's nightmare scenario, then, the corrupt rule of Louis XIV prepares the ground on which the slithering Spinozists flourish, and these serpents of materialism then spread their soul-destroying ideas and bring about a global revolution in which western civilization collapses into anarchy. The program at the core of all of Leibniz's political activities throughout his career can be summarized in a single slogan: Stop Spinoza.

Newton's Repulsive Law of Attraction Isaac Newton conceived the essentials of his version of the calculus during his anni mirabiles anni mirabiles of 16641666, when he was in his early twenties. For the next twenty years, he kept the discovery almost entirely to himself. It wasn't all that hard for him to do: he lived by himself in Cambridge, in a house where all the furnis.h.i.+ngs were colored red, he took his meals alone (when he could remember to eat), and he dutifully gave lectures to mostly empty cla.s.srooms. of 16641666, when he was in his early twenties. For the next twenty years, he kept the discovery almost entirely to himself. It wasn't all that hard for him to do: he lived by himself in Cambridge, in a house where all the furnis.h.i.+ngs were colored red, he took his meals alone (when he could remember to eat), and he dutifully gave lectures to mostly empty cla.s.srooms.

When Leibniz conceived the essentials of his version of the calculus in the autumn of 1675, he was not yet aware that Newton had achieved substantially the same results ten years previously. The next summer, through Henry Oldenburg's mediation, Newton informed Leibniz that he had come upon a method answering to the requirements of the calculus (though he did not provide details). Leibniz responded by divulging to Newton the basics of his own method. Both then kept their silence for another eight years. In 1684, incensed to learn that his old friend Tschirnhaus had tried to spill the beans about the calculus (and take credit for them, too), Leibniz published a sketch of his method in his famous article in the Acta Eruditorum Acta Eruditorum, ”A New Method of Maxima and Minima and Also Tangents, and a Singular Kind of Calculus for Them.”

A number of able mathematicians around Europe grasped the significance of Leibniz's discovery, and soon enough the courtier of Hanover, who was everything the Cambridge don was not in terms of human relations, commanded a frenzied web of calculus aficionados in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

In 1687, Newton published his Principia Mathematica Principia Mathematica, which is generally regarded as one of the two or three most important works in the history of science. In that work, he stakes his claim to independent discovery of the calculus (though he does not detail his method). He lets on that he had ten years earlier informed ”that most skilled geometer G. W. Leibniz” of his discovery and ”that famous person replied that he too had come across a method of this kind, had imparted his method to me, which hardly differed from mine except in words and notation.” Leibniz made no objection to the claim, and indeed wrote to Newton urging ”you, who are a perfect geometer, to continue as you have begun” and to publish the details of his method.

And there the affair should have ended. It was, at bottom, a case of bright minds thinking alike and of trees falling in forests with n.o.body to hear them, followed in good time by the appropriate mutual recognition of independent achievement. It all began to turn sour with the intervention of Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a young, brilliant, and excitable Swiss mathematician who achieved a degree of personal intimacy with Newton unmatched by any other mortal and that has since raised more than a few prurient eyebrows. More than ten years after the publication of the Principia Principia, Fatio a.s.serted that Newton was the ”first” inventor of the calculus. ”As to whether Leibniz, its second inventor, borrowed anything from him,” he added, ”I prefer to let those judge who have seen Newton's letters and other ma.n.u.script papers...which I myself have examined.”

For another decade the conflict simmered at a low boil, the antagonists and their seconds content to restrict themselves to unsavory insinuations. All-out war began in 1710, when an English writer published an article bluntly accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Understandably outraged, Leibniz demanded an independent inquiry from the Royal Society. In 1712, the Society duly organized a commission, which delivered its verdict: the accusation of plagiarism stands. The de facto de facto chairman of the inquiry and author of its report on Leibniz was Isaac Newton. chairman of the inquiry and author of its report on Leibniz was Isaac Newton.

An anonymous article appeared in the German press defending Leibniz and reversing the charge: Newton, the unnamed author declaims, plagiarized Leibniz. Leibniz was forced to disown the article, claiming that it had been put out by a ”zealous friend.” But it soon became clear to all parties that the ”zealous friend” in question was Leibniz himself. In England, meanwhile, appeared an anonymous review of the dispute, according to which Newton was the innocent victim of Leibniz's chicanery. The ”anonymous” author, it turns out, was Newton himself.

