Monad (philosophy)
The term Monas (Greek for "unity, simplicity " ) has or monad in the history of philosophy different meanings, but whose basic aspects remain remarkably constant. They begin with the Pythagoreans and unfold especially in Neo-Platonism, in Christian mysticism, Jewish Kabbalah and the Hermetic tradition. Later, then almost all bundle in Leibniz 's Monadology before they break apart in special meanings in the 19th century.
The Monas up to Leibniz
Even in Greek mathematics occurs, the term monas, Euclid's definition of a number is a composite of monads manifold. The Pythagorean idea that the Monas of metaphysical origin ( archê ) be the numbers is explained in Neo-Platonism of Plotinus ( 205-270 ) to the effect that the Monas is the minimum size of arithmetic, such as the point representing the minimum of the geometric size; and it is symbolized by Proclus ( 410-485 ) through metaphors by which the Monas source, root or stove is the number.
This basic meaning of the Monas as generating principle, which causes the transition from the unspeakable and indivisible for countable and measurable is in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th century AD) explicitly connected to the speech of the triune God. The Monas is based on the three divine persons and penetrates all heavenly and earthly things, so it is the end of man, to unite with this " sacred unity". This Trinitarian process is then compared in the pseudo- hermetic philosophers Book of 24 (around 1200) with the refraction or reflection of light: "God is the unity ( Monas ), which has a (second) unit produced or generated, and ( thirdly ) has reflected their love or ardor in itself. "
In the early modern period, the Monas wins a predominantly natural-philosophical meaning. Thus, the late Giordano Bruno defines the first monad ( Amphitrite ) as the " substance of each number " and characterizes it as a substantial minimum in the triple sense, namely as a rational choice model in the figures, as Essential principle in nature and as Unzerteilbarkeitsprinzip of the atoms in the bodies. The second monad (Diana ) is the man intelligible light trace of the first in the universal universal nature.
Even when influenced by Paracelsus natural philosophers such as Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614-1699) are "physical monads " accepted as a vital forces and accrued both of the atoms as well as the mathematical minima. The Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614-1687), however, God sees as the non-moving monad, radiating their being in the created Monads as the ubiquitous center of its radii towards the periphery.
The monad in Leibniz
Leibniz (1646-1716), who first used the term monad 1696, weaves together the threads mentioned historical significance to his metaphysical hypothesis of an infinite number of single substances ( monads ). You are everywhere in the matter and are either markedly active ( awake ) when they form the central or dominant monad, which is the center of activity and experience in an organism, or only weakly active ( sleeping ) when the innumerable subordinate monads are inside or outside of organic bodies. Monads are the sources of spontaneous, that is not mechanically erklärbarem work in nature, and they constitute the unity of every single thing or individual.
Although all monads are living mirror of the universe, because all possess perception, that is, a - if ever so dark - capture the outside world, and " Appetition ", that is, the desire to get from one perception to another. However, they differ according to the level of clarity and distinctness with which they perceive the world around them, that is, according to the structure of the body associated with them perceive, imagine or comprehend even thinking. The lowest level in the hierarchy of monads form the entelechies, that is original, irreducible to physical forces centers spontaneous activity in inorganic bodies or plants. If these are powerhouses of sensation and memory efficient, as shown in animals and humans, they are called souls. The highest level of monads are the rational souls or spirits that are capable as the man who is intellectual self-reflection and the ego - consciousness.
Leibniz characterizes the monads as metaphysical, animated points or metaphysical atoms, in contrast to the postulated from the atomistic physical atoms have no stretch and thus are not bodies. It does not follow, as Leibniz pointed out with particularity in correspondence with de Volder Burchard and Bartholomew des Bosses, that the monads would be immaterial. Rather, they consist of two principles, which are in themselves dependent and complete substance or monad form only in its connection, the innermost center of a monad, ie the mathematical point at which locates the entelechy, the soul or spirit is, forms the internal shape of the monad. However, this form can not exist as such, but is a physical point, ie a planted or incarnated, the forms as the outer shell of the Monad against infinitely small sphere. It consists of a particular matter, the Leibniz Erstmaterie ( materia prima, primitive matière ) calls.
The difficulty that monads have one hand matter, but on the other hand, should have no parts and no expansion can be explained by the particular nature of the Erstmaterie. In contrast to the second matter ( materia secunda ), that is, the extended bodies, which are always only phenomena understands Leibniz under the Erstmaterie a very fine, liquid and elastic matter, which he in his " Hypothesis physica nova" with the already 1671 ether or dynamic light matter identified that everywhere flows through the body. Strictly speaking, this is light or Erstmaterie " not in the expansion, but in the desire for expansion ," because " the nature of light strives to spread ."
The emotional center of a monad can therefore never exist without that enveloping Lichtfluidum because monads not suffer without matter, and therefore could perceive no impressions of the outer world. " Accordingly, God also created a substance does not deprive them of their Erstmaterie, although he can take her by his absolute power their second matter; because otherwise he made it the pure activity, like only he himself is. " Detached from all matter is only God, the creative Urmonade from which all monads created by constant " are generated Effulgurationen ".
