Heidegger's Leibniz and Abyssal Identity

Continental Philosophy Review 36: 303–324, 2003. © 2003 K luwer luwer Academic Publishers. PrintedAND in theABYSSAL Netherlands. HEIDEGGER ’S LEIBNIZ IDENTITY

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Heidegger’s Heidegger’s Leibniz and abyssal identity

DANIEL J. SELCER Department of Philosophy, Philosophy, Duquesne University, University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA PA 15282, USA (E-mail: [email protected]) [email protected])

Abstract. When Heidegger pursues his destructive interpretation of Leibniz’s doctrine of

judgment, he ident ifies a principle of “abyssal ground” ground ” and a concealed metaphysics metaphysi cs of truth that undermine the priority of logic with respect to ontology. ontology. His reading turns on an account of Leibniz’s methodological methodological generation of metaphysical principles and the relation between reason and identity, which, I argue, is at once deeply flawed and extremely productive. This essay pursues the implications of Heidegger’s Heidegger’s quickly abandoned suggestion that Leibniz’s principle of identity is reflexively self-grounding, arguing that this claim makes possible a rigorous interpretation interpretation of Leibnizian method as an abyssal logic of repetition. I hold that the identification of such a methodology requires a modified account of the metaphysics of truth operative in Leibniz that reinvigorates Heidegger’s reading even while moving beyond his now exhausted trope of a hidden presupposition of subjectivity. subjectivity.

At a key point in his analysis of various ways of “hearing” Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason during the 1955/56 Freiburg lectures (published as Der Satz vom Grund ), ), Heidegger insists that the principle of Grund is at the same time a principle of Abgrund Abgrund . That is, the principle on which Leibniz founds the epistemological domain is in fact that of the t he absence or vanishing of foundation, and of the revelation of nothingness in the heart of being. 1 While every being has its sufficient reason for Leibniz, Heidegger’s rearticulation of the principle “lets us hear an accord [ Zusammenklang] between being and reason,” where “to being there belongs something like reason” (GA 10, 76/50). Thus, the most thoroughly epistemological of Leibniz’s many methodological principles is displaced into the ontological realm where it decisively impacts the question of being. To To say that “being qua being grounds” is to grasp the essence of being as Grund . But if the essence of being is ground, then “being can never first have a ground which would supposedly ground it,” and “ground is missing from being” (GA 10, 76/51). As the principle of grounding reason, being is itself groundless. groundles s. It is the origin of ground and the abyss of reason. This logic of the abyssal ground dominates Heidegger’s interpretation of Leibnizian metaphysics. In a much earlier and more traditionally scholarly

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engagement with Leibnizian principles (the Summer 1928 Marburg lectures published as Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik ), ), one of Heidegger’s primary concerns again was the status of the principle of sufficient reason. 2 As in the later lectures, sufficient reason turns out to be abyssal in nature. In Freiburg, everything turned on the identity of ground or reason and being. But in Marburg, Heidegger already recognized that such an identity could never be established without engaging the principle of identity. Where the Freiburg lectures proceed from an argument for the identity identit y of ground and being to the displacement of ground from being – because being is ground, being is groundless – the earlier Marburg lectures concern the status of Leibnizian identity as such. On the basis of this t his conjunction of the principles of ground and ideni dentity, I will argue that: (1) Heidegger presents a plausible and productive interpretation of Leibniz’s critique of the Cartesian criteria for truth, and this interpretation transforms the usual reduction of Leibnizian identity to the formal logic of A = A into an identity of the multiple; (2) while in some respects inadequate and incomplete, Heidegger ’s understanding of the problem of the derivation of Leibnizian metaphysical principles principl es opens the question of the abyssal grounding of method in the t he Leibniz’s work; (3) a rigorous analysis of Leibnizian method is possible pos sible on the basis of the very text that Heidegger Hei degger abandons for its lack of clearly delineated delinea ted ordering principles; and (4) the resulting Leibnizian strategy – which I describe as a form of methodological repetition – requires that we modify and extend Heidegger’s characterization of the Leibnizian “metaphysics of truth” and provides an indication of a general problematic in early modern rationalism. Heidegger’s Leibniz 1: the identity of the multiple

How does the problem of identity arise for Heidegger Hei degger in his reading of Leibniz, and what is its connection to the principle of ground? Through a beautiful reading of two short but crucial Leibnizian texts te xts in §§3–4 in the Marburg lectures (“Principia logico-metaphysica” of 1689 and “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” of 1684), Heidegger discovers a tension between two of Leibniz’s explanations of the nature of truth (GA 26, 64–86/52–69). 3 On the one hand, truth is defined in relation to a proposition, as idem esse. But on the other, it is defined in relation to Leibniz’s idea of knowledge as such, as adaequate intuitive perceptum. How, Heidegger asks, can these two definitions of truth be reconciled? What does being identical i dentical have to do with adequate intuitive perception? Heidegger will argue that they are reconcilable (and in fact, identical), but only insofar as we recognize that there are two

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distinct notions of identity operative in Leibniz. One is the empty and formal identity of the same, whose exemplar is logical equivalence (A = A). But the other is the unity of what is different, “compatibility without conflict” [widerstreitfreie Verträglichkeit ] (GA 26, 85/68). This identity of the different on the basis of compatibility is clearly linked to Leibniz’s monadological ontology, where each monad is absolutely and irreducibly singular, yet also an ontologically reflective repetition re petition of totality, a “perpetual living mirror of the universe” (G 6, 617/648). 4 Leibniz, Heidegger argues, is wrong to import the first interpretation of identity (the identity of the same) into his philosophical project, or rather, he was bound to do so by his reliance on a Cartesian analogy between subject and ground. But at the same time, Heidegger holds that it is Leibniz’s philosophical thinking itself that makes possible the articulation of the latter interpretation of identity. How is Heidegger able to sustain this claim? Or perhaps more interestingly, inte restingly, from what elements of Leibnizian thought does Heidegger draw a notion of identity that is predicated on the reconciliation (and not the elimination) of difference? Before we can begin with the second piece Heidegger engages, it is important to consider that “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” deals with many of the key issues for the Neo-Kantian interpretation interpretati on of Leibniz against which Heidegger’s own lectures were set, especially the dominant early twentieth century commentaries by Ernst Cassirer (1902) and Louis Couturat (1901). 5 Each of them saw Leibniz’s Leibniz’s metaphysics and ontology as consequences of his epistemological and scientific commitments. Since Leibniz provides something that looks like an unbroken hierarchy of kinds of knowledge culminating in perfect and intuitive perception, they held that Kant was ultimately correct to charge Leibniz with taking the difference betw een knowledge and intuition to be one of degree rather than kind, and thus with the illegitimate extension of reason beyond its proper bounds. Where Cassirer was fundamentally interested in the historical hist orical and conceptual role that Leibniz played in the formation of modern mechanics (especially his conflict with Newton) and subsequently in the development of a Kantian notion of dialectical reason, Couturat saw an opportunity to reassert a Leibnizian metaphysical approach in the face of resurgent Kantianism. Just as Leibniz deduces mathematical and epistemological definitions from his basic logical principles in “Initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica,” Couturat seeks to account for the possibility of a similar deduction deducti on of Leibnizian monadology.6 But for both Couturat and Cassirer, Leibnizian logic ultimately grounds Leibnizian metaphysics. When Heidegger steps in, it is to implicitly charge both these interpret ers with failing to interrogate the eminently Leibnizian principle of ground, foundation, or reason, and thus with having built their analyses on shifting sands by uncritically

