Heidegger's Leibniz and Abyssal Identity

303HEIDEGGER’S LEIBNIZ AND ABYSSAL IDENTITY

Continental Philosophy Review 36: 303–324, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Heidegger’s Leibniz and abyssal identity

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

Abstract. When Heidegger pursues his destructive interpretation of Leibniz’s doctrine ofjudgment, he identifies a principle of “abyssal ground” and a concealed metaphysics of truththat undermine the priority of logic with respect to ontology. His reading turns on an accountof Leibniz’s methodological generation of metaphysical principles and the relation betweenreason and identity, which, I argue, is at once deeply flawed and extremely productive. Thisessay pursues the implications of Heidegger’s quickly abandoned suggestion that Leibniz’sprinciple of identity is reflexively self-grounding, arguing that this claim makes possible arigorous interpretation of Leibnizian method as an abyssal logic of repetition. I hold that theidentification of such a methodology requires a modified account of the metaphysics of truthoperative in Leibniz that reinvigorates Heidegger’s reading even while moving beyond hisnow exhausted trope of a hidden presupposition of subjectivity.

At a key point in his analysis of various ways of “hearing” Leibniz’s princi-ple of sufficient reason during the 1955/56 Freiburg lectures (published as DerSatz vom Grund), Heidegger insists that the principle of Grund is at the sametime a principle of Abgrund. That is, the principle on which Leibniz foundsthe epistemological domain is in fact that of the absence or vanishing of foun-dation, and of the revelation of nothingness in the heart of being.1 While everybeing has its sufficient reason for Leibniz, Heidegger’s rearticulation of theprinciple “lets us hear an accord [Zusammenklang] between being and rea-son,” where “to being there belongs something like reason” (GA 10, 76/50).Thus, the most thoroughly epistemological of Leibniz’s many methodologi-cal principles is displaced into the ontological realm where it decisively im-pacts the question of being. To say that “being qua being grounds” is to graspthe 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 ground-ing reason, being is itself groundless. It is the origin of ground and the abyssof reason.

This logic of the abyssal ground dominates Heidegger’s interpretation ofLeibnizian metaphysics. In a much earlier and more traditionally scholarly

304 DANIEL J. SELCER

engagement with Leibnizian principles (the Summer 1928 Marburg lecturespublished as Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik), one of Heidegger’sprimary 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. InFreiburg, everything turned on the identity of ground or reason and being. Butin Marburg, Heidegger already recognized that such an identity could neverbe established without engaging the principle of identity. Where the Freiburglectures proceed from an argument for the identity of ground and being to thedisplacement of ground from being – because being is ground, being is ground-less – the earlier Marburg lectures concern the status of Leibnizian identityas such. On the basis of this conjunction of the principles of ground and iden-tity, I will argue that: (1) Heidegger presents a plausible and productive inter-pretation of Leibniz’s critique of the Cartesian criteria for truth, and thisinterpretation transforms the usual reduction of Leibnizian identity to theformal logic of A = A into an identity of the multiple; (2) while in some re-spects inadequate and incomplete, Heidegger’s understanding of the problemof the derivation of Leibnizian metaphysical principles opens the question ofthe abyssal grounding of method in the Leibniz’s work; (3) a rigorous analy-sis of Leibnizian method is possible on the basis of the very text that Heideggerabandons for its lack of clearly delineated ordering principles; and (4) the re-sulting Leibnizian strategy – which I describe as a form of methodologicalrepetition – requires that we modify and extend Heidegger’s characterizationof the Leibnizian “metaphysics of truth” and provides an indication of a gen-eral problematic in early modern rationalism.

Heidegger’s Leibniz 1: the identity of the multiple

How does the problem of identity arise for Heidegger in his reading of Leibniz,and what is its connection to the principle of ground? Through a beautifulreading of two short but crucial Leibnizian texts in §§3–4 in the Marburg lec-tures (“Principia logico-metaphysica” of 1689 and “Meditationes de cog-nitione, veritate, et ideis” of 1684), Heidegger discovers a tension betweentwo 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 assuch, as adaequate intuitive perceptum. How, Heidegger asks, can these twodefinitions of truth be reconciled? What does being identical have to do withadequate intuitive perception? Heidegger will argue that they are reconcilable(and in fact, identical), but only insofar as we recognize that there are two


distinct notions of identity operative in Leibniz. One is the empty and formalidentity of the same, whose exemplar is logical equivalence (A = A). Butthe other is the unity of what is different, “compatibility without conflict”[widerstreitfreie Verträglichkeit] (GA 26, 85/68). This identity of the differ-ent on the basis of compatibility is clearly linked to Leibniz’s monadologicalontology, where each monad is absolutely and irreducibly singular, yet alsoan ontologically reflective repetition of totality, a “perpetual living mirror ofthe universe” (G 6, 617/648).4 Leibniz, Heidegger argues, is wrong to importthe first interpretation of identity (the identity of the same) into his philosophi-cal project, or rather, he was bound to do so by his reliance on a Cartesiananalogy between subject and ground. But at the same time, Heidegger holdsthat it is Leibniz’s philosophical thinking itself that makes possible the articu-lation of the latter interpretation of identity. How is Heidegger able to sustainthis claim? Or perhaps more interestingly, from what elements of Leibnizianthought does Heidegger draw a notion of identity that is predicated on thereconciliation (and not the elimination) of difference?

Before we can begin with the second piece Heidegger engages, it is impor-tant to consider that “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” deals withmany of the key issues for the Neo-Kantian interpretation of Leibniz againstwhich Heidegger’s own lectures were set, especially the dominant early twen-tieth century commentaries by Ernst Cassirer (1902) and Louis Couturat (1901).5

Each of them saw Leibniz’s metaphysics and ontology as consequences of hisepistemological and scientific commitments. Since Leibniz provides some-thing that looks like an unbroken hierarchy of kinds of knowledge culminat-ing in perfect and intuitive perception, they held that Kant was ultimatelycorrect to charge Leibniz with taking the difference between knowledge andintuition to be one of degree rather than kind, and thus with the illegitimateextension of reason beyond its proper bounds. Where Cassirer was fundamen-tally interested in the historical and conceptual role that Leibniz played in theformation of modern mechanics (especially his conflict with Newton) andsubsequently in the development of a Kantian notion of dialectical reason,Couturat saw an opportunity to reassert a Leibnizian metaphysical approachin the face of resurgent Kantianism. Just as Leibniz deduces mathematical andepistemological definitions from his basic logical principles in “Initia rerummathematicarum metaphysica,” Couturat seeks to account for the possibilityof a similar deduction of Leibnizian monadology.6 But for both Couturat andCassirer, Leibnizian logic ultimately grounds Leibnizian metaphysics. WhenHeidegger steps in, it is to implicitly charge both these interpreters with fail-ing to interrogate the eminently Leibnizian principle of ground, foundation, orreason, and thus with having built their analyses on shifting sands by uncritically


presupposing the meaning of the very principle through which their readingsare refracted. Thus, Leibniz’s “Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics”becomes The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, and the epistemologicalhierarchy by which Cassirer and Couturat authorized their interpretationsbecomes (at its key point) anything but hierarchical.

