Jeanne Roland. Leibniz et l'individualité organique. Collection Analytiques, 99.
Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2012. Pp. 380. Paper, $39.95.
Jeanne Roland offers in this book a rich and thorough investigation of Leibniz’s
metaphysics of living beings – what she terms organic individuality. The book is
organized in three main parts and the main concepts under investigation, as well as the
periods (or moments, in Roland’s terminology), can be presented as follows: In the first
part of the book Roland focuses on “individual substance, corporeal substance and
organic body in the years of the Discourse on Metaphysics”; in the second part, she is
focusing on the transition in Leibniz’s writings from the notion of an individual substance
to that of an organism; in the third part, she is focusing on monads, organic bodies, and
individuals in the Monadology and other late texts.
Roland does not attempt an exhaustive analysis of Leibniz’s texts. She is wisely focusing
instead on the moments where Leibniz’s effort to think the metaphysics of individual
substance, truly distinct from Cartesian dualism, engages the nature of living bodies
(page 16). In particular, the main moments that constitute the structure for Roland’s book
are (i) the years of the Discourse and the correspondence with Arnauld; (ii) the New
System of Nature (1695) where the central notion is that of a natural machine; the New
Essays, the exchange with Lady Masham and the exchange with Stahl regarding the
notion of organism; (iii) the Monadology and the correspondence with des Bosses. This
thematic focus and choice of texts makes a lot of sense in tracing (and reconstructing) the
main steps Leibniz takes from the Discourse of Metaphysics to the Monadology. It seems
to me that some of the inspiration for this kind of investigation, as well as for some of the
main claims Roland advances, relate to Michel Fichant’s work and especially the
introduction to his edition entitled From the Discourse on Metaphysics to the
Monadology. This is a very welcome and interesting project, which was not carried out
before in such detail and in such a textually informed manner.
The merits of Roland’s approach can be exemplified through her investigation of
Leibniz’s notion of a natural machine. Roland points out that the main features of this
concept take shape in the years of the Discourse but that it is only in the New System
(1695) that Leibniz delineates the boundaries between natural machines and artificial
ones. Roland argues that the progressive disappearance of the term “individual
substance” between the correspondence with Arnauld and the publication of the New
System does not indicate that Leibniz has abandoned his concern for individuals and
individuality as a necessary condition for true being (262). Rather, Leibniz’s thought has
developed by thinking about the individuality of true unities in terms of a kind of
machine – a natural machine, which is defined through an internal law of order and which
also captures Leibniz’s paradigmatic example of living beings as animals which are
taking the place of corporal substances. In this sense, the notion of a natural machine
takes the place of the individual substance of the Discourse. I think that this is a very
insightful observation. How this concept works with the definition of true beings in terms
of monads of varying degrees of perfection is a question Roland addresses in the third
part of the book.
This book is a fine example of what might be characterized as the French school in
Leibniz’s scholarship. To begin with, the book discusses Leibniz’s notion of living things
through (the notion of organic individuality) in a metaphysical and historical context –
this theme has been pioneered by François Duchesneau and has been almost ignored in
the Anglophone world until quite recently. Gladly, this is rapidly changing. Second,
Roland’s approach is primarily textual and it is extremely well informed as such. Third,
Roland employs a developmental approach to the texts along the lines one finds in the
writings of Michel Fichant. For these reasons, Roland’s conclusions might seem more
local and particular to the texts and the period under consideration; she is more concerned
with an adequate analysis of the texts than with a global thesis that risks simplifying
them. Thus, her book does not advance a grand thesis but offers a careful and instructive
story of Leibniz’s chronological and conceptual development through the complexity of
his texts. This is not the place to attempt a comparison between the French school and the
Anglophone school of doing history of philosophy. For readers who might ask
themselves whether reading a book in French is worth their while, the most pertinent
point is this: for any Leibniz’s scholar, this book offers a wealth of information and
insights into Leibniz’s approach to the metaphysics of organic beings. It is a highly
recommended read.
Ohad Nachtomy
ohadnachtomy@mac.com
Bar-Ilan University