ThePhilosophyCenter: Rationalism #2

 Hello!

Another relevant rationalist philosophers is Gottfried Leibniz, a rationalist philsopher. We will do his philosopher profile first before delving deeper.

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CHARACTER PROFILE: GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Born: 1645, Leipzig, Germany.

Died: 1716, Hanover, Germany.

Works:Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, Monadology, the Discourse on Metaphysics, etc.

Ideas: Rationalism, Theory of Monads, 

Text Intro: Leibniz is a polymath, meaning he had knowledge in many topics, butnhe also was a rationalist philosopher. He contributed greatly to mathematics, particularly calculus. He was religious.

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According to Leibniz, there was such thing as monads, which will be important later. What are monads? In usual terminology, monad an means a singular unit, anything, but in Leibniz' philosophy it has a similar yet slightly different meaning, a singular and indivisible (so infinitely simple) unit, whether it be an atom or person. We can see that "mono" is one (other examples of this word appears in "monochrome", "monomania", "monologue"), so monad  is a simple, singular unit. In his work "Monadology", he says that all knowledge is availabke through rational reflection but due to rational imperfection, experience is also needed. According to him, everything in the universe is connected and there sre two kinds of truths, truths of reasoning (since everything is connected, we can reflect something we already know to know more) and truths of fact (experience-based). 

Here is where monads come into play. Monads are needed to explain how very different things are related. There are many monads, and each have a representation of the chronology of the universe, and since the human mind is a monad, we can reflect and use what we have to know things through reflection. 

The trouble is that if we separate these neccesary and contingent truths (neccesary being through reflection and contingent being through experience, neccesary truths are uncontradictable to him). But why separate the two groups when truths from either groups are the same in our mind, a monad? 

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