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| Leibniz versus Newton |
I have a special fondness for Leibniz, a philosopher hardly anyone talks about these days. You might think he has nothing to say about what agitates people these days, or even what they particularly aspire to, for themselves or for the world in general. It was through Leibniz, however, that I met my husband many years ago.
I won’t belabor it, only a few words, since it’s a charming story. For some reason, but in connection with the dissertation I was writing on Goethe, I was in the stacks of the library studying the section of books on Leibniz. A fellow student approached me and asked if I was interested in Isaac Newton. It turns out that the works of Newton in the library were catalogued in the same section. That’s how it started: two random souls in the universe.
Now, to the title of this post. There’s a lot to dislike about New York: the noise of the train pulling into the subway station, the screeching of the metal wheels as it stops. If you’re not rich it can be an assault on your senses. If you allow yourself to stand back and take a look around, distance yourself, other things occur to you. And not specifically the arts and food and other diversions, the “Sunday-best culture,” as Lionel Trilling put it, of museums and Broadway.
It’s the people who for some reason have come to live in this place, despite all its drawbacks. I can’t put myself in their shoes, but they constantly remind me that we are social animals, despite all the all-to-often unsociability that one is subjected to. I am not speaking of the bureaucratic kind, but, rather, on the most ordinary everyday level: the bike riders traveling in the wrong direction; the person who steps in front of you in a crowded market to grab the shopping basket; the gal who carries on a loud conversation on her phone on the bus or subway or even walking a few paces behind you on the street; the neighbor in your building who doesn’t properly separate the trash (thereby attracting rodents, another feature of the city).
What are the implication effect of Leibniz on our being able to put up with these features of urban life?
Monads (as I understand Leibniz) are the building blocks of reality. Human souls are a special kind of monad, a self-sufficient, indivisible, simple substance, self-sufficient because it depends on nothing for its existence. It was created directly by God. Fulguration by God: “all created or derivative monads are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations of the divinity from moment to moment. [G 6:614; AG 219].”
The monad is also indivisible, and this creates a problem, since anything that is touchable, material, or physical is divisible. Think of an apple or a biscuit. Anything with mass, even the smallest piece of an apple, has mass, can be cut and sliced. The only way for the monad to be indivisible is to be immaterial, not to have physical existence. The only way the monad can fulfill the condition of indivisibility; it must not occupy any space. It is not material, touchable, physical.
Got that? Based on this, all the things we interact with in daily life reality are not physical. I.e., not those screeching trains or the obnoxious folks on their phones. And yet we live our lives and interact and touching many things that feel physical.
Imagine yourself sitting sit in a room on a sofa watching TV, talking to your husband. No room, no husband, no TV, no sofa, no interaction. Monads are windowless. It is impossible for one monad to affect another. They are closed and not affected by each other. What really exists is a spirit monad (your own consciousness, your ability to reason, your ability to make plans for the future, your cognitive ability, your memory). God simulates an interaction between the two of you, one you think you are having with your husband.
You can extrapolate this to the whole world, even to the urban life of New York. It is the best world it is possible to make. The evil we have now is necessary for experiencing good. War is needed for courage to exist. All in the balance of the universe.
There is beauty in the world, which has been created for us to enjoy. For instance, my darling husband. We must seek our own joy and leave aside all those irritations that can blight the joys.
This is the only world we have.
Image credit: The Partially Examined Life
