Monade und Begriff: Der Weg von Leibniz zu Hegel (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 217 R. A. Duff wrote about Spinoza's political thought: "From the premises of The Prince he reaches a conclusion analogous to that of the Civitas Dei; and on the basis of Hobbes's absolutism he builds a superstructure of popular liberties better secured than that of either Locke or Rousseau." RALPH Ross Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School Monade und Begri~: Der Weg yon Leibniz zu Hegel. By Joachim Christian Horn. (Wien und Milnchen: Verlag R. Oldenbourg, 1965. Pp. 201) This study had its inception in a dissertation by Theodore Litt (Bonn, 1952). A few years later the author's own dissertation, "G. W. Leibniz: Grundwahrheiten der Philosophic," appeared (Frankfurt am Main, 1962) from which the present work is a direct outgrowth. Horn has attempted to provide a key by which the metaphysical systems of Leibniz, Fichte, and Hegel may be interpreted and to present the development of philosophy as a foundational science. A chapter is devoted to each of these and another (Chap. II) is given to what is regarded as "die Abseitigkeit Kants." As the author notes: "The entire investigation moves from Leibniz to Hegel and not to Kant" (p. 185). Kant's return to the transcendental subject is loaded with an undermining nihilism (p. 185)! The recognition of philosophy as a foundational science can be gained, however, only if the enterprise is divorced from such catch-words as formalistic rationalism and the equally untrue (of Hegel) logical idealism. The strategy for moving beyond the rejected caricatures is suggested by the following. "... Hegel ist unter- oder tiberrational--ganz wie man will--lectigllch vom ausschliesslichen Standpunkt der formalen Logik" (p. 131). Although Leibniz makes his substance individual, the concept of timeless unextended monads provides help toward understanding Fichte's ego and Hegel's "der Begri~" (both absolute). Hegel's Begriff is grounded in Leibniz' individual substance, thought which thinks, following the logic of percepient perception. In Fichte is found the first reply to Leibniz, when he said of the ego, "das sich selbst Setzende, das was bestimmend und bestimmt zugleich ist," which thought is present in Hegel's Encyklopedie when he says of knowledge "in der Tat bestimmendes und bestimmtes Denken" (pp. 179 f.). A problem in Leibniz' thought consists in that monads, in which the substantiallogical is grounded, with their individually determined beings, with nothing prior, cannot be phenomena. We are left here with the nonidentity of substance and phenomena--an odd doctrine (p. 56)--and an unremediable dualism. Horn holds that the (for Leibniz) authentic unity of particular corporeal phenomena (its substantial concept) cannot be realized. Following Leibniz, we have to turn to causality to provide an account of the unity of phenomena: in place of individual substance as ground we have mere corporeahty as cause to explain "aggregates." Even man as a free spiritual being has to be explained by the causal determinism operative in phenomena. The resulting Verstand (even when supplemented by the unplausibly developed doctrine of preestablished harmony) is not Vernunft, Horn reminds us. Hegel objected to the many individual monads which have their respective grounds exclusively in themselves and not in their relations and references to one another. The 218 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY opposition between them (their difference) is not overcome (p. 136). Hegel must find this externality to be mediated dialectically. Leibniz' understanding of the continuity of orders of complexity of monads provided a model for Hegel's dialectically related concepts of substance of varying complexity. The repulsion (or negation) in Hegel's dialectic develops from an analysis of the concept of unity, the source of which is the subjective concept of unity, which determines concepts of the 'objectively' (merely external) actual. Because the implicit unity of the subjective idea and its embodiment in the "objective" world is in the course of being realized in Hegel's dialectic, the dualism of substance and phenomena in Leibniz (above referred to) is rendered remediable (p. 138). An anticipation of Hegel is found in the fact that, for Leibniz, the beginning of the life of the individual substance involves a doubling. % . . das naturisch zentrier.te 'in sich vermittelte' Wesen (Heintel) und das denkende Ich, beide sollen dieselbe individuell--monadische Substanz sein" (p...