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presupposing the meaning of the very principle principl e through which their readings are refracted. Thus, Leibniz’s “Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics” becomes The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, and the epistemological hierarchy by which Cassirer and Couturat authorized their interpretations becomes (at its key point) anything but hierarchical. How does this occur? Heidegger does not deny that the basic hierarchy exists.7 Cassirer and Couturat are absolutely correct, he implies, to see Leibniz as launching a systematic critique of Descartes’ rule of clarity and distinctness by complicating the different kinds and criteria of ideas a nd knowledge. A concept may be obscure, where “it does not suffice for recognizing the thing represented,” or clear, “when it makes it possible for me to recognize the thing represented.” Clear knowledge is either confused, “when I cannot enumerat e one by one the marks which are sufficient to distinguish the thing from others,” or distinct, when I am able to distinguish the thing from all others “by sufficient marks and observations.” And distinct knowledge, in turn, is either inadequate, when the marks that allow for the distinctness of the concept are known only clearly enough for me to distinguish the thing from other things “but nevertheless confusedly,” or adequate, “when every ingredient that enters into a distinct concept is itself known distinctly, or when analysis is carried through to the end.” So far, so good: Descartes was mistaken in restricting his criteria for truth to clarity and distinctness, and he failed to see that clear and distinct concepts could also be adequate or inadequate. But Leibniz adds a final distinction to his epistemological system: an adequate concept can either be blind and symbolic, when “we do not intuit the entire nature of the s ubject matter at once but make use of signs instead of things,” or perfect and intuitive, when we can “think simultaneously of all the concepts which compose it” (A 6, iv-A, 585–588/291–292). With this final distinction, Heidegger steps into the fray. Where previous interpreters (including Kant) took this smooth progression from clarity to distinctness, distinctness disti nctness to adequacy, and adequacy to intuition as proof that Leibniz takes intellectual intuition merely to be a more intensive degree of all other forms of knowing, Heidegger suggests that while whi le each of the earlier distinctions “refers to a stage of analysis, analys is, a step in making explicit marks and moments of marks” (GA 26, 78/63), the shift to perfect intuitive i ntuitive adequacy (as well as its negative form, blind and symbolic adequacy) is simply not a part of the hierarchy. “Intuition is not a still higher degree of analysis,” he says, “but a mode of appropriation of the highest stage of analysis, i.e., of its result, of cognitio adequata” (GA 26, 79/64). But how could this be? What grounds this sudden shift of interpretation of the status of Leibniz’s epistemological framework?


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The basis for this transition is nothing other than the problem of identity. Leibniz is quite clear that not all concepts are even capable of being known intuitively “outside the mind of God.” Indeed, complex concepts admit of infinite analysis, and thus only an infinite infinit e intellect would be capable of intuiting them without the use of a symbolic framework, no matter how adequate they might be. So what kind of concept is it that we can grasp intuitively? Only a “primitive concept,” a term that Leibniz always uses interchangeably with “identity.” And what does this mean? It indicates nothing more or less than that the kind of concept whose truth we can know by simultaneously grasping “all of the concepts which compose it” must be a concept that was never composed to begin with, one that is simple in the sense of lacking all aggregation (A 6, iv-A, 587–588/292). This, however, is a disappointing answer for Heidegger. Or rather, rather, it would be disappointing if he were simply willing to t o accept the assumption that identity and lack of aggregation implied the absence of multiplicity; it would be disappointing, that is, if identity were we re merely a lack of difference and the formality of A = A. But this is not the meaning of intuition for Leibniz, Heidegger argues, which is instead a “double way of appropriating and possessing the adequate” (GA 26, 78/63). Remember that intuition is “a mode of the appropriation” of adequation, a way of grasping adequate knowledge of identities . “In adequate knowledge, that which is known is the totum of the requisita,” Heidegger writes, “that which, as a whole, constitutes cons titutes the reality of a thing.” The totality of the essential determinations determinat ions of the thing is what adequate knowledge grasps, and this totality “is the possibilitas, that which makes possible the thingness of the thing” (GA 26, 84/68). Even a simple thing, identical with itself, a “metaphysical point,” requires an internal interna l multiplicity understood as determinate possibility. possibility. It contains, as Leibniz repeats throughout his vast corpus, an entire world. Thus, this totality must now be thought of as a unit y, not in the aggregational sense of the collection of a series of disparate parts, but as the organic compatibility of a singular and self-identical thing. Indeed, claims Heidegger, “incompatibility taken as conflict breaks apart, as it were, the essence of a thing; it falls fa lls apart and ‘can’ not ‘be’.” And thus, “Adequate knowledge is the total grasp of the harmony of multiplicity” multipli city” (GA 26, 84/68). Heidegger’s Heidegger ’s initial problem was the reconciliation of two seemingly incompatible definitions of truth in Leibniz. The criterion of adaequate intuitive perceptum appeared to be incompatible with the propositional truth of idem i s the very essence of the former. An intuiesse. But it turns out that the latter is tive grasp of adequate knowledge of a thing can only be an intuition of identity. And this identity of identity and intuition means that the singularity of Leibnizian identity has exploded into the multiplicity mul tiplicity and differentiation of a

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world, such that Leibnizian identity (and even self-identity) cannot imply lack of differentiation. Thus, Heidegger concludes, “Identity does not then basically refer to an empty uniformity stripped of difference. On the contrary, it means the entire richness of real determinations in their compatibility without conflict. Identity is not the negative concept of the absence of all differentiation. It is, conversely, the idea of the unisonous unity of what is different” [ Ein-stimmung Ein-stimmung des Verschiedenen Verschiedenen] (GA 26, 84/68). Heidegger admits that this exploded identity of the multiple is clearly not always what Leibniz has in mind. As mentioned, Heidegger sees Leibniz’s reliance on what is ultimately a Cartesian, Cartesi an, ego-centric ontology as depending on the “empty formality” of the logical identity of A = A (this position will be explored in greater detail below). Leibniz’s identification of intuition and identity thus depends on its derivation from “the simplicitas Dei as the guiding ideal of what, in the genuine genui ne sense, is” (GA 26, 85/69). Indeed, Heidegger’s Heidegger ’s analysis of “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” establishes only one direction of the identity of adaequate intuitive perceptum and idem esse; it demonstrates how adequate intuition can embrace an identity rethought as the compatibility of the multiple. But how is it that the logical concept of identity can be reconciled with its methodological and epistemological iteration? Heidegger’s Leibniz 2: derivation and order