How does this occur? Heidegger does not deny that the basic hierarchyexists.7 Cassirer and Couturat are absolutely correct, he implies, to see Leibnizas launching a systematic critique of Descartes’ rule of clarity and distinct-ness by complicating the different kinds and criteria of ideas and knowledge.A concept may be obscure, where “it does not suffice for recognizing the thingrepresented,” or clear, “when it makes it possible for me to recognize the thingrepresented.” Clear knowledge is either confused, “when I cannot enumerateone by one the marks which are sufficient to distinguish the thing from oth-ers,” or distinct, when I am able to distinguish the thing from all others “bysufficient marks and observations.” And distinct knowledge, in turn, is eitherinadequate, when the marks that allow for the distinctness of the concept areknown only clearly enough for me to distinguish the thing from other things“but nevertheless confusedly,” or adequate, “when every ingredient that en-ters into a distinct concept is itself known distinctly, or when analysis is car-ried through to the end.” So far, so good: Descartes was mistaken in restrictinghis criteria for truth to clarity and distinctness, and he failed to see that clearand distinct concepts could also be adequate or inadequate. But Leibniz addsa final distinction to his epistemological system: an adequate concept can eitherbe blind and symbolic, when “we do not intuit the entire nature of the subjectmatter at once but make use of signs instead of things,” or perfect and intui-tive, when we can “think simultaneously of all the concepts which composeit” (A 6, iv-A, 585–588/291–292).

With this final distinction, Heidegger steps into the fray. Where previousinterpreters (including Kant) took this smooth progression from clarity todistinctness, distinctness to adequacy, and adequacy to intuition as proof thatLeibniz takes intellectual intuition merely to be a more intensive degree ofall other forms of knowing, Heidegger suggests that while each of the earlierdistinctions “refers to a stage of analysis, a step in making explicit marks andmoments of marks” (GA 26, 78/63), the shift to perfect intuitive adequacy (aswell as its negative form, blind and symbolic adequacy) is simply not a partof 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 re-sult, of cognitio adequata” (GA 26, 79/64). But how could this be? Whatgrounds this sudden shift of interpretation of the status of Leibniz’s episte-mological framework?


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 knownintuitively “outside the mind of God.” Indeed, complex concepts admit ofinfinite analysis, and thus only an infinite intellect would be capable of intu-iting them without the use of a symbolic framework, no matter how adequatethey might be. So what kind of concept is it that we can grasp intuitively? Onlya “primitive concept,” a term that Leibniz always uses interchangeably with“identity.” And what does this mean? It indicates nothing more or less thanthat the kind of concept whose truth we can know by simultaneously grasp-ing “all of the concepts which compose it” must be a concept that was nevercomposed to begin with, one that is simple in the sense of lacking all aggre-gation (A 6, iv-A, 587–588/292).

This, however, is a disappointing answer for Heidegger. Or rather, it wouldbe disappointing if he were simply willing to accept the assumption that iden-tity and lack of aggregation implied the absence of multiplicity; it would bedisappointing, that is, if identity were merely a lack of difference and the for-mality of A = A. But this is not the meaning of intuition for Leibniz, Heideggerargues, which is instead a “double way of appropriating and possessing theadequate” (GA 26, 78/63). Remember that intuition is “a mode of the appro-priation” 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 the reality of a thing.”The totality of the essential determinations of the thing is what adequate knowl-edge grasps, and this totality “is the possibilitas, that which makes possiblethe thingness of the thing” (GA 26, 84/68). Even a simple thing, identical withitself, a “metaphysical point,” requires an internal multiplicity understood asdeterminate possibility. It contains, as Leibniz repeats throughout his vastcorpus, an entire world. Thus, this totality must now be thought of as a unity,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 apart and ‘can’ not ‘be’.” And thus, “Adequateknowledge is the total grasp of the harmony of multiplicity” (GA 26, 84/68).

Heidegger’s initial problem was the reconciliation of two seemingly incom-patible definitions of truth in Leibniz. The criterion of adaequate intuitiveperceptum appeared to be incompatible with the propositional truth of idemesse. But it turns out that the latter is the very essence of the former. An intui-tive grasp of adequate knowledge of a thing can only be an intuition of iden-tity. And this identity of identity and intuition means that the singularity ofLeibnizian identity has exploded into the multiplicity and differentiation of a


world, such that Leibnizian identity (and even self-identity) cannot imply lackof differentiation. Thus, Heidegger concludes, “Identity does not then basi-cally refer to an empty uniformity stripped of difference. On the contrary, itmeans the entire richness of real determinations in their compatibility with-out conflict. Identity is not the negative concept of the absence of all differ-entiation. It is, conversely, the idea of the unisonous unity of what is different”[Ein-stimmung des Verschiedenen] (GA 26, 84/68).

Heidegger admits that this exploded identity of the multiple is clearly notalways what Leibniz has in mind. As mentioned, Heidegger sees Leibniz’sreliance on what is ultimately a Cartesian, ego-centric ontology as dependingon the “empty formality” of the logical identity of A = A (this position will beexplored in greater detail below). Leibniz’s identification of intuition andidentity thus depends on its derivation from “the simplicitas Dei as the guid-ing ideal of what, in the genuine sense, is” (GA 26, 85/69). Indeed, Heidegger’sanalysis of “Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis” establishes onlyone direction of the identity of adaequate intuitive perceptum and idem esse;it demonstrates how adequate intuition can embrace an identity rethought asthe compatibility of the multiple. But how is it that the logical concept ofidentity can be reconciled with its methodological and epistemological itera-tion?