The priority dispute over the calculus outlived even its two obstreperous protagonists and was not definitively put to rest until scholars finally set the record straight in the twentieth century. At first glance, the whole sorry affair seems to represent a case of supersized egos with undersized scruples clas.h.i.+ng in the context of overheated national rivalries and suboptimal publication practices. It was all those things, too, but it was also something else.

From the moment Principia Principia appeared, Leibniz demonstrated far greater anxiety about Newton's physics than his mathematics. In February 1689, shortly after reading Newton's work, Leibniz published another article in the appeared, Leibniz demonstrated far greater anxiety about Newton's physics than his mathematics. In February 1689, shortly after reading Newton's work, Leibniz published another article in the Acta Eruditorum Acta Eruditorum arguing that the movements of the planets may be explained in terms of a complex, invisible, and fluid vortex centered on the sun. The manifest purpose of the exercise was to provide an alternative to Newton's physics, according to which planetary movements are the consequence of the law of gravitational attraction. In order to make his claims appear independent of and even prior to Newton, incidentally, Leibniz a.s.serted that his knowledge of the arguing that the movements of the planets may be explained in terms of a complex, invisible, and fluid vortex centered on the sun. The manifest purpose of the exercise was to provide an alternative to Newton's physics, according to which planetary movements are the consequence of the law of gravitational attraction. In order to make his claims appear independent of and even prior to Newton, incidentally, Leibniz a.s.serted that his knowledge of the Principia Principia was only secondhand. As Newton later suspected, however, Leibniz was fibbing: notes made in his personal copy of the was only secondhand. As Newton later suspected, however, Leibniz was fibbing: notes made in his personal copy of the Principia Principia date from before the time he wrote the article. date from before the time he wrote the article.

Over the next two decades, Leibniz regularly took swipes at Newton's repugnant law of gravity. In 1710, ominously, he noted that the theologically suspect John Locke took great comfort in Newton's idea of action at a distance. By 1715, Locke and Newton were quite mixed up in Leibniz's mind. In his correspondence battle with Samuel Clarke-who was understood by all to represent his friend and neighbor Newton-Leibniz opened the attack on his antagonist in the priority dispute with the strange observation that ”Natural religion seems to be very much in decline in England.... Several make souls corporeal, others make G.o.d himself corporeal: Mr. Locke and his followers are doubtful at least whether souls are not material and naturally perishable.”

Why did Leibniz find Newton's law of attraction so repulsive? And why did he link it with Locke's conjectures about the materiality of the mind? In a letter to one of his French allies, Leibniz frankly acknowledges the anxiety that lay at the bottom of all his dealings with Newton: After [admitting the law of attraction], it will be permitted to imagine all the shams that one would want; one could give to matter the power of thought, and destroy the immateriality of the soul, which is one of the princ.i.p.al foundations of Natural Theology. Thus one sees that M. Locke, who is not very persuaded of this immateriality, seizes avidly on M. Newton's idea.

According to Leibniz's way of thinking, the chain of inferences is so obvious that it hardly needs stating: Newton's law of gravity implies that matter can move by itself, without the need for any mindlike principle of activity. But from this it follows that matter might acquire the force of thought. And, as the case of Locke shows, merely to suggest that matter might think is ipso facto ipso facto to destroy the immortality of the soul. Newtonian physics, in sum, is a Trojan horse: it conceals a horde of atheistic ideas that, if permitted entry, will overrun the citadel of European civilization. to destroy the immortality of the soul. Newtonian physics, in sum, is a Trojan horse: it conceals a horde of atheistic ideas that, if permitted entry, will overrun the citadel of European civilization.

Leibniz's attribution of such hideous designs to Newton is highly problematic, to say the least. The great physicist devoted much of his spare time to proving precisely those theological doctrines Leibniz accused him of subverting. In truth, the heresies that Leibniz attempted to pin on his rival in the priority dispute-that matter can move by itself; that matter can think; that the soul is material; that the soul is mortal-clearly belong to another philosopher. When Leibniz looked at Newton-no less than when he looked at Descartes and Locke-he saw Spinoza. And this fact, as much as the usual story about supersized egos facing off across the Channel, explains much of the strange intensity, if not the origin, of the most inglorious dispute in the history of mathematics.

