Leibniz was a genius
philosopher, and his thoughts expressed in aphoristic form are priceless for
any such collection. As always, I am not motivated by quoting for quote sake.
In my personal selection of favorites, I am omitting many of his most famous, signature quotes, to focus on those
only, to which I can relate in the explicitly idiosyncratic manner, to which my
accompanying comments provide all necessary corroboration. So, here they are,
his quotes and my comments.---
---“To love is to be delighted by the happiness
of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define
this as true love.” (The Elements of True Piety; circa 1677.)
This
thought of a younger Leibniz rings a very powerful bell in my memory. This is
what my mother used to tell me, in a slightly different way, as I reveal in my
posted entry Proof Of True Friendship (February
11th, 2012). There it says
that the truest friend is revealed not so much in need as in his or her ability
to be happy upon your happiness, as if it were their own. The parallel is clear
… I wonder if my mother was somehow paraphrasing Leibniz, or, far more likely,
had come up with this wisdom independently, out of her life experience…
---“Omne possibile exigit existere.”
(“Everything
that is possible demands to exist.”) (De veritatibus primis;
1686.)
Here’s
one of the most profound ideas formulated on behalf of philosophy and
science... I am jokingly alluding here to Kant’s famous boast, but otherwise, I
am quite serious. The only catch is not to decide this matter ex post facto (It exists, ergo it was possible), but to
ideate a possibility before the actual existence is discovered… The more I
think about it, the more I realize how breathtaking this Leibniz thought truly
is!
---“It
is necessary to act conformably to the presumptive will of God, in so far as we
are able to judge of it, trying with all our might to contribute to the general
welfare and particularly to the ornamentation and the perfection of that which
touches us, or of that which is nigh and, so to speak, at our hand.” (Discours
de Metaphysique; 1686.)
Need I spell it out that Leibniz wrote
this long before Kant would come up with his Categorical Imperative, and a very similar discourse on the
principles of moral behavior?
--“One cannot explain words without making
incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from the dictionaries;
and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining
its terms.”
(Of the Division of the Sciences, Book 4,
Chapter 21; written in 1704; published in 1765).
Definitions, definitions, definitions! Haven’t we been here before? But Leibniz was here long before
us. Oh, yes, our friend Epictetus had been near the same place long before
Leibniz, but not in such a sophisticated manner, tying science with
linguistics, and words with scientific terms…
---“Now this supreme wisdom, united to goodness
that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. For, as a lesser
evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil, once it stands
in the way of a greater good; and it would be something to correct in the
actions of God if it were possible to the better. As in mathematics, when there
is no maximum nor minimum, in short, nothing distinguished, everything is done
equally, or when that is not, nothing at all is done: so it may be said likewise
in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than mathematics, that
if there were not the best (optimum)
among all possible worlds, God would not have produced any.” (Theodicy:
Essays on the Goodness of God and Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil; 1710.)
I
invite the reader already familiar with my treatment of evil as a product of
the freedom of choice to make a comparison here with Leibniz’ proposition. In
matters of choice, “a lesser evil” indicates a better choice, and therefore, a
good thing, when compared to the “greater evil” of the wrong choice, which is a
bad thing. On the other hand, “a lesser good” does indeed turn itself into a
bad thing, even if it is intrinsically good, if we compare it to the “greater
good,” which must be the one and only good thing, in matters of choice. This
consideration, so important to our thinking about the freedom of choice,
organically brings Leibniz to his most famous idea of our world being “the best of all possible worlds” on the
grounds of the logical conclusion that “the
second best” is a bad thing…
---“Music is the pleasure which the human mind
experiences from counting, without being aware that it is counting.” (from Leibniz’ Letter to Christian Goldbach, of April 17, 1712.)
It is absolutely delightful to find this
comparison of music to mathematics although it becomes less original in the
shadow of a similar effort made by Leibniz’ senior partner Pythagoras. Yet, it
was not Pythagoras but Leibniz whom Schopenhauer would later choose to
paraphrase in Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung: Book I, as: “Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum
nescientis se philosophari animi.”
(“Music is a hidden metaphysical exercise
of the soul, which does not know that it is philosophizing.”)
“There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible:
truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is
necessary, reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas
and truths, until we come to those which are primary.” (Monadologie;
1714.)
This
passage is very close to my two related lines of thinking on the question of truth. On the one hand, my skepticism
about the” truth of fact” finds a genius champion in Leibniz, whom in the
future I can always be calling as an expert witness on this subject. On the
other hand, my concept of “truth of creation” holds well here, considering that
the only “lie” to be concerned about there, would be an internal contradiction.
Thus, my verification of truth in this instance, would be a thorough analysis
and careful reasoning which turns the truth of this nature into a necessity, in
the absence of self-contradictions, and its opposite within the framework of
the same “fiction,” a total impossibility, as the said opposite immediately
exposes itself as an internal contradiction, and therefore a lie.
---“These principles have given me a way of
explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual conformity of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows
its own laws and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with
each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances,
since they are all representations of one and the same universe.” (Monadologie;
1714.)
Remember
Nietzsche’s splendid observation to the effect that we are by no means masters
of our thoughts, as they come and go on their own will, not ours. Curiously,
the Leibniz passage above addresses the same question (“the soul follows its own laws and the body likewise follows its own
laws”), but he resolves this paradox immediately by stressing that they are
not totally disattached, which would have been an absurdity, but that “they agree with each other in virtue of the
pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all
representations of one and the same universe.”
---“A great doctor kills more people than a
great general.” (Alas, I have not been able,
so far, to ascertain the Leibniz work, from which this wonderful quote has been
sprung.)
Doctor
James Tyler Kent, my frequently mentioned homoeopathic authority, and a great
philosophizer too, candidly admits that before a physician reaches the end of
his practice, he sends a lot of patients to the other world, as a direct result
of his mistakes, but the difference between an average doctor and a great
doctor is that the latter always learns a lot from each of his lethal mistakes,
and thus gains a priceless experience that he starts using in much more
rewarding instances of spectacular patient healing.
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