It is on the basis of this question that Heidegger turns (or in the proper order of the Marburg lectures, had already turned) to Leibniz’s “Principia logicometaphysica.” Heidegger ’s analysis of this text will only leave us in the aporia detailed above: the incompatibility of a compatibilist, multiple, differentiated identity with a formal, empty, and logical one. Thus, for Heidegger, while Leibniz’s thought resonates with a “new tonality” [ neue Tonart ] of identity, it ultimately fails in its articulation. As proof for this, Heidegger cites Leibniz’s frequent attempts at the logical deduction of the principle of identity from the principle of sufficient reason (and thus, for Heidegger, from the concept of Grund ). ). Through an examination of Heidegger’s Heidegger ’s reading of the derivation of Leibnizian principles and the relation between sufficient reason and identity in “Principia logico-metaphysica,” I want to suggest that Heide gger actually (and perhaps unwittingly, though I won’t insist on that) opens a new abyss for our understanding of Leibniz and early modern rationalism rationalis m in general. This Abgrund cannot be mapped precisely onto the groundlessness of being in Der Satz vom Grund , but is rather a structural mise en abîme of methodological


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repetition. I hold that if we pay particular parti cular attention to a special case c ase of Leibniz’s principle of identity (namely, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles), then the role of identity in the formulation formula tion of the principle of reason involves a methodology based on abyssal repetition. Furthermore, while he does not Heidegger himself who suggests this. pursue its implications, it is Heidegger himself Again, a bit of historical histori cal context is in order. When Heidegger takes up the problem of the order of derivation of metaphysical principles in “Principia logico-metaphysica,” logico-metaphysica,” he is stepping into an old interpretive melee. As Heidegger himself points out, Wolff and Baumgarten were the first to atte mpt to derive the principle of sufficient reason from the principle of contradiction, thus making noncontradiction the principle of all knowledge. This gesture is likewise an attempt to force ground to submit to identity (in the logical sense), since it takes the principle of noncontradiction to be the negative expression of the principle of identity. But this interpretation, Heidegger claims, “goes counter to Leibniz and especially to the problems themselves” (GA 26, 65/ 52). After Baumgarten and Wolff Wolff (and in response to them), Kant reversed the order of derivation, arguing in the pre-critical Principorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio that contradiction and identity must derive from “the principle of determining ground.” 8 In one sense, Heidegger’s conclusion that “the principle of reason holds first rank” among all Leibnizian principles (GA 26, 68/55) is simply an affirmation of Kant’s perspective on the matter. At the same time, Heidegger wants to preserve an ambiguity in the relation among the principles of reason, contradiction, and identity, denying that they are “‘linearly’ deducible” and positing their equiprimordiality. On the other hand, he concludes his reading of “Principia logico-metaphysica” by indicating that “the inner constitution of this equiprimordiality” is still a question, as is “the ground which makes it possible” (GA 26, 69/56). Thus, even while Heidegger denies logical preeminence to the principle of Grund or ratio, he affirms its ontological priority (something that takes the form of the transcendence of Dasein in later sections of the Marburg lectures). Leibniz is often understood to associate the principle of noncontradiction with “truths of reason” (concepts whose contrary implies a contradiction), and the principle of sufficient reason with “truths of fact.” While clai ms depending on noncontradiction are logically necessary, those depending on sufficient reason are contingent. For obvious reasons, Heidegger takes this assignation of necessity and contingency to be something of an oversimplification. If nothing is without reason, but truths of reason rea son depend only on noncontradiction, than it would be precisely reason that is without ground. This is fallacious, insofar as we hear only the “usual tonality” of the principle of reason (in the language of the later Freiburg lectures: “ Nothing is without reason”).

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But it is acceptable if we leap ahead to the new sonority of “Nothing is without reason” where, since ratio and Grund are one and the same, it is precisely reason that is abyssal (GA 10, 75–77/50–52). In the context of the Marburg lectures, Heidegger is concerned wi th complicating this relationship between contingency contingenc y and necessity precisely in order to think the connection among identity, reason, and contradiction. He associates the principle of identity with Leibniz’s primary truths – identities – that “wear their identity character for all to see” (GA 26, 65/52). Such identities need no grounding, but “this does not mean that they are groundless; on the contrary, they are themselves ground” (GA 26, 65/53) (I will return to the implications of this claim below). The “usual truths” (both necessary and contingent), meanwhile, fall under the principle of sufficient reason, which Heidegger rewrites as “the principle of demonstrating grounds” [ Grundsatz des aufzuweisenden Grundes] or “the principle of the need for proof” [ Grundsatz der Beweisbedürftigkeit ] (GA 26, 65/53). Every “derivative” truth is thus referred to the principle of reason. Here Heidegger has broken decisively with the interpretive tradition that assigns the necessity for grounding only to contingent truths. Instead, necessary truths have a dual reference: they require both the principle of reason and the principle of contradiction. This is the first labyrinthine reversal in Heidegger’s analysis. Necessary truths are, according to Leibniz, directly reducible to identities. ident ities. And insofar as conceptual necessity denotes the contrary of a concept containing a contradiction, such reducibility, holds Heidegger, implies accordance with identities: “What is not in accord but in discord with identities ‘speaks against’ (contra-dicts) identities and contains a contradiction.” Thus, “reducibility to identities denotes a noncontradiction” (GA 26, 66/53). However, insofar as identities depend de pend on the principle of noncontradiction, they also depend on the principle of sufficient reason (i.e., der Satz vom Grund ). ). That is, the principle of noncontradiction depends on the principle of reason, so the latter must be more primordial than the former. And still more strangely, the principle of noncontradiction is reducible to the principle of identity, so “it cannot be restricted to a class of identities, but must be related to all identities, and therefore also to contingent truths” (GA 26, 67/54). Heidegger’s analysis of the order of derivation of Leibniz’s metaphysical principles has thrown them all into a muddle of mutual dependence and seeming equiprimordiality. equiprimordi ality. Yet Yet they cannot be equiprimordial, since each implies a demand that the others submit to a relation of dependence. Identity is by definition self-constituting and cannot involve external relation to another, especially when raised to the status of principle. However, without the principle of sufficient reason and its insistence on the grounding of all truths in