The Yellow Peril In a Europe whose Eurocentrism was at its narrowest peak, it is eloquent testimony to the breadth of Leibniz's intellectual interests and to the sincerity of his desire to reconcile all of humanity in a single City of G.o.d that he took great interest in the history, religion, and philosophy of the Chinese. It has been said that the word ”China” appears more frequently in his writings than ”monad” or any of the other terms of his metaphysics.

Leibniz's fascination with the Middle Kingdom dates at least from the time of his epic voyage to Italy, where he met the Jesuit Claudio Grimaldi (16381712), who had spent seventeen years as a missionary in Beijing. The princ.i.p.al topic of discussion among European sinologists at the time was how to manage the proselytizing of the Christian religion in China. Should the local rites a.s.sociated with Confucianism be regarded as secular and therefore compatible with Christianity? Or are they in fact heathen rituals, deserving of harsh repression? Does Chinese religion include concepts compatible with the Christian G.o.d and the immortality of the soul? Or is it paganism-or, worse, atheism?

True to his peacemaking disposition, Leibniz took a very conciliatory stance. In his China writings, he maintains that missionaries should not attempt to suppress local traditions, but rather should incorporate any rites that did not directly contradict the Christian message. Furthermore, he offers a highly favorable judgment on the philosophy that underlies most of Chinese theology. His argument, in brief, is that Chinese philosophy, especially in its ancient form, looks very much like his own philosophy; and since he is a good Christian, so are the Chinese.

Specifically, he a.s.serts that most of the Chinese religious thinkers acknowledge a ”supra-mundane intelligence” that the more astute ones have discovered the ”soul” and that perhaps all that is lacking is to introduce them to the latest developments in Europe-”by acquainting them with the true systems of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm”-in order to include them within a universal Christian church. He even hints that the most sophisticated Chinese may be there already. The principle of the li li-a core concept in much of Chinese thought-may be read not just as the proposition that All is One, says Leibniz, but also as the proposition that One is All. This, of course, would render it a version of his own monadology, than which no finer specimen of Christian metaphysics may be conceived.

Alas, the melancholy monadologist notes with dismay, there is a ”bad” version of philosophy afoot in China. This bad philosophy is almost entirely the work of modern Chinese thinkers-”heterodox and atheistic scholars...who are permitted in China to utter their impieties with impunity, at least orally.”

These malevolent unbelievers, says Leibniz, manage to twist the true meaning of the principle of the li li. They deviously attempt to render the li li as ”the soul of things as if it were their essence”-that is, as if it were some sort of universal Substance. They put forward the evil dogmas that everything occurs by ”brutish necessity” and that there are no ”spiritual substances.” The bad Chinese philosophers, in other words, are retailing the execrable ideas Leibniz elsewhere attributes to a certain, infamous, European atheist. And, indeed, in summarizing his case against the Middle Kingdom's homegrown deviants, Leibniz at last identifies the real object of his concern: ”One could perhaps claim that...one can conceive of [the as ”the soul of things as if it were their essence”-that is, as if it were some sort of universal Substance. They put forward the evil dogmas that everything occurs by ”brutish necessity” and that there are no ”spiritual substances.” The bad Chinese philosophers, in other words, are retailing the execrable ideas Leibniz elsewhere attributes to a certain, infamous, European atheist. And, indeed, in summarizing his case against the Middle Kingdom's homegrown deviants, Leibniz at last identifies the real object of his concern: ”One could perhaps claim that...one can conceive of [the li li] as the prime form, that is, as the Soul of the World, of which the individual souls would only be modifications. This would follow the opinions of several ancients, the Averroists, and in a certain sense even the opinions of Spinoza.” Elsewhere Leibniz describes Averroes (the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd) as essentially a Spinozist avant la lettre avant la lettre; thus we may infer that the bad Chinese are Spinozists to a man.

