This dissertation is a study Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s repeated characterization of the soul as a “spiritual” or “incorporeal” automaton. Within Leibniz’s mature period philosophy of nature, souls play a necessary metaphysical role in providing unity and activity to bodies. I situate Leibniz’s use of the term “automaton” within the wider philosophical context of seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Europe and explain why it provides a useful model to capture the operation of the soul. I argue that for Leibniz, souls are like automata in three ways: they act spontaneously according to an internal principle of motion; they act in a way that depends upon their design by God; they move themselves without the need for conscious thought or deliberation. In comparing the soul to a “spiritual automaton,” Leibniz combines the traditional notion of an immaterial soul with that of a self-moving mechanical device. I therefore argue that the concept of the soul as a “spiritual automaton” embodies Leibniz’s synthetic or conciliatory approach to philosophy, which seeks to harmonize elements from seemingly divergent intellectual positions. Accordingly, I connect Leibniz’s development of the concept of the soul as spiritual automaton to his his critical appropriation of elements of the mechanical philosophy of Hobbes and Descartes and his intellectual engagement with Spinoza. Further, I show how Leibniz deploys the concept as a means to resolve philosophical controversies regarding the mode of activity of immaterial substances involving Ralph Cudworth, Jean Le Clerc, Isaac Jaquelot, and Pierre Bayle.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Federico Boccaccini;
Anna Marmodoro;
(2017)
Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB647362818/)
Article
Marleen Rozemond;
(2016)
Descartes, Malebranche and Leibniz: Conceptions of Substance in Arguments for the Immateriality of the Soul
(/isis/citation/CBB117763212/)
Book
Huenemann, Charlie;
(2008)
Understanding Rationalism
(/isis/citation/CBB000950265/)
Article
Fiormichele Benigni;
(2017)
Questioning Mechanism: Fénelon’s Oblique Cartesianism
(/isis/citation/CBB348584037/)
Article
Richard Mark Fincham;
(2015)
Reconciling Leibnizian Monadology and Kantian Criticism
(/isis/citation/CBB087483741/)
Article
Alberto Frigo;
(2016)
A Very Obscure Definition: Descartes’s Account of Love in the Passions of the Soul and Its Scholastic Background
(/isis/citation/CBB526688882/)
Chapter
Chene, Dennis des;
(2007)
Abstracting from the Soul: The Mechanics of Locomotion
(/isis/citation/CBB000774725/)
Book
Jolley, Nicholas;
(2013)
Causality and Mind: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB001553076/)
Book
Jessica Riskin;
(2015)
A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick
(/isis/citation/CBB045220187/)
Book
Seigel, Jerrold E.;
(2005)
The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000930043/)
Book
Janiak, Andrew;
(2008)
Newton as Philosopher
(/isis/citation/CBB000850371/)
Chapter
Ariew, Roger;
(2009)
Descartes and Leibniz on the Principle of Individuation
(/isis/citation/CBB001021827/)
Book
Nolan, Lawrence;
(2011)
Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate
(/isis/citation/CBB001035171/)
Chapter
Garber, Daniel;
(2007)
Mécanisme et morale: la mort du corps et l'éternité de l'esprit chez Spinoza
(/isis/citation/CBB001022505/)
Book
Woolhouse, R.S.;
(1993)
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The concept of substance in 17th-century metaphysics
(/isis/citation/CBB000047297/)
Book
Nachtomy, Ohad;
Smith, Justin E. H.;
(2014)
The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB001551476/)
Article
Galen Barry;
(2021)
Spinoza on the Resistance of Bodies
(/isis/citation/CBB170992423/)
Chapter
Garber, Daniel;
(2013)
God, Laws, and the Order of Nature: Descartes and Leibniz, Hobbes, and Spinoza
(/isis/citation/CBB001553039/)
Article
Yamada, Toshihiro;
(2003)
Stenonian Revolution or Leibnizian Revival? Constructing Geo-History in the Seventeenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000774898/)
Article
Nachtomya, Ohad;
(2011)
A Tale of Two Thinkers, One Meeting, and Three Degrees of Infinity: Leibniz and Spinoza (1675--8)
(/isis/citation/CBB001211008/)
Be the first to comment!