According to Leibniz’s interpretation of death, he was dead, but not totally dead.

Leibniz, German, was both a philosopher and a mathematician. Leibniz was a representative of rationalists in the seventeenth century and a rare all-rounder in human history. Not only did Leibniz make great contributions to philosophy, but he also invented the symbols of calculus in mathematics that are still used today. Leibnitz, as a modern philosopher, is a representative figure who adopts the ancient Greek Monad theory, which is also the main Angle of Leibnitz’s explanation of death.

In Leibniz’s System of Metaphysics, monads are immaterial basic substances that make up the universe. Each monad lacks spatial extension, and is unique, indestructible, soul-like entity whose properties are a function of its perceptions and appetites. Monads’ property of perception are mainly mentioned under the context of death. From this perspective, Leibniz discusses death in both humans and animals. Leibniz regards death as a diminution that applies to both humans and animals, but the death of the two kinds are different.

In Leibniz’s view, the act of death is the process of body and consciousness becoming innumerable pieces. “Death” itself is a state, that is, a creature being in the state of innumerable monads. Therefore, Leibniz did not agree with Plato on the transfer of the soul, arguing that the soul can change (such as metamorphosis of insects), but does not transfer from one body to another. He wrote: 

The misconception… that preservation of the souls of beasts would lead one to metempsychosis and their transmigration from body to body… has resulted, in my opinion, in their overlooking the natural way to explain the preservation of the soul.

From this point of view, we begin investigating the death of animals first. In Leibniz, the death of an animal is the death of an irrational soul. (If a person is exceptionally stupid, is it also an irrational soul?)

When an animal is deprived of organs capable of giving it sufficiently distinct perceptions, it does not follow that the animal has left no smaller and more uniform perceptions or that it is deprived of all its organs and all its perceptions. Its organs are merely enveloped and reduced to a small volume, but the order of nature requires that everything is developed again sometime and return to a noticeable state and that there be a definite well-regulated progression in its changes which helps to bring things to fruition and perfection

The above excerpt explains how Leibniz thought about the death of animals. Leibniz does not believe that perception disappears when all organs fail to provide it (death). Perceptions become smaller perceptions. In other words, when you are dead, all of your senses are in a “diminished” state. Thus, there is no perception in the state of death, and this “diminished” state is a lower level of perception.

He said that the order of nature would allow these little perceptions to be pieced together again as something that could be perceived. Then the creature returns to a state of being perceived and is able to perceive other things. When all the perceptions are “put together” again, an animal is out of the state of death. (It’s like differentiating and integrating in calculus.) The death of an animal, for Leibniz, is a cognitive and sensory relegation to a minute, imperceptible state. Correspondingly, the state of “death” is not eternal. After a certain amount of time, the monads will come together again and return to a state of higher perception, and begin the next phase of their lives.

But unfortunately, Leibniz himself seems not to know how long the state of “death” will last, and there is no discussion about it in Leibniz’s previous works.

Logically, the death of a human is not that different from the death of an animal. But the perceptions of humans (Rational Souls) are more advanced than those of animals, making them more difficult to explain. As explained in Death of Monads: 

In cognitive terms, the death of human beings does not differ very much from the death of animals, except that the cognitive change is far greater in scope.

The big difference between human perception and animal perception, according to Leibniz, is the ability to know what we are perceiving and to reflect on it — perceive that we are perceiving. Leibniz argues that the prerequisite for thinking is distinguish of perceptions. For any perception people have to be able to distinguish before they can reflect on one or part of it. When humans die, perception is also divided into countless pieces. Different from animals, the death state of human beings is not that the volume of perception is too small and people can’t perceive it. Instead, it is that people are unable to distinguish countless perceptions in a moment, so they can’t reflect and are in a confused state. For example, now when you look at the room you perceive a room, but when all your perceptions are pieces of color you can’t tell whether it is a room or not, and you can’t tell the difference between two similar pieces of color. You’re in a confused state. (When you feel confused solving a math problem, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you’re dead.) A person who has been in such a confused state for a certain period of time is dead. In a letter to Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, he wrote:

In death, or rather the appearance of death, since I take it only for an envelopment, we do not lose life, sensation, or reason, but what prevents us from noticing that for a time is the confusion, that is, the fact that at that time we have an infinity of little perceptions all at once, in which there is no single one which is clearly distinguished from the others.

Similarly, the death of the human (rational soul) is not a permanent state. When these perceptions come together again into a discernible perception, man ceases to be “confused” and is freed from the state of death.

Leibniz died, according to himself not totally dead, in Hanover in 1716. Though as a member of the Berlin society of sciences, His grave was unmarked for 50 years. I guess Leibniz himself also didn’t care so much about the grave for one day he will break away from the state of confusion again.

Bibliography

Leibniz G.W. (1989) Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit. In: Loemker L.E. (eds) Philosophical Papers and Letters. The New Synthese Historical Library (Texts and Studies in the History of Philosophy), vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1426-7_59

Leibniz, G. W. (1925). Monadologie. Sfinx.

Leibniz, G. W. (2019). Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. De Gruyter. 

Leibniz, G. W., & Gerhardt, C. I. (n.d.). Die philosophischen Schriften. Olms. 

Roinila, Markku, (2016, December 25) The “Death” of Monads: G. W. Leibniz on Death and Anti-Death

Look, B. C. (2013, July 24). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#MonWorPhe.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, June 25). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Death.

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Monad. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/monad.