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identity, there could be no reduction reducti on to identity as such. Yet Yet reason or ground also requires identity, for ground or reason can never be external to that which is grounded. Meanwhile, ground alone is incapable of constituting itself with regard to necessary truths, whose grounds depend on their noncontradiction. Still, reducibility to identities already implies noncontradiction, and thus must be subsequent to it in the order of derivation. Without being able to posit a clearly defensible order of derivation or priority, Heidegger concludes that “identity “identity is. . . the basic feature feature of the being of all all beings” and “the “the principle principle of reason holds first rank, albeit unclearly, among the principles” principles ” (GA 26, 68/ 55). The result of this analysis of “Principia logico-metaphysica” is simply Zusammenh ang] among identity, the “connection” [ Zusammenhang identity, noncontradiction, and ground. As mentioned above, Heidegger takes t akes Leibniz to be unjusti unjustified fied in his extension of priority to the principle of reason in his lust for a linear and logical derivation of metaphysical principles. Thus, he holds that Leibniz ultimately fails to see the full possibility for the explosion of identity into differentiated compatibility. But there is more to say here. Perhaps it is possible to hear one of Heidegger’s Heidegge r’s own claims regarding identity with a “new tonality” tonal ity” and to discover an abyss at the heart of Leibniz’s principle of identity. Recall that Heidegger associated the principle of identity with Leibniz’s primary, simple, empty, formal, Der Satz vom Grund , these logical truths. In accordance with the argument of Der identities need no grounding because they are themselves ground. Leibnizian identities are self-identical reasons – the groundless abyss of ground. Thus, says Heidegger, “The principle of the knowledge of primary prima ry truths is nothing other than the most elementary of primary truths. The criterion, identity, is itself the first truth and the source of truth. t ruth. Accordingly, Accordingly, we should note that this principle does not remain extrinsic to those cognitive statements for which it is the guiding principle. Rather, it itself belongs to the statements as their first statement” (GA 26, 65/52). With this stunning description of the reflexivity of the principle of identity, Heidegger opens the door for what I take to be one of the most fundamental methodological strategies of early modern rationalism: the constitution const itution of singularity via methodological methodologi cal repetition. We have already seen the sense in which Heidegger used a careful analysis of Leibniz’s epistemological hierarchy of truths to explode the Le ibnizian concept of identity, transforming its formal logicality into a mode of singularity that embraced the totality of differential compatibility. compati bility. If we take a step back from the Marburg lectures into Leibniz’s “Principia logico-metaphysica” and engage the very principle that defines ontological ontologic al singularity, then Heidegger’s suggestion regarding primary, primary, identical truths will allow us to find a way back into the problem of the order of derivation. Ultimately, it will provide a means

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for reconciling the static logical identity of “Principia logico-metaphysica” with the differential identity of “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, veritat e, et ideis.”9 Leibnizian identity and methodological repetition

We still need to consider the question of the metaphysical principle that governs Leibnizian singularity, namely, namely, the principle of the identity of indiscernibl indisc ernibles. es. Beyond its mediation by Wolff Wolff in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuce nturies, this principle was primarily propagated through the English, French, and German editions of Leibniz’s correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Since t hat correspondence was in effect a battle by proxy with Newton, muc h of the exchange is devoted to arguments for and against Leibnizian and Newtonian conceptions of space and time. Are they containers and measures for the objects that appear within them, or orders of existence that are only insofar as they are expressed by the relation of existent things? Is space an empty field in which existent objects appear and relative to which they take up a position, or an order of simultaneous coexistence in which the position of a thing is relative only to the contents of its concept (contents that are reflected in the object’s apparent spatial relation to other objects)? Is time, too, a container and measure, now of motion across space, or the non-simultaneous order of the existence of things, a well-founded phenomenon depending depending merely on our finite and confused perception of an ultimately simultaneous reality? Relative to arguments about space, time, and our perception of them, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles is taken primarily in its negative sense: “There is no such thing as two individuals indiscernible from each other” (G 7, 372/687), or “I infer from the principle of sufficient reason, among other consequences, that there are not in nature two real, absolute beings, indiscernible from each other, because, if there were, God and nature would act without reason in ordering the one otherwise than the other; and that therefore God does not produce two pieces of matter perfectly equal and alike,” etc. (G 7, 393/699).10 This implication of the principle is fairly straightforward (if vigorously contested by Newton, and later, Kant) as well as negative. It tells us that there cannot be two existent things differentiated by number or spatial location alone. While Leibniz expresses it most often as “no difference solo numero ,” his earlier articulations place a greater emphasis on the reason for this lack of distinction between perfectly similar things, namely that each individual thing does and must possess an internal principle of differentiation. Thus the positive side of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles is less a negation of the identity similars than it i t is an affirmation of the individuation


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of each and every singular thing. Rather than a principle of the multiplicity of things, it is formulated formul ated as a principle of their individuality. There is no difference solo numero or merely by location in space precisely because both numerical singularity and spatial location are effects of the unique internal conceptual conce ptual structure of any given thing. That said, let us turn to Leibniz’s methodological derivation of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles in “Principia logico-metaphysica,” where he brings together conceptual and ontological singularity with a curious mode of methodological repetition. The status of this derivation is extremely important in its historical reception, obsessing Kant in his pre-critical writings Vernunft ), (and to a lesser extent in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft ), Hegel in his account of the Leibnizian monad in Wissenschaft der Logik , and, obviously, Heidegger in the Marburg lectures. “Principia “Principi a logico-metaphysica” is important here both because it is the locus of Heidegger’s Heidegger ’s analysis and because in it Leibniz is not concerned with demonstrating principles regarding the vari ous modes of our knowledge of existent things, but with providing a priori grounds for the systematic deduction of basic metaphysical principles. principl es. In this context, Leibniz’s arguments present something akin to an immanent logical deduction of concepts, and then describe that logic as a methodology. In other words, in “Principia logico-metaphysica” logico-metaphysica” we have the description of a method for metaphysics that dispenses with the need for a methodological subject and turns out itself to be identical with the logical considerations at hand (or at least, as I discuss below, with the rule-governed character of thought). In what follows, I am not concerned as much with the contents of this articulation of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles as with the form of its methodological generation. It is still worth quoting in full: [On the basis of first truths] it also follows that there cannot be two singular things [res singulares] that differ only numerically. For surely there must be a reason for their are distinction, and this reason reas on must derive from some difference they contain. Thus the observation of Thomas Aquinas about separate intelligences, which he declared never to differ in number alone, must be applied to other things also. Never are two eggs, two leaves, or two blades of grass in a garden to be found exactly similar to each other. So perfect similarity occurs only in incomplete and abstract concepts, where things are conceived, not in their totality but according to a certain single viewpoint, as when we consider only onl y figures and neglect the figured matter. So geometry is right in studying similar triangles, even though two perfectly similar material triangles are never found. And though gold or some other metal, or salt, and many liquids may be taken for homogeneous bodies, this can be admitted only as concerns the senses and not as if it were true in the exact sense (A 6, iv-B, 1645/268). 11