Heidegger’s Leibniz 2: derivation and order

It is on the basis of this question that Heidegger turns (or in the proper orderof the Marburg lectures, had already turned) to Leibniz’s “Principia logico-metaphysica.” Heidegger’s analysis of this text will only leave us in the apo-ria detailed above: the incompatibility of a compatibilist, multiple, differentiatedidentity with a formal, empty, and logical one. Thus, for Heidegger, whileLeibniz’s thought resonates with a “new tonality” [neue Tonart] of identity, itultimately fails in its articulation. As proof for this, Heidegger cites Leibniz’sfrequent attempts at the logical deduction of the principle of identity from theprinciple of sufficient reason (and thus, for Heidegger, from the concept ofGrund). Through an examination of Heidegger’s reading of the derivation ofLeibnizian principles and the relation between sufficient reason and identityin “Principia logico-metaphysica,” I want to suggest that Heidegger actually(and perhaps unwittingly, though I won’t insist on that) opens a new abyssfor our understanding of Leibniz and early modern rationalism in general. ThisAbgrund cannot be mapped precisely onto the groundlessness of being in DerSatz vom Grund, but is rather a structural mise en abîme of methodological


repetition. I hold that if we pay particular attention to a special case of Leibniz’sprinciple of identity (namely, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles),then the role of identity in the formulation of the principle of reason involvesa methodology based on abyssal repetition. Furthermore, while he does notpursue its implications, it is Heidegger himself who suggests this.

Again, a bit of historical context is in order. When Heidegger takes up theproblem of the order of derivation of metaphysical principles in “Principialogico-metaphysica,” he is stepping into an old interpretive melee. As Heideggerhimself points out, Wolff and Baumgarten were the first to attempt to derivethe principle of sufficient reason from the principle of contradiction, thusmaking noncontradiction the principle of all knowledge. This gesture is like-wise an attempt to force ground to submit to identity (in the logical sense),since it takes the principle of noncontradiction to be the negative expressionof the principle of identity. But this interpretation, Heidegger claims, “goescounter to Leibniz and especially to the problems themselves” (GA 26, 65/52). After Baumgarten and Wolff (and in response to them), Kant reversed theorder of derivation, arguing in the pre-critical Principorum primorum cog-nitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio that contradiction and identity mustderive from “the principle of determining ground.”8 In one sense, Heidegger’sconclusion that “the principle of reason holds first rank” among all Leibnizianprinciples (GA 26, 68/55) is simply an affirmation of Kant’s perspective onthe matter. At the same time, Heidegger wants to preserve an ambiguity in therelation among the principles of reason, contradiction, and identity, denyingthat they are “‘linearly’ deducible” and positing their equiprimordiality. Onthe other hand, he concludes his reading of “Principia logico-metaphysica”by indicating that “the inner constitution of this equiprimordiality” is still aquestion, as is “the ground which makes it possible” (GA 26, 69/56). Thus,even while Heidegger denies logical preeminence to the principle of Grundor ratio, he affirms its ontological priority (something that takes the form ofthe transcendence of Dasein in later sections of the Marburg lectures).

Leibniz is often understood to associate the principle of noncontradictionwith “truths of reason” (concepts whose contrary implies a contradiction), andthe principle of sufficient reason with “truths of fact.” While claims depend-ing on noncontradiction are logically necessary, those depending on sufficientreason are contingent. For obvious reasons, Heidegger takes this assignationof necessity and contingency to be something of an oversimplification. Ifnothing is without reason, but truths of reason depend only on noncontradic-tion, than it would be precisely reason that is without ground. This is falla-cious, 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”).


But it is acceptable if we leap ahead to the new sonority of “Nothing is with-out reason” where, since ratio and Grund are one and the same, it is preciselyreason that is abyssal (GA 10, 75–77/50–52).

In the context of the Marburg lectures, Heidegger is concerned with com-plicating this relationship between contingency and necessity precisely in orderto think the connection among identity, reason, and contradiction. He associ-ates the principle of identity with Leibniz’s primary truths – identities – that“wear their identity character for all to see” (GA 26, 65/52). Such identitiesneed no grounding, but “this does not mean that they are groundless; on thecontrary, they are themselves ground” (GA 26, 65/53) (I will return to theimplications of this claim below). The “usual truths” (both necessary andcontingent), meanwhile, fall under the principle of sufficient reason, whichHeidegger rewrites as “the principle of demonstrating grounds” [Grundsatz desaufzuweisenden Grundes] or “the principle of the need for proof” [Grundsatzder Beweisbedürftigkeit] (GA 26, 65/53). Every “derivative” truth is thus re-ferred to the principle of reason. Here Heidegger has broken decisively withthe interpretive tradition that assigns the necessity for grounding only to con-tingent truths. Instead, necessary truths have a dual reference: they requireboth the principle of reason and the principle of contradiction. This is the firstlabyrinthine reversal in Heidegger’s analysis. Necessary truths are, accord-ing to Leibniz, directly reducible to identities. And insofar as conceptual ne-cessity denotes the contrary of a concept containing a contradiction, suchreducibility, holds Heidegger, implies accordance with identities: “What is notin accord but in discord with identities ‘speaks against’ (contra-dicts) identi-ties and contains a contradiction.” Thus, “reducibility to identities denotes anoncontradiction” (GA 26, 66/53). However, insofar as identities depend onthe principle of noncontradiction, they also depend on the principle of suffi-cient reason (i.e., der Satz vom Grund). That is, the principle of noncontra-diction depends on the principle of reason, so the latter must be more primordialthan the former. And still more strangely, the principle of noncontradiction isreducible to the principle of identity, so “it cannot be restricted to a class ofidentities, but must be related to all identities, and therefore also to contin-gent truths” (GA 26, 67/54).

Heidegger’s analysis of the order of derivation of Leibniz’s metaphysicalprinciples has thrown them all into a muddle of mutual dependence and seem-ing equiprimordiality. Yet they cannot be equiprimordial, since each impliesa demand that the others submit to a relation of dependence. Identity is bydefinition self-constituting and cannot involve external relation to another,especially when raised to the status of principle. However, without the prin-ciple of sufficient reason and its insistence on the grounding of all truths in


identity, there could be no reduction to identity as such. Yet reason or groundalso requires identity, for ground or reason can never be external to that whichis grounded. Meanwhile, ground alone is incapable of constituting itself withregard to necessary truths, whose grounds depend on their noncontradiction.Still, reducibility to identities already implies noncontradiction, and thus mustbe subsequent to it in the order of derivation. Without being able to posit aclearly defensible order of derivation or priority, Heidegger concludes that“identity is. . . the basic feature of the being of all beings” and “the principleof reason holds first rank, albeit unclearly, among the principles” (GA 26, 68/55). The result of this analysis of “Principia logico-metaphysica” is simplythe “connection” [Zusammenhang] among identity, noncontradiction, andground. As mentioned above, Heidegger takes Leibniz to be unjustified in hisextension of priority to the principle of reason in his lust for a linear and logi-cal derivation of metaphysical principles. Thus, he holds that Leibniz ultimatelyfails to see the full possibility for the explosion of identity into differentiatedcompatibility.

