Semina veritatis. Geschichte und Metaphysik bei Leibniz

My thesis is dedicated to Leibniz’s conception of the history of philosophy and to the relationship of this conception with his metaphysics. Leibniz, as I show in my work, has a progressive conception of the history of philosophy, which was by no means a given at his time. Indeed, Leibniz’s famous term, philosophia perennis, commonly understood as a conservative approach, actually expresses this progressive perspective. Furthermore, I argue that this subject is not marginal, but an integral part of Leibniz’s spiritualist philosophy. Leibniz’s views on the history of philosophy on the one hand, his metaphysics and epistemology on the other, are mutually dependent: problems and solutions that we find in Leibniz’s philosophy are often consequences of his conception of the history of philosophy, which in turn depends on metaphysical premises. Leibniz’s programme of a metaphysics that follows modern methodological standards results from his analysis of the ambiguous seculum philosophicum he believed himself to be living through. This progressive view of the history of philosophy, in turn, is the direct consequence of a dynamic and hierarchical metaphysics, according to which creatures participate to an increasingly higher degree in the essence, and consequently the omniscience, of God. The thesis is divided into two parts, which correspond to the phases of Leibniz’s philosophical development as he describes them in several autobiographical texts. The first of these was mechanist in nature, the second one more traditional, characterized by the “reintroduction” of the scholastic concept of forma substantialis. Contrary to the interpretation advanced, among others, by Daniel Garber, I attempt to show that this concept does not significantly change during the second phase, which from this perspective may be regarded as homogeneous. Leibniz’s forma substantialis and hylemorphism are in accordance with the platonic model of a metaphysics of participation. Furthermore, the thesis shows that, notwithstanding the central importance of the forma substantialis, the “hylemorphistic” and the “mechanist” phase of his thought have key characteristics in common: a metaphysics of participation, a hierachical subordination of mechanist physics under a spiritualist metaphysics, and a progressive view of history. These two central parts are preceded by a brief introduction to the historical-political context: the central role in Leibniz’s thought of dynamic development corresponds to historical experiences of Leibniz’s time, closely connected to the so-called “absolute” monarchy. We can maybe characterize Leibniz’s philosophy as “baroque platonism”: “baroque” not just because Leibniz happened to live in the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the more meaningful sense that his philosophy has its origin in the encounter between metaphysical premises of platonic character and the concrete experiences of the baroque era. [edited by Author]