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Of course, before Leibniz generates this version versi on of the principle, he begins at the Leibnizian beginning with a notion of first truths or identities as “those which assert the same thing of itself or deny the opposite of its opposite,” exemplified by various logical and metaphysical formulations of the principles of identity and contradiction: “A “ A is A” and “A is not non-A,” “everything is what it is,” is ,” “if it is true that A is B, then it is false that A is not B,” “nothing is greater or less than itsel itself,” f,” etc. (A 6, iv-B, 1644/267). The self-evidence of these identities forms the methodological basis for an a priori deduction of a series of metaphysical principles via the analysis and definition of concepts. One begins with a definition and subsequently analyses it by means of these identical propositions. This method is possible on the basis of the oft-repeated axiom that predication is internal predication: the predicate inheres in the subject. In identities, this inclusion is an explicit or expressed one, while in all other propositions it is implicit and thus requires analysis. Leibniz proposes that there is a set of primary propositions whose logical structures s tructures are developed or unfolded in their abstract simplicity, while all other concepts carry their predicates implicated or folded within them. The primary role of an identity is to make possible the unfolding or explication of the predicate s implicit in complex ideas, i.e. to express the predicates hidden within the striated surface of complex concepts. We might expect, then, that what follows would w ould have the status of a series of metaphysical examples: the secret, implicit contents of various concepts unfolded a priori by means of identical propositions. But Leibniz’s method is somewhat stranger than it first appears. Rather than instrumentally applying first truths to complex propositions, Leibniz introduces a logic of “resolution.” Not only do we use first truths to unfold the content of complex concepts, but the results of this unfolding are also themselves first truths, as complexity (the inner differentiation of the concept) is resol ved into simplicity (the identity of the concept with itself). It is precisely here that Heidegger ’s startling claim regarding the identity of primary truths and their principle comes into play. With his insight in mind, we can see that in the methodological analysis of concepts, identities repeat themselves: they are at once the simple methodological elements applied to complexity and also the res ults of that application. So as Leibniz moves to the deduction of a series of metaphysical principles, the very methodological repetition of identities in the analysis of concepts becomes the ground on which the generation of metaphysical principles rests. The relation between implicated and explicated predication, according to Leibniz, is the proof for the validity of principles. For example, the princieffect um esse ple of sufficient reason (here: nihil esse sine ratione, seu nulla effectum


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absque causa) is not itself a first truth, despite Leibniz’s later characteriza-

tion of it as one of the “two great principles on which our reasoni ng is based” (G 6, 65/646). 12 Rather, it is derived from the relation between identical and complex concepts via the analytical analyt ical resolution of the latter latt er into the former. If this principle were not the case, Leibniz writes, then “there would be truth which could not be proved a priori or resolved into identities, which would be contrary to the nature of truth, which is always al ways either explicitly or implicimpli c13 itly identical” (A 6, iv-B, 1644–1645). Thus, the proof required for metaphysical principles is constituted by the relation among (1) an interpretation regarding the nature of truth (the predicate is contained in the subject), (2) a methodological reliance on first truths or identities as the engines of analysi s (brought together with definitions, constituting constitut ing the form of analysis as such), and (3) the transformation of the status of these identities into that of analytic results (the resolution of complexity into identity). In short, the elements of Leibniz’s Leibniz’s entire ent ire methodological methodol ogical apparatus provide the proof for their own efficacy, as the method of invention stands at both ends of the spectrum: it constitutes the means that are supposed suppose d to be used for the explication of concepts, and its structure alone (without any attempt at application) generates complex concepts under the rubric of metaphysical principles. Method generates truths, but not merely by its application to an external concept; its methodological character is itself generative of principles. The principle of sufficient reason follows from methodological structure, without any requirement for methodological techne: it is the immediate result of the constitution of method. There is no complex concept to be analyzed, no implic it predicate to be unfolded methodologically. There is only method, and then there is sufficient reason. The principle of the identity of indiscernibles is the next to arrive in the text, and Leibniz uses one of its most typical formulations: “it also follows that in nature there cannot be two singular things which differ solo numero.” With With regard to the principle’ principle’ss origin, we are told only only “it also follows. follows. . . .” But why does it also follow, and from what? It follows, Leibniz argues, because “it must be possible to give a reason why any two things are distinct, and that reason must derive from some difference they contain” (A 6, iv-B, 1645/268).14 In this deceptively simple phrasing of a supposedly immediate analytical deduction we can find the doubling of Leibnizian methodology at work. The concept of the difference between two singular things is brought before methodological reflection with a simple si mple consequence: if there are two singular things, then there must be a reason for their distinction. Why? Simply because nihil esse sine ratione . That is, the derivation of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles requires the analysis of a complex concept,

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namely, the analysis of the principle of sufficient reason. This means that concept of the identity of indiscernibles is contained in the concept of sufficient reason. Ratio implies diversitas , as the explication of sufficient reason reveals an implicit principle of difference, or alternately, as the latter can be resolved into the former. not enough to generate the However, this analysis or resolution alone is not enough principle. The methodological invention of principles also requires a confrontation with the structural elements of method in order to attain that status. Not only must “there be a reason for their distinction,” but als o “that reason must derive from some difference they contain” (A 6, iv-B, 1645/268). 15 Can we find this second element for the generation of the identity of indiscernibles in the principle of sufficient reason? Surely not, for the latter principle tells us nothing more than that everything must have a reason, and nothing about internal differentiation. The claim about internal difference must refer to an element of method: because predication is intrinsic, difference (understood as a predicate) must be intrinsic to the concept that it predicates. Looking back at the generation of this methodological methodological element, the concept of internal predication follows from the claim that all complex concepts are reducible to simple identities. It would be one thing to say that Leibniz simply uses the analysis of two complex concepts – sufficient reason and internal predication – to explicate an implicit principle: (1) analyzing the principle of sufficient reason; (2) resolving the identity of indiscernibles into the concept of internal predication; (3) resolving internal predication into the concept of the reduction or resolution of complexes into simples; and finally (4) resolving that concept into the simple, self-evident truths of identity ident ity and contradiction. But we cannot leave it at that. tha t. The ‘second concept’ under analysis here (internal differentiation) is no mere metaphysical principle among others. It is an element of the very methodological procedure of analysis, reduction, and resolution itself, according to Leibniz’s text. That is, in order to generate indiscernibility, Leibniz methodologically analyzes not only the principle of sufficient reason, but also the concept of methodological analysis itself. Ultimately, analysis of a principle and analysis of method amount to one and the same thing, and the difference di fference between them is merely one of somes omething we might call ‘methodological movement.’ Recall the origins of the principle of sufficient reason – the concept whose analysis generates the first part of the proof for indiscernibility. indis cernibility. I have argued that nihil esse sine ratione does not emerge from the analysis of any ordinary complex concept, but from the unfolding of the implicit conceptuality of Leibniz’s methodological edifice. With this in mind, we are faced with a quandary; in fact, we are faced with precisely the same quandary that leads Heidegger to his tentative claim


