Idéalisme et réalisme chez Leibniz. La métaphysique monadologique face à une métaphysique de la substance corporelle

Abstract

In this paper we inquire whether Leibniz’s metaphysics of the body has undergone a significant change in the last twenty years of his life. This metaphysical conception seems incompatible with the late monadological conclusions. Yet, to explain the body in terms of monadic subordination makes soul and body inseparably united. Far from there being two incompatible ontologies in Leibniz’s late philosophy, we find a seamless connection between what is monadic and what is organic: a single point of view that includes the order of bodies and that of monadic substrates, and a system that accounts for all levels of reality. Ultimately, our topic is whether Leibniz was a realist metaphysician, an idealist one, or whether in the philosophy of his maturity he tried to reconcile the two tendencies.

English title: Idealism and realism in Leibniz. Monadological metaphysics versus a metaphysics of corporeal substance