SUBSTANTIAL SIMPLICITY IN LEIBNIZ: FORM, PREDICATION, & TRUTHMAKERS

摘要

ACCORDING TO Leibniz,1 there are constraints on what counts as a genuine individual substance.2 Four such constraints are derivative from the Aristotelian and scholastic traditions: substances are (1) independent;3 (2) essentially active;4 (3) persistent through change;6 and (4) ultimate subjects of predication, that is, never themselves predicated of other things.6 And yet, there is at least one further constraint on an entity's counting as a genuine substance, exclusive to Leibniz's philosophy: substances are (5) simple, per se unities.7 In his correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz says: I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings. [...] most scholastic theologians beUeved that God's simpUcity requires aseity, such that all dependence relations are absent in God.10 An authentic simple would be dependent on nothing other than itself, mcludmg any mereological parts of which it may be composed.