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for the equiprimordiality of identity, ground, and noncontradiction. Exactly which complex concepts are unfolding here? Is sufficient reason unfolding into a methodological art of invention, or is invention unfolding into sufficient reason? The same question holds for the second aspect of the proof for the identity of indiscernibles. If the former is the case, then the results of methodological analysis give rise to the structure of method as such. If the latter obtains, then the identities identit ies lying at the ground of Leibnizian methodology must be neither so s o simple nor so identical ident ical after all. “A is A” or “A is not non-A” would have to be complex rather than simple concepts, the principles of sufficient reason, of the identity of indiscernibles, and indeed the entire edifice of metaphysical conceptuality all implicitly predicated of them, folded within an inexplicable corrugation of simple identity. In summary, summary, Leibniz outlines two types of concepts: identical concepts (non-analyzable simples, asserting the same thing of themselves or denying the opposite of their opposites) and complex concepts (differentiated complexes of identities, ultimately reducible to their constituents). The analyticity of complex concepts depends on a claim about the nature of metaphysical truths, namely, that the predicate inheres in the subject (this internal predication is explicit in identities and implicit in complexes). comple xes). The method of analysis, however, both uses identities to unfold the contents of complex concepts and resolves that complexity into identity. Identities stand both as the elements of method and as its results (this is Leibniz’s first methodological repetition). Rather than simply accepting the doubled role of identities and applying it to complex concepts, the logic of Leibniz’s text indicates that the very claim that this doubling occurs is the principle for the generation of those concepts. Because identities are both the arche and telos of method, Leibniz’s first metaphysical principle – sufficient reason – must obtain (for if it did not, then there would be complexes that could not be resolved into identities). The concept of method in itself (and not in its application, not for another concept) grounds complex principles (this is Leibniz’s second methodological repetition). For the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, the situation becomes even more difficult. Part of its proof comes from everyday methodological analysis (the analysis of the concept of sufficient reason), but part of it also comes from the redoubled doubling doubl ing of method and its claim for intrinsic predication. The problematic conclusion is that the proof for the identity of indiscernibles requires an application of methodological analysis to one complex concept among others, but also requires either a transfer of conceptual validity from the edifice of method to the principle in question or an analysis of the concept of method itself. If the former is the case, then the identity of indiscernibles is an identity and not a complex concept requiring

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analytic deduction (a position Leibniz clearly does not hold). If the latter, then the structure of method – a structure of simple identities i dentities – is itself a complex compl ex concept, and identities that imply or contain nothing nevertheless unfold into principles. principles . The identical, immediate, immedi ate, non-analytic concept of method turns out to be a differentiated, mediated, analytic concept, folding within itself a plenum of metaphysical principles. Leibnizian metaphysics emerges, at least in part, from the application of method to its own methodological methodologic al structure. It is precisely this essential form of methodological reflexivity that Heidegger’s somewhat abortive reading of “Principia logico-metaphysica” reveals. Heidegger, Leibniz, and the metaphysics of truth

A series of further questions remains: What are the implications of this selfgrounding, abyssal Leibnizian method for Heidegger’s interpretation? Does it undermine, strengthen, alter, or extend his reading? In this section, I situate Heidegger’s Leibniz interpretation in the broader context of his project in the Marburg lectures. I argue that while Heidegger’s Heidegger ’s claim that Leibnizian logic depends on a metaphysics of truth characterized by a monadological ontology is substantially correct, the abyssal repetition of Leibnizian method allows another important aspect of his metaphysical project to c ome to the fore. Finally, I suggest that this interpretation of method provides a preliminary indication of a general problematic in early modern rationalist metaphysics, one indicated but not pursued by Heidegger’s reading. Heidegger’s general project in the Marburg lectures is to clarify the idea of philosophical logic in order to open more radical possibilities possibili ties for philosophical questioning and to “loosen” that idea so that “central problems probl ems in it become clear, and from the content of these very problems we shall allow ourselves to be lead back into the presuppositions of this logic” (GA 26, 7/6). Heidegger approaches this clarification through what he describes as a “historical recol lection” [geschichtliche Erinnerung] (GA 26, 10/9) that takes the form of a “critical dismantling” [kritischer Abbau] (GA 26, 27/21) of traditional logic through a “ Destruktion of Leibniz’s doctrine of judgment down to basic metaphysical problems” (GA 26, 35/27). Ultimately, Heidegger resists the claim that metaphysics is founded on logic, demonstrating through his reading of Leibniz that the converse is the case. 16 So what are the metaphysical foundations of Leibnizian logic, according to Heidegger? What metaphysical presuppositions do Leibnizian epistemological principles conceal? Heidegger argues that Leibniz’s logical doctrine of judgment rests on an interpretation of the nature of substance, specifi cally a presupposition of monadic ontology that depends on a Cartesian assertion


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of the primacy of the subject’s subje ct’s self-certainty. As Heidegger puts it, i t, “Constant reference to one’s own Dasein, to the being-structure being-struct ure and being-mode of one’s own ‘I’, provides Leibniz with the model of the t he ‘unity’ he attributes to every being” (GA 26, 106/85); or “though he has many differences with Des cartes, Leibniz maintains with him the primacy of the ego ’s self-certainty. Like Descartes, he sees in the ‘I’, in the ego cogito, the dimension from which all basic metaphysical concepts must be drawn” (GA 26, 108–109/87); or again, “Leibniz poses and solves the problem of being, the basic problem of metaphysics, by recourse to the subject” s ubject” (GA 26, 110/88). Leibniz, that is, illegitimately imports a metaphysical interpretation interpreta tion of the problem of being into his generation of logical principles as such (and his principle of identity in particular), all the while insinuating that he has founded his ontology on purely logical principles. Heidegger’s interpretive strategy, of course, echoes the various readings of the early modern rationalists that crop up throughout his career. If we accept Heidegger’s claims regarding the primacy of a metaphysical concept of identity over its logical articulation, then it follows that Leibnizian logical principles (and especially the Leibnizian principle of identity) “must be conceived as a metaphysics of truth” (GA 26, 126/102). As Heidegger summarizes: Reduction to identity, as a whole of mutually compatible and coherent determinations, as a mode of judging about beings, is only onl y possible metaphysically if the being itself is constituted by an original unity. unity. Leibniz sees this unity in the monadic structure of substance. Thus, the monadic structure of beings is the metaphysical foundation for the theory of judgment and for the identity theory of truth. Our dismantling of Leibniz’s doctrine of judgment down to its basic metaphysical problems is hereby accomplished.... Leibniz’s logic of truth is possible only on the basis of the monadological metaphysics of substance. This logic has essentially metaphysical foundations. It is indeed, as radical consideration can demonstrate, nothing other than a metaphysics of truth (GA 26, 102–103/126–127). I hold that Heidegger’s claim here is partly correct, but also that he is by no means seeing the whole picture. Given that Leibniz’ Lei bniz’ss methodological generation of logical principles (and particularly the principle of identity) takes the form of a self-grounding structure of abyssal repetition – the interpretat ion of “Principia logico-metaphysica logico- metaphysica”” I elaborated above on the basis of Heidegger’s own interpretation – it seems to me that there the re is another presupposition at work here, and another essential aspect to the metaphysics operative in Leibnizian thought. That is, it is not only the monadological interpretation of substance that constitutes the metap metaphysics hysics of truth that grounds Leibnizian logic, but also an abyssal interpretation of philosophical method. Indeed, I think that this