But there is more to say here. Perhaps it is possible to hear one of Heidegger’sown claims regarding identity with a “new tonality” and to discover an abyssat the heart of Leibniz’s principle of identity. Recall that Heidegger associ-ated the principle of identity with Leibniz’s primary, simple, empty, formal,logical truths. In accordance with the argument of Der Satz vom Grund, theseidentities need no grounding because they are themselves ground. Leibnizianidentities are self-identical reasons – the groundless abyss of ground. Thus,says Heidegger, “The principle of the knowledge of primary truths is nothingother than the most elementary of primary truths. The criterion, identity, isitself the first truth and the source of truth. Accordingly, we should note thatthis principle does not remain extrinsic to those cognitive statements for whichit is the guiding principle. Rather, it itself belongs to the statements as theirfirst statement” (GA 26, 65/52). With this stunning description of the reflex-ivity of the principle of identity, Heidegger opens the door for what I take tobe one of the most fundamental methodological strategies of early modernrationalism: the constitution of singularity via methodological repetition. Wehave already seen the sense in which Heidegger used a careful analysis ofLeibniz’s epistemological hierarchy of truths to explode the Leibnizian con-cept of identity, transforming its formal logicality into a mode of singularitythat embraced the totality of differential compatibility. If we take a step backfrom the Marburg lectures into Leibniz’s “Principia logico-metaphysica” andengage the very principle that defines ontological singularity, then Heidegger’ssuggestion regarding primary, identical truths will allow us to find a way backinto the problem of the order of derivation. Ultimately, it will provide a means


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

Leibnizian identity and methodological repetition

We still need to consider the question of the metaphysical principle that gov-erns Leibnizian singularity, namely, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles.Beyond its mediation by Wolff in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-ries, this principle was primarily propagated through the English, French, andGerman editions of Leibniz’s correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Since thatcorrespondence was in effect a battle by proxy with Newton, much of the ex-change is devoted to arguments for and against Leibnizian and Newtonian con-ceptions of space and time. Are they containers and measures for the objectsthat appear within them, or orders of existence that are only insofar as theyare expressed by the relation of existent things? Is space an empty field inwhich 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 isrelative only to the contents of its concept (contents that are reflected in theobject’s apparent spatial relation to other objects)? Is time, too, a containerand measure, now of motion across space, or the non-simultaneous order ofthe existence of things, a well-founded phenomenon depending merely on ourfinite and confused perception of an ultimately simultaneous reality?

Relative to arguments about space, time, and our perception of them, theprinciple of the identity of indiscernibles is taken primarily in its negativesense: “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 otherconsequences, that there are not in nature two real, absolute beings, indiscern-ible from each other, because, if there were, God and nature would act with-out reason in ordering the one otherwise than the other; and that therefore Goddoes 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 vig-orously contested by Newton, and later, Kant) as well as negative. It tells usthat there cannot be two existent things differentiated by number or spatiallocation alone. While Leibniz expresses it most often as “no difference solonumero,” his earlier articulations place a greater emphasis on the reason forthis lack of distinction between perfectly similar things, namely that eachindividual thing does and must possess an internal principle of differentiation.Thus the positive side of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles is lessa negation of the identity similars than it is an affirmation of the individuation


of each and every singular thing. Rather than a principle of the multiplicity ofthings, it is formulated as a principle of their individuality. There is no differ-ence solo numero or merely by location in space precisely because both numeri-cal singularity and spatial location are effects of the unique internal conceptualstructure of any given thing.

That said, let us turn to Leibniz’s methodological derivation of the princi-ple of the identity of indiscernibles in “Principia logico-metaphysica,” wherehe brings together conceptual and ontological singularity with a curious modeof methodological repetition. The status of this derivation is extremely im-portant in its historical reception, obsessing Kant in his pre-critical writings(and to a lesser extent in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft), Hegel in his accountof the Leibnizian monad in Wissenschaft der Logik, and, obviously, Heideggerin the Marburg lectures. “Principia logico-metaphysica” is important here bothbecause it is the locus of Heidegger’s analysis and because in it Leibniz is notconcerned with demonstrating principles regarding the various modes of ourknowledge of existent things, but with providing a priori grounds for the sys-tematic deduction of basic metaphysical principles. In this context, Leibniz’sarguments present something akin to an immanent logical deduction of concepts,and then describe that logic as a methodology. In other words, in “Principialogico-metaphysica” we have the description of a method for metaphysics thatdispenses with the need for a methodological subject and turns out itself to beidentical with the logical considerations at hand (or at least, as I discuss be-low, with the rule-governed character of thought). In what follows, I am notconcerned as much with the contents of this articulation of the principle ofthe identity of indiscernibles as with the form of its methodological genera-tion. It is still worth quoting in full:

[On the basis of first truths] it also follows that there cannot be two singu-lar things [res singulares] that differ only numerically. For surely there mustbe a reason for their are distinction, and this reason must derive from somedifference they contain. Thus the observation of Thomas Aquinas aboutseparate intelligences, which he declared never to differ in number alone,must be applied to other things also. Never are two eggs, two leaves, ortwo blades of grass in a garden to be found exactly similar to each other.So perfect similarity occurs only in incomplete and abstract concepts, wherethings are conceived, not in their totality but according to a certain singleviewpoint, as when we consider only figures and neglect the figured mat-ter. So geometry is right in studying similar triangles, even though twoperfectly similar material triangles are never found. And though gold orsome other metal, or salt, and many liquids may be taken for homogene-ous bodies, this can be admitted only as concerns the senses and not as if itwere true in the exact sense (A 6, iv-B, 1645/268).11


