1

Implications of Letters Twenty-Nine and Thirty for the Metaphysics of Body

Justin Leuba

Intro
One important contemporary debate concerning Leibniz’s metaphysics of body unfurls between
Robert Adams and Daniel Garber. The central contention is whether Leibniz’s conceptions of the
physical world were ultimately always the phenomenalistic, idealistic positions outlined in his
Monadology or whether he underwent a shift into a phenomenalistic view from one which held
corporeal substance as metaphysically fundamental. Garber presents a meticulous case for the
latter in his monograph Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad (2009). In short, Garber outlines a
view by which Leibniz eventually comes to a phenomenalistic view on the metaphysics of body
by the time of the Monadology but arrives at it through an earlier period dubbed “middle years”
in which Leibniz believed that corporeal substances are metaphysically basic. Richard Adams
(2010) criticizes this view, claiming instead that Leibniz’s views had always been
phenomenalistic and idealist. Adams critiques Garber for ascribing a positive inconsistency to
Leibniz’s oeuvre without sufficient textual evidence, and then performs a reading of Leibniz’s
work which he claims demonstrates a consistent set of (phenomenalistic) metaphysical
commitments throughout Leibniz’s work.
The correspondences between Leibniz and Arnauld take place during the “middle years.”
In this paper, I will reconstruct Adams’ critique of Garber’s view on corporeal substance, and the
ways in which Garber responds to the criticisms. After describing the topography of the debate, I
will perform a reading of Letters 29 and 30 (Oct. 1687) from the Leibniz-Arnauld
correspondence1.By situating in the Adams-Garber debate a detailed theoretical focus on these
two letters, potentially indicative of Leibniz’s thinking during the disputed period, I hope to
elucidate both Leibniz’s actual thinking as well as discuss why some theoretical approaches and
phrasing that Leibniz uses may lend themselves to different interpretations. Ultimately I argue
that letters twenty-nine and thirty provide textual support for both arguments in different ways,
but still compel us to side with Adams’ view that phenomenality is more metaphysically
fundamental than corporeality even during Leibniz’s “middle years”.

Summary of the debate

1
All translations of the letters excerpted from: Voss, Stephen (2016). The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence. Yale UP.
2

I will preface my discussion of the Adams-Garber debate with a cursory overview of a few core
concepts. Some fundamental interconnected notions in Leibniz’s metaphysics are monads,
expression, and concomitance. Monads are the basic entity; each contains a complete concept,
which constitutes everything that it will ever experience. Human minds are one kind of monad,
and Leibniz posits an infinite number of monads. Every monad expresses everything else in the
universe to differing degrees of clarity, in accordance with its proximity and sensibility. Leibniz
describes “expression” as “constant and regulated relation between what can be said of one sand
the other” (A II,231). Thus, Leibniz’s metaphysics is deeply relational in that each fundamental
entity is the particular entity that it is in virtue of its enmeshment with every other entity. Each
monad’s expression is a perspectival, incomplete view of the universe’s “Ground plan” (A II,
249).
At the same time though, monads have fixed natures as complete concepts. They are
causally isolated and never act directly upon one another, but rather each of their experiential
states or movements is brought about by their previous state (A II, 232). Thus they are unique,
totally self-contained, and numerically singular. In order to reconcile this with the relational
constitution of the universe, Leibniz describes “concomitance” as the pre-established (by God)
harmony which regulates the expressions of every monad so as to generate a shared universe.
But if the world’s nature is a function of causally isolated experiencing entities whose
perspectives cohere because of a cosmological principle, rather than some casual power of/in the
world itself, then what is the role of matter? And does Leibniz ground the world in its material
reality, or in its infinite perspectival subjective representations? In a letter to de Volder sent in
1703, Leibniz distinguishes the structural breakdown of metaphysical corporeal entities: i)
substantial form (or “Entelechy or Soul”); ii) primary matter, or the primitive passive power; iii)
the monad which results from i and ii; iv) “the Mass or secondary matter…for which countless
subordinate monads come together”; v) “the Animal or Corporeal substance” (G II,252/L 530f).
Adams and Garber agree that the eventual metaphysics of the Monadology is distinctly
phenomenalistic. However, Garber argues that Leibniz underwent a period (beginning in the
1670s and ending in the 1690s) in which corporeal substance, rather than the experience of
monads, is metaphysically basic. The disagreement between Adams and Garber takes place
primarily over the term “substantial form.” Substantial forms, or souls, are one characteristic of
monads and invoke their capacity for expression. Substantial forms also impart metaphysical
3

unity on entities. Garber claims that in the middle period, forms or souls “never exist apart from
the corporeal substances of which they are constituents. A corporeal substance, of course, never
exists without a soul or form either, which would make the corporeal substance depend on the
soul or form too. But even so, my claim would be that when you count up things in the world in
the middle years, the ultimate individuals are not corporeal substance and souls, but corporeal
substances with souls” (Garber, 76, emphasis original).
For Garber, during the middle years entities perceive because they have souls, not
because they are souls. Corporeality grounds both soul and monad. This can be called an
aggregate phenomenalist view, in which aggregates of primary matter metaphysically ground
and gain unity from substantial forms. One can characterize Adams’ opposing view as
intentional object phenomenalism because the expression of monads is metaphysically
fundamental in the constitution of the world. Adams “think[s] it is clear that in both his later and
middle years, the central issue here for Leibniz, and his principal requirement for the existence of
a corporeal substance, is that of an adequate basis for the unity of what would otherwise be a
mere plurality or aggregate. In his middle years he had looked to the pre-established harmony
between soul (or form) and body for such a basis, and that was still the only basis offered by the
monadological metaphysics” (Adams, 57). On an intentional object account, corporeality is
derivative of phenomenality.
I have given a succinct outline of the debate’s major theoretical contention. In the next
section I will elaborate on three themes that run through letters twenty-nine and thirty and their
intimations for adjudicating between the two views.