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methodological self-grounding (the construction of logical principles through the application of philosophical method to the concept of methodological construction) is a central element of Leibnizian metaphysics that is in no way exhausted by Heidegger’s too often repeated trope of the illegitimate and concealed reliance on a foundational subjectivity. A strategy of abyssal method, after all, dispenses with the presupposition of a thinking subject: philosophical method becomes a kind of self-winding automaton that neither assumes its epistemological priority over the practice of metaphysics nor seeks its certification by a thinking being. Indeed, in the final Marburg lecture devoted to his “destructive” reading of Leibniz, Heidegger himself considers whether an approach that backs away from the sheer assertion of the priority of a science of knowing (a logic) in favor of a looser assertion of the priority of rule-governed thinking (which I take to mean a method) might not pose a stronger challenge to Heidegger’s claims for the foundational priority of metaphysics vis-à-vis logic. Here he considers and dismisses a ‘classical’ ‘clas sical’ argument argument for the primacy of logic: metaphysics is a science, and thus a form of thinking; as a form of thinking, it presupposes a science of thinking (a logic); therefore, t herefore, before laying the foundations for a metaphysics, one must establish a logic. Heidegger’s response is four-pronged, and its last two elements el ements are essential here. Briefly, his first two counter-arguments are: (1) this argument simply assumes that logic is “free-floating” thinking, and (2) by this argument, even logic (since it is a science) must presuppose logic, which would be logically incoherent (GA 26, 128/103). The third counter-argument is more relevant to our problem, because be cause it introduces the idea of rule-governed methodological thought as an element distinct from a formal science of thinking. Heidegger argues that (3) the inevitability of the use of rules does not imply that scientific thinking must be founded on logic: “Using rules does not necessarily require a science of the rules of thought and certainly not a reasoned knowledge knowle dge of these rules in the sense of traditional logic,” because this would w ould render the justification of logic impossible. The use of rule-governed thinking may in fact be inevitable, but this inevitability “can only be justified metaphysically” (GA 26, 129/104). Notice that Heidegger’s establishment of the necessity for this justification implies only that it requires a metaphysics, and not a metaphysics of the sub ject qua cogito or monad. This metaphysics need not involve “reasoned knowledge” [begründetes Wissen] and might presumably be articulated in the absence of a being defined by the immediacy of its thinking or the centrality of its drive. Such a possibility certainly does not allow for the foundational foundational priority of rule-governed thinking over metaphysics. Indeed, Heidegger’s fourth and final response is that (4) this is impossible because


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even while rule-usage (method) may be inevitable for the establishment of a metaphysics, “it does not follow that the foundation [of metaphysics] consists in the use of rules” (GA 26, 130/105). But this distinction between logic and rule-governed thought does allow us to articulate an element of metaphysics metaphysic s in addition to and aside from the metaphysics of subjectivity that Heidegger finds operative in Leibniz, namely, a metaphysics of the abyssal repeti tion of method governed by the moment at which method takes itself to be the primary object of its own application. This is precisely the form of Leibnizian metaphysics that I have argued we can find at work in “Principia logicometaphysica” when we begin with Heidegger’s suggestion that we attend to the reflexivity of Leibniz’s principle of identity. Finally, I would like to propose that what I have suggested is a second form of the Leibnizian metaphysics of truth might be broadly construed as an central metaphysical vein running through the concept of method in the early modern rationalist tradition. Consider, for example, Descartes’ account of Regula e ad the generation of methodological rules for thought in his e arly Regulae directionem ingenii: the “greatest example of all” for the application of the rules for the direction of mind is the methodological generati on of those very rules via their reflexive application. applicati on. “Our method in fact imitates those in the mechanical arts,” he writes, “which “w hich have no need of methods other than their own, and supply their own instructions for making their own instruments.” Just as the blacksmith must forge an anvil, hammers, and tongs before attempting swords and helmets, methodological investigation first seeks to define and delimit its own structure before turning to “philosophical disputes disputes or. or. . . math17 ematical problems.” Descartes, in fact, repeats this claim three times in the fragmentary text, adding that the first task of method must be to enumerate “all the paths to truth which whic h are open to men, so that the investigator may follow the one which is most certain” ce rtain” (AT (AT 10, 396), or to investigate “human knowledge and how far it extends” and “define the limits of the mental powe rs that we possess” (AT 10, 397–398). The operations he mentions here, of course, delimit the content of the rules that make up the Regulae itself.18 While emphasizing progress towards methodological perfection in a way that both Descartes and Leibniz would probably reject, Spinoza appropriates Descartes’ technical metaphor of methodological self-forging in his early Tractatus de intellectus emendatione when he attempts to avoid the infinite regress that threatens the constitution of any philosophical method that denies its certification by an external subject: To find the best method of seeking the truth, there is no need of another method to seek the method of seeking the t he truth, or of a third method to seek

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the second, second, and so on to infinity infinity.. . . . Matters stand stand here as they they do with corporeal corporeal tools. tools. . . . For to forge forge iron a hammer hammer is needed; needed; and to have have a hammer it must be made; for this another hammer and other tools are needed; and to have these tools too, other tools will be needed, and so on to infinity. infinity. . . . In the same way the intellect, intellect, by its inborn inborn power, power, makes intellectual tools for itself, its elf, by which it acquires other powers for other intellectual works, and from these works still other tools, or the power of searching further, and so proceeds by stages, until it reaches the pinnacle of wisdom.19 While it is certainly true that these references can give only a preliminary indication of the ubiquity of an abyssal metaphysics m etaphysics of method in early modern rationalism (one that centers, in Leibniz, on an reflexive abyss at the heart of his generation of the principle of identity), I think that they provide a productive way to evaluate an operative metaphysics of early modernity that is based on and compatible with Heidegger’s interpretations without being restricted to the orthodoxy of his results. Opening up an aspect of Leibniz’s metaphysics of truth that is not simply reducible to t o the now exhausting claim that it conceals a hidden presupposition of Cartesian subjectivity allows us both to reinvigorate Heidegger ’s reading of the early moderns and to investiinves tigate important aspects of their metaphysical procedures that he overlooks. Whether Heidegger would welcome or disdain such a project seems largely irrelevant. My interpretation of the abyssal structure of the Leibnizian concept of identity – taking its cue from Heidegger ’s abortive suggestion – is meant to t o imply neither that Leibnizian method is non- or pre-metaphysical, pre-metaphysi cal, nor that Leibnizian logic somehow slips through Heidegger’s critique, nor that we can simply turn the critical tools constructed by Heidegger’s reading against themselves. Instead, I have attempted to reinvigorate Heidegger’s Heidegger’s interpretation of early modern metaphysics, arguing that his own suggestions allow us to articulate a form of metaphysical method operative in Leibnizian logic aside from (and perhaps more important than) the one Heidegger identifies. This is a metaphysics of methodological repetition that operates without presupposing or requiring a thinking subject by defining and developing de veloping itself out of a methodologically reflexive operation. That is, Leibniz’s second implied metaphysical claim – his second metaphysics of truth – is the construction of a self-generating method that takes consideration considerati on of its own structure as the first and most mos t fundamental of its tasks.