Of course, before Leibniz generates this version of the principle, he begins atthe Leibnizian beginning with a notion of first truths or identities as “thosewhich assert the same thing of itself or deny the opposite of its opposite,”exemplified by various logical and metaphysical formulations of the princi-ples of identity and contradiction: “A is A” and “A is not non-A,” “everythingis what it is,” “if it is true that A is B, then it is false that A is not B,” “nothingis greater or less than itself,” etc. (A 6, iv-B, 1644/267). The self-evidence ofthese identities forms the methodological basis for an a priori deduction of aseries of metaphysical principles via the analysis and definition of concepts.One begins with a definition and subsequently analyses it by means of theseidentical propositions. This method is possible on the basis of the oft-repeatedaxiom that predication is internal predication: the predicate inheres in thesubject. In identities, this inclusion is an explicit or expressed one, while inall other propositions it is implicit and thus requires analysis. Leibniz proposesthat there is a set of primary propositions whose logical structures are devel-oped or unfolded in their abstract simplicity, while all other concepts carrytheir predicates implicated or folded within them. The primary role of an iden-tity is to make possible the unfolding or explication of the predicates implicitin complex ideas, i.e. to express the predicates hidden within the striated sur-face of complex concepts.

We might expect, then, that what follows would have the status of a seriesof metaphysical examples: the secret, implicit contents of various conceptsunfolded a priori by means of identical propositions. But Leibniz’s methodis somewhat stranger than it first appears. Rather than instrumentally apply-ing first truths to complex propositions, Leibniz introduces a logic of “reso-lution.” Not only do we use first truths to unfold the content of complexconcepts, but the results of this unfolding are also themselves first truths, ascomplexity (the inner differentiation of the concept) is resolved into simplic-ity (the identity of the concept with itself). It is precisely here that Heidegger’sstartling claim regarding the identity of primary truths and their principlecomes into play. With his insight in mind, we can see that in the methodo-logical analysis of concepts, identities repeat themselves: they are at once thesimple methodological elements applied to complexity and also the results ofthat application.

So as Leibniz moves to the deduction of a series of metaphysical princi-ples, the very methodological repetition of identities in the analysis of con-cepts becomes the ground on which the generation of metaphysical principlesrests. The relation between implicated and explicated predication, accordingto Leibniz, is the proof for the validity of principles. For example, the princi-ple of sufficient reason (here: nihil esse sine ratione, seu nulla effectum esse


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 reasoning is based”(G 6, 65/646).12 Rather, it is derived from the relation between identical andcomplex concepts via the analytical resolution of the latter into the former. Ifthis principle were not the case, Leibniz writes, then “there would be truthwhich could not be proved a priori or resolved into identities, which wouldbe contrary to the nature of truth, which is always either explicitly or implic-itly identical” (A 6, iv-B, 1644–1645).13 Thus, the proof required for meta-physical principles is constituted by the relation among (1) an interpretationregarding the nature of truth (the predicate is contained in the subject), (2) amethodological reliance on first truths or identities as the engines of analysis(brought together with definitions, constituting the form of analysis as such),and (3) the transformation of the status of these identities into that of analyticresults (the resolution of complexity into identity). In short, the elements ofLeibniz’s entire methodological apparatus provide the proof for their ownefficacy, as the method of invention stands at both ends of the spectrum: itconstitutes the means that are supposed to be used for the explication of con-cepts, and its structure alone (without any attempt at application) generatescomplex concepts under the rubric of metaphysical principles. Method gen-erates truths, but not merely by its application to an external concept; itsmethodological character is itself generative of principles. The principle ofsufficient reason follows from methodological structure, without any require-ment for methodological techne: it is the immediate result of the constitutionof method. There is no complex concept to be analyzed, no implicit predicateto be unfolded methodologically. There is only method, and then there is suf-ficient reason.

The principle of the identity of indiscernibles is the next to arrive in thetext, and Leibniz uses one of its most typical formulations: “it also followsthat in nature there cannot be two singular things which differ solo numero.”With regard to the principle’s origin, we are told only “it also follows. . . .”But why does it also follow, and from what? It follows, Leibniz argues, be-cause “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 immediateanalytical deduction we can find the doubling of Leibnizian methodology atwork. The concept of the difference between two singular things is broughtbefore methodological reflection with a simple consequence: if there are twosingular things, then there must be a reason for their distinction. Why? Sim-ply because nihil esse sine ratione. That is, the derivation of the principle ofthe identity of indiscernibles requires the analysis of a complex concept,


namely, the analysis of the principle of sufficient reason. This means thatconcept of the identity of indiscernibles is contained in the concept of suffi-cient reason. Ratio implies diversitas, as the explication of sufficient reasonreveals an implicit principle of difference, or alternately, as the latter can beresolved into the former.

However, this analysis or resolution alone is not enough to generate theprinciple. The methodological invention of principles also requires a confron-tation with the structural elements of method in order to attain that status. Notonly must “there be a reason for their distinction,” but also “that reason mustderive from some difference they contain” (A 6, iv-B, 1645/268).15 Can wefind this second element for the generation of the identity of indiscernibles inthe principle of sufficient reason? Surely not, for the latter principle tells usnothing more than that everything must have a reason, and nothing about in-ternal differentiation. The claim about internal difference must refer to anelement of method: because predication is intrinsic, difference (understoodas a predicate) must be intrinsic to the concept that it predicates. Looking backat the generation of this methodological element, the concept of internal predi-cation follows from the claim that all complex concepts are reducible to sim-ple identities. It would be one thing to say that Leibniz simply uses the analysisof two complex concepts – sufficient reason and internal predication – toexplicate an implicit principle: (1) analyzing the principle of sufficient rea-son; (2) resolving the identity of indiscernibles into the concept of internalpredication; (3) resolving internal predication into the concept of the reduc-tion or resolution of complexes into simples; and finally (4) resolving thatconcept into the simple, self-evident truths of identity and contradiction. Butwe cannot leave it at that. The ‘second concept’ under analysis here (internaldifferentiation) is no mere metaphysical principle among others. It is an elementof the very methodological procedure of analysis, reduction, and resolution it-self, 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 oneand the same thing, and the difference between them is merely one of some-thing we might call ‘methodological movement.’ Recall the origins of theprinciple of sufficient reason – the concept whose analysis generates the firstpart of the proof for indiscernibility. I have argued that nihil esse sine rationedoes not emerge from the analysis of any ordinary complex concept, but fromthe unfolding of the implicit conceptuality of Leibniz’s methodological edi-fice. With this in mind, we are faced with a quandary; in fact, we are facedwith precisely the same quandary that leads Heidegger to his tentative claim


for the equiprimordiality of identity, ground, and noncontradiction. Exactlywhich complex concepts are unfolding here? Is sufficient reason unfoldinginto a methodological art of invention, or is invention unfolding into suffi-cient reason? The same question holds for the second aspect of the proof forthe identity of indiscernibles. If the former is the case, then the results ofmethodological analysis give rise to the structure of method as such. If thelatter obtains, then the identities lying at the ground of Leibnizian methodol-ogy must be neither so simple nor so identical after all. “A is A” or “A is notnon-A” would have to be complex rather than simple concepts, the principlesof sufficient reason, of the identity of indiscernibles, and indeed the entire edi-fice of metaphysical conceptuality all implicitly predicated of them, foldedwithin an inexplicable corrugation of simple identity.