Unity, transmogrification, and the expressive content of forms

In letters twenty-nine and thirty, one of substantial forms’ central metaphysical features is its
unification of aggregates into a single being. This functions both at the corporeal level and with
aggregates of substantial forms. Leibniz writes that “…something that is truly one single being
must be admitted in bodies – matter or extended mass in itself never being anything but many
beings” (A II, 248). There are an infinite number of substantial forms, and each is full of animate
bodies. A human body is the classic example, divisible into a variety of animate parts which
themselves are monads and have their own substantial forms (the parts which themselves are
divisible…etc.), governed by the overarching substantial form or dominant monad. A “parcel of
4

matter” without a substantial form is a “pure phenomenon” rather than a full Being (A II, 232),
which I take to mean that the matter is expressed but does no expressing.
On the one hand, bodies are infinitely divisible with their parts making up the “immediate
requisites” (A II, 234) to constitute a unified whole. Such a formulation indicates an aggregate
phenomenalist approach, because it presents matter as the basic requisite for wholeness, rather
than wholeness as itself grounding the matter. However, further evidence challenges an
aggregate phenomenalist reading of these letters. For example, elsewhere Leibniz described mass
itself as “pure phenomena” (A II, 232). Form gives determinate being to matter, “it is only
indivisible substances and their different states that are absolutely real” (A II, 249). His
description of the forms’ indestructibility and persistence through the transmogrification of
matter further demonstrates the grounding relation of object intentional phenomenalism.
Substantial forms are indestructible, and seemingly involved in an endless process of
material and perspectival change. Leibniz demonstrates both in his example of the burned ram.
When a ram is burnt to ash “the soul of the burned ram remains in a very small organized body
in order not to expose itself to the fire, and according to me this preservation is infallible.
Knowing whether this animal should be called a ram makes no difference to things” (A II, 236).
The same substantial form which ascribed the animal’s unity now resides in a speck of ash, or
some molecule of carbon. The true nature of substantial forms eludes human perception, since
our minds are largely flawed perceivers of metaphysical reality and our concepts mostly “make
no difference to things.” The material boundaries of substantial forms are ambiguous, their
corporeal manifestations do not have “precise or fixed qualities”. Unity of phenomenon or unity
of thought is not sufficient for what is real in phenomena (A II 250).
Thus, the substantial form retains its identity while undergoing a shift in the mode of its
experiential content. On the one hand this construction could imply an aggregate phenomenalist
grounding relation since the experiential mode of the substantial form’s monad appears
contingent on the structure of the corporeal substance. On the other hand, an intentional object
phenomenalist reading would more fully incorporate the role of concomitance in harmonizing
corresponding changes in the soul and corporeal substance. It would also explicitly acknowledge
the fallaciousness of human perception in ascribing unity. Finally, it can more fully account for
the multiplicity and dynamism of the experiential modes corresponding to a particular substantial
form.
5

Presumably there are as many modes of expression as there are substantial forms. Human
experience such as perception, cognition, sensation, and thought are just a few species of
expression. The distinctness of a soul’s expression has to do with perspectival contingencies and
corresponds to the substantial form’s corporeal manifestation’s material nature and properties (A
II, 231). For example, the mechanisms of expression corresponding to the ram are different than
those corresponding to a piece of ash. A substantial form retains its identity while also
undergoing changes in its mode of expression. I think the immense multiplicity of expressive
modes and the way in which a given substantial form persists through radical qualitative changes
in its expressive content inclines toward an intentional object phenomenalist reading of the
correspondence because it calls into question the consistency of corporeal nature across different
expressive modes. Primary matter may be perceived or expressed with incommensurable
qualitative characteristics across substantial forms, which makes it a trepidatious and ambiguous
grounding. Corporeal substance is thus presented as derivate from the expression of substantial
forms.

Concluding remarks
My analysis shows significant textual evidence for attributing to Leibniz an intentional object
phenomenalist view over an aggregate phenomenalist view on the metaphysics of body during
the time of his correspondence with Arnauld. This correspondence provides an important
window into Leibniz’s thinking during the middle years. The paper has demonstrated support for
Adams’ argument that the phenomenalist idealist framework of the Monadology was a consistent
thread in Leibniz thinking throughout his life. While I see certain ways in which one could
interpret letters twenty-nine and thirty along the aggregate phenomenalist lines that Garber
describes for this period, I think that the textual evidence weighs heavily against Garber’s claim.
At least in October of 1687, phenomenality appears to be a metaphysically basic function in
Leibniz’s metaphysics of body.
6

Texts Used
Garber, D. (2009). Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad. Oxford UP.

Adams, R.M. (2010). Continuity and Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Body: A Response
to Daniel Garber’s Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad. The Leibniz Review (Vol.20), 51-71

Garber, D. (2010). Reply to Robert Sleigh and Robert Adams. The Leibniz Review (Vol.20), 73-79.

Voss, Stephen (2016). The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence. Yale UP.