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Notes 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

Mart Martin in Heid Heideg egge gerr, Der Satz vom Grund , Gesamtausgabe, Band 10 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), pp. 75–86. Hereafter GA 10, German followed by English pagination in The Principle of Reason , trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 50–58. In most cases, I have replaced Lilly’s translation of Grund as “ground/reason” with “ground” alone. Where Heidegger refers directly to Leibniz’s Leibniz’s principle, I have used “reason.” It is worth noting that this identification of Leibniz’s ratio with Grund (the key to Heidegger’s analysis of its “tonality”) has a very specific philosophical history. First occurring in Crusius, it was standardized by Kant and institutionalized by Hegel. Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz , Gesamtausgabe, Band 26 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978). Hereafter GA 26, German pagination followed by English pagination in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992). G.W. .W. Leibni Leibniz, z, “Princi “Principia pia logico logico-met -metaphys aphysica” ica” in G.W. .W. Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Berlin-Brandenburgisc he Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Akademie Briefe, hrsg. Berlin-Brandenburgische der Wissenschaften Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Reihe 6: Philosophische Philosophische Schriften (Darmstadt, Leipzig, und Berlin: Akademie, 1923–), Band iv-B, 1644–1649. Hereafter A 6, volume and pagination followed by English pagination in Philosophical Letters and Papers , trans. and ed. Leroy E. Loemker (Boston: Kluwer, 1989), pp. 267–271, 290–295. The dating of “Principia logico-metaphysica” remains tentative. Leibniz, “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis,” A 6, iv-A, 585–592/290–295. Heidegger knew Leibniz’s “Principia logico-metaphysica” as “Primae veritates” via Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, ed. Louis Couturat (Paris: Alcan, 1903), pp. 518–523, and “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” via Die Philosophische Schriften Schriften von Leibniz , vol. 4, hrsg. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875–1890), pp. 422–426. Hereafter G, volume and original pagination followed by English pagination in Loemker. Leib Leibni niz, z, “Mo “Mona nado dolo logi gie, e,”” §56. §56. Erns Ernstt Ca Cassir sirer, er, Leibniz’ System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962). Louis Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, Lei bniz, d’après des document s inédits i nédits (Hildesheim: Olms, 1961). Heidegger was most likely unfamiliar with the third major turn-of-the-century Leibniz interpretation, Bertrand Russell’s A Critical Exposition of University Press, 1900), though he the Philosophy of Leibniz (Cambridge: Cambridge University undoubtedly read Cassirer’s Cassirer’s review of it in the appendix to Leibniz’ System. . ., pp. 532– 541. Leibni Leibniz, z, “Init “Initia ia rerum rerum math mathemat ematicar icarum um metap metaphys hysica, ica,”” Leibnizen Leibnizenss Mathemat Mathematisch ischee Schriften, vol. 7, ed. C.I. Gerhardt (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962), pp. 17–36. Heidegger’ Heidegger’ss analysis analysis of the the distinctio distinctions ns followin followingg can be found at GA 26, 72–81/58 72–81/58–– 65. Immanue nuel Kant, Werkausgabe, vol. 1, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 422–444. Here one one might ask ask why – given given the probl problems ems I have have outlined outlined in Heidegg Heidegger’ er’ss account account – one ought to take the tack of reinterpreting the Leibnizian principle of identity and the process of its methodological generation on the basis of Heidegger’s Heidegger’s insight, rather than simply dismissing Heidegger’s Heidegg er’s reading in favor of a more orthodox account of Leibniz’s critique of Descartes. First, I hold that despite its flaws, H eidegger’s interpretation makes

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10. 11. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 17.

18.

19. 19.

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a major contribution to the question of the relative priority of logic and metaphysics in Leibniz. His careful interpretation of the texts and their relationship demonstrates that they open the problem of “foundation” and provides indications of why Leibniz’s thought takes the direction that it does. Despite the fact that Heidegger’s interpretation ends too quickly – perhaps an early indication of his overriding and often exhausting enthusiasm for finding concealed presuppositions presuppositions of subject-centered metaphysics throughout the philosophical tradition tradition (more on this in the final section) – it still provides an important series of insights into the Leibnizian principle of identity. identity. Furthermore, given that his comments also indicate the possibility of an interpretation of Leibnizian method based on the reflexivity of the principle of identity, it would be short-sighted to dismiss this path simply because Heidegger Heidegg er himself did not pursue it. Finally, the exploration of such an interpretation holds open the possibility for a systematic account of a central element of Leibnizian thought (namely, the status and structure of philosophical method, an issue one would be hard pressed to minimize for an intellectual heir of Descartes) that an approach limited to historical reconstruction alone would be forced to abandon. Leibniz, fourth fourth and fifth letters letters to Clarke. Translation Translation modified. modified. Trans Translat lation ion modif modified ied.. Leibniz, “Monadologie,” §31–32. Translation Translation modified. Trans Translat lation ion modif modified ied.. Trans Translat lation ion modif modified ied.. Trans Translat lation ion modif modified ied.. Again, Heidegger is is primarily responding responding to the the implications of Cassirer and Couturat’s Couturat’s influential interpretations of Leibniz. This position is even more starkly expressed in Russell, but again, Heidegger was probably not familiar with his text. René René Des Desca cart rtes es,, Regulae ad directionem ingenii , Oeuvres de Descartes , vol. 10, eds. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1996), p. 397. Hereafter AT, followed by volume and Latin pagination. Translations are mine. Cf. “Rules for the Direction of Mind,” trans. Dugland Murdoch in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , vol. 1, trans. and ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 28-33. It is likely that Leibniz was was profoundly influenced by the the elements of this passage appearing in the copy of the Regulae that he purchased sometime between 1670 and 1678. This was one of three extant copies made from Descartes’ lost original manuscript, and has been a major source for subsequent editions. Unlike the other copies, in this one the second of the three quoted passages is located in an appendix. See Adam’s Adam’s editorial note to “La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle,” AT 10, 492–493, as well as Heinrich Springmeyer, “Eine neue kritische Textausgabe Textausgabe der Regulae ad directionem ingenii von René Descartes,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Philosophische Forschung 24 (1970): 101– 125, and Herbert Breger “Über die Hannoversche Handschrift der Descartesschen Regulae,” Studia Leibnitiana 15:1 (1983): 108–114. Baru Baruch ch Spin Spinoz oza, a, Tractatus de Intellectus emendatione , Opera, vol. 2, ed. C. Gebhardt, (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925), pp. 13–14. Translated as Treatise Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect in The Collected Works of Spinoza , vol. 1, trans. E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 16–17. It is likely that Spinoza was also directly influenced by the passage in Descartes’ Regulae, since another of the extant copies belonged to Jean De Raey, a member of Spinoza’s circle in the Netherlands. Cf. Adam’s editorial note to the Regulae, AT AT 10, 353.

Heidegger's Leibniz and Abyssal Identity

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