In summary, Leibniz outlines two types of concepts: identical concepts(non-analyzable simples, asserting the same thing of themselves or denyingthe opposite of their opposites) and complex concepts (differentiated com-plexes of identities, ultimately reducible to their constituents). The analyticityof complex concepts depends on a claim about the nature of metaphysicaltruths, namely, that the predicate inheres in the subject (this internal predica-tion is explicit in identities and implicit in complexes). The method of analy-sis, however, both uses identities to unfold the contents of complex conceptsand resolves that complexity into identity. Identities stand both as the elementsof method and as its results (this is Leibniz’s first methodological repetition).Rather than simply accepting the doubled role of identities and applying it tocomplex concepts, the logic of Leibniz’s text indicates that the very claim thatthis doubling occurs is the principle for the generation of those concepts.Because identities are both the arche and telos of method, Leibniz’s firstmetaphysical principle – sufficient reason – must obtain (for if it did not, thenthere would be complexes that could not be resolved into identities). Theconcept of method in itself (and not in its application, not for another con-cept) grounds complex principles (this is Leibniz’s second methodologicalrepetition). For the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, the situationbecomes even more difficult. Part of its proof comes from everyday methodo-logical analysis (the analysis of the concept of sufficient reason), but part ofit also comes from the redoubled doubling of method and its claim for intrin-sic predication. The problematic conclusion is that the proof for the identityof indiscernibles requires an application of methodological analysis to onecomplex concept among others, but also requires either a transfer of concep-tual validity from the edifice of method to the principle in question or ananalysis of the concept of method itself. If the former is the case, then theidentity of indiscernibles is an identity and not a complex concept requiring


analytic deduction (a position Leibniz clearly does not hold). If the latter, thenthe structure of method – a structure of simple identities – is itself a complexconcept, and identities that imply or contain nothing nevertheless unfold intoprinciples. The identical, immediate, non-analytic concept of method turns outto be a differentiated, mediated, analytic concept, folding within itself a ple-num of metaphysical principles. Leibnizian metaphysics emerges, at least inpart, from the application of method to its own methodological structure. It isprecisely this essential form of methodological reflexivity that Heidegger’ssomewhat 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 self-grounding, abyssal Leibnizian method for Heidegger’s interpretation? Doesit undermine, strengthen, alter, or extend his reading? In this section, I situateHeidegger’s Leibniz interpretation in the broader context of his project in theMarburg lectures. I argue that while Heidegger’s claim that Leibnizian logicdepends on a metaphysics of truth characterized by a monadological ontol-ogy is substantially correct, the abyssal repetition of Leibnizian method al-lows another important aspect of his metaphysical project to come to the fore.Finally, I suggest that this interpretation of method provides a preliminaryindication 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 ideaof philosophical logic in order to open more radical possibilities for philosophi-cal questioning and to “loosen” that idea so that “central problems in it becomeclear, and from the content of these very problems we shall allow ourselves tobe lead back into the presuppositions of this logic” (GA 26, 7/6). Heideggerapproaches 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 logicthrough a “Destruktion of Leibniz’s doctrine of judgment down to basic meta-physical problems” (GA 26, 35/27). Ultimately, Heidegger resists the claimthat metaphysics is founded on logic, demonstrating through his reading ofLeibniz that the converse is the case.16

So what are the metaphysical foundations of Leibnizian logic, accordingto Heidegger? What metaphysical presuppositions do Leibnizian epistemo-logical principles conceal? Heidegger argues that Leibniz’s logical doctrineof judgment rests on an interpretation of the nature of substance, specificallya presupposition of monadic ontology that depends on a Cartesian assertion


of the primacy of the subject’s self-certainty. As Heidegger puts it, “Constantreference to one’s own Dasein, to the being-structure and being-mode of one’sown ‘I’, provides Leibniz with the model of the ‘unity’ he attributes to everybeing” (GA 26, 106/85); or “though he has many differences with Descartes,Leibniz maintains with him the primacy of the ego’s self-certainty. LikeDescartes, he sees in the ‘I’, in the ego cogito, the dimension from which allbasic metaphysical concepts must be drawn” (GA 26, 108–109/87); or again,“Leibniz poses and solves the problem of being, the basic problem of meta-physics, by recourse to the subject” (GA 26, 110/88). Leibniz, that is, illegiti-mately imports a metaphysical interpretation of the problem of being into hisgeneration of logical principles as such (and his principle of identity in par-ticular), all the while insinuating that he has founded his ontology on purelylogical principles. Heidegger’s interpretive strategy, of course, echoes thevarious readings of the early modern rationalists that crop up throughout hiscareer. If we accept Heidegger’s claims regarding the primacy of a meta-physical concept of identity over its logical articulation, then it follows thatLeibnizian logical principles (and especially the Leibnizian principle of iden-tity) “must be conceived as a metaphysics of truth” (GA 26, 126/102). AsHeidegger summarizes:

Reduction to identity, as a whole of mutually compatible and coherentdeterminations, as a mode of judging about beings, is only possible meta-physically if the being itself is constituted by an original unity. Leibniz seesthis unity in the monadic structure of substance. Thus, the monadic struc-ture of beings is the metaphysical foundation for the theory of judgmentand for the identity theory of truth. Our dismantling of Leibniz’s doctrineof judgment down to its basic metaphysical problems is hereby accom-plished.... Leibniz’s logic of truth is possible only on the basis of themonadological metaphysics of substance. This logic has essentially meta-physical 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 nomeans seeing the whole picture. Given that Leibniz’s methodological genera-tion of logical principles (and particularly the principle of identity) takes theform of a self-grounding structure of abyssal repetition – the interpretation of“Principia logico-metaphysica” I elaborated above on the basis of Heidegger’sown interpretation – it seems to me that there is another presupposition at workhere, and another essential aspect to the metaphysics operative in Leibnizianthought. That is, it is not only the monadological interpretation of substancethat constitutes the metaphysics of truth that grounds Leibnizian logic, but alsoan abyssal interpretation of philosophical method. Indeed, I think that this


methodological self-grounding (the construction of logical principles throughthe application of philosophical method to the concept of methodologicalconstruction) is a central element of Leibnizian metaphysics that is in no wayexhausted by Heidegger’s too often repeated trope of the illegitimate andconcealed reliance on a foundational subjectivity. A strategy of abyssal method,after all, dispenses with the presupposition of a thinking subject: philosophi-cal method becomes a kind of self-winding automaton that neither assumesits epistemological priority over the practice of metaphysics nor seeks itscertification by a thinking being.

