La Monadologie: histoire de naissance

The text discusses the principal versions of the Entstehungsgeschichte of Leibniz's Monadology, from the classic account to the hypothesis formulated by Strack and then by Robinet: that the Monadology would have been composed for the circle of the French regent, specifically in order to supply with a draft a neolatin poet, Fraguier, friend to N. Rémond, cor- respondent and admirer of Leibniz. Robinet's interpretation, that was fancied especially by those scholars who do not care much for the Monadology, was sharply criticized by Boehm already in 1953 and has some far-fetched aspects. But it has not been substituted by any other, so if a fourth version of this history is current today, it is that of historiographical common sense: the Monadology and the Principles of nature and grace, written shortly before it, surely are closely connected and somewhat correlative; they are two popularizing texts, of different qualitative level, and one is better than the other, even though scholars don’t agree on which one. It’s time to re-tell the whole story. At the beginning the destination of the Monadology, although not being Fraguier’s poetic vein, surely is the circle of the duke of Orléans. But essential to the nature of the Monadology, as it becomes clear along its composition, is the autonomy it gains as it progressively separates from the other viennese writings with which it shared their first genesis. Our history would thus have to be a sort of cladistic of the Monadology: the effort to reconstruct a history of evolutionary relations, of which the content of the writings, since it can be analyzed in itself and comparatively, is both result and condition (as the constraints exerted on the real process). It is obvious that the genesis of the Monadology, by itself or in its relationship with the PNG, is also an element of an ampler phase of elaboration, starting with the concoction of that dialogue for the conversion of Malebranche’s followers, the Entretien de Philarete et Ariste—a text not completeley devoid of continuity with the Monadology itself—, and ending up in connection, exactly by way of the Monadology, to the last reworking undergone by Leibniz’s philosophy between the departure from Vienna and his death. The question about the nature of the Monadology is lastly considered. Its descriptive name is, in the end, a good definition of its content. It is more than a truism, that the Monadology actually contains a monadology, i.e. a new kind of philosophical text of which its structure is an exemplar.