”If by misfortune Atheism should prevail in Europe and become the doctrine of the most learned,” just as it has in China, Leibniz goes on to say, then missionaries from China would have the right to look at ancient texts in Europe and ”to ridicule the ridicule” of the Atheists. For all of his interest in China, it seems, Leibniz never quite managed to get Europe off his mind. China, in the final a.n.a.lysis, was a kind of laboratory experiment in modernization, a cautionary example of what might happen here at home, should Spinoza succeed.

Heal Thyself Leibniz's paranoia about Spinozism was a general feature of the age in which he lived. The universal impulse to expose Spinozistic conspiracies had something of the air of a highbrow witch-hunt (and it is interesting to note that the lowbrow variety was very much in fas.h.i.+on at the time, too). In more recent times, one could find an a.n.a.logue in the anti-Communist crusades of the mid-twentieth century. A typical feature of such affairs, in any case, is that the accusations eventually fall on precisely those who make the accusations themselves. The case of Leibniz was no exception to the rule.

In 1712, a Dutch professor named Ruardus Andala published a tract accusing Leibniz of plagiarizing Spinoza. One of Andala's pupils followed suit with another book making essentially the same charge. In 1723, some years after Leibniz's death, the German theologian Joachim Lange a.s.serted that the entire system of the pre-established harmony was nothing but the Spinozan philosophy under a new name. (To be fair, however, it must be pointed out that Lange was of the sort who believed that the remote cause of all philosophy was Satan himself.) The suggestion that Leibniz had some deep and unacknowledged attachment to Spinozism soon spread beyond the bastions of orthodoxy. Gotthold Lessing, the eighteenth-century critic whose reading of Spinoza played a crucial role in reviving the philosopher's fame, said of Leibniz: ”I fear that he was himself a Spinozist at heart.” Johann Gottfried Herder, who sensibly declined any access to his subject's inscrutable interior, declared: ”What Leibniz was in his heart I may not know; but his Theodicy Theodicy just as many of his letters show that, precisely in order not to be a Spinozist, he thought through his system.” More recently, Bertrand Russell has said, in a typical a.n.a.lysis of the philosopher's notes: ”Here, as elsewhere, Leibniz fell into Spinozism whenever he allowed himself to be logical; in his published works, accordingly, he took care to be illogical.” just as many of his letters show that, precisely in order not to be a Spinozist, he thought through his system.” More recently, Bertrand Russell has said, in a typical a.n.a.lysis of the philosopher's notes: ”Here, as elsewhere, Leibniz fell into Spinozism whenever he allowed himself to be logical; in his published works, accordingly, he took care to be illogical.”

The suggestion that Leibniz's mature philosophy retains some unstated attachment to Spinozism, however, invariably arouses controversy among those who care about such matters-as it should. In his mature metaphysics, after all, Leibniz contradicts every central doctrine of Spinoza's philosophy, and in his public and private comments on any number of other subjects he engages in ceaseless, if covert, warfare on Spinozism in all its forms. Given the obvious, then, one should ask: What grounds could there possibly be for suspecting a hidden link between Leibniz and his nemesis?

It is our good fortune that Leibniz had a chance to respond to the charges. In 1714, one of Leibniz's correspondents gently inquired whether perhaps there might be some Spinozism in the doctrines of the monadology. Leibniz's reply: On the contrary, it is precisely by means of the monads that Spinozism is destroyed. For there are as many true substances-as many living mirrors of the Universe, always subsisting, as it were, or concentrated Universes-as there are Monads; whereas, according to Spinoza, there is but one sole substance. He would be right, if there were no Monads.

On first reading, the meaning of Leibniz's words is plain enough: he unequivocally rejects the Spinozistic philosophy. On second reading, however, we seem to enter the labyrinth all over again. Here Leibniz draws an inference that is perhaps obvious from a consideration of his metaphysical system but that must nonetheless sound very troubling to the many who are not yet convinced of the truth of the monadology. For, as he now makes explicit, if the infinite, sizeless, windowless, mutually harmonized substances of which he writes do not exist, then Spinoza is correct. Not: that both he and Spinoza might be wrong; but: that if he is wrong, Spinoza is right right. At the very least, this represents a spectacular promotion for the philosopher of The Hague. After forty years of avoiding as much as possible the mention of his name and publicly dismissing his philosophy as so bad it need not be refuted, Leibniz suddenly declares that Spinoza-and not Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or any other great philosopher from the past-offers the only real alternative to his own philosophy.

