GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 

His Metaphysical Vision

God (alone) knows the potential of every monad and knows how the world is to look as a result of how these monads are brought together by him in various combinations to produce the harmony of life or existence.

These single monads are not mere Newtonian pieces of the larger cosmic puzzle, but are each tiny mirrorings of the entire universe.  Each monad has the capacity or potential to express the fullness of the universe built through the relationship of all the monads with each other--though the particular expression or mirroring of each monad represents only a single view or perspective--the view from where it sits in relationship to the whole picture.  Only God alone has the capacity to see the whole picture--from all perspectives simultaneously.  Only God alone has the capacity to choose which of these views or visions will be the one that comes into actual being--through an "unfolding" of the potential of the multiplicity of monads into the harmonious actuality of their God-ordained behavior.

This is to say that only God alone has the power to move this whole picture forward from potential to fulfillment.  The universe is entirely dependent upon God for its actual existence--its movement from potential (from a virtually infinite realm of possibilities) to the actual.  It is not, as Newton's world was, "auto-deterministic" or self-running in accordance to some absolute plan like a well wound-up clock or some kind of perpetual motor moving in accordance to the laws that describe, dictate or direct its actions.

Leibniz' world did not result from a rule of physical cause-and-effect.  One monad did not spur another monad into being--like a billiard ball hitting other billiard balls and setting off a round of cause-and-effect movements.  Each monad was independent, automonous.  The linkage among the monads was entirely through the design of God by which each monad moved from potential to actual by God's separate and harmonious design of  all the monads working together.

Thus not only was Leibniz' cosmos not self-running (as Newton saw things), it was not even truly existent apart from the "intervention" from God.  For Leibniz:  "No God--no universe."  God was totally necessary to Leibniz' world--not just as the original architect (as Newton acknowledged God) but as the actual sustainer of all existence, all substance, all being, all "time," all events.

God is the "intellect" of the universe, which everything else in the universe (all the monads) mirrors, in full--but in relative form.

Other forms of necessary truths are:  "a circle is a perfectly round line"; "a square is an area enscribed by four straight lines of equal size meeting at right angles to each other"; "8 + 3 = 11."  These are true because we have ourselves defined the word "eleven" to mean eleven and not ten--or because we have given the name "circle" to the round object and the name "square" to the boxy object.  We could have reversed the words and taught ourselves to see them accordingly--even teaching our children to use these words in this new way and it would not change anything about reality.  We are only talking about things that are "true" by common definition.  If you change the definitions you only are changing our vocabulary, our terminology--not the reality of the things in themselves.

Some people when asked what color the sea is might say "green."  Others might say "blue"  There is no point in arguing which of these statements is true, because they are true by definition--that is by how a person defines the boundaries of blue or green--especially where they meet each other on our personal color charts!

This arbitrariness is the very essence of all things that are true by definition, by necessity.

Contingent Truths.  Also--this necesary truth which is true by very definition or necessity has no cause and effect to make it true, such as "if you go out in the rain you will get wet."  The latter kind of truth is a truth of fact, a truth of science, a "contingent" truth.  It is true because something "causes" it to be true.  A contingent truth is a very different order of truth than a necessary truth.

In our modern thinking, every event supposedly has its particular "cause," something that caused it to be or to happen.  We are not merely interested in the necessary truth that "Johnny is wet."  If we were Johnny's mother, we would certainly want to know why Johnny is wet.  We would be interested in the contingency of his wetness--that is, the realm of cause-and-effect about his wetness.  (But Johnny himself in the face of such a question might speak up:  "Aw Mom, I'm not wet, I'm just a little damp."  He is offering up a necessary truth when his mother is looking for a contingent truth:  "how did you get this way?")

The thing that characterizes modern culture is our preoccupation with contingent truths.  We want to know why things happen.  We're like one of two people gazing at a setting sun across a lake, blanketed by clouds of hues of pink and orange and even red.  One person might be thinking "how beautiful this all is" (a truth by necessity).  But we westerners would be too busy to notice such beauty because our minds were working on the thought:  "why do these colors occur as they do; what causes the red, the orange and the yellow?"  We don't just want to receive the truths of the events.  We want to master those truths.  And so we busy our thoughts with the quest for contingent truths.  We are of a scientific bent or nature!

Anyway, it is this realm of cause and effect truths that our modern, western, "empirical" science is designed to explore.  In the end, such science hopes to be able to provide an explanation for everything that happens under the sun--in terms of the causes of all things.

The ultimate contradictions inherent in contingent truths.  The difficulty, however, of trying to describe life, the very universe, through such truths of fact or contingent truths is that there is no end to their contingency.  If everything has a cause there can be nothing that has no cause.  And yet something has to start the series of cause-and-effect off.  By this very logic of cause-and-effect there can never be some kind of ultimate starting point, a point at which things simply are, without a cause.  And yet the process of cause and effect necessarily requires some kind of a starting point, one which would be the ultimate cause of all other causes.  Thus this logic cannot, because of its need to explain all events in terms of their cause, provide any kind of explanation of this most important of all causes: the first cause!  At this most critical of points in its line of logic, its very logic breaks down!

Thus without being able to provide an explanation for first causes, there can be no true logic to such a science.  Indeed, all that factual or contingent science can do is to study the appearances of events, and their apparent causes.  It cannot truly find the ultimate cause of anything.

Leibniz and the ultimate source of all truth in God.  Leibniz understood that all truths ultimately point back in their contingency to the same ultimate cause:  God.  It is God that sets off the course of all events.  Everything is contingent upon his being, his thoughts, his will.  Unless you can factor God into the picture you have offered no explanation whatsoever about the cause of things!

Yet when you come back in your logic to God, you are no longer talking about contingent truths--because from the point of view of God all things have their truth "by necessity."  They are what they are and do what they do simply because God defines them to be/to act that way.

Remember that Leibniz understood that every monad had the potential to become everything.  It is only by the choices of God that they become what they actually become--they become so by the arbitrary decisions or judgments of God.  Through the will of God they take the ultimate course that they do.