Indeed, in the final Marburg lecture devoted to his “destructive” readingof Leibniz, Heidegger himself considers whether an approach that backs awayfrom the sheer assertion of the priority of a science of knowing (a logic) infavor of a looser assertion of the priority of rule-governed thinking (which Itake to mean a method) might not pose a stronger challenge to Heidegger’sclaims for the foundational priority of metaphysics vis-à-vis logic. Here heconsiders and dismisses a ‘classical’ argument for the primacy of logic: meta-physics is a science, and thus a form of thinking; as a form of thinking, itpresupposes a science of thinking (a logic); therefore, before laying the foun-dations for a metaphysics, one must establish a logic. Heidegger’s responseis four-pronged, and its last two elements are essential here. Briefly, his firsttwo 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 sci-ence) must presuppose logic, which would be logically incoherent (GA 26,128/103). The third counter-argument is more relevant to our problem, becauseit introduces the idea of rule-governed methodological thought as an elementdistinct from a formal science of thinking. Heidegger argues that (3) the in-evitability of the use of rules does not imply that scientific thinking must befounded on logic: “Using rules does not necessarily require a science of therules of thought and certainly not a reasoned knowledge of these rules in thesense of traditional logic,” because this would render the justification of logicimpossible. The use of rule-governed thinking may in fact be inevitable, butthis inevitability “can only be justified metaphysically” (GA 26, 129/104).Notice that Heidegger’s establishment of the necessity for this justificationimplies only that it requires a metaphysics, and not a metaphysics of the sub-ject qua cogito or monad. This metaphysics need not involve “reasonedknowledge” [begründetes Wissen] and might presumably be articulated inthe absence of a being defined by the immediacy of its thinking or the cen-trality of its drive. Such a possibility certainly does not allow for thefoundational priority of rule-governed thinking over metaphysics. Indeed,Heidegger’s fourth and final response is that (4) this is impossible because


even while rule-usage (method) may be inevitable for the establishment of ametaphysics, “it does not follow that the foundation [of metaphysics] consistsin the use of rules” (GA 26, 130/105). But this distinction between logic andrule-governed thought does allow us to articulate an element of metaphysicsin addition to and aside from the metaphysics of subjectivity that Heideggerfinds operative in Leibniz, namely, a metaphysics of the abyssal repetition ofmethod governed by the moment at which method takes itself to be the pri-mary object of its own application. This is precisely the form of Leibnizianmetaphysics that I have argued we can find at work in “Principia logico-metaphysica” when we begin with Heidegger’s suggestion that we attend tothe reflexivity of Leibniz’s principle of identity.

Finally, I would like to propose that what I have suggested is a second formof the Leibnizian metaphysics of truth might be broadly construed as an cen-tral metaphysical vein running through the concept of method in the earlymodern rationalist tradition. Consider, for example, Descartes’ account ofthe generation of methodological rules for thought in his early Regulae addirectionem ingenii: the “greatest example of all” for the application of therules for the direction of mind is the methodological generation of those veryrules via their reflexive application. “Our method in fact imitates those in themechanical arts,” he writes, “which have no need of methods other than theirown, and supply their own instructions for making their own instruments.”Just as the blacksmith must forge an anvil, hammers, and tongs before attempt-ing swords and helmets, methodological investigation first seeks to define anddelimit its own structure before turning to “philosophical disputes or. . . math-ematical problems.”17 Descartes, in fact, repeats this claim three times in thefragmentary text, adding that the first task of method must be to enumerate“all the paths to truth which are open to men, so that the investigator may followthe one which is most certain” (AT 10, 396), or to investigate “human knowl-edge and how far it extends” and “define the limits of the mental powers thatwe 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 waythat both Descartes and Leibniz would probably reject, Spinoza appropriatesDescartes’ technical metaphor of methodological self-forging in his earlyTractatus de intellectus emendatione when he attempts to avoid the infiniteregress that threatens the constitution of any philosophical method that de-nies its certification by an external subject:

To find the best method of seeking the truth, there is no need of anothermethod to seek the method of seeking the truth, or of a third method to seek


the second, and so on to infinity. . . . Matters stand here as they do withcorporeal tools. . . . For to forge iron a hammer is needed; and to have ahammer it must be made; for this another hammer and other tools areneeded; and to have these tools too, other tools will be needed, and so onto infinity. . . . In the same way the intellect, by its inborn power, makesintellectual tools for itself, by which it acquires other powers for other in-tellectual works, and from these works still other tools, or the power ofsearching further, and so proceeds by stages, until it reaches the pinnacleof wisdom.19

While it is certainly true that these references can give only a preliminaryindication of the ubiquity of an abyssal metaphysics of method in early mod-ern rationalism (one that centers, in Leibniz, on an reflexive abyss at the heartof his generation of the principle of identity), I think that they provide a pro-ductive way to evaluate an operative metaphysics of early modernity that isbased on and compatible with Heidegger’s interpretations without being re-stricted to the orthodoxy of his results. Opening up an aspect of Leibniz’smetaphysics of truth that is not simply reducible to the now exhausting claimthat it conceals a hidden presupposition of Cartesian subjectivity allows usboth to reinvigorate Heidegger’s reading of the early moderns and to investi-gate important aspects of their metaphysical procedures that he overlooks.Whether Heidegger would welcome or disdain such a project seems largelyirrelevant.