The secret of the Monad or the metaphysical point, that is, the dynamic unity of mathematical focus and enveloping physical point, therefore, is that although has the essential liquid shell of the monad and extension parts, but has not the monad itself for them alone is the combination of emotional spontaneity and receptivity much material, but not the size or character of their surrounding matter. Because even if their essential envelope can be shattered and destroyed, but the soul is always maintained in the smallest resulting fluid as a mathematical center. Therefore, the monad, and so did the incarnated into her soul, indestructible or immortal.
Leibniz conceived as an intellectual response to the Descartes (1596-1650) radicalized the mind-body problem, the monad. Because Leibniz understands the soul as an immaterial center, he rejects a direct interaction or physical interference ( influxus physicus ) between body and soul. Instead, he has the monad to the causal mediation between the two, because their liquid ether or light matter the substantial band ( vinculum substantiality ) between body and soul. The circulation of the ether by the visible body of the world is thus that pre- established by God "work of art ", which enables the exact correspondence and harmony between the perceptions of the soul and the movements of the body. Therefore, this pre-established harmony prevails not only between body and soul, but also between the monads themselves
According to Leibniz's famous formula, however, yields have the monads, although " no window " or doors into them or from the inside could by something from the outside coming out of them, as their mental focus is always enveloped only by their own Erstmaterie, the monad the spontaneous performance, the movements of the world around them to represent individual perspective due to their selective structure of the center, angle radii and periphery.
For Leibniz, the world does not end in the scientific world, but the world of science and the language corresponding to a philosophical world, made up of monads ( simple substances ) whose symbolic representation are the things. The question of the existence of elementary units to be answered by determining conceptual units, referred to as ( individual substances, or substantial forms ) monads. The identification of monads over so-called individual concepts, which in turn are designed as a complete terms, ie as (infinite ) conjunction of all an individual can assume predicates. Behind the world of concepts (and thus again the language and science ) is (even conceptually constructed ) the world of monads.
Leibniz puts forward three theses:
- The thesis of a representation of the universe in every monad ( based on the given design with the full terms opportunity statements about any object as statements about and represent the same object ),
- The thesis of a pre-stabilized harmony ( can be interpreted as the application of such a conceptual way to the ( problematic ) situation of representable by a full term infinite system as a whole to understand )
- And the thesis that monads by perceptions (defined as intrinsic property and activity of a substance ) to be constituted (leading to a theory of complete concepts or conceptual provisions within the meaning of the first two theses back ).
Everything that happens to a monad is merely the result of their idea or their full term, because this idea already contains all the predicates or events and overall the universe expresses. This inner determination is indeed associated with an external destination, but logically belong external provisions for the complete term of the predicted object, thus takes the place of the empirical subject a logical subject.
By replacing the empirical through the Logical, the project of a logical hermeneutics are seen. Leibniz seeks truths of fact due to truths of reason (Thesis of sufficient reason: there is always a sufficient reason why something is the way it is). The relationship (simple ) monads and assembled substances (body) concerns the relationship of an object with its language, more precisely, conceptual representation. The world tells not of themselves, as it is, but it changes to a linguistic / conceptual level; everything can be traced back to conceptual units. The world is visible only on the basis of our constructions, but it is not mapping. A direct view ( our distinctions over) is not possible ( of modern skepticism - is about the thesis of the world perspective of what one thinks subjectivity that is not reduced to the subject).
Monad in time according to Leibniz
In the Christian Wolff (1679-1754) coined the German school metaphysics Leibniz's theory of monads was usually taken only modified. Wolff himself speaks of " first elements ", but who lack the metaphysical quality. In the famous " Monadenstreit " of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1747, a contribution was awarded, the basing on geometrical considerations, the theory of monads refused. The extensive journalistic debate on this judgment in the contemporary scholarly journals refers to a split between leibnizianisch - Wolffian embossed university education in Germany and the French and English influenced Frederick ( the Great named after Friedrich) Academy in Berlin.
The criticism that exerts Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in Amphiboly chapter of the " Critique of Pure Reason " on the theory of monads, its actually diluted after - Leibnizian form applies. The early Kant conceived the monads no more than metaphysical, but only as a physical and therefore soulless points, namely as space-filling spheres with attractive and repulsive force. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that Leibniz had imagined the monads as noumena ( CPR B 321 f - Amphiboly the concepts of reflection ).
The few theories of the 19th and 20th centuries, the claim the concept of the monad are still characterized by very different contexts. When Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) called " Monad " about a "simple real being " of any kind is also the soul. Karl Marx referred to in his work On the Jewish Question in 1844, the freedom in civil society than freedom of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn to himself. The physician Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) even called the body's cells monads, as each is an individual. In contrast, some philosophers of the 20th century, using the Leibniz central concept in a rather inspired by Kant or Descartes sense; said Richard Hönigswald (1875-1947) and Wolfgang Cramer (1901-1974) for the principle of subjectivity, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) for the concrete ego.
In natural philosophy the term monad ' as the epitome of a Newtonian conception of space diametrically opposite concept of space is used: The space and the ponderable body can not exist side by side as two independent subsystems of the cosmos, but everyone's body is surrounded by its own, infinitely extended space share. In this sense, as the special theory of relativity has become known physical interpretation of the Lorentz transformation of S. Mohorovicic has been referred to as " Monadology ".