Even in his response to the charge of Spinozism, it seems, Leibniz could not shake the obsession that led to the charge in the first place. He had already sensed the presence of his rival in the most unexpected places-in Locke's Essay Essay, Newton's physics, Descartes's metaphysics, Louis XIV's politics, the history of Chinese philosophy-and now he saw it lurking in the shadow of his very own philosophical system, determined to break free should his own arguments fail to destroy it. The strange ubiquity of Spinoza in Leibniz's world, in fact, requires that we leave open the possibility that his restless vigilance on the matter perhaps followed from some awareness of just how close he was himself to succ.u.mbing to the danger; that he feared Spinozism so much because he thought that it just might be true true; and that, in a manner of speaking, he perceived the influence of his rival everywhere because he mistook the tint in his own spectacles for a certain dark aspect of the outside world.

16.

The Return of the Repressed Imagine a pair of friends returning separately from travels abroad, each describing a favorite city whose unp.r.o.nounceable name they have forgotten. Your friends are wildly different in character, background, and aesthetic sensibilities; not surprisingly, they seem to have taken an interest in wildly different cities. As your friends are quite compet.i.tive, furthermore, they soon take to criticizing each other's choices. Each celebrates the virtues of his city by contrasting them with the alleged failings of the other's. As the discussion progresses, however, you begin to suspect that they are talking about the same city. In fact, you hear nothing in what they say that could confirm that they are not not talking about the same city. Yet there is still no doubt that the city in question talking about the same city. Yet there is still no doubt that the city in question means means something very different to each of your friends; that the two something very different to each of your friends; that the two saw saw very different things in their travels. Now imagine that your friends are named Leibniz and Spinoza, and that instead of a particular city they are discussing the nature of the universe. The question then is: Do they share the same philosophy? Or, in other words, is philosophy about very different things in their travels. Now imagine that your friends are named Leibniz and Spinoza, and that instead of a particular city they are discussing the nature of the universe. The question then is: Do they share the same philosophy? Or, in other words, is philosophy about what what you see, or the you see, or the way way you see it? you see it?

G.o.d It is a startling fact that Spinoza considered and rejected something very like Leibniz's transcendent concept of G.o.d before the two philosophers met. In a letter dating from 1674, Spinoza writes: ”He who affirms that G.o.d could have refrained from creating the world is declaring in an indirect way that it was made by chance, since it proceeded from an act of will which might not have been. Since this belief and this view is quite absurd, it is commonly and unanimously admitted that G.o.d's will is eternal and has never been indifferent.” The idea that G.o.d has the option not to create the world, of course, is a defining feature of Leibniz's concept of divinity. Spinoza's critique of that concept begins with a premise with which Leibniz must agree: that G.o.d must have reasons for what it does. When G.o.d creates the world, Spinoza therefore infers, it cannot do so by whim or accident, but because some reason compels it to do so. Since that reason is always there-it is ”eternal”-then it is ”quite absurd,” as Spinoza puts it, to speak of G.o.d as having the option not to create the world.

Spinoza's comments on a proto-Leibnizian concept of G.o.d antic.i.p.ate a set of criticisms later offered by others in direct response to Leibniz. The debate boils down to a simple question: Does Leibniz's G.o.d really have a choice? Many have argued that he does not. Leibniz seems to add fuel to the fire under his feet with comments such as ”everything [is] settled in advance” and ”G.o.d's decree [to actualize the best of all possible worlds] is immutable.”

A version of the critique runs like this: How do we know that this is the best of all possible worlds? It cannot be because we observe it to be so-for, to sift through all possible worlds and rank them according to their merits requires the kind of omniscience that only G.o.d has. It must therefore be because the choice of the best of all possible worlds follows from G.o.d's nature. In other words, G.o.d chooses the best of all possible worlds because it is in his nature to be good. G.o.d could not do otherwise because if he did so he would not be good, and therefore he would not be G.o.d. But this implies that G.o.d does not have a choice at all. He must create this world, exactly as it is, if he is to deserve the name of G.o.d.