My interpretation of the abyssal structure of the Leibnizian concept of iden-tity – taking its cue from Heidegger’s abortive suggestion – is meant to implyneither that Leibnizian method is non- or pre-metaphysical, nor that Leibnizianlogic somehow slips through Heidegger’s critique, nor that we can simply turnthe critical tools constructed by Heidegger’s reading against themselves. In-stead, I have attempted to reinvigorate Heidegger’s interpretation of earlymodern metaphysics, arguing that his own suggestions allow us to articulatea form of metaphysical method operative in Leibnizian logic aside from (andperhaps more important than) the one Heidegger identifies. This is a meta-physics of methodological repetition that operates without presupposing orrequiring a thinking subject by defining and developing itself out of a methodo-logically reflexive operation. That is, Leibniz’s second implied metaphysicalclaim – his second metaphysics of truth – is the construction of a self-generat-ing method that takes consideration of its own structure as the first and mostfundamental of its tasks.


Notes

1. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, Gesamtausgabe, Band 10 (Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), pp. 75–86. Hereafter GA 10, German followed by Englishpagination in The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1991), pp. 50–58. In most cases, I have replaced Lilly’s translation ofGrund as “ground/reason” with “ground” alone. Where Heidegger refers directly toLeibniz’s principle, I have used “reason.” It is worth noting that this identification ofLeibniz’s ratio with Grund (the key to Heidegger’s analysis of its “tonality”) has a veryspecific philosophical history. First occurring in Crusius, it was standardized by Kantand institutionalized by Hegel.

2. Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, Gesam-tausgabe, Band 26 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978). Hereafter GA 26,German pagination followed by English pagination in The Metaphysical Foundationsof Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992).

3. G.W. Leibniz, “Principia logico-metaphysica” in G.W. Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften undBriefe, hrsg. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Akademieder Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Reihe 6: Philosophische Schriften (Darmstadt, Leip-zig, und Berlin: Akademie, 1923–), Band iv-B, 1644–1649. Hereafter A 6, volume andpagination followed by English pagination in Philosophical Letters and Papers, trans.and ed. Leroy E. Loemker (Boston: Kluwer, 1989), pp. 267–271, 290–295. The dat-ing of “Principia logico-metaphysica” remains tentative. Leibniz, “Meditationes decognitione, 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 inéditsde Leibniz, ed. Louis Couturat (Paris: Alcan, 1903), pp. 518–523, and “Meditationes decognitione, veritate, et ideis” via Die Philosophische Schriften von Leibniz, vol. 4, hrsg.C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875–1890), pp. 422–426. Hereafter G, volume andoriginal pagination followed by English pagination in Loemker.

4. Leibniz, “Monadologie,” §56.5. Ernst Cassirer, Leibniz’ System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (Hildesheim:

Olms, 1962). Louis Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, d’après des documents inédits(Hildesheim: Olms, 1961). Heidegger was most likely unfamiliar with the third majorturn-of-the-century Leibniz interpretation, Bertrand Russell’s A Critical Exposition ofthe Philosophy of Leibniz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), though heundoubtedly read Cassirer’s review of it in the appendix to Leibniz’ System. . ., pp. 532–541.

6. Leibniz, “Initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica,” Leibnizens Mathematische Schriften,vol. 7, ed. C.I. Gerhardt (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962), pp. 17–36.

7. Heidegger’s analysis of the distinctions following can be found at GA 26, 72–81/58–65.

8. Immanuel Kant, Werkausgabe, vol. 1, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 422–444.

9. Here one might ask why – given the problems I have outlined in Heidegger’s account –one ought to take the tack of reinterpreting the Leibnizian principle of identity and theprocess of its methodological generation on the basis of Heidegger’s insight, rather thansimply dismissing Heidegger’s reading in favor of a more orthodox account of Leibniz’scritique of Descartes. First, I hold that despite its flaws, Heidegger’s interpretation makes


a major contribution to the question of the relative priority of logic and metaphysics inLeibniz. His careful interpretation of the texts and their relationship demonstrates thatthey open the problem of “foundation” and provides indications of why Leibniz’s thoughttakes the direction that it does. Despite the fact that Heidegger’s interpretation ends tooquickly – perhaps an early indication of his overriding and often exhausting enthusiasmfor finding concealed presuppositions of subject-centered metaphysics throughout thephilosophical tradition (more on this in the final section) – it still provides an importantseries of insights into the Leibnizian principle of identity. Furthermore, given that hiscomments also indicate the possibility of an interpretation of Leibnizian method basedon the reflexivity of the principle of identity, it would be short-sighted to dismiss thispath simply because Heidegger himself did not pursue it. Finally, the exploration of suchan interpretation holds open the possibility for a systematic account of a central elementof Leibnizian thought (namely, the status and structure of philosophical method, an is-sue one would be hard pressed to minimize for an intellectual heir of Descartes) that anapproach limited to historical reconstruction alone would be forced to abandon.

10. Leibniz, fourth and fifth letters to Clarke. Translation modified.11. Translation modified.12. Leibniz, “Monadologie,” §31–32. Translation modified.13. Translation modified.14. Translation modified.15. Translation modified.16. Again, Heidegger is primarily responding to the implications of Cassirer and Couturat’s

influential interpretations of Leibniz. This position is even more starkly expressed inRussell, but again, Heidegger was probably not familiar with his text.

17. René Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. 10, eds.Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1996), p. 397. Hereafter AT, followed byvolume and Latin pagination. Translations are mine. Cf. “Rules for the Direction ofMind,” trans. Dugland Murdoch in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1,trans. and ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Murdoch (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1985), pp. 28-33.

18. It is likely that Leibniz was profoundly influenced by the elements of this passage ap-pearing 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, andhas been a major source for subsequent editions. Unlike the other copies, in this one thesecond of the three quoted passages is located in an appendix. See Adam’s editorial noteto “La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle,” AT 10, 492–493, as well asHeinrich Springmeyer, “Eine neue kritische Textausgabe der Regulae ad directionemingenii von René Descartes,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 24 (1970): 101–125, and Herbert Breger “Über die Hannoversche Handschrift der Descartesschen Regu-lae,” Studia Leibnitiana 15:1 (1983): 108–114.

19. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus de Intellectus emendatione, Opera, vol. 2, ed. C. Gebhardt,(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925), pp. 13–14. Translated as Treatise on the Emendationof 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 directlyinfluenced by the passage in Descartes’ Regulae, since another of the extant copies be-longed to Jean De Raey, a member of Spinoza’s circle in the Netherlands. Cf. Adam’seditorial note to the Regulae, AT 10, 353.

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Heidegger's Leibniz and Abyssal Identity

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